Collecting Ireland

Like so many descendants of Irish immigrants, I dreamed of visiting the “homeland.” Ireland, however, is a pretty big island with considerable diversity, and I wanted to see the particular region, land, and little towns my ancestors had known. None of my living relatives knew the location, great-grandpa had come from so many years ago and had been dead since 1929. None of them had ever asked. I should have asked my grandmother myself while I had the chance, but I hadn’t.  I felt doomed to live with the void.

A browning, fragile, and somewhat tattered envelope with a return address and postmark provided the answer.  Somehow, I faintly remembered the envelope, which I had seen as a small child. Planning a trip to Ireland in 2005, I determined to find it. I tore my mother’s house apart looking. Finally, I found it with a stack of old papers stashed in a drawer. There it was—everything I needed on an envelope postmarked “1936,” with a return address in Newcastlewest, County Limerick.  My great-grandfather’s sister had sent it, and my grandmother (and then my mother) had saved it. 

Thank goodness for the mail and for those who saved what probably had seemed an insignificant scrap. The bit of information it bore opened-up an entire world to me . . . one that would have been lost to my family forever otherwise. When I arrived in Ireland, I went directly to Newcastlewest and literally walked to my long-lost relative’s home. It was a dream come true.

-Terry Sheahan