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And then we were 4... (more)
May. 18th, 2012 12:37 pmI have mentioned in the past that the O'Neill-McNamara family is a strange beast. Something happened in the early 1940s which split the family. My Uncle Tighe (Tim) O'Neill basically vanished and was *never spoken of again*.
There were rumours. He turned up at the family farm in Cappamore some time in the early 80s. My Dad bumped into him at Aintree in the late 70s. But I couldn't really get a straight answer out of anybody. One version of the story was that his wife had worn a floral dress to my grandmother's funeral and scandalized the family. Late one night after much drink, my father owned up to feeling screwed by his brother. The family ran out of money in the 1930s, thanks, mostly to my Grandfather's ability to drink and bet on 3 legged horses (the rest, as they say, he squandered...) anyway, Tim was met to put Martin, the baby of the family through University, instead he got married and had a kid and expected my dad to babysit. Dad had none of this and decamped to London where he worked in a machine shop for a year, and when he turned 16 he joined the Navy.
Troubling part of this was we knew that we had at least 1 first cousin out there and I've tried over the years to find them. I got nowhere.
Until the day before yesterday.
I got an email out of the blue from somebody via Ancestory.com - they'd been researching their great grandfather Tim McNamara and had seen a post from me with somebody from Chicago where a bunch of Tim's brothers ended up. She was curious to find out more, because she'd manage to track down her father's sisters but couldn't quite figure out where another set of O'Neill's would come from with a McNamara grandfather... It was a bit of a shock for both of us when I responded that she had the 3 sisters correct, but had left Paddy, the youngest, off the list and that I was, in fact, her First Cousin.
We've had a bunch of catching up in the last couple of days and it's a little weird, not only to find 4 first cousins, but that there's another David, and a bunch of first cousins once and twice removed with the same set of first names as us three. It was also sobering to learn a little more of the story, which isn't all that nice. It seems that Uncle Tim was a chip off the old block, what seems likely now is that he turned up at his mother's funeral with a pregnant girlfriend in tow and announced he had to marry her. My aunts, having pretensions of grandeur, went apeshit and basically kicked him out of the family and blamed the whole thing on the expecting mother. A few years later, having lumbered Agnes with 4 kids, good old Uncle Tim disappeared. The family left Ireland and grew up in Kent in the post war years dealing with the poverty and crap caused by Tim and his sisters who made damn sure nobody in the family knew about them or would talk to them.
The well was poisoned so effectively that when my cousin arrived in Cappamore in 2007 to track down her relatives, people there refused to believe who she was until she produced a birth certificate!
All in all, quite the little soap opera. But it's nice to finally find them, and turn the page on a, frankly, shitty part of the family history. We've now exchanged emails, and the introductions and pictures are starting to flow. It's just kinda weird, especially when my mother was an only child and my other two cousins were pretty remote, to suddenly find a set of first cousins, the youngest of whom is in their early 60s! The oldest is barely 10 years younger than my mother!
So, the last few days have been a flurry of activity on Ancestory.com and Geni while we fill in some holes in the family tree and, I suspect, we'll be having some kind of reunion at some stage. I'm still boggled to think that we grew up living on opposite sides of London and didn't know a damn thing about each other.
There were rumours. He turned up at the family farm in Cappamore some time in the early 80s. My Dad bumped into him at Aintree in the late 70s. But I couldn't really get a straight answer out of anybody. One version of the story was that his wife had worn a floral dress to my grandmother's funeral and scandalized the family. Late one night after much drink, my father owned up to feeling screwed by his brother. The family ran out of money in the 1930s, thanks, mostly to my Grandfather's ability to drink and bet on 3 legged horses (the rest, as they say, he squandered...) anyway, Tim was met to put Martin, the baby of the family through University, instead he got married and had a kid and expected my dad to babysit. Dad had none of this and decamped to London where he worked in a machine shop for a year, and when he turned 16 he joined the Navy.
Troubling part of this was we knew that we had at least 1 first cousin out there and I've tried over the years to find them. I got nowhere.
Until the day before yesterday.
I got an email out of the blue from somebody via Ancestory.com - they'd been researching their great grandfather Tim McNamara and had seen a post from me with somebody from Chicago where a bunch of Tim's brothers ended up. She was curious to find out more, because she'd manage to track down her father's sisters but couldn't quite figure out where another set of O'Neill's would come from with a McNamara grandfather... It was a bit of a shock for both of us when I responded that she had the 3 sisters correct, but had left Paddy, the youngest, off the list and that I was, in fact, her First Cousin.
We've had a bunch of catching up in the last couple of days and it's a little weird, not only to find 4 first cousins, but that there's another David, and a bunch of first cousins once and twice removed with the same set of first names as us three. It was also sobering to learn a little more of the story, which isn't all that nice. It seems that Uncle Tim was a chip off the old block, what seems likely now is that he turned up at his mother's funeral with a pregnant girlfriend in tow and announced he had to marry her. My aunts, having pretensions of grandeur, went apeshit and basically kicked him out of the family and blamed the whole thing on the expecting mother. A few years later, having lumbered Agnes with 4 kids, good old Uncle Tim disappeared. The family left Ireland and grew up in Kent in the post war years dealing with the poverty and crap caused by Tim and his sisters who made damn sure nobody in the family knew about them or would talk to them.
The well was poisoned so effectively that when my cousin arrived in Cappamore in 2007 to track down her relatives, people there refused to believe who she was until she produced a birth certificate!
All in all, quite the little soap opera. But it's nice to finally find them, and turn the page on a, frankly, shitty part of the family history. We've now exchanged emails, and the introductions and pictures are starting to flow. It's just kinda weird, especially when my mother was an only child and my other two cousins were pretty remote, to suddenly find a set of first cousins, the youngest of whom is in their early 60s! The oldest is barely 10 years younger than my mother!
So, the last few days have been a flurry of activity on Ancestory.com and Geni while we fill in some holes in the family tree and, I suspect, we'll be having some kind of reunion at some stage. I'm still boggled to think that we grew up living on opposite sides of London and didn't know a damn thing about each other.
