A Little Background Before We Start

I knew from my beginning research that Catholic records in Ireland are scarce before the 1840s.

So, in trying to find out about my family, I was not hoping to find any relation to Brian Boru! I was just interested in finding my great-grandparents.

I promise this is not an Irish history lesson – but just a quick background before starting my story.

Ireland has a history of being invaded - by Vikings, Norsemen, and others. The English invaded several times, and although they eventually became rulers of this small country, they were unable to subdue the natives and bend them to an English will  - despite military force and the Penal Laws. As we all know, the native Irish lost their lands – they were taken away and given as payment or rewards to English soldiers and civil servants who helped crush the Irish.

In a further effort to suppress the Irish, the English government abolished the independent Irish Parliament in 1800 and merged it with the English Parliament. Many of the “gentry” moved to London after this – that’s where the power was - as well as the social scene for their families. They became absentee landlords – their estates in Ireland were used to support a lifestyle in London that they could not afford. High walls - some still seen today – surrounded the landlords’ estates to keep out the native Irish. Their agents were responsible for extracting rents from the Irish tenants. The rents were forwarded to the landlords – many of whom never set another foot in Ireland. They had no connection with their tenants. What once was a somewhat paternalistic relationship between landlords and tenants was now lack of interest in their tenants but  an increasing dependence on their rents to pay for increasing mortgages on their Irish estates and their English lifestyle.

By the 1840s, the majority of Irish land was in the hands of a few landlords. The Irish were renting small parcels of land and were trying to survive. Their rents were increased if they made any improvements on the land. The majority lived in poverty. They raised potatoes to feed themselves. If they raised any crops, they sold them to pay the rent. Or if they were lucky enough to have a pig - again they sold it to pay the landlord. They cut turf for fuel. They were forced to pay tithes to the Church of Ireland even though the vast majority of native Irish were Catholic. This is how my relatives lived! in their own country!

Let’s talk about County Kerry.

When I was first looking into my family’s history, I started with Sneem because my grandmother - Margaret Moriarty Keohane who was known to everyone as “Ma”- had been born in Sneem. She was now spending a lot of time at our house. It was easy to talk to her about her family, and even though she was becoming confused, she still had some memories. And as I mentioned previously, I had recently met and spent some time with her nephews and nieces in Loughane. I wanted to learn what caused so many of our relatives to emigrate – and what brought them to Boston?

On one of my first trips to Ireland, I had picked up a small booklet about Sneem, which was written by Mr. Theo Stoakely. In the 1970s, when I was making my first trips to Sneem, Mr. Stoakely was teaching school in Kenmare and was married to Dr Ruth Stoakely, who was the local doctor in Sneem. Since it seemed he knew something about Sneem, I wrote to him for information about the local area. I gave him some basic information about my grandmother. The following letter is his reply.

"Ankail, Tahilla,
Killarney, Co. Kerry.
17th August 1980.
Dear Mrs. Manning, 
     Thank you for your letter of 20th July which I received about a fortnight ago. I am glad you enjoyed reading "Sneem - the Knot in the Ring", but I fear it will be quite a long time before the enlarged edition is available. Tracking down the required information is a time-consuming business for one person, but I keep working at it and hope to put it all together one day.
     No, I am not a native of these parts, in fact I am really a rank outsider, having been born in England. However, I had a strong Irish Connection in the shape of two uncles who were clergy in the Church of Ireland, and it was on a visit to one of them that I first set foot in Ireland in 1923. I took my degree in Trinity College, Dublin, and was a schoolmaster in England for many years after the end of the second world war. My wife was born in Dublin and is the doctor for the Sneem area; she knows the Mike O'Sullivan you mentioned. We bought our land in Kerry in 1964 and having been living here permanently since 1960.
     One reason for wanting to write a detailed account of Sneem and district is that no one has attempted it so far. Consequently I am unable to recommend to you any books on Sneem - there just aren't any. As you remark, even Tom Barrington's "Discovering Kerry" (frequently called "The Kerry Bible") devotes only a few pages to the area. This part of Kerry has been the subject of almost complete neglect, mainly because it remained primitive for a long time, and was almost depopulated during Cromwellian Times. Also, compared with places such as Kenmare, Tralee and Dingle, Sneem is a much more recent centre of population,having started to develop only late in the eighteenth century.

     Numerous books contain references to Sneem, but for the most part they are short and don't give much idea of what life was like in the old days. However, there are some worth mentioning. I am assuming that you have good library facilities in the States, and that your local public library will either have or be able to get a copy of any given book.

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES - To Return To All That. Published by Jonathon Cape:London 1930. The author of this book wrote the ballad 'Father O'Flynn', which as you will know, is about Father Michael Walsh, the P.P. of  Sneem from 1829 to 1866. Chapters IV and V give a wonderful account of what life in the Sneem area was like for members of the gentry class.

JAMES FRANKLIN FULLER - Omniana. Publishd by Jarrold's, about 1918. This is another book written from the point of view of one of the gentry. There are only a few pages dealing with the area, but there is a valuable account of 'Father O'Flynn'. 

SEAMUS FENTON - It All Happened. Published by Gill and Son, Dublin, 1949. This is written from quite a different point of view. The author was of the old Gaelic stock - and lets you know it. He had a chip on his shoulder concerning the Anglo-Irish and the book is spoilt by his vicious references to them. However, the book is redeemed by its marvelous description of Sneem fair in 1885.

No one to my knowledge has written about life in the area in the early 1800s. The chief landlords were the Blands,who came from Yorkshire in 1692 and were in the Sneem area from about 1750 to 1933, although they sold up their estates about 1890. I am at present in correspondence with the present head of the family, who lives in Northern Ireland. The Blands were good landlords who looked after their tenants well, and I have never heard anyone say a word 

"against them. In 1891 the Blands sold out to Colonel Warden, of whom many old people of Sneem alive today have the unhappiest of memories. He imported staff from Scotland and evictions became quite common. It was understandable, although regrettable, that during the troubles in 1922 he was burnt out and fled to England. There were numerous other gentry living in the district last century, but in the main they were in houses leased from the Blands. Several of the "Big Houses" of those days still exist today.

As for dancing at the crossroads, there was - and still is - a concrete square at Oysterbed Cross, and another at Kelly's Cross. The latter would be the one your grandmother remembers near Glenlough School - now a church. I fear I haven't been able to give you much help, but if there are any other questions you wish to ask, please write and I will do my best,

Your sincerely,

Theo Stoakley"

I include the letter below so you could see how it looked - this was communication in 1980!

Doesn’t it seem funny today - in a world of instant communication - when we have iphones, tablets, computers/laptops, email, IM, text messaging, Facebook, tweets - even the “old fashioned” telephone - that Mr. Stoakely would ask me to WRITE to him if I had questions? What a big difference in 30+ yrs! And he wrote on a typewriter!! On airmail stationary that was less expensive than sending a letter!! If you could look closely, you could see where he made typing errors and corrected them. Reminds me of typing term papers when I was in college.

But I can still remember how excited I was to receive any little bit of information about any of the relatives or anything about where they came from – and back in the 1970s/1980s, the news usually came by snail mail. My mother and father would be as excited as I was when a letter arrived in the mail!!

Since we will be talking about the geographical divisions of Ireland, especially the townlands, I have included another of Mr. Stokely’s letters, which gives some background information.

"Ankail,
Tahilla,
Killarney,
Co. Kerry.
24th August 1981

Dear Mrs Manning, 
Thank you for your letter of 12th June. I was very sorry to miss you last month I was at home on the 13th, 18th and 19th, when you hoped to be in Sneem, but I expect you didn't have enough time to get round everybody.

I also have to thank you for your letter of 24th January and to apologise for not answering it earlier. Unfortunately it must have got put on one side, but your June letter jogged my memory and I found it.

I fear I am not really qualified to answer all your questions, as the area you are interested in - Glenlough, Loughane, etc., - is rather outside the area I am studying in detail. I believe at one time the main landlord in the Sneem area - Bland - owned land as far away as Castlecove and that his agent in those days was William Jermyn of Scart. I believe also that a lot of his outlying lands were sold about 1873 , but I don't know whether someone else took them over or whether they were sold to the tenants.

However, I can deal more easily with your question about townlands and maps. I expect you know that the townland is the smallest named division of land in Ireland. The whole country is divided into:-
Provinces; there are four of these, each being subdivided into
Counties; of which there are 32. I am of course considering the whole island, as it was before partition. Each county is subdivided into
Baronies; of which there are 273 in the whole country. In this part of Kerry we are in the Barony of Dunkeron South. Baronies are subdivided into
Parishes; here we are in Kilcrohane. And finally parishes are subdivided into
Townlands; of which there are about 62,000 in the whole of Ireland. The area of a townland may be only a few acres, but in mountainous or waste areas there are townlands of two or more thousand acres. You are correct in understanding the origin of the townland as the land associated with a farm or homestead or a group of such. Although this system of subdivision of the land was in use in the 17th century, it was not until the General Valuation of Ireland in 1851 that their boundaries were fixed and the Anglicised versions of their names were standardised.
Unfortunately there are no small-scale Ordnance Survey maps which have all the townlands marked and their boundaries shown. It is necessary to use the six-inch plan if this information is required, and the snag then is that each sheet covers a very small area. There used to be a map called the townland Index which would have been very helpful to you, but it is long out of print and quite unobtainable.
Incidentally, Loughane is not a townland. Although the townland is the smallest subdivision of land, some of them have names applied to smaller parts of them. these smaller named areas have no precise boundaries and so cannot be called subdivisions; the Ordnance Survey refers to them as sub-denominations. Loughane is not shown on the 1" and 2" maps.
Sincerely, Theo Stoakley"

So I think we need a break before we continue!