Connacht Tribune
American visitors’ emotional trip to grave of their long-gone Galway ancestors
To find a place in the world where you belong outside the place where you grew up is how Cameo Wood describes returning to the home of her three-times great-grandparents in Kilchreest.
Cameo, who first landed on Irish soil eleven years ago, shortly after discovering her roots, returned this week with 30 members of her extended family to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors who left Galway in the early 1900s.
Discovering that connection, over a century after her relatives set foot on a ship bound for the USA, has led her family to discover a past they never knew they had.
“In 2011, someone associated with Ireland Reaching Out [Ireland XO] contacted me and said they had been clearing out Killinane Graveyard and said ‘we found your ancestors and if you come, we’ll show you where they lived, what they did and how they spent their time’,” says Cameo of the discovery.
“That sounded pretty good,” she laughs. “You hear that you might be Irish but what are you going to do – go to Dublin and look at a harp and then go home? That wouldn’t be very interesting.”
What was interesting was finding a long-forgotten connection with a place that extended her roots from Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, across the Atlantic to Kilchreest where her three-times great-grandparents, Pat Ball and Margaret Donohue, are buried.
It was their daughter, Jane Agnes Ball who married Kilkenny man George Daniels and moved to the US, beginning the journey that led 30 of their descendants back to Galway this summer.
Cameo’s awareness of her Irish roots only came about after hearing from Ireland XO – an organisation founded by Galway man Mike Feerick – while there had been rumours of a connection with the ‘old sod’, they’re not uncommon in America, she laughs.
“No one ever mentioned we were Irish. I sort of happened on a tiny link, but I was 90% sure it wasn’t true because all Americans like to think they’re Irish and Native American – and they never are!”
Now San Francisco-based, Cameo is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker but was working in tech in 2011 and it was while she was selling her company to Google that she was contacted by Mike Feerick of Ireland XO.
Standing in Woodville Gardens just outside Kilchreest, she says since that first trip to Galway in 2011, the connection has been re-established, and it’s thriving.
“We’re here in Woodville and Margarita [Donohue] who runs it remembers me. And we were just in the Village Inn in Kilchreest which I was referred to – I already had a connection.
“I can go to a bar in Loughrea and embarrassingly order my Guinness with blackcurrant syrup, because they know how I like it – and I can take 30 members of my family with me because we already know people, and that’s exciting,” says Cameo.
The complexities of Irish history at the turn of the 20th Century may have complicated matters, she says of their lost heritage, because her ancestors were Protestants and left Ireland as the push for independence intensified.
“After I made the first trip, I came back and was talking to my cousins and I was saying, ‘I think we’re definitely Irish, but it’s a weird kind of Irish because we’re Protestants’, and there were questions about if Protestants could even be Irish,” she laughs.
While many here would associate Massachusetts with the Irish-American community, Pittsfield where her family is from is a long way from the Boston-Irish, as Cameo explains.
“It’s far away from Boston and we don’t have a lot of ideas of culture there because, for whatever reason, once you’re in the Berkshires, you’re ‘Berkshires’ and wherever you came from, it doesn’t matter. And that’s true for a lot of America where there’s this funny uneasiness with heritage.
“Everyone’s American, but you forget where you came from. It may also have been the case that being an Irish person in the early 1900s wasn’t a plus, so it’s possible it fell away for that reason,” she continues.
It was as Cameo filled her relatives in on their Irish connection that the idea of a family trip grew legs.
“There’s these people at Ancestry.com who have a really big team here and they did a ton of research, and they used the research that I got from Ireland XO as part of a book they were putting together.
“I’d been involving my family and getting pictures and quotes and suddenly, everyone was like, ‘wait, we are Irish – this is amazing’!”
Ancestry help families organise this type of trip, says Cameo, and once word spread that she was planning a return, the numbers kept growing.
“At first, it was only going to be five or six people and . . . word of mouth spread that if you were a family member to Cameo, you could go to Ireland. Now we’re finally here.”
As part of their eight-day tour of the country, they took in Dublin, Galway and Clare, but their trip to Kilkenny was special. There, they met direct descendants of their two-times great-grandfather.
“We’re all very wary about claiming to be Irish because we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but now some of my cousins got tattoos saying they’re Irish, so we’re fully in,” she jokes.
“Thirty members of my family are going through this together and it is an experience we can communicate through the generations. We were just reading how my third-great-grandfather went to Salamanca and Rochester, New York, and then came back to Kilchreest, so we’ve always been travellers across the Atlantic and now we can continue to come back.
“I’m the organiser of the trip and my goal is to leave people feeling that this is the place they belong in the world, other than their hometown – this is their second hometown. I want them to feel like they have a local pub to go to and that they feel like they could take their children and their friends in 10 or 20 years and feel like they know the area and are comfortable here,” says Cameo.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
Galway 3-18
Cork 1-10
NEW setting; new opposition; new challenge. It made no difference to the Galway minor hurlers as they chalked up a remarkable sixth consecutive double digits championship victory at Semple Stadium on Saturday.
The final scoreline in Thurles may have been a little harsh on Cork, but there was no doubting Galway’s overall superiority in setting up only a second-ever All-Ireland showdown against Clare at the same venue on Sunday week.
Having claimed an historic Leinster title the previous weekend, Galway took a while to get going against the Rebels and also endured their first period in a match in which they were heavily outscored, but still the boys in maroon roll on.
Beating a decent Cork outfit by 14 points sums up how formidable Galway are. No team has managed to lay a glove on them so far, and though Clare might ask them questions other challengers haven’t, they are going to have to find significant improvement on their semi-final win over 14-man Kilkenny to pull off a final upset.
Galway just aren’t winning their matches; they are overpowering the teams which have stood in their way. Their level of consistency is admirable for young players starting off on the inter-county journey, while the team’s temperament appears to be bombproof, no matter what is thrown at them.
Having romped through Leinster, Galway should have been a bit rattled by being only level (0-4 each) after 20 minutes and being a little fortunate not to have been behind; or when Cork stormed out of the blocks at the start of the second half by hitting 1-4 to just a solitary point in reply, but there was never any trace of panic in their ranks.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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GARDAÍ and the IFA have issued a joint appeal to all road users to take extra care as the silage season gets under way across the country.
Silage harvesting started in many parts of Galway last week – and over the coming month, the sight of tractors and trailers on rural roads will be getting far more frequent.
Inspector Conor Madden, who is in charge of Galway Roads Policing, told the Farming Tribune that a bit of extra care and common-sense from all road users would go a long way towards preventing serious collisions on roads this summer.
“One thing I would ask farmers and contractors to consider is to try and get more experienced drivers working for them.
“Tractors have got faster and bigger – and they are also towing heavy loads of silage – so care and experience are a great help in terms of accident prevention,” Inspector Madden told the Farming Tribune.
He said that tractor drivers should always be aware of traffic building up behind them and to pull in and let these vehicles pass, where it was safe to do so.
“By the same token, other road users should always exercise extra care; drive that bit slower; and ‘pull in’ that bit more, when meeting tractors and heavy machinery.
“We all want to see everyone enjoying a safe summer on our roads – that extra bit of care, and consideration for other roads users can make a huge difference,” said Conor Madden.
He also advised motorists and tractor drivers to be acutely aware of pedestrians and cyclists on the roads during the summer season when more people would be out walking and cycling on the roads.
The IFA has also joined in on the road safety appeal with Galway IFA Farm Family and Social Affairs Chair Teresa Roche asking all road users to exercise that extra bit of care and caution.
“We are renewing our annual appeal for motorists to be on the look out for tractors, trailers and other agricultural machinery exiting from fields and farmyards,” she said.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
