Connecting to emigrants’ descendants in Canada
KEVIN AND ELEANOR LEE FROM CARNEW HAVE ESTABLISHED LINKS WITH THE DESCENDANTS OF MIGRANTS WHO MOVED TO CANADA FROM SOUTH WICKLOW 150 YEARS AGO. DAVID MEDCALF VISITED THEM
THE PAST maintains a very strong presence across large swathes of South Wicklow. Kevin Lee grew up with reminders of that past constantly in the background of his Rathdrum boyhood. And the history follows him to this day, ever since he settled near to the Wexford border, in Carnew. The common factor is the influence of the Fitzwilliam estate, a gargantuan holding run for the benefit of long gone absentee landlords.
The Fitzwilliam family were the owners of an obscenely vast area of farmland and highland which was under their control for hundreds of years. The estate, which began in the 17th century with the Wentworth clan, later the Rockinghams and then the Fitzwilliams, ran at one stage to a bloated 86,000 acres.
The Fitzwilliam connection with Coollattin ended with the sale of the big house and what remained of the estate during the mid-1970s.
By then the once-mighty Irish holdings had already been filleted by the Wyndham Act of 1903 under which much of the land was bought out by the Westminster government to be passed on to the tenant farmers.
The most substantial remaining symbol of long gone aristocratic power and influence over the local economy is the magnificent Coollattin House. The vast pile is these days little more than a brooding shell looming over the local golf course.
There are many other buildings still standing scattered around the area from Rathdrum to Carnew, from Arklow to Tullow, which serve as less grandiose souvenirs of the departed epoch.
Farmhouses, old schools, terrace homes, halls, churches (both Protestant and Catholic) and grain stores, most of them constructed for the long haul in solid stone, are on the list.
For Kevin and his wife Eleanor, however, the focus is not so much on the sturdy old structures which continue to serve the modern generation.
They are more interested in the people who populated the estate and, occasionally, in less substantial sites where the famers and the smallholders and the labourers used to reside.
The result of the couple’s passion for the human heritage is the Coollattin Canadian Connection, building links which stretch from Tomacork to Toronto.
KEVIN tells the story of going on a picnic at Moyne with members of a family who arrived from Grey County in Ontario to visit the Lees not so long ago.
As every good teacher should, he had done his homework, so he was able to make a stunning revelation over the tea and sandwiches.
It proved to be a very emotional oc- casion after he informed the visitors that the picnic was taking place on the very spot where their ancestors used to live before emigrating. The family was called Lawrence, their surname commemorated in a small road still called locally Lawrence’s Lane.
Those who emigrated from Moyne were among thousands who departed from the estate in overcrowded, famine-racked Ireland for the open spaces on the far side of the Atlantic…
Now well into his sixties, Kevin Lee graduated in history from UCD in 1968 and went on to forge a career in education.
His teaching speciality after he was taken on at Coláiste Bhríde in Carnew was mathematics and he rose through the ranks to become principal there in 1979, in succession to Joe O’Shea.
He did not neglect his original discipline, however, retaining a strong interest in history, with particular reference to the Fitzwilliams.
He took out a reader’s ticket for the National Library in Dublin, calling for the estate papers to be produced by the box load from the basement for his perusal in the manuscripts room.
Nowadays, most of the material has been computerised and put online so that there is no need to darken the door of the library in person. But for many years he enjoyed putting his hands on the original material and building up a comprehensive picture of a remarkable mass migration.
Our 21st-century vision of Famine times is coloured by the awfulness of the experience of the regions worst affected by the failure of the potato crop, especially in the West. Mass loss of life through hunger and disease was the fate of many in Mayo and Galway, with the Russian roulette of the coffin ships awaiting many of those who attempted to flee.
Things were handled slightly differently in Coollattin country. Years before potato blight wreaked its devastation, the estate management moved to thin out a population which the agriculture of the day could no longer support with any degree of assurance.
The means chosen was not a campaign
of forced evictions but instead a more civilised, voluntary scheme of assisted passage to Canada.
Backed by a fabulous fortune extracted from the coal fields of South Yorkshire, these landlords at least had money for subsidies to make migration enticing for those who elected to leave.
The families which departed often packed their valuables for the journey in chests made by the estate carpenters, examples of which are prized in the new millennium by those lucky enough to have inherited them
They left at first in their hundreds and then in their thousands, a flow of humanity through the port of New Ross which peaked in the Famine years. Five shiploads pulled out of New Ross in 1847 alone, a year when 4,000 made the trip, never to return to the land of their birth.
THE SCHEME was initiated in 1832 and the last allowance was paid out in 1856. During that time, perhaps a third of the people living in the Fitzwilliam controlled baronies of Ballinacur South and Shillelagh chose to up sticks and move across the ocean.
Fortunately for those who now take an interest in what happened, the management of the exodus was meticulously documented. Kevin retired from teaching in1997 and much of his time since has been spent steeped in the detail of the social environment of south Wicklow in the first half of the 18th century. He has charted not only the Lawrences but also the Roches, the Prestleys, the Byrnes, the Kennys, the Fitzpatricks, the Codds, ththe DDoylesl andd ththe restt off them. th
In part he was responding to the number of Canadian tourists who arrived at his door seeking to trace their genealogical roots.
They were coming to the right place as the man of the house has not only mined Dublin’s National Library. He also took time to visit Sheffield archive, close to the gigantic stately home of Wentworth where the Fitzwilliams spent most of their time, adjacent to the their lucrative coal mines.
The former school principal has been supported in his dedication to history by Eleanor, who still works at the chalk-face. Native of Kilkea in Kildare, she teaches home economics and co-ordinates Transition Year and Leaving Cert Applied in Coláiste Bhríde.
Together, they have visited Canada and they have also put a structure on the link between Wicklow and Ontario – the Coollattin Canadian Connection.
As a result, regular annual exchange visits have taken place, with a party of Canadians due to arrive for a week-long immersion in their history next July.
‘It is the very opposite of the tourist thing,’ says Eleanor Lee. ‘ The magic of it is when we can walk to the family homestead. It is a little bit of magic to bring such joy.’
Yes, the lucky ones may have the opportunity to experience an emotional experience similar to that undergone by the Lawrences, besides calling to set-piece sites such as Wicklow Gaol and Coollattin House.
IN 2019, it will be the turn of the Irish to set off once more in the opposite direction, where they will doubtless drop in to see the folks at Smiths Falls, the town in Ontario south of Ottawa which has been twinned with Carnew.
Among the Fitzwilliam diaspora to have done well in Canada have been David James, a successful horse breeder whose most famous steed was named Shillelagh Slew while his house is called Coollattin.
A stroll around an Ontario graveyard can be an eerie experience as the tombstones are so often engraved with familiar names.
Though separated from the homeland by thousands of kilometres, the migrants and their descendants have also clung on to aspects of the culture they left behind for more than a century and a half.
‘ They have preserved many Irish traditions,’ reports Kevin Lee. ‘For example, they now produce champion fiddlers and Irish dancers.’
He and his wife are always extending their knowledge of the shared heritage and believe that the tourism authorities with their ‘Ireland’s Ancient East’ brand should be sitting up and taking greater notice of the Coollattin Canadian Connection.