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Book Review, Connecticut Society of Genealogists!

13 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Janet Maher in Book Review, Connecticut Irish, Early Irish Catholics in Connecticut, Kilkenny Mahers, Naugatuck, Ordering From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley

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Connecticut Society of Genealogists Literary Awards, Irish Catholic History, Irish in Connecticut, Mary Sullivan Conran, Naugatuck Connecticut, Patrick Maher

 
Mary Sullivan Conran, from Janet Maher family photograph album, colorized ©2010 Janet Maher

Mary Sullivan Conran, from Maher family photograph album, colorized ©2010 Janet Maher

Although I was disappointed not to have won a literary award from the Connecticut Society of Genealogists, I very much appreciate the review they included in this issue of Connecticut Genealogy News! About my book, From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley: Early Irish Catholics in New Haven County, Connecticut, they wrote:

A massive volume of Irish lore, this book will attract not only the beginning researcher but also those charter members of TIARA. The author, a native of Connecticut, has equipped this scholarly book with multi-colored and black and white photographs. The author uses larger print size than usual as she maps and transcribes the oldest Catholic cemetery in Naugatuck, where generations of people and their descendants who helped shape the character of southern Connecticut lay interred. An excellent set of researcher’s tools enable the user of this material to accurately navigate throughout its contents. Starting with a clearly defined table of contents and ending with a plethora of selected bibliographical works, broken into sections determined to be primary and secondary sources, this book’s organization is a reader’s delight. The concluding section entitled Recommended Organizations is a source not usually included, but is an added bonus for the researcher.

In the course of my research, photography was a partner to historical and genealogical study. Our family images provided questions and sometimes hinted at answers, helping to create ties between individuals. After years of puzzling over one large group photo, included in full in my book, I finally determined that the striking older woman in this detail, above, was Mary Sullivan Conran. Mary, the daughter of Mary Maher and Patrick Sullivan, of Ireland, had several siblings who also emigrated to Naugatuck, Connecticut. She was the wife of Edward Conran, one of the close partners of my great great grandfather, Patrick Maher, and godfather to Patrick’s youngest child, Josephine (future principal of Salem School).

In my study of birth records in Freshford, Kilkenny, I believe that I discovered Mary and three of her siblings. She was born in 1826, relatively close in age to Patrick Maher, who was born in 1811, from nearby Queen’s County/Laois. (In Naugatuck, four years were shaved from Mary’s age. This, however, was a slight amount compared to those subtracted in census and birth records throughout the decades by so many other historically young-looking Irish women.)

Mary Sullivan Conran died in June, 1910, at age eighty. My research of the first community of Irish Catholics in nineteenth century Naugatuck suggests that she would have been the last remaining elder of the original immigrant group. I discussed this revelation with a descendent of the Conrans, who thought she recognized a resemblance to another photo of Mary Conran that she remembered.

I find these kinds of discoveries to be quite thrilling. Having spent my entire life as an artist, little could I have known that the path of an historian might have been another possibility–albeit aided by art! It’s also delightful to have discovered through this work that our family was not as tiny as it had always seemed. I wish that we could have known our ancestors during their lifetimes, but am grateful for the journey they nonetheless provided.

©2013 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley: Early Irish Catholics in New Haven County, Connecticut was published by Apprentice House, Baltimore, MD. It is 400 pages and includes 336 images. It may be obtained at: Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT; Naugatuck Historical Society, Naugatuck, CT; and Quinnipiac University Bookstore, Mount Carmel Branch, Hamden, CT. In Baltimore it may be purchased from Loyola University Bookstore and The Ivy Bookshop. Online it may be purchased from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, and from me via Paypal or by check (P.O. Box 40211, Baltimore, MD, 21212).

Thank You

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Janet Maher in Book Review, Connecticut Irish, New Haven Irish Catholic Immigrants

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From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley

JosephineAMaherWindowCPRT

©2008 Janet Maher, Saint Francis Church, Josephine A. Maher Window, Naugatuck, Connecticut

        With this final post for 2012 I wish relaxing, soul-nourishing holidays and peace in the new year for all. Thank you to everyone who purchased my book, wrote about it, attended my talks and signings, sent me letters, made comments on and became followers of my blog. I am grateful to you all!

John O’Donohue wrote that the air around us is filled with the souls of all who have left the earthly plane before us. There are times that I sense this link with the deep past, but I also sense the cosmos as being filled with a web of connections invisibly darting about, like a psychic interpersonal internet.

Perhaps that energy from “the other side” plays a role in making disparate factors align, piercing its way through time and space to leave its mark on our lives. We wander through our daily realities, falling forward, and once in a while we’re redirected as if someone had been watching, seeing us flounder, and decided to shoot some new insight or spotlight out to guide our way. We wake into a new awareness or are steadied along. That strangers can become important members of our present continues to strike me as miraculous. It reminds me how vast and extensive a single life is and what actually matters in the long run.

Physical remembrances of my great great Aunt Josephine arrived not long after meeting a dear and formerly unknown relative. A silver serving bowl from 1847, silver bread plate and butter knife, were among things that Josephine and her niece had used and saved throughout the decades of their lives. “Auntie’s” Beleek porcelain pitcher and the Maher pin that she always wore became my treasures too. These were gifts I could never have imagined existed, much less having come into my own presence. Sequences of small miracles built upon each other and led to the discovering of people I was meant to know before I die. The gifts of the people themselves extended forward as if manifesting through myriad unexpected connections from a time long before us that now enfolds us.

Recently I was surprised with a gift from someone who shares my roots in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley. I am so grateful to Charles, a reader of my book, who took the time not only to send me a beautiful letter, but to make me an elegant framed tinwork that he had carefully punched with the Maher motto. He has allowed me to include his words here:

        “Please accept the enclosed as a thank you for the effort you expended for your readers. I am actually into my second reading. It seems as though you had me in mind as you wrote, since I arrived “on the scene” just at the end of your chronology. Every child grows hearing stories and references to people with whom they have no personal contact although the family obviously exhibits great reverence and respect. For me two such people were Josephine Maher and Peter J. Foley.

        These two were the stuff of legends in my family. A week did not pass without a sentence prefaced with “Miss Maher always said” or “Pete Foley would do it this way” being pointed in my direction as a guidepost for life. As time when on I surely integrated a lot of what I heard but the sources dimmed, mixed in with the volume of other influencing events. When I read your book, Josephine Maher and Pete Foley were back and with them memories which I had long ago stored on a distant back shelf of my mind…”

       I thank Charles again for his generosity, which means so much to me. The journey I’ve been on has renewed my appreciation for my home town area and its history that had long been lost to me. I am eternally grateful for all the people from this place who have influenced and shaped me in life, and for all the recent others whom I have been lucky enough to meet both virtually and in real time through the course of this project. That many of these new friends are now part of my current life is the greatest gift.

I’ve often wished that my friends in New England, New Mexico, Maryland and other areas could all be in the same place at the same time and that it wasn’t so difficult to keep in touch due to the busyness of our lives. The thought of a psychic network reassures me that we remain interconnected nonetheless as our thoughts and wishes for each other reach across the miles and throughout time.

May the new year deepen and sustain vital emotional connections for all and bring moments of joy and renewing stillness, healing for those who have suffered great losses this year, and blessings wherever they are needed.

Janet

©2012 Janet Maher/Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

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From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley

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