Civil War Monument and Cluster of Tombstones, Saint Bernard Cemetery, West Haven, CT

I’m learning daily about blogging and about Word Press, which I find very user-friendly. I’m really happy to be with them! My “Dashboard” shows addresses of web sites that have referred mine, and it’s terrific to see that people are finding me and making comments. With school about to begin I will not be able to post as regularly as I have, but will try for once a week. “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” can be a way to fill in between more indepth pieces.

• Mashpedia has listed MaherMatters on their page about Ikerrin. They also linked a blog by Malcolm Redfellow, who included some text and images from Joseph Casimir O’Meagher’s book. Redfellow discovered an anonymous article in Antiquary (Vol. XIV, July-December, 1886) that is included in O’Meagher’s Some Historical Notices of the O’Meaghers of Ikerrin. He determined that it was attributed to Andrew Carnegie, leading one to wonder – in a chicken and egg manner – who wrote it? Did Carnegie see O’Meagher’s work before it was published and anonymously publish it first in Antiquary magazine, or did O’Meagher include Carnegie’s piece in his work that Dr. William O’Meagher entered into the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. in 1890? My bet is on O’Meagher as the author, but we may never know. The Antiquary article can be found online, pages 101-108.

• The links I include in my postings are ones I have found on my own and recommend. Most sites that I had included in my three pages of links (and more within other pages) on my first Maher and Ireland-related website are still active and I recommend looking at them. I think “Ireland’s History In Maps” is a particularly invaluable one. I have already mentioned Jane Lyons’ From Ireland web site, which is chock full of helpful information, but I also want to point out another for which I included a link in a previous post – Pat Connor’s, Connor’s Genealogy. He also extracts information from microfilms and continues to add resources. Mahers can be found in his Tithe Applotments Lists for Tipperary, Kilkenny and Laois and in Famine Emigration, Castlecomer Area, Kilkenny. There is much more there that I should also look at! (When such index extractions seem relevant to one’s own research, the next step would be to rent the microfilm and translate the handwriting yourself to ensure that you see the same thing the indexer did.)

• I have discovered two excellent blogs through my involvement with Word Press. One is called A Silver Voice From Ireland, loaded with interesting and eclectic Irish topics. The author recently announced news about another find of an ancient body in a Tipperary bog.

• An amazingly rich resource for those interested in the participation of the many Irish in the American Civil War is Damien Shiels’ blog. Jim Larkin, in Connecticut, has a website about the Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the Civil War. His father, Bob Larkin, was instrumental in the erection of a monument honoring soldiers who died at Vicksburg. Larkin is also responsible for gathering together the volunteer group who are currently transcribing Irish tombstones in Saint Bernard Cemetery, West Haven, Connecticut. They have already found more than 500!

• As was the case with Silas Bronson Library, in Waterbury, Connecticut, built on what had been the earliest Waterbury cemetery,* it has been discovered that Yale New Haven Hospital was built on top of the site of the first Catholic Church in New Haven. By covering up the footprint of Christ’s Church, the first cemetery was also buried. Howard Eckels and others are working to document burials in this location before Saint Bernard Cemetery** began to be used. That all this good work is being done in New Haven is a monumental step in preserving and noting the important legacy of Irish Catholic emigration to New Haven County in the years before, during and after the Great Famine.

• Neil Hogan, editor of Shanachie, the newsletter of the Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society (of which I am a member) has told me that Sacred Heart University, in Bridgeport/Fairfield, which offers a degree in Irish Studies, has put the archive of Shanachie online. They have also included his excellent book, ‘Strong In Their Patriotic Devotion,’ Connecticut Irish in the Civil War, which I see that Damien Shiels has listed in his own resource of books. (When I get the correct link for the SHU resources, I’ll add them.)

• The topic of the Civil War came up in a comment someone recently posted here. I mentioned Major Patrick Maher, about whom Neil Hogan wrote, and about whom I will add a post, having gone to Cahir, Tipperary, on our recent trip specifically to look for his family’s graves. Some of what I’ve already written in relation to Mahers in the Civil War and about Thomas Francis Meagher can be found here. Major Maher, a stone mason/builder, is also mentioned in a New Haven website, Irish In New Haven.

• For some lovely reveries about Irish ancestors and ancestry and for those particularly interested in County Clare, see That Moment in Time, by Crissouli from Australia.

* When I put up my first Irish-oriented web site I did not include my Maher transcriptions. I did, however, quietly include some images. In the composite image header at the top of this page (Saint Bernard Cemetery), center, the tall brown monument is the tombstone of Catherine Strang Maher, wife of Stephen Maher, about whose lineage I am currently writing. The tombstone by the tree in the far right image is that of Catherine Maher, of Templetouhy, Tipperary, her husband Thomas Maher, Tipperary, and Michael, whom we believe to have been relatives of Bob Larkin.

** In the composite image header at the top of this page (Old Saint Joseph Cemetery), far left is the tombstone of a Maher couple from Templemore, Tipperary. At the far right is the stone of William Maher and siblings, from Queen’s County (Laois).

©2011 Sinéad Ní Mheachair (Janet Maher)

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