With showers and sunshine alternating off-and-on all day, we looked for things to do "indoors" and started with the Mayo Library in the county town of Castlebar, just east of Westport.
They have a great research librarian there by the name of Ivor, and he lined us up with a number of books that gave us information on our great-grandmother's (Prendergast's) home area of "Accony" (or Aghany or Aughany) near the western, Atlantic coast of County Mayo.
But before we got to that description in the 1835 Ordinance Survey Book, we came across a strange entry regarding a certain man by the name of Cormac O'Malley who was known as "The Hermit of Glenconcela's Cave." The entry goes on to note that "The hermit...made the cave a place of refuge to evade the murderer of his sister, who also sought his own life. The cave is 4 feet high, 3 feet wide, and 7 feet long." (Now, how is that for a thorough ordinance survey by the British!)
Then we found the entry for the Prendergast's townland of "Accony/Aghany/Aughany" as described below. Hard to believe people were not enjoying their hard life when all the land was owned by the British Marquis of Sligo.
Nothing much more of significance was found at the library since most records (census, birth/death/marriage) in Ireland don't go back to the 1820's, 1830's, and 1840's when our great-grandparents were living here in Ireland, unless you come across a church with excellent records or can seek them out at the National Archives in Dublin.
BUT, with the help of Patsy and Joe last summer, who led us to Bridie and Michael, who led us through Mary O'Flynn to Deirdre, we do have a likely link to the Prendergast line. It is still at the "speculation" stage since Deirdre's uncle and late father who did all the family research on this Prendergast line have an "unnamed daughter" who is still being researched. So, the conjecture is based on a family story about a "Sick Geoffrey" as well as a later marriage of James Prendergast to our widowed great aunt, Mary Jane (O'Keane)(Cosgrove) Prendergast, plus Marquette Fleming's family stories and conversations with earlier Prendergast and Scott relations when he visited this area of Ireland in the 1970's and 1980's.
If the speculation is confirmed by old records, then our Great-grandmother Katherine (Prendergast) O'Keane's parents (and our great-great grandparents) would be Michael ("Dick Michael") Prendergast and Catherine Watty Gibbons.
And Katherine's grandparents (and our great-great-great grandparents) would be Richard ("Dick") Prendergast and Bridget Lyons.
(Now, wasn't that a long, boring, complex family history story that you did not deserve to have been put through?)
We were getting to feel the same way at the library, so, instead of all this family history work, we moved on to another visit at the" National Museum of Country Life" in the nearby town of Turlough (ter-lock').
We followed a tour guide this time and learned a lot more about the Fitzgerald Mansion that is a part of the museum grounds, along with the display museum and beautiful lawns and gardens. The tour guide explained about the British Fitzgerald family being granted all the land in the area after removing the original Irish owners, the Burkes. When the tour guide said that it was not known what became of that line of Burkes, two "Old Timers" at the back of the tour shouted, "We're still here!" They went on to explain that they were from that same Burke family line who had relocated to the Kilkenny area. The tour guide thanked them for the update and said she planned to include that new fact in future tours.
And it was also noted that this "River Turlough" that runs through the museum's grounds, as well as many other rivers in Ireland, have been having flooding problems not unlike the flooding we were experiencing in Wisconsin in early June.
But all the rain certainly must have helped grow such large and healthy flowers like the hydrangea below.
So, we continued our "indoor" activities with a swim in the hotel's pool before dinner and only went back outside for a quick walk around Westport town to pick up postcards for the "computer-less" people who are a part of "All Those We Left Behind In America."
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