Mike Cullinane is a rare New Jersey native who has been writing for most of his life: postcards, letters, poetry, a brief journalism career, and spellbinding corporate presentations. He has previously contributed to The Galway Review, Failed Haiku, Sad Girl Diaries and anthologies published by Moonstone Art Center. After a moderately successful career, he spends most days as the project manager of his own life, serving friends and family when needed, while being mentored by his Grandson.
Chapel of Serendipity
By Mike Cullinane
A Christmas gift from his adult son sparked Stanley’s momentum to renew his exploration of family history. He enjoyed finding his paternal Grandparents within the 1901 Census of Ireland with their youthful occupation described as ‘Scholars’. True it meant they were students at the time, but the title did permeate through the family’s appreciation of education. It served as a reminder to Stanley that he would approach the oral history and legends of his family with an eye towards validating what he could while leaving some legends to drift at sea.
Tools of the 21st Century helped make the effort less time consuming and more a labor of love. Having downloaded an app to build the family tree, Stanley noticed his cousin Helen’s yeoman’s work on his maternal side – the much more difficult ancestors to trace from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Unfortunately Helen passed away before Stanley could thank her and offer to collaborate. He made a mental promise to come back to his Mother’s side of the family, after adding the symmetry of his paternal branches.
With a surname of McDonough, most people would remark to Stanley “You must be Irish”, to which he would reply, “No, I was born in New Jersey.” There was no reason to make grandiose claims of his Irish-ness, but he had enough of it in him to understand green-dyed beer is blasphemy and St. Patrick’s Day isn’t an excuse to get drunk. At this point in life, he appreciated his native born parents’ – children of the 1930s & 1940s – desire to be Americans. However, there was something lost in translation from their forebears. Mom and Dad were citizens where they were born, whereas their elders were subjects of Empires. In the case of Stanley’s Irish Grandfather John McDonough, there seemed to be an extra emphasis in his signature on his Petition for U.S. Citizenship. The ink seemed bolder where signed his renouncement of “allegiance to George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland and British Dominions beyond the seas”. Stanley had enough Irish-ness to know George was not a name of a true King of Ireland.
He looked at his Grandfather’s record within the app which started at his birth on January 11, 1891. Quite the meticulous fellow as many historical records were available for his journey through life; in Ireland, the United States and a brief perilous time in the Ardennes Forrest with the AEF in 1918. So Irish, John McDonough’s parents sent him and his brother to America in 1915 to avoid the “Bloody Tax” but he signed up for the U.S. Army to fight the Hun while still aspiring to be a U.S. citizen.
One day while traversing the Great-Grandparent branches of the tree, Stanley looked at John’s mother, Deliia McDonaugh, a farmer’s daughter from Rathnaglye in the vicinity of the Ogulla Well. Delia was born shortly after The Famine’s height, while her future husband thankfully survived his childhood through it. She lived through the Irish Civil War and to see the beginning of the Irish Free State; while her husband Brian passed away in late 1919.
In one of our family legends, Brian and Delia’s son John went absent without leave after the Armistice was signed in 1918. In the Spring of 1919, John took a holiday from his encampment in France to visit Mom & Dad in County Roscommon. The war was won, and there wasn’t much to do but boring drills, create mischief and avoid this strange pneumonia killing some of the boys who had survived the trenches. His Father was approaching 80 and his Mother was in her late 60’s. To Stanley there was enough evidence in hand to believe this legend as true. He understood the part of the familial character that believed this is what we do.
Stanley noticed that Delia McDonough’s record had a new document attached. The Latter-Day Saints had been busy on their service mission and attached the Civil Marriage Certificate of his Great-Grandparents. He quickly viewed his Great-Grandfather’s record too, the stone mason’s son from Ballenagar, and happily the marriage certificate was attached to him also. He admired the Latter-Day Saints dedication to family connection. While not being a religious man, Stanley was not an atheist. He just didn’t think tying one’s shoes or bringing the trash to the curb were acts of Providence.
He did believe much of his life had a tailwind to it which he named the serendipity of his life. When the winds weren’t favorable it was up to him to row out of the doldrums. So there in the app was the Civil Marriage Record of Brian and Delia McDonough in the District of Elphin stating their marriage occurred on June 17, 1886. According to the document they were “married in the Roman Catholic Chapel in Tulsk according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church by the Reverend J.J. Kelly”.
The Civil Record did not give the chapel’s name, but the 21st Century does allow for a swift resolution of a mystery as long as a kind person on the receiving end is willing to answer. Stanley sent an email to the Diocese of Elphin, and shortly after a kind parish secretary within the Parish of Tulsk replied. While she could not confirm with total certainty, given the dates of the marriage and the age of the chapel building in Tulsk, Brian and Delia were most likely married in the Saints Eithne and Fidelma Chapel.
Being an American, the many saints and martyrs of Ireland are often lost on Stanley. There’s no reason to be ashamed of that, it seems to be a fact of any diaspora, so just be curious. Now the homework assignment turned to who were these Saints Eithne and Fidelma?
A discovery followed that they were sisters, daughters of King Laoghaire of Connaught, who encountered St. Patrick and his entourage near a spring in present day Tulsk. So powerful was Patrick’s message to the King’s daughters that they chose to be baptized as Christians at the well. They asked if they could see God’s face, which Patrick explained can only happen after death. Patrick gave both a vale of virginity and holy communion. After receiving the communion, the sisters were so filled with rapture that they passed away on the spot becoming martyrs of Irish Christianity.
Stanley felt no reason to doubt this story, although his Irish family line were more of the stoic types, so that height of passion was unlikely. His family was more likely to believe, “Oh, we’ll get there soon enough. Would you like some tea or maybe some whiskey?” And then strike up another conversation about the amusement of it all. Stanley’s only encounter with Brian and Delia was when he visited their gravesite in a cemetery near Ballenagare. He speculated how these two people were brought together as the N5 of Irish modernity was not in place in the 19th Century – just the bumpy paths with names like the Strokestown Road. Some may see the hand of God in it, but Stanley assumed it was more likely the pragmatic side of his family – a matchmaker joined the hands of a farmer and stone mason for their children. But the matchmakers book is probably long gone to prove that and so that thought will drift at sea.
Serendipity is a curious experience, as Stanley now had acquired the knowledge of circumstances that had not crossed the sea. Children forget their parents were children once; there was much they didn’t know. However, it is now clear that Delia had grown up in the Diocese of Elphin where St. Patrick founded the episcopal see that survives today. The probability his Great-Grandparents were married in a chapel named for two early martyrs within Irish Christianity was extraordinarily high. He assumed Delia drank from the well of Ogulla mainly because his own Grandparents were in the habit of bringing gifts of water from a local well to his parents. Saint Eithne and Fidelma’s Feast Day is celebrated every year on January 11, the birthdate of his Grandfather John McDonough, the third child of Brian and Delia. Even with his family’s stoicism and pragmatism, Stanley had admit to having a warm feeling from the knowledge of where his serendipity springs.
The Galway Review 