Day 2: Returning to Innishnee

Our first morning in Ireland began with a traditional Irish breakfast, prepared by Ann: cereal, a fried egg, sausage links, bacon, toast, a tomato, orange juice, coffee and black & white pudding. As we were finishing up, Noel, having worked late the night before, came in for a quick “hello” & “goodbye.” We were sad to have to leave such a lovely home so quickly, but excited to move onto the great genealogical unknown that awaited us.

To drive from Enniskerry to Roundstone (in the far west of County Galway) you first have to head back north to the outskirts of Dublin in order to pick up the N6 highway toward Galway. Driving from the Dublin area past Galway into Roundstone is like driving down an ice cream cone: the roads get narrower, messier and more full of holes the further you get. After driving past Galway, the road becomes narrow, curvy and treacherous.

As we rounded one of the final bends of R341 heading toward Roundstone, a small brown sign appeared on the left side of the road, pointing southward: “Innishnee.” It had been six short months since we were last on the island – a trip of enormous discovery, which has been subsequently accentuated with intermittent bits of knowledge, piecing together our ancestral story. We could not resist the urge to turn left and head down to Innishnee for a quick trip around the island before checking into our lodging at Lisara House in Roundstone.

Innishnee was exactly as we had left it: hard, unforgiving and ravaged by years of windswept waves cutting into the landscape like razorblades, stained by the constant changing of the tide, and disfigured by the evolutionary violence of the salty sea gusts. Even the trees on this island grow in one direction because of the constant wind.

Carefully navigating the narrow road up and down the island’s hills and slowly rounding bends for fear of an unlikely oncoming car (the only solution to which would be one of the cars having to reverse to the nearest driveway or knoll on the side of the road), we finally came to the fork in the road at the north end of the second of the island’s three main portions. Taking this fork to the left leads to the ruined cemetery and Church of St. Matthias – the sight where my great-great-grandparents Peter King and Mary Ward were married in 1868 – the home of John Barrett (our friend from the March trip), and the home of Michael King (a possible long-lost relative).

As we came upon Michael King’s house, we looked to our right to his front doorstep, upon which stood an exceptionally tall man of about 65 in a green woven sweater and brown wool hat. After we drove by in our rented SUV – a giveaway of our status as strangers to Innishnee – and were greeted by a wave, we immediately pulled over and walked up. As I walked up the path to his front door, I said “Are you Michael King?” to which he replied, with his hand outstretched and bent downward to meet mine: “I am. You must be the O’Briens I take it?” Clearly he had received the note my dad sent him a couple of weeks prior to our visit. My dad offered: “I think we might be related,” to which Michael (pronounced “Mee-kel”) quickly replied: “I don’t think so on the King side, I’m sorry to say, but perhaps way back on the Ward side. I do have quite a bit of information for you though. Come in, come in.”

We sat in Michael’s living room – a lovely room with wooden trim, books, framed maps, and pictures of his now-adult children (all now living off the island and working in larger cities) – and heard about his life on the island. He was born on the island - in a house just south of the one he lives in now – 72 years ago. He told us that he has childhood memories of the elder Michael King (Honor King’s brother and my great-great-uncle). After Peter King and Mary Ward were married on Innishnee, they moved across the bay (about 1 mile) to Letterard (an equally unforgiving landscape on the shores of the mainland). It was in Letterard that my great-grandmother Honor and all of her brothers and sisters were born. They were baptized in Carna, the largest town nearby on the mainland.

Michael King (the elder) was a fisherman and lived with his mother as the head of the household after his father’s death in 1895. Michael told us that Michael King (the elder) never had children and married late in life, initially living in a house on the shore of Letterard that is visible from Innishnee on a clear day, and then later moving back to Innishnee with his wife, before dying in the nursing home in Roundstone in 1951. Michael told us that Michael King (the elder) is buried alongside his wife in the graveyard at the church on Innishnee and that Peter King and Mary Ward (his parents) are likely buried in the same grave or nearby. Furthermore, Michael told us that he knows precisely where the grave is because his own uncle is immediately adjacent. He remembered seeing Michael King (the elder) on the island as a child because his parents would look after people’s boats after they rowed to the island from Letterard in order to walk into Roundstone for supplies. He also remembered Michael King’s funeral – which he thought was in 1951 because he remembered it being after a major storm had washed out the roads, forcing the body to be brought over in a boat (and he knew that the roads were repaired in 1952).

The day was overcast and rainy, making it impossible to see the house in Letterard or easily navigate the cemetery. We also wanted to make it into town in time to stop by Tim Robinson’s store in Roundstone – so we agreed to come by in the morning and meet up with Michael. Before heading back, however, we decided to go up toward the cemetery and also take the fork in the road that led by U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s vacation home (known locally as the “Senator of Innishnee”).

We made our way back through Innishnee and into Roundstone – failing to notice any store called “Folding Landscapes” (Tim Robinson’s store), so we found our B&B and dropped our stuff off and asked Geraldine Coyne, the proprietor of Lisara House, if she knew Tim’s phone number. She didn’t – but she called Richard de Stacpoole (another person we had learned about before coming to Roundstone via the Roundstone community website). We got Tim’s number and called him up – he was happy to have us come down.

We made our way back into “downtown” Roundstone – about a one-minute drive around the bend in the road and down to the pier. Tim’s house and office store were located through a gate in the last house on the pier. After knocking on the door, we were soon shaking hands with the author of Connemara: Listening to the Wind, the extremely detailed, and pricelessly painstaking account of the Connemara region that we had been reading in advance of the trip (a very surreal feeling). He was a kind man and was happy to sell us a few of his famous maps of Connemara and the Burren (he’s the only man in the world to have personally mapped out the regions in such detail) as well as a signed copy of his book – a gift for our upcoming visit with Brian Rabbitt.

We walked back up the pier and around the corner to a used bookshop. A nice young girl inside, after being informed of our reasons for touring the area, suggested that we go across the street for a pint at “King’s Bar” – a pub named not for royalty, but after the owner: Mary King. It took some hard thought and convincing, but we were soon enjoying a pint of Smithwick’s in King’s Pub and talking with Mary King, who told us that she’s not related (her husband was from Cashel) but she knew of another King family that lives on Innishnee: an old brother and sister in their 80’s whom she thought were the children of a Colman King. My ears and hopes perked up at the statement: Honor King (my great-grandmother) had a younger brother Colman. My excitement, however, was quickly dispelled by my lawyerly criticism: if that’s true, then why didn’t Michael King – an Innishnee resident of 72-years - say anything about them? Mary did not know which house they lived in, but she said they painted it recently and it was on the west side of the road in the second part of the island. We had a lead…

We enjoyed cod & chips dinner at O’Dowd’s before heading back to Lisara House. On the way home, however, we thought we’d stop by the Catholic Church and talk with the Parish Priest to see if he had any records of the area (a suggestion made by several people). Father McCarthy was a very sweet, older gentleman and he graciously showed us the printed list of the Roundstone Parish’s records, an index for the delicate, fragile hard copies that date all the way back to 1872. Unfortunately, the Kings/Wards moved to Letterard after being married on Innishnee sometime after 1868, and Letterard is in the Carna parish, not the Roundstone parish (the Carna parish having lost many of its records in a fire decades ago). Nonetheless, we thumbed through the first volume of the written records: ancient, weathered parchment, decorated with the patient Latin and English inscriptions of steady hands, accounting for marriages and baptisms. There were several King families on Innishnee at that time (the island itself had a population some fifteen times greater then than it does now), none of which were directly traceable to our ancestors.

Although we had not found any hard evidence, the search through the ancient book was exciting. We thanked Father McCarthy and exchanged pleasantries on our way out of the rectory – when I suddenly noticed a map of Parish on his office wall. An idea struck me: “Do you know of a second King house on Innishnee other than Michael’s?” “I do,” said Father McCarthy, “There's another Michael King. Michael and Nora – a brother and sister.” “Do you know where they live?” I followed up. “Well, let’s see,” he said, turning toward the map on his wall, “here.” He pointed to a dot on the west side of the road, right next to the road and directly south of the entrance to the new pier. “Fantastic,” I thanked him, “we’re going to talk with them tomorrow to see if they can help us.” Mary’s story rang true and our lead seemed more promising.