Finding My Irish Roots
A cold October rain was falling as I turned my rented Nissan Sunny down the dirt lane in the village of Portglenone, Northern Ireland. The road was barely wide enough for one vehicle and had patches of grass growing between tire-worn tracks. Up on a hill in the distance to the left, I could make out a pickup truck. A man closed a gate behind the truck, then got behind the wheel and began driving down the long winding road in my direction.
One of us was going to have to pull into the tall grass along the side to let the other pass. Having no idea if I was on private property, I wondered if this could be the land owner who might not appreciate my presence.
As the truck approached, I could make a white-haired older man in the passenger seat and a younger man driving. When the elder man rolled down his window, I hastened to explain that I was an American from Boston and that my mother was a Blaney. My grandfather, John Blaney, had grown up in Portglenone before leaving for Boston in 1900. I added that the owner of the village butcher shop had sent me here, telling me that all of the Blaneys once lived at the end of this lane.
“Aye,” the man in the truck said, “They did.”
I told him that all I wanted to do was to see and perhaps take a photo of the land where my grandfather had lived so long ago.
“Well, you can’t go up there,” the man replied. “Not now. You’ll be stuck in the mud for a week. Phone me on Sunday afternoon and I’ll take you there in the truck.”
I wrote down his phone number as he recited it through the rain drops.
“Who shall I ask for when I call?” I asked.
“Patrick Blaney,” he said.
It was only Wednesday, so I headed back to my room at the Beechfield Guest House, the bed & breakfast establishment in Ballymena where I had registered that morning. I went out to dinner, then returned to my room and stretched out top of on the bed, excited about the prospect that in a few days I’d be laying eyes on the land where my grandfather had lived his youth.
I had never known John Blaney, who died two years before I was born. I knew that he had grown up poor and Catholic in Northern Ireland. After his father, Henry Blaney died in 1899, Henry’s widow, Alice O’Neill Blaney sold the farm and headed for America with her two youngest sons, 18 year-old John and his younger brother William. Several of John’s older siblings had years earlier departed for Boston, eager for a better life than what faced them as poor Catholic farmers in a Protestant country.
Years after arriving in Boston, John Blaney married Rose O’Hara, also a Catholic from Northern Ireland. The couple had five children, including my mother, Rita. While I hadn’t known my grandfather, I did know my grandmother, who came to live with our family in Wakefield in her last years.
Lying on the bed at the Beechfield Guest House on Wednesday evening, I wondered how I would fill the time until Sunday when I was supposed to contact Patrick Blaney. I had arrived in Ireland about a week earlier for a three week vacation with no itinerary and no lodging reservations. My plan was to tour the country by car, booking rooms each night along the way. My one specific goal was, at some point on the trip, to visit Northern Ireland and the area where my grandparents had come from.
At about 9:30 p.m. there was a knock on my door. It was the owner of the guest house.
“Are you Mark?” she asked. “There’s a friend of yours downstairs.”
I told her it must be a mistake. No one in the world knew where I was staying.
“Well, she says she’s a friend of yours,” the owner said.
I told her I’d go right down.
When I reached the bottom of the staircase, there was a fair-skinned woman in her twenties with long auburn hair.
“Are you Mark?” she asked. “I’m Claire Blaney. I believe you were talking to my daddy down on the lane today.”
I tried to process what was happening. “How on earth did you find me?” I asked.
“There aren’t that many guest houses in Ballymena,” Claire explained. “We went to each one and asked if they had an American guest named Mark.” She said that her brother Pat, who had been the driver of the truck on the lane, had also remembered the make of my rental car and a partial license plate number, which helped them in their search.
“Would you like to meet the others?” Claire asked. “They’re out in the car.” I went out to the car and met Claire’s brother Pat and sister Una. They explained that when their father came home that day and reported the he had met “a Blaney from Boston” earlier that day, they were appalled that he hadn’t brought me home right then and there. So they decided to track me down. Now they wanted me to come back with them to the house in nearby Ahoghill for tea and to meet the rest of the family.
When we arrived at the house we sat and talked with Patrick, the man from the lane, his wife Trea and their grown children Pat, Colm, Una, Dympna and Claire. It turned out that Patrick, a cattle dealer, owned the land at the end of the lane and used it as pasture for his cows. To my amazement, the family knew the names of all of my grandfather’s siblings who had left for Boston a century earlier.
They insisted that I stay at their house for the remainder of my time in Ireland. The next day, I checked out of the Beechfield Guest House and drove back the Blaney’s home, where I stayed for the next week.
Members of the family took time off from work to show me the sights, like the Giant’s Causeway and the Glens of Antrim. We went to hear traditional Irish music at a pub at which, I was assured, they poured “the finest Guinness in all of Ireland.”
On Sunday, they took me back to lane where I had first met Patrick, and they pointed out the hill where my great-grandfather’s house had stood in 1882 when my grandfather was born.
Filed under: Blaney Blog, Columns & Essays, Family, Feature stories | 5 Comments
Tags: Ballymena, Blaney, County Antrim, Ireland, Irish, John Blaney, Nark Sardella, Northern Ireland, Patrick Blaney, Portglenone
Search this site
Categories
Flickr Photos
Archives
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
Recent Comments
Mark Sardella on A very Special Town Meeti… John Breithaupt on A very Special Town Meeti… Mark Sardella on A very Special Town Meeti… John Breithaupt on A very Special Town Meeti… Dan Noren on A very Special Town Meeti… Blog Stats
- 368,033 hits
LINKS
My mother was Margaret Blaney and was related to your mother
Tell me more, Teresa. What was your mother’s name?
My mother was Margaret Blaney and her father was James Blaney. He married Ellen Hughes, they had six children, Margaret, Mary Ann, Henry, Ellen, James and John. They lived in Lisnagarron Lane in Portglenone. My mother was a first cousin of the Patrick Blaney that you met.
My mother name was Margaret Blaney from lisnagarron lane portglenone
Hello,
I just happened upon your story and saw the post about Ellen Hughes. My great grandmother was the sister of Ellen Hughes. She was from Rocktown but went to Philadelphia and married James McNally outside of Philadelphia. I am interested in connecting with the Hughes family but also I am trying to find out where the McNallys or McAnallys were from. I was always told Antrim. James was born in the US. His father was Michael married to Elizabeth Knowlan. Michael had at least two brothers who both died in Philadelphia in the 1850s, Francis and John. All three brothers had a son John which leads me to believe that was the father’s name. There was also a sister Rosanna who died in Philadelphia. Michael McAnally had a dairy farm in Philadelphia. He died at age 95 in 1906 in Haverford Pennsylvania.