Achill Island, Galway, Aran Islands, Ireland in 2003

Keel Strand, Achill Island, 2003.

I had some vacation time to burn in 2003 and wanted to visit Ireland for the first time to follow up on some genealogical research. Our mother, Ruth Hausser, was German on her father's side and Irish on her mother's side -- Anna (also called Nan) Lavelle.

My mother's mother, Anna, was the fourth of the 10 Lavelle kids. They lived on the West Side of Cleveland, W. 111th St., in St. Rose's parish. Their parents, John Patrick Lavelle and Bridget Gallagher, both had roots on Achill Island, which in the 19th century was the poorest part of the poorest county in Ireland, County Mayo.

The book “Irish Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland” (Cleveland State University, 1978) explained how many Clevelanders could trace their roots back to Achill. The author, Plain Dealer writer William Hickey, told how Achill men tended to find their way to Cleveland. Many of them, like my great-grandfather, John Patrick Lavelle, who immigrated to Cleveland at age 17 in 1875, found a kind of work that uneducated men were qualified for -- they unloaded coal, iron ore, lumber, and grain from the Great Lakes ships that docked on the Cuyahoga River.

Daughter Christine on Achill, 2003

Many of the women who immigrated from Achill worked in the hotels. Most of the Irish laborers lived nearby in what was known as the Angle, around what today is West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue, and they attended St. Malachi’s Church nearby. In fact, that is where John and Bridget got married in 1880. Bridget was pregnant with their 10th child when John died at age 42. For my grandmother, who was 15 at that time, and her siblings, it meant they had to go to work to help support the family. She became a telephone operator. But that is another story.

Achill is on the Atlantic Coast in northwestern Ireland.

I wanted to see for myself this Achill Island where my great-parents came from. Our daughter Christine, who was then teaching at a high school in Baltimore, agreed to take some of her summer vacation and accompany me. For 10 days she good naturedly put up with many annoying dadly habits.

Deep Cleveland connections

We flew into Dublin and took a train west across the country to Westport, and then went by bus, crossing a bridge from the mainland to Achill. The bus went only so far, and we needed to go further to reach our B&B, so we decided to hitchhike. The first guy who stopped was a man about my age, wearing a Cleveland Indians ball cap. This was the first of many encounters with Achill residents who had Cleveland connections.

In every pub, when we announced we were from Cleveland, we heard stories of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins who had worked in Cleveland or visited there.

We had intended to rent bicycles to travel around the island, but at the only rental place we found, a half-dozen broken down bikes with flat tires lay abandoned at the side of the building. It was closed. Today, 15 years later, I am sure there are more and better options.

Still, we managed to get around the island and could see in many places the remnants of old potato fields, with their parallel mounds. Achill used to survive on farming and fishing, and 15 years ago, you could still see a lot of sheep. Well into the 20th century, it was isolated enough that there were many Gaelic speakers there. During our visit we saw Gaelic language classes promoted.

Healy, Molloy, and Lavelle, common names in an Achill graveyard. Also Gallagher, Kilbane, and Joyce, among others.

Achill today is a vacation getaway for prosperous city dwellers who have second homes on the island. Tourism is the big industry. But part of its attraction is seeing the old stone structures that shepherds used.

Abandoned village, Achill, 2003

Beyond Achill

 

Clare Island lies just off Achill, a short ferry ride.

We headed south to Galway and visited the tiny house where Nora Barnacle, wife of the writer James Joyce, grew up. There we also had the delightful experience of watching a street performer called Johnny Massacre use a series of clever tricks to build up a crowd and then get them to give him a pile of 10-euro notes even though he never quite delivered on his promise to swallow a sword while astride his unicycle. Blarney, they call it.

Galway had a lively street life when we visited in 2003

On the Aran Islands, a ferry ride from Galway.

We took a ferry from Galway out to the Aran Islands, which are famous for their sweaters and other wool handicrafts. It was easy to rent bicycles and visit some of the famous sites. It was July, and we worked up a sweat.

At the stone fortress, Dun Aonghasa, on Inismor in the Aran Islands, 2003

There are a number of stone forts along the west coast of Ireland and in the Aran Islands. The one we bicycled to, Dun Aonghasa, sits on the edge of a 300-foot cliff.

A 1981 visit  

Our mother, Ruth Breiner, went to Ireland with our sister Mary in September of 1981. They spent more than a week driving around the west of Ireland. Ruth, who was 61 at the time, wrote in her journal:

    “I was so glad not to miss Achill. It was a detour off the main road but it was worth the whole trip. Biggest island in Ireland, about 10 miles wide. We took the ‘famous Atlantic road’ (never heard of it) and it boggled eyes and mind. Gorgeous. Stood at the top looking out over the Atlantic with the wind blowing. Turn around and there are rounded mountains left and right, green hills and you see way off in the distance green expanse, houses, lakes, etc. You need a camera going around in a full circle to get it all in. Anything after this is anti-climactic, I think. Westport [an hour from Achill] is the prettiest city we’ve been in so far. You drive down a steep hill and it’s sort of nestled down at the bottom there, a river running though the middle so there are two bridges over.”

Years after I left home and talked with my mother on the telephone, I could hear, for the first time, a touch of Irish in her voice. Even though she was a generation removed, the rhythms and the tone of her speech had some remnants of the old country.

The older you get, the more you realize how much of your habits and thinking and behavior have their roots several generations earlier. Recently I re-read James Joyce's novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and his collection of short stories. So much of Joyce's life growing up in Dublin at the end of the 19th century, being educated by Jesuit priests, had parallels in the Irish Catholic life of Cleveland today.

Reading Joyce's short story "Ivy Day in the Committee Room", with a half-dozen Dubliners talking politics, you can hear rhythms of speech that you might hear today in any bar on the West Side of Cleveland. Or on Achill.

A curious fact: for a few years in the early 1950s, my grandfather owned Halley's Bar, on the corner of Bunts Road and Madison Avenue in Lakewood, across the street from the high school. It was later known as Achill Isle, a tribute to the local Irish residents. My dad managed the place for a time. He never much liked listening to the barflies at closing time. But of course, he had German roots.

Our Irish roots
The Irish roots mapped below. Our grandmother, Anna Frances, the fourth of the Lavelle children, married August Hausser in 1916. Our mother, Ruth, was the second of their five children. The last of them, James Hausser, passed away at the end of last year.

Martin Joseph Gallagher -------Ellen Joyce, married 1857, Achill, Ireland                             

                                           |         

b. 7 Nov. 1834, Achill        |       b. 1840, Achill

d. 5 May 1910, Cleve.        |      d. 29 Sep. 1892

immigrated 1860                |      immig. 1860            

      _______________________________________________

      |                             |                             |                                  |

Michael                   Bridget                  Mary                    Anna Loretta (Nitty)                              John Patrick Lavelle

b. 1857, Ireland       b. 1862, Cleve.      b. 1866, Cleve     b. 1869, Cleve.                                        b. 1857, Achill, Ireland

d. 1932, Cleve.        d. 1942, Cleve.                                                                                                  d. 1901, Cleve.

                                         |                                                                                                                   immig. 1875

                                         |___________________ Married at St. Malachi’s______________________|

                                                                                 23 Nov. 1880

                                                                                           |

___________________ The Lavelles    __________________________________________                                                                                                 

|                 |                   |            |        |                       |                  |              |                          |                          |

Mary     Ellan       Thomas        |    Kathryn            Gertrude   Florence    Martin             Teresa                  John

b. 1881   b. 1883    b. 1885        |    b. 1889              b. 1891     b. 1893     b. 1896             b. 1898                b. 1901

d. 1916   d. 1943    d. 1957        |    d. 1980, Chic.   d. 1977                       d. 1969, Cols.   d. 1964, Chic.     d. 1957, Cleve.                                                                                            |                                     

                                     Anna Frances Lavelle-------August Hausser, married 1916

                                      b. 1886, Cleve.                    b. 1891, Cleve.

                                      d. 1963, Cleve.                   d. 1946, Cleve.