Tombstone Tuesday

Ardcavan, County Wexford, Ireland

This stone marks the resting place of my great grandfather Patrick and great grandmother Mary (Ronan) Sinnott, and his grandfather ?  Sinnott.  The stone reads like the begats, unfortunately it's broken in significant places, cutting off names, dates, and ages. It was transcribed by Brian Cantwell in his Memorials of the Dead for County Wexford. His transcription has only the information on this broken stone.  I am unable to find my notes but if memory serves the Ardcavan Cemetery was transcribed in 1970, so the stone broke before that time. 

Sinnott Family Stone

  I discovered unfriendly stinging plants (are these pretty things stinging nettle?) as I tried to expose and photograph the ground level engraving .

Overgrown Ardcavan Cemetery

 My camera could not capture a readable image of  the entire stone.  So with red and stinging arm (which I tried to hide from my cousin whom we had just met and  had graciously driven us to this old and remote cemetery on Wexford Bay) I shot as many photos close up of the engraving as I could.  Eventually I ended up with a combined image, best described as a puzzle with missing pieces, and taken at varying distances and angles.

"[Pat]rick Sinnott died March 31, 1909 aged 87 yrs..."  and "

Mary Sinnott, died April  25, 1909, aged 75 yrs."

 

Finding the stone was a surprise even to my cousin who had come to the cemetery as a child, and visited her Sinnott grandparents grave just a step or two away.  I am still working on the relationships of sons, daughters-in-laws, and grandsons mentioned on the stone.  There is a son Robert who could have been Patrick's father, or his uncle; it was impossible to tell from the wording on the stone.  Thus one of my "brick walls" is a broken stone.....

Ending and New Beginning

Ending: the year of 2010....the look and feel of writing this date has appealed to me, so I'm sorry to have to move on to 2011.  But 2011 can be something better and different from 2010.  

New Beginning: a blog
I've thought about starting a blog but never found the courage.  Now I will begin.

I will write about "Chandlacy" family history and my adventures in working on it.  Chandlers form a very large branch of my tree and they joined with the Lacys in many and various ways to create part of my family history.They connected in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and many of them lie in peaceful rest there in the Tewksbury Center Cemetery.The cemetery is located on East Street  not far from the center of town, with graves from the 1700 to the present day.

Returning  to find graves of family two summers ago, I took pictures of anyone who seemed to have a relationship to me.  I wasn't always sure they were related, and I had moved years ago when I married so it was guess work to begin with.  After two years I am amazed that my intuition was right in so many instances.

The Lacys came from Ireland and the photo is of the Lacy property looking out to the Irish Sea in Inch Blackwater, County Wexford, where my grandfather Peter Charles Lacy was born in 1855.  They have been much harder to research and my tree is definitely lopsided.  His sister Catherine is the only Lacy grave I found in Ireland.

My grandmother "Eliza" Sinnott, who married Peter in Watertown, Massachusetts, has been a bit easier to research since there are living descendants in County Wexford.  I was fortunate to be shown the gravestone of her parents and great grandfather in a small overgrown grave yard in Ardcavan, County Wexford, overlooking Wexford Bay.

So that is the beginning of my search for my family history.  I'm fortunate to have had help from others in my family who also researched, Aunt Hannah, cousin Mitzi, Robin, and others as well.

So with that I hope that Chandlacy is a good beginning for 2011.  Happy New Year to all!

palib