Today was our Regan heritage day. Cindy has traced Brad’s maternal ancestors back to Ireland. His great, great grandmother Ellen Regan came to the US in 1847 aboard a famine ship. She was one of 10 children and she was born and baptized near Schull, Ireland a small town in West Cork.

We met up with Frank Fahy, a local amateur historian, who showed us around various local sites. Stouke Cemetery is where Ellen’s father Cornelius, would have been buried. Cornelius would have been married in St. Marys Church, and later Ellen was baptized in that same church. It was interesting to stomp around the old cemeteries, especially St. Marys since it looked over Schull Harbor. The weather was picture perfect today, so the views were fantastic. (Hopefully pictures will load correctly so you can see them.)

We finished our day with Frank at the location of the Skibbereen Work House, which is now just green space with a small sign as a memorial. The work house was used as a place of last resort for the poor. Conditions were abhorrent and thousands of people died in the one at Skibbereen. Similar “houses” were built throughout Ireland and England in the 1700’s and 1800’s all with quite deplorable conditions.

After we said goodbye to Frank, we headed over to the Skibbereen Heritage Center, the town museum, most of which is dedicated to the 1840’s famine. The famine affected the entire island of Ireland, but was most acute in the southwest, the area in and around Skibbereen.
Ireland had the fastest growing population in Europe from about 1750-1840. During the famine, approximately 1 million people died and 1 million people emigrated to other countries. The high rates of emigration continued for 100 years, and only in recent years has the population of Ireland caught back up to its 1840 level.

Today was a bank holiday so we didn’t have many options for places to eat and ended up eating both lunch and dinner at a local hotel. It was nice to be able to turn in early after a full and rather poignant day.