This is a place for all those with an interest in the history and people of Ireland's Beara peninsula. I will sometimes post original content of my own creation, but more often I intend to solicit guest articles from others.
So please make yourself welcome. Participate in the discussions, if you're so minded; and if you have an article you'd like to contribute, please let me know.
Bill Gawne
The Great Irish Famine (1845-1851) was the result of a blight which caused successive crops of potatoes to fail. Combined with centuries of English racist policies towards the Irish Catholics & the " Clearances" & evictions, which continued during the Famine and the callous "laissez faire" attitude of the English, only made a serous problem into a catastrophe. England at the time was the richest & most powerful country in the world, yet had little sympathy for the starving Irish . The English dug in their heels & did as little as possible to alleviate the situation which led to one and a half million deaths, and a similar number of desperate Irish forced to Emigrate to America & Canada. While thousands over the years of the Famine were arrested for minor crimes and sent to the prison colony of Australia for years of hard-labour, & many were sentenced for life. Was this Genocide?it was,OR at the least, a form of "Ethnic Cleansing ".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_K89KZhpoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZCe8Fw8vyM&feature=fvwrel
Would you like to expand this into an article for publication? (Also, I'm boldly assuming that this is from Reg, who posts to the Beara mailing list. If not, please let me know.)
ReplyDeleteBill, I have no articles to post, only an interest in the Twomeys of cahirgarriff and to ask what or where "Inchanagat" is. Through some intense digging and then sourcing through Riobard O'Dwyers book, we find that our Twomeys were descended from Phillip Twomey and Ellen Lahane, and that my great grandmother Mary Twomey married Patrick Harrington, son of Jerry Harrington and this couple left Beara in 1882 and 1883 and migrated to Detroit, were married and then removed to Ironwood Michigan. I also read somewhere that Mary's brother or uncle John Twomey was Riobard's godfather as both would have been in Detroit at the time of Riobards birth, this seems plausable. Is Riobard O'Dwyer still alive ?
ReplyDeleteAny help or insight into the Harringtons and Twomeys of that community or answers to my questions are greatly appreciated.
Thank you, John McDonald Spring Arbor Michigan.