Amazing coincidence linking an Australian wedding to Cork

I THINK ’twas around 1816 that one of my eight great, great grandmothers was born.

Yeah, we have just one mother and two grandmothers. A further generation back we have four great grandmothers and further back eight great, great, grandmothers.

In my case, all these women - and their spouses also - would have been born between say 1790 and 1825.

I often wonder did authorities or clergy fight over parish boundaries long, long ago? There’s a huge jut of land, part of Bartlemy/Rathcormac parish, that is like a peninsula in the midst of neighbouring parishes. This area mainly comprises the townland of Ballyogoha, which is sometimes translated as Baile O gCofaigh, or the townland or homestead of the O Coffey family. This clan is long departed but their memory is enshrined in the locality name forever.

Well, it was in Ballyogoha that Elizabeth O Shea was born nearly 30 years before the Great Famine, one of a family of 12 children.

In the height of that catastrophic event, in November, 1847, Elizabeth married my great, great grandfather John Twomey and they settled down to farming at Kilcor in the parish of Castlelyons.

Now, some families couldn’t care less about who or where their second or third cousins are, but my mother’s aunt Lizzie was a font of knowledge in terms of family tracing. She died the year I was born, but thankfully her daughter May and her niece - my mother May - were toppers at maintaining and cultivating family links.

People often say to me, ‘But shure, it don’t matter a toss who our distant cousins are’. I suppose that’s true in one sense, but when the very same blood flows through the veins of relations and cousins, well then there is a common bond which should not and cannot be denied.

That’s my tuppence worth anyway and I get great satisfaction in tracing and helping others do the same.

In fairness, nowadays, with so many Civil and Church records available online, it makes the task a tad easier.

A few years before my birth, the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, was seen as a major breakthrough in terms of genetics and identifying differing family groups, clans and worldwide racial traits.

When I first heard about DNA, maybe 20 years ago, it was largely spoken of in terms of crime detection and seen as a huge bonus for worldwide legal systems. Science and progress never stop evolving and it’s now a very useful tool in the armoury of genealogists.

Over the last three years, we’ve become accustomed, during the Covid pandemic, to taking nasal swabs to detect the presence or absence of the respiratory condition. When I was told just three years ago that a similar swab taken from the mouth could ‘match’ with people related to me all over the world, I was more than sceptical!

Not bestowed with any kind of scientific ability or understanding, I was told ‘It’s a bit like faith - you cant see, hear, smell or taste it - but it exists’.

So, under the supervision of a close friend I ‘did the test’ and sent off the swab as instructed.

Not being familiar with social media in any of its various manifestations, my friend agreed to ‘manage’ my results - that was if anyone showed up as a ‘match’ with me.

I needn’t have worried! Literally hundreds, now well over a thousand ‘matches’ have been forthcoming.

Now, some are coming in as eight or ninth cousins but hundreds are much closer. I haven’t contacted them all yet, but I must admit I have been overjoyed and profoundly surprised at the extent, both numerically and geographically, of my Arnold and Twomey diaspora all across the globe.

Just last year, from Down Under in Australia, came news of a third cousin Carrie Smith - her great, great grandfather Denis O Shea was a brother of my ancestor Elizabeth.

Long before the discovery of DNA, Carrie and her relations had made contact with other relations in this country. She has some wonderful letters written ‘home’ from Australia to Irish cousins a century ago - Carrie is married to Kriss John de Britt.

I have spoken to Carrie and it was really emotional for me - I thought how excited my late mother and her cousin May would have been to make this contact. Hopefully, it won’t be long before we’ll meet here in Ireland or in the sunny climes of Australia.

Truly, genealogy and ‘family tree tracing’ is the gift that keeps giving.

Just this week I found out something that’s beyond coincidence. You know the way someone would say ‘There’s about a million to one chance of that’ - well, this is it.

The Ireland of the 1820s and 1830s when Elizabeth O Shea was growing up was a tough place to live in. Though Catholic Emancipation was granted and the Penal Laws were gone, ordinary country life was a struggle for the huge rural populace.

On March 21, 1834, the Cork Assizes opened and the ‘Calendar for Cork County’ included a long list of charges. The list was as follows; Murder 12, rape 11, burglary 10, highway robbery 2, abducting 1, cutting and maiming 1, embezzlement 1, sheep stealing 13, horse stealing 3, cow stealing 2, perjury 2, petty larceny 34, passing base coin 7, concealing birth 1.

Sheep stealing was very prevalent, not alone in Cork but right across the country. It might seem a trivial crime but was very severely dealt with.

On May 20, 1830, one Michael Cotter, a 21-year-old ‘ploughman and reaper’ from Rathcormac, stole a sheep from William Hennessy. Michael was arrested the next day.

His trial came to Court on Monday, August 16, and Michael was tried and found guilty of theft. His sentence was seven years’ transportation to New South Wales, where he arrived on November 5, having travelled on the convict ship Jane.

Felons from Ireland were generally not jailed after transportation - they were put to work. Michael Cotter was ‘assigned’ to work on the holding of a Dr Gibson near Goulbourn - regarded as Australia’s first ‘inland’ city.

There, for six years, faraway from the banks of the Bride in Rathcormac, Cotter toiled. He got his Ticket of Leave in 1836 and was a fully-fledged freeman two years later.

He married 18 year-old Catherine Dodd - daughter of a fellow convict from Ireland. The couple had 12 children and farmed at Binalong in New South Wales.

Around this time a young African man living on Cape Verde Island decided to try and start a new life -somewhere else. He stowed away on a boat bound for Australia and arrived there safely. His surname was de Britt.

After a few years he met and fell in love with a daughter of Michael and Catherine Cotter. They married and settled in the new land of Australia far, far from Ireland and Cape Verde.

Rathcormac native Michael Cotter died at the age of 77 in 1886. His daughter and her husband, the de Britts, are the direct ancestors of Kriss John de Britt.

In March, 1989, at St Columbkille’s Church in Jindabyne, New South Wales, Kriss, descendant of a Rathcormac man, married my cousin Carrie Smith, descendant of a Bartlemy man! Talk about coming the full circle and bringing it all back home. I’m fully convinced that faith and fate can often combine with wonderful results.