Breakthrough?

I woke up Wednesday morning scared and frustrated.  I was scared because after a full day in Ballinhassig wandering around the graveyards, I wasn't any closer to finding that additional information that would confirm that my ancestors came from here.  I was frustrated because I knew the next step would necessarily involve trying to talk to people, and approaching and talking to strangers is not one of my strengths.

I first called Seamus Casey.  Seamus and his wife run a B&B on the outskirts of Ballinhassig, and I had originally been in contact with him trying to book a reservation at their B&B.  Unfortunately, they had no room, but when I told Seamus why I was coming to Ballinghassig, he graciously offered to talk with me when I got here.  We made an appointment to meet at his place at 8pm.

Then, at breakfast, Bernadette, the proprietress of the Ardfield Farm B&B, asked me how things were going, and I told her that I needed to talk to people who had lived in the area for a long time.  She suggested that I talk to Willie O'Mahony, saying her was one of the oldest O'Mahonys in the area and could perhaps provide me with some family history.   She said he lived somewhere up close to the Goggins Hill Church where I had been the day before.

I drove up to the Goggins Hill Church and saw three guys doing some work in the graveyard around the church, so I went up to them and told them I was hoping to talk to Willie and asked them if they knew where I could find him. Unfortunately, it seemed there was a slight problem with talking to Willie O'Mahony:

The three men then pointed to a house a few doors away, and told me that Willie's brother Dermot lived there.  I screwed up my courage, walked up to the door, and rang the bell.  Dermot answered.

He was most gracious.  He invited me in, and told me what he knew of his family history, but said I really needed to talk to his second cousin Teddy, who lived in Bandon, a town about 15 kilometers to the west.  He called Teddy, and Teddy agreed to meet me at the hotel in downtown Bandon.  I drove on over and soon was having a very pleasant dinner with Teddy and his wife at the hotel.  Teddy had a pretty detailed family tree going back about four generations which he gave to me.  Unfortunately, the family tree made it pretty clear that his branch of the O'Mahony tree was different from mine.  His O'Mahonys were from Bandon, and they came over to Ballinhassig about 1900 when Jerry O'Mahony married Margaret Murphy, whose family had a farm on Goggins Hill.  Another dead end, although spending time with Dermot and Teddy and his wife was a much more enjoyable dead end that the solitary internet searches I had engaged in.

I got back to Ballinhassig just in time for my 8pm appointment with Seamus.  We had a pleasant chat for about a half an hour, and he told me what he knew of the various O'Mahony and Duggan families that still lived in the area.  He said I  must talk with John O'Sullivan, whom he described as "the Ballinhassig historian".  I asked if he could call John to help me make an appointment.  He said he didn't have the number, but would give me directions to his house, and I should just go and knock on his door.

So, at 9pm at night, I did.

John's daughter answered the door and escorted me into the front room where John was sitting.  He explained apologetically that he had had an artificial knee put in awhile ago, but it became infected, so they had to take it back out.  So he was sitting there without a knee until the infection went away at which point he would get a new artificial knee.  His eyes gleamed as I told him why I was there, and his level of enthusiasm matched mine as I went through all the various pieces of information and research I had.

Then he started to tell me about what he knew.  Ballinhassig has changed dramatically over the last 25 years or so.  It was originally just a sleepy little farming town for many hundreds of years, but its proximity to Cork City has been transforming it into a suburban bedroom community.  The old farmsteads and pasture land are now interspersed with sleek, modern suburban houses, and drivers like me inching along the little one-and-a-half lane farm roads savoring the journey become little more than road kill for speeding SUVs craving the destination.

Many of the old families, John O'Sullivan explained, had either moved away or died off.  He knew histories behind most of the folks buried in the various Ballinhassig graveyards (he had done a grave-by-grave inventory of the three graveyards), and the more we talked and exchanged information, the more he started to focus in on one family -- the Duggan family.  There was a grave for this Duggan family in the Ballyheedy graveyard:

The Cornelius Duggan here had a father named Cornelius and a grandfather named Cornelius.  He also has a son named Cornelius, who is still alive.  The Duggan family has occupied the same plot of land on Goggins Hill since at least the late 1840s, perhaps longer.  Griffith's Valuation, which from 1847 to 1864  documented which families lived on which pieces of land throughout Ireland, documented in 1851 a Denis Duggan living on the same plot of land that Cornelius (Corly) Duggan currently occupies today.  On the marriage document that I have for Cornelius Mahony and Catherine Duggan in 1838, Denis Duggan is listed as one of the witnesses.

John O'Sullivan is certain that at some point there was a Mahony family occupying the plot of land right next to the Duggan plot; he says there are no longer any members of that family in Ballinhassig, having either died off or moved away.  Griffith's Valuation lists a James Mahony occupying a plot very close to the Duggan plot, but perhaps more importantly, the plot right next to the Duggan plot is listed as unoccupied in the Valuation.  Would this have been the place where the family of Cornelius Mahony lived before they left Ireland for the United States?

Below is a graphic of the Grifith's Valuation information showing the locations of the Duggan house, the James Mahony house, and the vacant house that was perhaps previously used by Mahonys.

Next is a present day map showing the same locations. I've also circled the B&B that I have been staying at:

Here are some pictures I took from the road. The first  is the house which currently sits on the property next to the Duggan land, the place where the Mahonys most likely lived (though not, obviously, in this house).

This is the roof of the Duggan place:

Now comes the tricky part.  I was warned from several sources to be VERY careful about approaching Corly Duggan.  He was variously described as "addled", "paranoid", "churned", and "not all there".  So, will my fervent desire to meet a relative from Ireland overcome the worry that he may not be so glad to meet me?  Corly Duggan, my potential Irish relative, lives right down this road.  The question is, will I walk down the road to meet him?