Growing up in the Irish-American section of a largely Irish-American city in a very Irish-American state, we were always both aware and

proud of our heritage. The Hungry Hill section of Springfield, Massachusetts had been -- since the mid-1800s -- a stronghold of Irish culture, and this cultural affinity was strengthened in the mid 20th century by a great influx of inhabitants of the Blasket Islands to the area. Many of the girls of my class regaled us several times each year with the fruits of their step dancing lessons, and many classmates had relatives in Ireland whose names they knew, and whose homes they had even visited. Our neighbors belonged to the John Boyle OReilly Club (one of the many Irish-American social organizations originally formed in the 19th century in the States to support the cause of Irish independence), and the father of the family who lived in the apartment below us was a native of Ireland. I even took part in a Republican march in the early 1970s, before I was old enough to attend school (or to understand that the march wasnt designed for my entertainment). However, even growing up with this strong cultural identity, feeling our Irishness as something more than just wearing green on St. Patricks day, I never knew anything more about our familys history other than the Caseys were from Cork. As is often the case, it wasnt until I started a family of my own that I became interested in actively pursuing the Caseys history. Unfortunately, interviewing family members still only got me vague responses about Cork, and almost nothing about actual ancestors, so I became more out of curiosity than a desire for a new hobby a genealogy researcher. I began with the primary goal of finding the exact place in Ireland from which my Caseys came, and with the suspicion that there was some dark family secret that had fostered a calculated forgetfulness on the part of my grandparents and great grandparents, some horrible thing that caused them to retain their cultural identity, but to forgo the particulars of their own origins. While many gaps remain, and much work still needs to be done, my primary goal has been reached, and my suspicions have been answered. Here is an abbreviated version of the story. The first Casey in my line to come to America was my g-g-g grandfather, Matthias Casey. Baptismal records from the Diocese indicate that Matthias Casey was born in Meenachony on April 7, 1843, though his United States naturalization records place his birth in 1847, and his grave stone has him born in 1842. Regardless of the exact date, with the hunger and disease that gripped the land at the time, by all accounts the 1840s were an awful time to be born in Donoughmore Parish. Matthias was born to John Casey and Margaret Twohig, who themselves were wedded in Coachford Parish on February 8, 1842. Margarets father was James Toohig, and her mother Hanna Purcell. Several brothers and sisters would follow Matthias over the next several years: Catherine in 1845, Hannah in 1847, John in 1852 (his naturalization records state he was born in 1853, marriage record 1855, and his grave stone 1856), and Mary in 1853. Thankfully, Mary and presumably John were born just as Griffiths valuation of the area was being conducted. Their birth in Coolmona coincides with the valuation of the only property in Coolmona inhabited by a John Casey. The lot was north east of Donoughmore Center, just across the river a few hundred yards east of Downeys Bridge, and was very modest. John Casey likely worked on the farm of Cornelius Foley to provide for his family, as it was from Mr. Foley that he leased his small home and garden. The next Casey information available hints at a possible family tragedy. Early in 1859, Donoughmore Parish records show that Margaret Twohig married James Brue (Brew), and that Margaret gave birth to 1

Hannah Mariah Brew on May 31, 1860. The obvious question as to what happened to John Casey has no answer provided by any known record. As good a guess as any would be that John passed away, and that Margaret with at least four mouths to feed was fortunate to find another spouse within the Parish. Now the story moves to America. Naturalization papers for Matthias, filled out five years after his arrival, indicate that he arrived in New York City on November 10, 1865, probably by himself, aboard the steamer Etna. These papers also show that he was illiterate his name was signed with a rough X. Matthias brother John arrived two years later, in 1867, and initially moved to Chicopee, a mill town just a few miles north of the Hungry Hill section of Springfield, Massachusetts. Matthias vouched for his brother on his naturalization papers in 1874, and for a James Twohig of Hampden in 1872, signing his own name (instead of an X) in both instances. Matthias sister Mary, his mother and her second husband, James Brew, along with their young daughter Hannah Mariah, also made the journey to America around 1874, and his mother, step-father and sister were all buried in Chicopee at the end of their lives, though they died elsewhere. Census records from the period dont provide much help in determining why John, still a boy, would move to Chicopee first, or why his sister, mother, and step-father would have been buried in Chicopee. There were, however, an abundance of Twohigs living in Chicopee at that time, and perhaps this was simply an example of chain migration, where some of Matthias Twohig relatives had found a good living in the mills there, and provided some of their Casey relatives with a place to live for a brief time after they arrived in the States. While it may seem to make sense that my Irish relatives initially settled in the next town over from where I lived as a boy (Chicopee was a part of Springfield until 1890), my grandparents actually lived and my father grew up in a quiet suburb away from the city, in a town called East Longmeadow. My parents decided to move to Hungry Hill in part because my own father, with a young family for whom he needed to provide, had found work in Chicopee himself. Though he had no idea at the time of any connection between his own life and theirs, just as his ancestors had moved to the area to find work, so did he. So, for the first nine years of my life, I lived right across a park from where many of my own relatives including Matthias brother, sister and mother were buried, and never knew it. Another large group of Twohigs lived in the town of Hampden, Massachusetts (known as the South Parish of the town of Wilbraham until 1878), some ten miles from Chicopee, and this is where both Matthias and John moved to next. John eventually moved to a crossroads in the town which was known for many years after as Caseys Corner. In 1869, Matthias took a wife, Bridget McCarthy (the family was known as McCarty until the 20th century), whose family seems to have come from Middleton Parish, just north of Cork City. The following year saw the birth of the first of their eight children, John Thomas, my great great grandfather. Hampden is currently a picturesque and rural, suburban town, but at the end of the 19th century, there were several thriving textile mills located there. Census records from 1870 show that Matthias worked in one of these mills. Soon, however, he took to farming. A brief notice in the local Springfield newspaper comments on his apple crop: The bountiful rains have given the farmers a hope of cutting some rowen. There are some apples in some of the orchards on the west side of the mountain. Among those who have the most are John Isham, William Leech, Matthias Casey and William Sessions. (Springfield Republican, August 11, 1884) 2

Matthias gave up farming at some point in the 1880s and chose to run a general store in town, specializing in a range of bulk and dry goods, as well as fresh produce and goods to order. This store also housed the towns post office, and its first telephone exchange. A story is told in Hampden of the towns first long distance call. Matthias young daughter Nellie (Ellen) was minding the store at the time, and was so flustered by this momentous occasion that she had to run out and fetch a neighbor to come and actually plug in the telephones cables to connect the call. Matthias and Bridget lost two of their eight children during a typhoid outbreak in 1880. Death records show that Edward, age two, and one year-old William passed away within two days of each other in the summer of that year. While I was saddened over 120 years later by the deaths of these two little boys, I was also glad to have found out their names, and to have been able to share with their relatives at least that they had enjoyed a brief time in this world. Matthias, who came to this country as an illiterate factory worker, also sent two of his sons to dentistry school. Doctors Matthias and Stephen Casey both eventually moved to the eastern part of Massachusetts to practice dentistry, but kept a strong connection with their family, and were buried in Hampden when they died. James Casey, Matthias and Bridgets third child, went away to Montreal, Canada, to study for the priesthood. Brief newspaper notices of the period indicate that Matthias traveled to Montreal on several occasions to spend time with his son in Canada. Father James Casey also learned fluent French while in Canada, and served the parishioners of Worcester, Turners Falls and South Hadley, Massachusetts for many years. He is also interred in the Casey family plot in Hampden Census and vital records from 1880 show that Matthias mother, brother John, sister Mary, and half sister Hannah Mariah Brew, were living next door to Matthias at that time. In that same year, the year that saw the death of Matthias two young sons, his step-father James Brew died in Hampden, and soon after the girls were married off, and Matthias brother John moved down the road to what would become Caseys Corner. At some point in the late 1880s or early 1890s, Matthias mother Margaret went to live with her daughter Mariah and Mariahs husband, Edward Speight. Mariah and her husband had since moved to the neighboring town of East Longmeadow, where Edward worked in the redstone quarries found in the area. Her half-sister, Mary, married a man named William OBrien, and moved to East Longmeadow, as well. It seemed Mary and Mariah remained close, and it was Mariah who was the informant at the death of Mary (she was pre-deceased by her husband, and had no children), and who also figured most prominently in her modest will. This town of East Longmeadow, where Matthias sister, half-sister and mother lived was, again, where my grandparents lived, and was also the town my family moved to when I was nine, but I never knew that Matthias mother lived and died in a house I rode my bicycle by hundreds of times as a boy, or that her two daughters (Matthias sisters) had married and moved to East Longmeadow themselves. And to make this connection more strange, I dont believe my grandparents knew that my grandfathers great grandmother or great aunts lived in that town. Though they might have known about a general family connection, they more than likely moved there because it was just a nice place to raise a family. One of the children of Hannah Mariah Brew, Leo Matthias Speight, became a builder, and actually constructed the house in East Longmeadow in which I lived from age nine until 18. But we only had a 3

vague notion that the Speights were related to us, and we were never sure exactly how, so our living there was largely, again, coincidental. Another chance that was not altogether an accident is that I have as part of my research come to meet Bill Speight, Leo Matthias son and grandson to Matthias Caseys half-sister. Bills help in tracing some of this side of my family has been invaluable, and the picture of Hannah Brew and Edward Speight comes from his collection. John Casey, Matthias first child and my great great grandfather, moved to the town of Ware, some 15 miles to the north east of Hampden, to find his fortune. It was here that he married Annie Finley, from County Armagh. Like his father, he had a general store, though John also served as a mortician to the people of Ware. He sent his son, my great grandfather John Jr., away to college at the University of Maine, just ten miles from where I write this. John Jr. was, as far as records show, the first Casey to travel back to Europe, though it was to France during World War I, where he served in the Marbache and Moselle sectors, and took part in the battle of St. Mihiel during the fall of 1918. John survived the war, of course, but his father John Sr. passed away in 1917, and he never completed his degree at the University. Despite this, he became a surveyor and a well-respected member of the community. Though he passed away when I was eight, I recall him as a kindly old man, dapper in his bow tie, who would visit my grandparents house in East Longmeadow when we would be visiting them ourselves from Hungry Hill. One of the few elements of his personal life of which Im aware is that he used to carry a fly rod in his car, in case he should come across any promising trout streams while out on surveying calls. This has always struck me as an excellent idea, and the fly rod I myself keep in my vehicle has proved invaluable over the years. My grandfather James Frances Casey, great uncle Donald and great uncle John all served in World War II. It was while he was stationed in New York that my grandfather met my grandmother, Agnes Kane, whose family was originally from Co. Waterford. After the war, he took her back to the wilds of Western Massachusetts, where he and the Brooklyn girl had three daughters and four sons, one of whom was my father. Matthias lived out the rest of his life in Hampden, and is buried there. His life seems to have been filled with the victories and calamities that make up most lives, though he seems to have been more entrepreneurial and civically active than some. He was, according to his obituary, instrumental in the construction of the local church. He served as the postmaster for the town of Hampden for eight years, was a member of the Board of Assessors, and the town sexton, and served as a deputy sheriff of Hampden County for ten years, as well as an election officer for the town. When he died in April of 1929, his obituary noted that his funeral was one of the largest ever held in this town, and was attended by sixteen area priests. And so I found no dark family secrets, only a man born in Donoughmore Parish during one of the worst human disasters in modern history, who through hard work and the help of his family was able to make a better life for himself and his children. And perhaps it was because Matthias and his children were so busy and focused on bettering their own lives that they passed down a general sense of cultural pride, but neglected to take the time to share the particulars of the lives of their parents and grandparents. Or perhaps it was because of a heightened sense of privacy concerning the personal lives of those who had come before them that led them to gloss over purposefully the details of these lives. Regardless, I hope these departed relatives will excuse me for prying into their affairs and sharing their stories, and for trying to break this chain of forgetfulness. 4

By way of an epilogue, my sister and her family had the great pleasure of visiting Donoughmore Parish this past year, and with the help of this research and some of the knowledgeable and helpful folks from the area, she was able to walk some of the roads our ancestors traveled over one hundred and fifty years ago. And some of the stones of the house where John and Margaret Casey, and little Matthias and his siblings probably lived are still there, scattered among the grass and fuchsia.

Kevin Casey Dover South Mills, Maine

Planned Images 1. Map of Massachusetts, showing Boston, Springfield, Hampden and East Longmeadow, with scale. 2. Matts general store ad. 3. Matts store picture 4. Matts naturalization papers. 5. Drawing of the Etna. 6. Photo of Hannah Mariah and Ed 7. Photo of John Jr. 8. Photo of Father James