Blake/Brown cousins hold global gathering in Mayo

Years spent unravelling the mystery of their ancestors led to a group gathering in Carnacon on the shores of Lough Carra, with cousins meeting for the first time.

It was the first bus of visitors to the village to see the big houses of Towerhill and Moore Hall recently, and locals are hoping it will be the start of a bumper tourist season for the fast developing attractions.

The group, from Ireland, Britain, the United States and Italy, all had links to many of the old families of the area including the Blakes of Towerhill, the Brownes of Brownestown, and the Moores of Moore Hall.

When their voyage of discovery began, some had only a vague idea of their roots but by the end of their visit they had learned much more from Mayo County Council engineer Robert Coyne, Councillor Al McDonnell, community leaders Walter Hughes, Ann Corbett, Ann Coyne, John McDonnell and the former cathaoirleach of Ballintubber GAA Club, Sean Hallinan.

They and several members of the local community joined in a lunch prepared by Féile at the community hall and shared their recollections of times past, including Maureen Quinn, John Quinn and Emma Hughes.

On hand too were the Lally family who welcomed the visitors to their farm, where the last of the Browne family, Henry, once lived.

The group’s search began separately on different sides of the Atlantic - in Ireland when Carmel Cahill of Castlebar commissioned research from the South Mayo Family Research Centre in Ballinrobe several decades ago. They got back as far as local records go to 1844 but then the paper trail ran out.

The family story told of a love-match between Carmel’s great-grandparents, George Browne and Bridget Blake, who married against their families’ wishes in 1844 and were cut off.

They rented 19 acres in Carnacon, raised a family of seven, and died within two years of one another.

Carmel’s daughter, Ann, took up the search some years later and was surprised to find an identical story to hers with the same names, published on the government backed IrelandXO website by an American lady, Erica Rothwell.

"I couldn’t believe it - this was a real breakthrough. I contacted Erica and found we were indeed talking about the same people," said Ann.

Erica is descended from George and Bridget’s son John, while Ann is descended from the couple’s daughter, Margaret.

This led to contacts with other newly found American cousins and eventually led back to Mayo, and to Ann making a phone call to a pub in Ballavary asking for McKeowns, and a few evenings later she spoke to second cousin PJ for the first time.

He too had been building a family tree going back to 1810. His mother, Maisie, is one of the last great-grandchildren of Bridget and George.

Maisie’s mother, Ann, was one of John’s 15 children, eight of whom emigrated to the USA, and thanks to the McKeowns, Erica and another cousin, Eileen McLoughlin Carter, contact has been made with all their known descendants in the USA.

Bridget and George’s daughter, Margaret, taught in the old Blake built school in Carnacon where she met and married fellow local school teacher John Henry Garvey.

He helped teach the Moore boys Irish by taking them fishing and hunting rabbits as the old school desk method had failed.

Their daughter, Ellen, married another teacher, Patrick Caulfield of Inver in north Mayo, whose family discovered the Céide Fields, and she was grandmother to Cahill and Parsons families in Castlebar.

Several of the cousins, near and distant, cooperated in sharing their DNA matches and this led to a new range of discoveries, linking to people who had emigrated a century and more before from both well to do and poorer relations, to the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

"I’m sure everyone in the county has links to Grainne Mhaol and to lots of heroes of 1798 and many other good and bad events in Irish history, but we have found the DNA to prove our links. This has led us to a fresh understanding of our history.

"The old Irish and the Tribes of Galway who were Norman and became ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, led by the Clanricard Burkes, ran what was essentially a separate country in Galway and Mayo for centuries, side stepping the penal laws, keeping their Catholic faith and their property.

For the most they were decent landlords, with the Blakes not collecting rents during the famine and building a mill to grind the corn they and the Moores imported because they couldn’t get other millers to do the work."

After a few Zoom meetings, the cousins decided to meet in person in Carnacon, the chief organisers being PJ McKeown, Carmel McKeown Martin and Patricia Cahill Murphy. For the day in Carnacon they worked closely with the chairman of Carnacon Development Association, Walter Hughes.

PJ McKeown said: "The local people’s understanding of what they have, their relentless efforts to capture and preserve it and make it available to all are nothing short of astonishing."

"It has given us a fresh appreciation of where we came from. Carnacon is an area of such rich history, from the crannogs in the lake to the castles of Grainne Mhaol’s Burkes, from the abbeys and monasteries to the Blakes of Towerhill and the Brownes of Brownestown, Westport House, Castlemagarret and the Neale and the Moores of Moore Hall," said Ann.

Walter Hughes said he hoped this group would be the first of many who would come to admire the magical place that is Moore Hall, the now finished walled garden filled with wild flowers, its dove cote and pathways.

"We had our first meeting here about the Moore Hall plan in 2009. It’s a slow process, but I suppose all big wheels move slowly.

"We look forward to having a coach tour at least once a week after this. We are very proud of what we have here and it’s easy to see why so many fine houses were built in this locality."

Councillor Al McDonnell praised the great community spirit, the hard working committee and said that since Mayo County Council bought Moore Hall there had been more activity and visitors in just three years than in the previous 100.

With continuing support from the council and funding from various other sources they should be on track to create what will become one of the country’s favourite visitor locations, attracting locals and forming a hub for returning emigrants.

"This is an exciting time for Carnacon and Moore Hall, an area of tremendous physical beauty and great natural history. I know new friendships will be developed as a result of this visit and we look forward to many more such visitors," he said.

Sean Hallinan, a freelance tour guide with the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life, Turlough Park, treated the visitors to the story of Moore Hall, local heritage and of how Mayo got its 'Green above the Red' flag thanks to an early GAA match organised by Valentine Blake at Towerhill.

"This area is teeming with heritage with Towerhill itself going back to the very dawn of time," he told the visitors.