I only have two images that I attach to my paternal great grandmother. One is a photo, taken in the 1980s, of a tiny, smiling, elderly woman in a pinafore style apron mixing bread dough in a bowl. She’s so mini that the bowl is sitting on a stool as presumably it’s easier for her to reach than the kitchen counter. The second is an early memory: me and my cousin sitting under a table taking turns to dip a wetted finger into the sugar bowl while the legs of adults mill around us. We’re at my great-grandmother’s funeral. At least that’s the event the memory has attached itself to.
I can’t find my great-grandmother on the 1926 census. I’ve searched every combination of name, nickname and location I can think of. In fact, I’ve lost several days to the online historical records of my relatives and ancestors, going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. My lack of success in finding my great-grandmother turned me instead to my paternal grandmother, who died when I was in my early 20s.
My memories of her are limited but very much tinged with the smell of More cigarettes, which she smoked enthusiastically. I also remember her placing a glass milk bottle of hot water wrapped in a tea towel into my bed alongside me when I was a child, sleeping upstairs in her little terraced house, which was unburdened by central heating.
I knew there was an element of mystery – to me anyway – around Granny’s early years. I knew she had been born before my great-Granny was married, and I had a vague recollection of a mention of a mother and baby home or some kind of institution. After some digging around on IrishGeneology.ie, the Government’s source for the civil registrations of births, deaths and marriages dating back to the mid 1800s, I found her, I think.
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She was born, not in a mother and baby home or a Magdalene laundry, but in the Athlone Workhouse in 1916, sharing a surname with her mother and with no father recorded. My great-grandmother is noted as a mill worker, and in the space where the father’s name is to be recorded there is a dash. The three entries above my grandmother’s name on the birth register were also born at the Athlone Workhouse, and their fathers’ names are also absent.
So, for the moment, my paternal great-grandfather remains a mysterious figure, and maybe he always will.
I knew my Granny had a brother born around that time too, and I knew his name. I found his 1920 birth record, this time at the workhouse in Ballymahon, Co Longford. Both children gained a stepfather in 1922 – I was able to find the registration of that marriage – and I know that more siblings followed.
I’ve become fascinated with what my great-grandmother’s life might have been like during those years when she was on her own, mother to two young children born in institutions for the destitute and at a time when Ireland was in turmoil.
Other strands of my census and archive digging have revealed that at least three quarters of my recent ancestors were farm labourers and servants and resolutely Roman Catholic. I’m proud of these ghostly hard workers. I start to panic if my phone battery dips below 70 per cent. I wouldn’t have a hope as one of 12 in a two-room cottage or giving birth in a War of Independence-era workhouse.
[ What Census 1926 reveals about lives of children 100 years agoOpens in new window ]
I did uncover one glamorous instance of a great-grandparent born abroad – the far-flung climes of Scotland – which matches up nicely with the online DNA test I sent away during Covid which revealed me to be 75 per cent Irish and 15 per cent Scottish with some nods to Viking invasion making up the remaining genetic ancestry. If you cut me open, I would bleed turf, potatoes and Factor 50.
Westmeath County Library has in its possession the minute books of the board meetings of the county’s workhouses up to March 1922, so my next round of research might take me on a road trip. Meanwhile, the site of the Athlone Workhouse is currently being developed into a digital and arts hub, with protections in place for the original 19th century building.
If Granny was alive today, I’m almost certain she’d take a puff on her More cigarillo and declare, “I always dreamed that the place of my birth would one day become a mecca of digital innovation. Please, name a co-working hot desk in my honour”.
