A Window Into the Past - More on My Cooke Relatives

The Cooke family homestead, sometime in the 50's. We don't know who these people are.

I've been hearing regularly from my cousin, Ciaran Brett, in Ireland. Ciaran has made a firm connection between his family and mine which you will see in the family tree. You will remember that I found Ciaran through Ireland Reaching Out, which I recommend to anyone doing Irish research. Ciaran wanted me to see this particular picture because it shows the homestead where his mother was born and where the family still lives. But you can see in this picture the thatch roof and the lime wash walls which was very traditional. We're not sure who the people in the picture are. Family, no doubt.

For the next picture you will need what I've constructed to show my connection to Ciaran.

A partial Cooke family tree

By my reckoning, Katie and Ciaran's grandfather were first cousins, Dad and his mother were second cousins, and Ciaran and I are third cousins. Ciaran sent me a much more extensive file with all the family tree he has found. The Cookes go waaay back on this land and, more importantly, they were land owners!

Josie Cooke, James "Jimmy" Cooke and Bridget Coffey Cooke some time in the fifties.

This picture shows Ciaran's mother, her uncle James and her mother Bridget. James emigrated to Philadelphia, so Ciaran suspects he was home for a visit at the time. Again you get a good look at the family home and the thatch roof. This is all part of the property I wrote about in a previous post.

If I'm understanding this correctly, this is the very same house Ciaran's brother lives in now.

You can clearly see the "bones" of the old house and wall here. I think Ciaran said they used the stone from the much older Cooke house, which is in ruins on the property, for the stone work on this house.

So nice to have these photos and a little window into my family's past.

A New Resource for Irish Genealogy

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Curry village, Sligo, Ireland

This picture of a church sets the scene for a fabulous new resource I found this month. Lisa Louise Cooke, of Genealogy Gems, published a Facebook link to new records that went online at the
Irish National Library. You can get to them here.

I was very lucky. I knew enough information to make a smart guess at exactly where to look and within half an hour I had baptismal records for three people in my dad's family: his mother Catherine Marie Cooke, his aunt Mary Ann Cooke (called Mamie by the family) and his uncle John J Cooke (called Jack). My very fanciful (she once announced that we were really Italian and related to the Gherhardinis.  Eeek!) Cousin Katherine had recalled that Jack said the family was from "Curry village". I popped "Curry" into the parish terms and there were the records. I was lucky.

The geopolitical divisions of Ireland are a bit hard to get used to. For example, technically this family lived in the following: Province of Connaught, County Sligo, Barrony of Leyny, Civil Parish: Achonry, Poor Law Union of Tobercurry, Townland of Cloonigan. Where's Curry in all this mess? Well that's the Roman Catholic parish as well as a totally separate townland. There were also Church of Ireland parishes. What a mess!

The dates in the records are all over the place. The "official records" say, for example, that Mary Ann
Cooke was born on the 17 December 1874. Here is her baptism record:

Cloonigan is waaaaay out in the country. Even today on Google street view you get a few houses, a narrow two-lane road and lots of brushy open land. So I'm guessing she was born closer to the 12th and they didn't make the official record until closer to the 17th. The interesting thing in all these records are the "patrons" or  godparents. I don't know yet who these people are, but it is something more to go on. In this case we have Mary Ann Cooke and Michael Feehely. One person from dad's family and one from mom's I'm guessing.

Next we have John J Cooke born 19 April 1876.

Again this is almost a month earlier. His godparents are John Cooke and Mary Cooke. I know that Michael's father was named John, but the Griffith's Valuation shows a John and a John Jr., so maybe this is Michael's brother.

And lastly we have my grandmother, Catherine Marie Cooke, born 4 March 1878.

This time the baptism is a little bit later. The godparents in this case are James Cooke and Ann Feehily. Again I'm thinking uncles, aunts or cousins. Cloonigan was so tiny it didn't even have a town center, so the nearest church would probably have been the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Curry. My best guess is that my photo is the scene of the baptisms.

No wonder none of these three relatives were really certain of their actual birthdate! At any rate, this is a wonderful new resource for those trying to unravel an Irish family.  The serendipity of having a record pop up so quickly has encouraged me a bit. Persistence really does pay off.