Cooraclare recalls its emigrant dead

 

DECEASED Cooraclare and Cree emigrants, who are buried abroad, will be remembered on Sunday when a commemorative monument is unveiled outside St Senan’s Church.

Part Leader-funded research, carried out by the Cooraclare Cree Historical Society, has found that hundreds of Cooraclare people are buried around the world.

Committee chairman Tommy Clune has a deep personal interest in the project, as four of his siblings are buried abroad. Indeed, it was while at his brother Peter’s funeral in Southampton that he happened upon the remembrance concept.

“I was over at the brother’s funeral and that’s when this idea struck me. That was about five years ago. I was coming away from the grave and I said to myself ‘I might never again see this grave’. I thought about it after and I said there must be an awful lot of people in this situation,” Tommy told The Clare Champion.

Another brother, Patrick, is buried in Northampton; his sister Theresa is buried in Birmingham, while a second sister, Bridie, was laid to rest in New York.

“We would never get a chance to see my sister Bridie’s grave in America. There’s no way in the world we’d ever be able to visit it in New York. She’s dead about 10 years. She lived there for nearly 50 years,” Tommy reflected.

One of 11 children, Tommy is a returned emigrant himself. He lived in Birmingham for eight years.

“All of our family emigrated, the whole 11 of us. It’s sad when you have no real contact with members of your family ever again. If you went into it deeply enough, you’d find that every household in the parish might have somebody who emigrated and died abroad. You could go back a long way,” he said.

Tommy and his brother, Donal, who lives in the UK, are the only surviving members of the 11 siblings.
Parishioners in Cooraclare and Cree were very interested in remembering the community’s emigrant dead.

“We put it in the newsletter for the last six or seven weeks and we got a great response. We’re expecting a lot more but we have over 200 names at the moment. We’re getting phone calls around the clock. People think it’s a lovely idea. It will give them a chance to reflect on their loved ones. We’ve set up registers in Cooraclare and Cree. We’ll put the names of all of the deceased emigrants we get on the registers,” Tommy explained.

“A lot of them emigrated post-Famine. A lot went during the Famine too but we haven’t been able to find any records of that. In the 1800s and 1900s, a lot of people emigrated from the parish. That’s the kind of information we’re getting,” he added.

The Cooraclare/Cree Historical Society has been up and running since 2000.

“The first project we were involved in was when we transcribed all of the headstones in Kilmacduane Graveyard. There is one there from the 1700s. Then we did the parish history, which was a great success,” Tommy noted.

The commemorative monument will be unveiled in Cooraclare village on Sunday after 11am mass. The registers of deceased emigrants will be presented to the parish during the ceremony, while afterwards Cooraclare National School will mark its 60th anniversary.

Along with Tommy, the officers on the historical society committee are Jim Tubridy, John Kelly and Aidan Donnelly.