I HAVE FOUND THE ROOTS

I stand in an ancient graveyard near Kilmacabe, My new friend Margaret Murphy has taken me on a marvelous drive to the area of the Donovan home acre and ended her tour at the graveyard. What a marvelous ending to my research trip.  I shall try to share the experience with you. First you must know that while it is called the "Old Kilmachabe Graveyard, Actually it is nearer Knockanenacrony but nobody here in the bar can tell me how to pronounce that one.  

This adventure began as I waited in front of the hotel for Margaret Murphy.  A truck pulled up and parked in front of me.  Wow, I have learned that Denis Donovan married Julia Whooley, and Peter Donovan married a Julia Whooley, perhaps his first cousin.  I met Pat Whooley and soon we were looking at the map together.  Pat is a 6th generation blacksmith with a forge near where the Donovans lived no doubt sharing some  with the Donovans.

As we talked, Margaret drove up, and of course they are old friends.  This is a small town.

Soon I was following Margaret up the highway to Leap, 9 miles north of Skibberine, where I parked my car, got into her's and into the small roads we went.

Up and up we went into smaller and smaller roads until we were on the highest and most unproductive looking land, and here Margaret proclaimed was where the Donovan 1 acre was, somewhere along this road on the edge of Corran north township.  Most of the land was in re-forestration with lots of weak looking little conifers about 8 feet tall but this was the upper pasture of a farm.  The land is in re-forestation in a govt. subsidy to make unproductive land produce something of value.  You can grow trees where you cannot grow viable crops,  But the Donovans grew potatoes on the land.

Across the road on the neighboring township the land looks down on the village of Drinagh which had a church in the old days and was probably where the Donovans walked to worship. They surely did not have a horse or wagon on one acre,  That land was all devoted to potatoes.

We drove down and down into better land in the lowlands heading for the cemetery that Margaret is sure Denis and Julia would have been buried.

​Up a tiny road, through a farmyard, the car chased by 6 or 7 excited farm dogs, we finally came to this sign, parked the car and walked down the old lane defined by stone walls probably built in the 1700's.  There used to be a church and a graveyard down this lane, Now only the graveyard.

As Margaret said, "only wide enough for the horse drawn wagon carrying the coffin".  Just imagine the sorrowful processions that have trudged down this lane.

At the end of the long lane we came to the cemetery gate,  and passing through it, the first sight to greet me !!!

All about me were Donovan tombstones,  modern tombstones, but Margaret assures me that there are layers of family bones in these old graveyards and that Denis and Julia are likely to be somewhere below.  When earlier generations turn to dust, new generations are buried above them, or perhaps more accurately, in them.

I think this photo provides the proof.  The ancient stone wall surrounding the graveyard would have been at the level of a flat graveyard, but now the modern tombstones begin 7 or 8 feet above the original ground level and stone markers, un-engraved protrude from the grass everywhere.  There may be thousands of folks interred in this tiny walled cemetery.  I have never seen anything quite like it.  How much Donovan DNA lies here?

I end this report with a few photos of other O'Donovan tombstones.  

An afternoon to remember.  I feel that my mission is complete and I am ready to begin the biography of Bellingham's great historic figure J.J. Donovan, I have found his roots.