St Patricks Day: How to find your Irish ancestry on holiday in Ireland

Mel Homer's son Finn on Kilfinane's main street, during their Irish holiday in search of their family history. Photo / Supplied

After three years, Mel Homer travels to Ireland to learn more about her Irish heritage.

We’ve been in Dublin for just half an hour. My son Finn is slumped in a jetlagged fugue in the back of the minivan.

Connor, our shuttle driver, is insisting we must listen to the podcast about a Dublin bar once run by a serial killer witch, and then we simply must visit that very bar where she hid bodies under the floorboards.

I love a good podcast, but I wish Connor could make his point without twisting fully around in his seat to make eye contact, while simultaneously manoeuvering the van through the busy Dublin streets. Finn’s eyes meet mine and we subtly check our seatbelts.

When, as a parent, do you get the chance to spend quality time with your 19-year-old? It’s been three years since my first visit to Ireland, a place I adore, and it feels good to be back with my 6ft 2 red-headed son in tow.

First things first: Finn wants to try Guinness. We head to The Hairy Lemon, the pub where I had my first one in Ireland three years ago, because it’s good to have family traditions. The Irish stew is also pretty good and inspires Finn to start his Irish Stew Ranking Chart. This one’s an 8.

More numbers: research shows one in six New Zealanders has a link to Irish heritage. We’re here to find out more about my mother’s side of the family, the Hayes. My great-grandfather was born in Ireland before emigrating, and there are family rumours of a rogue murderous great-uncle who ran away to America. Maybe we’ll find out something juicy about him.

Epic, The Irish Immigration Museum has on-site expert genealogists to help visitors with their ancestry search. Photo / Tourism Ireland For Travel - March 14

If you’re serious about tracking down your ancestors, The Irish Family History Centre, part of Epic The Irish Emigration Museum, is a must to visit. They have expert genealogists on site who can help lead you through the maze of records and dead ends you will come across in your search.

There are a number of roadblocks that can get in the way of family sleuthing.

Many of Ireland’s records were lost in 1922, after a huge fire ripped through the public record office during the civil war. Whoever decided to store the ammunition in the room with all of the very important 1000-year-old records probably lost their job. Scraps of records and transcripts from all over the world have been traced to try to build the registry up, and they’re free to view on the Irish virtual treasury website.

Also adding to the confusion for a genealogy rookie like myself, only baptisms, not births, were registered in Ireland before 1864. Sometimes the priest would remember to write the baptism down in his book. Sometimes he wouldn’t.

Throw into the mix the Irish tradition at the time of naming your child after your mum or dad, and the large size of the Catholic families, and it wasn’t unusual to end up with eight people of the same name, all related, all born in the same time frame in the same area.

Mel Homer with Kayleigh Bealin, research manager and expert genealogist at The Irish Family History Centre, part of Epic The Irish Emigration Museum. Photo / Supplied

This is why you get an expert on the job, to help you unravel the threads of the Irish past.

We’ve booked an appointment with Kayleigh Bealin, research manager and expert genealogist. She’s warm and very invested in finding out about our family. Sometimes, she says, it’s hard not to get a little emotional when the connections are made.

I’ve sent her information gleaned from old family notes and the wonderful work that Geraldene O’Reilly from the Irish Interest group of the New Zealand Society of genealogists has already done for me.

Bealin has deep-dived numerous databases and has come up with a dossier about Edward Hayes and his wife Margaret Casey, my great-great-grandparents.

Edward was in the Royal Irish Constabulary, quite unusual for a Catholic in mid-19th century Ireland. Life was far from easy for them. They had 12 children, and in 1871, they lost two, aged 2 and 14, to scarlet fever - just a day apart.

They lived through the great famine when a million people in Ireland died and a million emigrated, which saw Ireland lose a quarter of its population in just a few years.

The small town of Kilfinane in County Limerick is most likely where they were both born, and Nenagh, about an hour north, is of importance as they settled there for more than 10 years. It’s also where Edward died.

A holiday hunt for family history took Mel Homer and son Finn to the Irish town of Kilfinane, population approximately 700. Photo / Tourism Ireland For Travel - March 14

Bealin’s advice is to head to Nenagh and Kilfinane and talk to the oldest locals we can find. Obviously, the best place for this is the local pub so we’re off to see what we can discover in Nenagh, Country Tipperary, population 8000.

Two hours and approximately 386 song changes later (teenagers and Spotify playlists, right?) we’re outside the Nenagh Heritage Centre. Nora, the local historian points us in the direction of “Kevin over at the Castle” who has connections to some local Hayes.

Kevin is a volunteer at 3th-century Nenagh castle, which dominates the skyline. He’s a chatty grey-haired fellow who happens to have been born on the same street as my great-grandfather. There could also be a distant family connection between us, and he regales us with stories of the local Hayes. Apparently, there was a Hayes in town in the 1950s who was a one-stop goat-seller-travel agent. You could book a trip to Australia and buy a goat at the same time. Convenient.

The next stop is a wander through the town centre to Pound and Silver Streets, where the family lived for 10 years, and Edward died. But even that’s not straightforward, as Silver St is also called Connelly St. The name was changed after the civil war - some people call it Connelly, some people Silver, it just depends on who you talk to and what mood they’re in. Google maps covers all bases and calls it both.

Wandering down the street, we try to figure out which of these little terraced houses could have been the one that housed our family. I’m closing my eyes, trying to see if I can sense which one it is. Finn is walking ahead, extremely embarrassed. Conveniently, we pass a small pub halfway down Silver St. It’s time for us to regroup, and grill some old people about the Hayes.

Do we learn much from the two elderly gents sitting at the bar? No, not really. Is it a fun afternoon drinking and yarning in the snug pub? Absolutely.

This is more or less the transcript of the conversation.

Me, approaching the two octogenarians: “Hi there, we’re from NZ researching our Irish family. Do you know any Hayes in the area?”

Old Man 1: “Ohhh yes, Pat Hayes’ boy, he went away, now what was his name, was it Michael?”

Old Man 2 “Nooo, it was David.”

Old man 1: ″No, David was Aileen’s boy, he went to school with your brother’s girl.”

Old man 2: “Now, did they live in the grocers, that’s the bookies now?”

Old man 1: “No, the bookies was the fruit shop. Alan ran the fruit shop.”

We had many versions of this conversation in our hunt for the family.

The most exciting discovery of the day is made as we stroll slightly tipsily back to our hotel. There’s a statue outside the courthouse that I think looks a bit like my granddad. It’s a statue of Johnny Hayes. He was an Olympic marathon gold medallist in 1908. He was born in New York, but his dad Michael Hayes was from - wait for it - SILVER ST in Nenagh. We are most definitely related. We can’t figure out how but just like Nenagh, we’re claiming Johnny Hayes and his Olympic medal as one of our own.

The next stop on our hunt for family history is the town where both Edward and Margaret appear to be from - Kilfinane, a population of approximately 700. It’s an hour’s drive south of Nenagh, through narrow winding country lanes, and it feels very reminiscent of home. We’re going grave hunting.

The graves in the cemetery across the road from the church in Kilfinane look to be too new. Disappointment sets in. We’re running out of daylight and we really haven’t found much.

The small town of Kilfinane in County Limerick, is where Mel Homer's great grandparents were born. Photo / Supplied For Travel - March 14

Just as we turn to leave, we spot a gap in the wall surrounding the cemetery and steps leading up to an area of well-established trees. As soon as we step through the mossy path, the temperature seems to drop a few degrees. The ruins of an old church are in front of us; it looks like some work is being undertaken to restore it. Most of the old gravestones surrounding it are tilted haphazardly with age. This could be the church Edward and Margaret married in.

And then we spy it. The same grave Bealin had shown us a picture of, back in Dublin. It’s one of the few legible graves in this part of the churchyard and it’s our Casey relatives.

This is the place where our ancestors were born, were married, and survived the famine. This is where some of them are buried. We share DNA with the people who are in the ground below our feet. Finn and I feel a deep connection to this place.

Mel Homer at her ancestors' grave in Ireland's Kilfinane. Photo / Supplied For Travel - March 14

In keeping with what’s becoming our new tradition, we head to the local pub to talk to the oldest person we can find. Everyone in the pub joins in the conversation, they’re so excited for us to have found a connection to their village. There are Caseys still living here, but no one can seem to agree in which exact house, and Finn and I aren’t quite prepared to go and knock on random doors.

It’s time for us to move on. We may not have discovered anything too groundbreaking about our family, but we have gained more of an insight into what their lives would have been like.

Besides, the trip has really been about connection - with the people we’ve met, with the past, and with each other. It’s been about the pints of Guinness drunk and conversations had with random strangers. It’s about the Irish Stews ranked by Finn (no establishment scored below a 7).

We never did get to the bottom of the murderous great-uncle, though. Best we start planning another trip.

Helpful tips to trace your Irish Heritage

• Start researching before you get to Ireland. The Irish Family History Centre ideally needs 8 weeks or more to look into your Irish heritage.
• Send them as much information as you can, including family pics, anecdotes, and keepsakes. It all helps.
• Ancestry.com is the most popular DNA website in Ireland. If you’re looking for Irish connections, this is the one to join.
• Websites of interest include: Irish Interest Group; Irish Family History Centre; Virtual Treasury; Epicc HQ

DETAILS

Emirates flies from Auckland to Dublin, via Dubai. emirates.com

For more things to see and do, go to ireland.com