Music • Stories • History • Viewpoint • Dance • Sport • Photos • Midwest Notes • Commerce Trader
| Stories of our past. It's what gives us an anchor to our past and a gateway to our future. Millions of Irish immigrants came to North America during the 19th century. And in many cases, all they could bring with them were their stories. A tie to the past, unbreakable only if it were preserved. That's why this section exists. | |||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
| Above, Tim Miles of the Peoria area, Illinois, describes his experiences in Ireland and his feelings of growing up Irish in the Midwest. Photos taken as stills from footage shot during the July 28 interview. |
|||
Tim Miles of Peoria
I guess it would be my second great-grandpa — my great-grandpa's grandpa — actually helped build the St. Patrick's Church — have you ever been there? It's in the cemetery right on 150 — it's St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Kickapoo [Illinois]. You go through that stop and it's going to be on the right hand side as you are going out of Kickapoo. I think it was my second great-grandpa — he came from Ireland and one of the jobs he got was helping build that church. And I'll have to double-check with my great aunt but I think she said they took horse and wagon up to Joliet, Illinois, to get the stone for that.
I bet it took days to get up there. It takes two and half hours now. But he helped build that church when he came over.
And if you ever go to that cemetery, the church is divided into the German Catholics and the Irish Catholics, with the Irish Catholics being on the south side of the church — they're buried on the south side and then the Germans are buried on the north side.
He came over in 1863, I think. Straight from Ireland, on the boat — in the bottom of the boat! They were considered second-class citizens, unfortunately. He came through Ellis Island, I know. There was 13 of then in their family, but not all of them came over to America during the Potato Famine because they couldn't afford it. So they sent the sons over or something.
How he ended up in Illinois I don't know! Probably because there were no jobs. And Irish people weren't treated real well. I think there were six or eight brothers that came from over there and they all ended up in this area. His last name was Macker and he married an Irish woman by the name of Dorn so her family migrated over from Ireland too. So that side of the family is all Irish. That's on my dad's side. They all ended up in this area — Princeville, Kickapoo, Brimfield area. One of my grandma's cousins actually traced back the lineage all the way into the 1600s. So she'd go over to Ireland. It's well documented.
Visiting Ireland
I found this out when I went over to Ireland — I guess the Irish government allows you to have dual citizenship depending on how many generations you are. You can't own property over there if you are not a citizen.
We were over there in October, so we were there for Halloween, which I didn't realize was such a big deal. In Ireland, Halloween is a big deal — like our Fourth of July. They had a parade and fireworks.
Those kids are out of school for the whole week! And they get All Souls' Day and All Saints' Day — they had the downtown closed up — it's just a big fest. And it was real interesting to see, and the reason they wore masks was because Halloween started as a way that you could talk to the dead. And the reason you wear a mask is that you can't see who is on the other side. So that's where the whole mask concept of Halloween came in. So I thought that was interesting. Or that was one take on it, anyway!
See, when I was over there too, it was in 2000. Ireland was going to join the European Union in 2001, I think. So I do have some pound coins because now it's all the Euro. One thing that kind of bothered me when we were over there — and my brother noticed this too — like if you go to McDonalds or something and your meal would be two pounds, 43, they didn't have pennies. Or they didn't use them — the pence. They rounded up or down depending, so sometimes, say, you should get two pounds and 53 pence you might only get two pounds, 50 pence. And I thought, Okay, somebody's getting a shaft in here, because sometimes it would be them, depending on how much your meal was, or whatever you bought. I found that interesting
Another thing that bothered me was their meat. I guess it's because of the way we live over here, but their shops — you know — they have a bakery, and they have a meat shop, and vegetable stands out on the street but that meat wasn't cooled. And stunk in there! But I guess it's because they just buy their stuff fresh every day rather than shop once a week or that sort of thing.
And then when we were on the main drag there in Dublin they have people who sell flowers. You know, you always see people with fresh-cut flowers and down by this monument they had a vendor who just sold flowers. And they'd just wrap them up in newspaper and take them home and you saw people with flowers all the time, which I thought was a little interesting. I mean, every day? I don't want flowers every day.
Then I talked to one of the guards over there — what we would consider police officers. I lot of them don't carry guns. I'm like, "Aren't you afraid?" Cause I'm thinking in Peoria, the people shoot at you. But they carry a baton and they said that they deserve to have themselves kicked if they can't whip that baton out and get people under control. But over there, it is different because people respect the authority of the Garda — or the police — compared with what we have here. People over there are respectful. In fact, when my brother and I went over there, we stayed at a bed and breakfast and they guy was a police — well, he was a Garda, that's what I guess the Gaelic term for police is. And most of his job consisted of just checking on older residents in the rural communities to make sure they had food and heat. Wouldn't it be nice if our tax paying dollars went to make sure that that happened rather than somebody shooting somebody or drug deals, or whatever? So that's what the majority of his job was.
I even talked to those policemen in Dublin which has three million people and they didn't carry a gun. We did see one night, two guys get kicked out of a bar. They must have been drunk and brawling. But they even respected the bartender. He just kicked them out and told them to get off the sidewalk and get on their way home. It's a different culture over there. People respect each other over there.
The second time — when my brother went with me — we did get to see more of the country because we drove around. About got killed over there, driving on the wrong side of the road. You know, the roads are not as wide as what we have here. Kind of like an old country road here would be their main thoroughfare. My brother yelled at me and I finally stopped the car and let him drive. He was like, "You're going to run off the side of the road!" but it's a hard adjustment when you are driving on the wrong side of the road.
But how would it be different to visit Ireland having Irish ancestry? I think that's why I wanted to go over there. I wanted to see what it was like. I always heard that Ireland was beautiful and green and it was. I think that's what was burnt into me — the desire.
There's something about Irish people that are different than any other people. You know, I've met other nationalities and the Irish just seem to be — they never meet a stranger. And you could be on the train and people would just come up and start talking to you. And you don't see that here. And their life is just slower. And they value life more than they do work. Why I don't know.
Pubs and Ballybrophy
And we went to a couple of pubs, and we were educated on the pubs over there. I didn't realize there was a difference. There are speaking pubs that have no radio, no TV, no jukebox, nothing. You just sit in there and talk.
And then there's like a nightclub. And then there's a pub that has like a jukebox or whatever. I preferred the speaking pubs cause you can learn a lot. However, the bartender told us to believe only about half of what you hear.
And it was about nine o'clock at night or so that we got there and my brother and I were the only ones there, which was fortunate for us because we got to talk to the bartender. But as people started coming in, it was all old farmers and I'm like, "It's kind of late." And they're like, "Well, we just got done milking or this or that." And it's 10:30 at night! And you think, Why are you coming to the pub now because you are going to be drunk and passed out! And they would be — we left around one o'clock in the morning and there were some that were just wiped. And I'm thinking, Okay, no wonder nothing gets done! But it was real interesting and he [the bartender] heated with — had a little stove off the side that he used peat. He heated the little pub with peat. It was a real small area — you could only get about 10 people in there comfortably.
That was in Ballybrophy which was the train station where a lot of people in Ireland went to get on to go to the ships. It was out in the middle of nowhere. It was in what used to be called Queen's County, Ireland, I think/ It's right in the middle of the country.
They say that's where my great-great grandfather left, and we need to do some more research on that because if he came over here on a ship, there's no water around that train station! So when we asked the people, an old guy who came into the pub said what they did was process people out of the train station.
So when they got to Ellis Island or wherever they were processed into the United States, they would ask, "What port did you leave from or what train station?" So whatever train station they left from that's supposedly where they were from, which isn't really the truth. That's just how they were documented.
So Ballybrophy is where a lot of people said they were from, because there were little towns all around of like, eight people, which is a town in Ireland! [At Ellis Island] they would have no clue as to where that was so I think the US government just made it easy.
Until you get into the southern part of Ireland — when we were over there, a lot of the signs were in Gaelic. It actually kind of sounds like a real harsh German. It's kind of harsh or stern or something. I don't know to describe it. We noticed that and if they want to talk about you they talk about you in Gaelic — because you have no clue as to what they are saying!
Differences in being Irish.
My dad's mom is Irish — strong Irish ancestry. And my grandfather (her husband) was strong English. So I think growing up with an Irish background you had a different respect for people who were suppressed. You remember [about] the signs that say Irish Need Not Apply. Even the separation, like in Kickapoo, with the German Catholics and the Irish Catholics were separated in the cemetery.
I think Irish people as a whole are more tolerant. I notice that especially with my great aunt and great uncle and grandma. They're more tolerant and I don't know if it's because they were raised Irish Catholic. But they were more tolerant than my grandpa who had English ancestry. And more so than my grandfather on my mom's side who was of German and American Indian ancestry.
And they had a closeness about their family. I think every Irish family I've ever seen has a closeness about their family versus just everyday everyday Americans.
And growing up in Elmwood — that's where my grandma grew up — they had the Rosminians group of priests from Ireland. They had the church in Elmwood and the church in Farmington. So talking to those Irish priests you got to know what it was like over there. You could learn a lot and it was so interesting to be able to talk with those folks.
One thing that did freak me out when I was over in Ireland was I did go to mass one day. I went into this old Catholics church [in Dublin] for mass. I went in and was praying and looked over and there was a coffin sitting there with the body still in it. And it was like eight o'clock in the morning so it was just a regular mass. But I guess they move the bodies into the church until the time of the funeral. Freaked me out. I was like, "Am I here for somebody's funeral?" But then I went online to read the Irish Independent newspaper, and if you read an obituary it will say, The body will be moved to St. Mary's church or whatever. It just freaked me out. Not that I'm afraid of a body but I just wasn't expecting it. I had gone up for communion actually is how I discovered it — so I went up for communion, got communion and was coming back to my seat and I had to pass by this coffin! And I'm thinking, Wait a minute! And the church was open and people could come and go and pay their respects. It wasn't like it was at the front of the church. It was towards the back and on the side. It was an eye-opening experience.
July 28, 2006 interview
October 20, 2006 post
|
Home •
Stories • Recent Articles • Illinois to Ireland Tim Miles • Our Heritage, Our Stories Charles "Chic" Thomson with Lynn Hunt • From Michigan to Missouri to Downpatrick Mike "Ezra" Micham with Nancee Walker-Micham |
|||||
|
• MidwestIrish.com is a part of Lucky13Studios Design Family. For more information, see JoshuaHeston.com•
|
|||||