In genealogical lingo, the family tree is depicted as spreading upward, the branches holding the knowledge of past and present generations. As a metaphor, though, I prefer to look not to the branches but to the unseen roots for the strength of the tree above. Roots provide the nurturing foundation and even – if I may borrow the concept of Peter Wohlleben in his book “The Hidden Life of Trees” – communicate with one another for protection and safety. It’s intriguing to think of all those tangled family roots that make up each of us today supporting one another generation to generation and country to country. There is allure, too, in the very hiddenness of roots. I think it is this quality of rootedness, more than any other, that draws me in to a deeper reflection and understanding of what it means to have a “family tree,” to be connected over time and space to the ancestors. Even in this modern day when a cheek swab can often unlock untold DNA stories, not everything can be known. So many of us are made of composite parts, a bit of this, a bit of that, with ancestors who are today only names on a computer screen or on some yellowed family document, and not much more. Who were they really, these rooted people who had families or not, fulfilling lives or not, foibles certainly, and who possessed a piece of DNA that connects them over the decades to us today?

Just recently, I traveled from my home in County Clare to the small “parish” of Eskra, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, where lived at least four generations of McDermotts but likely more. I could not tell you if my great-great-great grandmother Bridget McLaughlin McDermott loved to dance, or had a sweet tooth, or had a way with animals. This kind of intimacy is lost to the mists of time – but is nonetheless in the fiber of her unseen root that nurtures my Irish family tree. I can give her a name and probable occupation – farmer’s wife – which is more than many people with more dispersed or more tenuous roots can do. I can visit the gravesite where she and her husband James McDermott are laid. By the time their grandson Patrick was heading into middle age, he and some or perhaps all of his brood of 11 children left Ireland for good to settle in Chicago. One of those kids was my grandfather, Thomas John. I can not know if my love of chocolate or, more likely, my sense of humor came from these Irish forebears. But I do today have a greater insight into the probable lives of my Eskra ancestors than I had before my recent visit there. And if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to share some thoughts with you.

I learned that mine is a legacy tied to the land, that all-important Irish land that has been the lifeblood of this country for thousands of years. Land does not only mean land for farming, although it means just that. I have been reading a book called “Thirty-two Words for Field,” written by an Irish author who takes justifiable pride in knowing the intricacies and lost legacies of the Irish language. He tells us that there is the word geamhar, a field of corn-grass; tuar, a field for cattle at night; reidhlean, a field for games or dancing; cathairin, a field with fairy dwellings in it; colpa, the size of a piece of land measured by its grazing potential. And on, word after specific word tied to the land. That’s how important it is to the Irish. Just as important as the land on which you labor is the “townland” in which you live. A townland is a small region within a larger region, and is a peculiar Gaelic concept, found only in Ireland and parts of Scotland. Townlands were formalized in church records as early as the 12^th century and for this reason, are listed as being in “parishes.” Today, there are more than 61,000 townlands islandwide. This townland delineation is very important. I have a friend who lives in the townland of Killeen in the parish as well as the town of Corofin, and it matters to her. In the Eskra parish from where my family hails, it would appear that McDermotts settled in at least three townlands – Mount Stewart, Beltany and Tulnafoile, this last where my grandfather was born. But I dare not say that aloud until I know more than I do now!

Mine is a legacy tied, too, to religion and religious intolerance, and how small indignities can just punish a person. I spent the better part of a day in Eskra with a very kind man my age who was born and raised there. While he helped me trace a root in my family tree, Seamus also graciously shared his own story with me. In a matter-of-fact voice that held neither anger nor regret, he told of a life divided into Catholic and Protestant worlds. Catholic farmers were allotted only upland acreage, more rocky, less grassy, less hospitable than the rolling lowland fields and richer soils of the Protestants. He talked about a grinding poverty that really only abated in 1970s when greater economic prosperity burgeoned across Ireland. This was the way, he said: “Well, you didn’t get a job. And you didn’t get a house, there were so many things you didn’t get because you were Catholic.” Discrimination “was something that was never talked about but it was always known.” My ancestors lived generations before than Seamus, but if you know the history of Ireland at all, you know it has been one of disenfranchisement. And Northern Ireland retained its own peculiar brand of this. It is no surprise, then, that discrimination and poverty fueled by the aftermath of The Great Hunger were the likely causes that my great-grandfather left his native soil for Chicago. It is instructive for me, a white American with all the unearned privileges accorded me, to remember that my Catholic forebears were not treated with the dignity and worth they deserved. I descend from a minority clan, and it is particularly important now to consider that. I think it would not take much for any of us to find burrowed roots of intolerance toward our ancestors not that many generations back.

Mine is also a legacy of emigration, as those from my branch of the McDermotts made their way “across the pond” to a better life more than 150 years ago. In this, they were hardly alone. Between 1851, just after the end of The Great Hunger, and 1921, 4.5 million Irish residents left home, mostly headed to the US. This would have included my grandfather, who arrived in Chicago as an 11-year-old around 1890. And it is a legacy that very much continues until the present day. Over and over again, I meet mothers and fathers whose grown children have moved overseas — predominantly to the United States or Australia, the former British penal colony which continues to have strong ties to Ireland. Yet kismet! Thanks to Seamus, and since confirmed by my sister Diane, I learned that at least one member of the McDermott clan stayed behind in Eskra. Jim McDermott likely was born around 1888 and died in the 1970s – childless, more’s the pity. My working theory is that he was my grandfather’s cousin, the child of his father’s brother. Seamus remembers him well, as did others who we visited that day in Eskra. He was by all accounts a quiet, gentle, very “civil” man, handy mechanically, well read and always seen carrying a book in his back pocket. Jim, by the way, was “a Beltany man,” said one local resident, referring to his townland. But Beltany is just across the road from the townland of Tulnafoile, where my grandfather was born, so Seamus figured that wasn’t a deal-breaker. If one had been located across the parish from the other, well, that would be a different matter… These things are important! Diane, who visited Eskra with my parents and sister Doreen in the 1960s, told me later that she has a clear memory of Jim, of he and my dad talking family roots. This makes me happy, not least because my father died just a few years later of cancer when I was just 20. Not least because there is a story of staying put as well as a story of getting out. And did Jim have siblings? Seamus, who was just a kid, doesn’t remember any. But what if there was a sister who took a man’s name and lived close by? This tale will continue to take root, I will make sure of that. Eskra is only a few hours away from Corofin and I will be back.

By the way, Bridget McLaughlin McDermott’s memory lives on today. Her four-times great granddaughter, my own child, is named for her. And yes, my Bridget loves animals and has a wicked sense of humor. I like to think she received them from her namesake, that Bridget McDermott’s long sinewy root which took hold in our family in the 19^th century finds nourishment and release in her modern, very 21^st century offspring. It’s a comforting thought.

So I hope I haven’t bored you too terribly. Perhaps you’ll write a comment to this blog, and share a bit about your own roots. I declare myself fascinated with these stories of our past. Now, if I could just get to the matter of that Austrian rug merchant on mother’s side of the family…