Day 2: Genealogy and history

The weir, or low dam, at Athlone, ireland, dates to 1216. It was built to catch eels, and it has a fish ladder to allow salmon to pass. The English stormed across it in 1691 to end the siege and establish the rule of William of Orange in Ireland. It was the last stand of the Catholic Stewarts.

Genealogy and history in Athlone and Offaly

Nobody heard of any Bentleys in Athlone, Ireland.

We asked business people and officials around town as we saw the local sights in our attempts to look up my routes.

While no one knew of my grandfather or other relatives, many people knew Geroid O'Brien, the city historian.  Mickey and Denny, two garrulous, tipsy and not-terribly-reliable-appearing patrons (they were arguing about how many "r's" the word "reserved" has) at Sean's, the 1,100-year-old dive bar,called him up for us.

We visited him in his office amid the records and microfiche and in minutes, he found my grandfather, and his father and his father before, in the 1901 and 1911 Census. My grandfather, Nathaniel A. Bentley, it seems, was Nathaniel the third. His father and grandfather, both still living as of the 1901 census, worked as railroad policemen and conductors for the railway. And they lived near the railway station on the west side of town, in County Roscommon.

Indeed,  O'Brien said, Bentley is not a Irish name, but an English one, and he surmised that my grandfather, or perhaps even his parents, had immigrated from Yorkshire, England, which is full of Bentleys, to work on the railway when it began in the 1850s. An uncle was an artilliary officer in the Royal Army, and O'Brien said, "everybody was legally English at the time. They were the only armed forces."  Even with their English roots, they married Irish local women and raised their families in Athlone, and in the Catholic church. 

O'Brien also noted that indeed, as a grandson of an Irish-citizen grandfather, I am qualified to be an Irish citizen, as is my mother and the nine other middle-aged grandchildren of Nat Bentley in the U.S. 

"All the information you need is right here," he said, pointing to the census data. 

So with my Irish roots established, I explored the town: a walk by the River Shannon, a visit to the 13th-century abbey and equally ancient Norman castle, now a city museum opened just this year, to learn of the local history. And as of June 25, 2013, my own history was part of it, too.

Old gravestones are lined up at the 13th century abbey at Athlone.

A funeral cortege proceeds along a main road in Athlone.

We walked a few blocks from the library to the old abbey, built in 1240, but never finished. Inscribed slabs at the site in the city museum dating from the 9th century indicate an earlier church affiliated with the giant Clonmacnoise Abbey about 20 miles to the south, operated on the site. The abbey was used as a graveyard and a barracks for the British but it had fallen into disrepair. Its primary use was a graveyard, but the centuries-old gravestones, too, fell into disrepair. Beginning in the mid-20th century, locals carefully took the gravestones down and laid them around the walls of the abbey and its grounds.

The old Norman castle at Athone is now a museum and visitors center.

We then went to the museum and learned the town was on a ridge across central Ireland and its location  on a ford on the river was attractive to settlement from neolithic times 8,000 years ago. And it was a Catholic stronghold. Its most famous moment was the siege of 1690-91 during which it held out for the Catholic Stewarts against the Protestant followers of William of Orange. They were eventually defeated, but they took their Catholic and then Irish Republican sentiments through to the modern era.

From there, we drove to Dublin, but a spur-of-the-moment side trip down 20 miles of very narrow two-lane country roads brought us to Clonmacnoise, in County Offaly, a Christian abbey founded by St. Cieran in the year 545, the same time and era as King Arthur. Clonmacnoise was one of the places in which monks scrupulously copied scripture and other books, preserving Western education after the fall of Rome. It was one of the lights in the dark ages. Alcuin of York, tutor to Charlemagne, studied there. Clonmacnoise, too, fell into disrepair after being raided by Irish tribes, Vikings, and ultimately the English, who destroyed the abbey one final time in the 1500s.

Irish students explore an 10th-century church at Clonmacnoise

The main chapel at Clonmacnoise, on the River Shannon, background,  was finally closed after it was raided by English protestants in the 1500s.

The 9th century chapel, center, is one of the oldest still standing.

The grave of St. Cieran, dating to the 6th century.

Kate Zibluk, 13, explores the 10th century
ruins at Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, Ireland.

Sara E. McNeil explores an 11th-century chapel at Clonmacnoise.