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.

Day 1: Athlone, the new and the very old

The Shannon river waterfront at Athlone, with the 11th century castle now serving as a welcome 
and historical/tourist center. The river tour boat at left has
 been done up as a viking vessel to commemorate their visits in ancient times.

Like many Irish towns, Athlone has many pubs throughout its winding streets.

The new and the very old in Athlone

From the Czech car-rental clerk to the Latvian hotel maid to the Afro-Caribbean business-store proprietor, the Irish don't sound as Irish as they did when I last visited.

The Irish pound has been replaced by the Euro, and Europe and the world has begun to settle, even in smaller towns like Athlone, my grandfather's home on the Shannon River. Many came in the 1990s as the Irish economy, dubbed the Celtic Tiger, boomed. While the economy shrank with recession, the networks and family ties to Eastern Europe remained and multi-cultural Ireland seems established.

http://european-immigration.com/ireland/ireland.htm

But the old ways, the very old ways, remain. Athlone is the home of Sean's bar, proclaimed by the Guinness Book of World records as the oldest pub in Ireland. The bar owners display some mud daub and wattle remains of the original pub they found behind an old wall. It dates from the year 900.

Sean's pub in  Athlone preserves part of its old wall
dating to the year 900.

Some of Sean's patrons have been visiting for much of
this century as well

In later history, the town was besieged by the Orangemen of King William in 1690. The staunch Catholics of the area defended it for the Stewarts until they were defeated  in 1691. Local commander Col. Richard Grace is buried on the grounds of St. Mary's church downtown.

Irish Catholic and Republican feelings go deep, as the town lost 21 of its men in the 1916-1921 uprising against the English that ultimately ended with the founding of the Irish Republic in 1922.

Irish Catholic and Republican sentiment runs deep in Athlone.

Guinness is strength indeed, as pub-goers enjoy a pint
from mid-afternoon onward.

Athlone is also the home of  one of the original Irish tenors, 
the world-renowned John McCormack.
The site is now occupied by a Chinese restaurant.

An adventure and a homecoming

Albert Bentley "Bert" Sanford and his wife Kathy at
 their vacation "van" on the Irish Sea at Blackpool  in 1986.

Coming "home"

It's an adventure, and, in a sense, a homecoming.

My spouse, Sara E. McNeil, daughter, Kate Zibluk, 13 and a half, and I are heading for Ireland and the UK as part of the Ieimedia program in Armagh.

 http://ieimedia.com/armagh

I will be leading the journalism part of the program with three students, including Savana Maue, the new editor of the Arrow, the student newspaper at Southeast Missouri, where am I chair and  professor of mass media. I have been this way before, half a lifetime ago, in 1986. My mother's first cousin, Albert Bentley Sanford of Norden, Rochdale, Yorkshire, UK, my mother's first cousin, turned up by surprise in Connecticut a few years earlier, and I returned the favor. My grandfather, Nathaniel Austin Bentley,  was the younger brother of Bert's mother. I visited him and his wife Kathy  in Yorkshire; as well as my English former roommate, Paul A. Wheeler in the Richmond area of London, and I also visited Athlone, Ireland, from whence the Bentleys originated. I am Jack Bentley Zibluk, and under the Acts of Patriation, I have been told I qualify to be an Irish citizen. On this trip, I aim to document whether that's true.

It was a "lovely" trip in 1986, as they say. But the world has changed. There was no social media, no cell phones and no "interweb" 27 years ago, and the Internet was just beginning. Ireland was engulfed in "The Troubles," and a group of IRA supporters I knew asked me to deliver a "package for them" to a "Mr. Brown." I declined.

Now "The Troubles" are far less violent, though the tensions remain. I am no longer a young newspaper editor from Connecticut; I am a middle-aged university professor from Missouri. And I am not alone this trip as I was before. Though cousin Bert sadly died a few months ago, the family continues.  His brother Dennis, a retired MI5 spy-agency employee, is still there. He and my mom are the last of their generation. Bentley cousins Simon Mahon and Rachel Sanford Aston have kept in touch through cell, text and social media. Simon, who live near Sydney, Australia.  also holds a Ph.D. in communications, as do I. His mother and mine were pen pals and first cousins, though they never met. We will meet in a fortnight.

And there will be adventures and travel in our five weeks abroad. We will build on earlier experiences abroad in India asuindia2011.blogspot.com. With a little luck, we hope to build the ieimedia programme (I am spelling in British already) and bring more of our Southeast Missouri students and others next year.

So here we go, from Cape Girardeau to St. Louis to Chicago to Dublin to Athlone, Armagh and the UK.