Milestone reunion for local family

A major reunion of descendants from around the world of a local family took place this summer.

They gathered to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of Margaret Mary Hogan of Ballyhogan, Ballycommon. She was just 47 when she died at Nenagh hospital on July 28, 1964, following a battle with breast cancer. She left behind her husband Dan Hogan and a family of eight children ranging in age from 16 down to 5.

While life brought them in different directions around Ireland and abroad, Margaret’s children and their families have sought to honour the memory of their mother. In July 2014, the 50th anniversary of her death, they held a large-scale family reunion at the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh. Among those in attendance were Margaret’s sisters Rose and Nora.

A sad chapter in the family history was recorded last December when Nora died. She was the last living member of the nine children of Edward Murphy and Mary Ryan of Quakerstown, Ballingarry. Her sister Margaret of Ballycommon was the eldest of them.

The families of Edward Murphy and Mary Ryan provided them with 42 grandchildren. Four of them have passed away.

Thirty of the remaining grandchildren, plus partners and other relatives from throughout Ireland and Australia, France, Malta, Portugal, the UK and the US assembled at the Sheraton Hotel in Athlone last July for another family reunion on the 60th anniversary of Margaret Mary Hogan’s death.

FRENCH CONNECTION

Margaret and Dan Hogan came to Ballycommon in the 1950s from Dan's homestead of Ballinderry Park, near Borrisokane. He worked as a machine driver for James Healy of Rapla. All of their eight children went to Carrig NS, Ballycommon.

The eldest of them, Raphael (Ray) Hogan, now living in Lanesboro, Co Longford, has extensively researched his family history. He can trace his Murphy forebears right back to the late 1700s. He produced two booklets to coincide with the milestone gathering in 2014 and again this year.

Part of his research centred on his great-grandparents, Patrick Murphy (1835-1906) and Margaret Scully (1842-1920), and their 11 children. One of them, Thomas Murphy (baptised in Shinrone in 1879) emigrated to England and had two sons. The eldest, Thomas Anthony (born in 1929) moved to the United States and joined the US Air Force. He was deployed to Laon-Couvron base in France in the early ‘50s as part of US efforts to counter the buildup of the Soviet armed forces in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

While there, he formed a relationship with French lady Jeanne Bongur. They had a daughter, whom they named Annie. But Thomas Anthony subsequently went back to America and the relationship came to an end due to difficulties with communicating at distance across a language barrier.

Jeanne raised Annie on her own. Though all contact was lost with Thomas Anthony in the States, Annie grew up wanting to know her father.

DNA MATCH

She took a DNA test through the online genealogy platform My Heritage, which matched her with a Mary Feighery in Ireland. Mary, whose family is based around Portlaoise, was a great, great-grandchild of Ellen Scully, Raphael Hogan’s great-grandmother.

Annie made contact with Mary and discovered her Murphy family lineage from around Shinrone and Ballingarry. She then found reference to the research Raphael was doing. On learning that they were second cousins (their Quakerstown grandfathers were brothers), they have been in email contact ever since.

Raphael invited Annie and her husband Christian Sheaffer to attend the family gathering in Athlone this summer.

They accepted and came to visit Annie’s grandfather’s homestead in Quakerstown, and to stand on the original kitchen floor, which now forms part of a cattle feeding and machinery shed.

A link with the past was therefore connected, one that no one in the family previously realised was even missing.