I wonder how many of us could recognize what this says:
This is the signature of an Irish girl whose English name was Bridget Crowne. I find it stunning and beautiful to behold. For descendants of Crown(e) family groups from County Leitrim, Ireland, we can now recognize our ancestors' surname written in the language they spoke long before the English colonized their land. To learn more about this signature, click here.
I guess I never realized that both the Statue of Liberty as well as Ellis Island, which both lie in the waters of the Hudson River, have been at some point claimed to be in the territory of New Jersey rather than New York. In fact, Liberty State Park in Jersey City (JC) incorporates over 1200 acres, half of which is in the open waters of New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary, and the other 600 acres being a parkland of open space and wildlife habitat. Who knew? Ok, not me.
It turns out that Jersey City was a hub for Irish immigrants in the 1800s, which included some Crowns from County Leitrim. DNA-matching has helped to identify several children of Francis Crown and Biddy Carroll of Sweetwood who found their way to Jersey City. It's hard to imagine a more stark contrast in environment than that of Sweetwood and Jersey City, and in both places, the conditions for survival were a struggle. The Irish who emigrated faced different hardships from those they left behind, many of which were just as harsh or harsher. And yet they came. Is glas iad na cnoc i bhfad uainn. Distant hills look green.
It so happens my Crown ancestors were barely 10 miles away from JC, settling in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Did the Flatbush Crowns know the JC Crowns, I wonder. Maybe. Probably. They lived 10 miles apart from each other in County Leitrim, and Irish families not only knew each other, they often helped each other no matter how poor their own lives. I wish we knew more about how such family connections influenced the choices and the futures of so many.
Click here to read more about discovering the JC Crowns.
