An Irish Homecoming

I am just returned from my first visit to Ireland!  By all accounts, we were blessed with two weeks of nearly no rain in the areas we visited, so that made the journey all the more pleasant.

After so many years of researching the Crown and related families from afar, the time to meet many of my long-time correspondents had finally arrived.  We were greeted at the airport and later the train station, and then treated to a couple of family gatherings where I finally got to meet the kind people I've been corresponding with.  It's one thing doing genealogy research through a computer screen.  I've learned more than my father or even my grandmother ever dreamed of knowing about our Irish origins.  But meeting these Crown-related people now, seeing their faces and expressions, hearing their voices and tones and accents, feeling their memories come alive with the telling — these things shall never be conveyed by computer screen, and no AI can ever shake my hand knowing that the history of my connection to these people matters in deeper ways.

Because this was my first trip to the Emerald Isle and because time has its limits, I didn't want to get buried with research work.  Thus I bypassed places I might some day still visit, like the National Archives and the National Library.  However, I did make an appointment at the Valuation Office in Dublin because I knew there was information there not currently online.  And so I was able to spend an hour or so with two small books pertaining to properties in the Lurganboy district of County Leitrim.  I am still analyzing the information I gleaned from those books, but regarding the original Crown farm in Pollboy, I was able to see where the farm ownership passed down the line of Richard Sr. to Richard Crown II and III, and was finally sold out of the family to a man in his 90s who still lives on the property.  Amazing.

After Dublin, I was escorted to "Lovely Leitrim" by Paddy Travers, who was our personal guide throughout our days there.  We walked the rolling countryside, saw places off the beaten path where Crown and Travers relations lived, visited hard-to-find grave yards, and shared in the local Irish culture with music and pints.  Quite remarkably, Paddy also connected us to a McMorrow family who had made contact with the current owner of the original Crown farm to seek permission to walk on the property, which we did.  To step foot on that land would have been enough for me in itself, but then there were the ruins of the original Crown farm house.  I had hoped for but not expected this, and I was deeply moved to be standing on the property where our Crown family had lived for over 165 years.

But then there was more.  The McMorrows had located the Crown family plot at the Killasnet grave yard, and there they had found and unearthed the original gravestone of Richard Crown and his wife, Sarah Meehan.  This discovery was emotional.  All the years of research from afar had somehow lead me to this field where our original progenitors were laid to rest.  The origins of my Brooklyn Crown family are not just names and dates, the remnants of their lives in Leitrim are still tangible.

Click here to access the travelogue and photos of this very special journey.