Beattys Overseas

When we planned this trip months ago, we had Scotland on our list of places to visit in Europe.  Little did we know that there were so many O’Donnell relatives living there who we would be able to visit.  Many of the families in Donegal moved to Glasgow to find more work, as the port city in Scotland was a hub of economic growth during imaginably hard times in rural Donegal.  So, many of the O'Donnell cousins from Ireland are now actually Scots. As mentioned in a previous post, cousin Daniel O'Donnell was generous enough to house us for a few nights, and also pour upon us his wealth of information of family history. He made a few calls and arranged for a few of us to meet up after the devastating Celtic football club loss on Wednesday night. He also gave us our current favorite thing to repeat to each other at all times during the day: Aye.  It's the Scottish way of saying "Yes" or "Yep," and it's awesomely Scottish.   Aye.   Yes.   Aye. 

Thursday morning brought us to Auntie Mary O’Donnell, whose daughter Grace was in town from Dublin. We were warmly welcomed into her home and chatted for many hours about life in Culacrick and her large extended family. Grace, like Daniel, was a fountain of information, including the fascinating tidbit about the family photo that hangs in DenJohnny’s being a fusion of 3 separate photographs, as the family wouldn’t have been together to ever take a family photo (since the older sisters were in America).

Daniel, Grace, John and Aunt MaryWe brought our laptop to Mary’s and showed her the photos we had recently taken with Aunt Bridgie in Staten Island, with whom she speaks on a weekly basis. We also showed her all the photos we had taken at Culacrick, which pleased her very much (especially to see the great turf fire that had been built for our visit!). Aunt Mary’s stories about childhood in Culacrick were funny and poignant. As a girl, her parents had she and her siblings often working on the lands of neighbors to make money. A few times, her bosses paid her in sweets instead of money, which she brought home to give to her younger siblings. We discussed how much life changed for residents of Donegal in the late 1950s when electricity arrived (that’s not a typo; it was the 1950s), and how she enjoys visiting DenJohnny’s every summer when she’s back in Ireland.

Thursday night brought us out with a large group of the Scotland cousins. A few were in town from Ireland for the bank holiday (Grace [Boyle] Green and Grace [O’Donnell] McGeehan), but we were quite surprised at the size of the group who live in Glasgow. We were welcomed with plenty of hugs and kisses and stories of John’s mother and aunts from a their visits with the relatives in America.

It was a lovely night, full of laughs and wonderful memories. The photos included in the Scotland Photo Album should speak for themselves: it was a blast for these 'Yanks.'   Aye.

- Whitney