He Endeavored to Lay His Claim to This Land But Was Prevented

Evicted Tenants' File No. 13,324; County Kerry; Landlord, Francis Pierce; 

Evicted Tenant, Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Other posts in this series:
1. "Back to the Old Home--Genealogical Research in Dublin"
2. "Digging for the Truth at the National Archives of Ireland"
3. "How Many Repositories Can I Visit in One Day?"
4. "Irish Land Records Not Just About Land!"
5. "Wronged Again"
6.  "He Endeavored to Lay Claim to This Land But Was Prevented"

In my last post I told the story of searching for proof of my grandfather's eviction from the family farm in County Kerry, Ireland in 1883. Before I left Dublin last week I requested case number 13,324 from the Irish Land Commission's Estate Commissioners' Evicted Tenant's Files at the National Archives. And today it arrived! But first a little background.

As is usual in genealogical research, the deeper you dig, the more you find. One newspaper article leads to research in Evicted Tenants, and that leads to studying the laws that caused the records to be created in the first place. And that leads back to the article to read it more closely.

Over the course of the eighteenth century for a variety of causes (emigration, competition from US grain producers, a mini-famine, inequitable laws, and all kinds of financial kerfufflement) the cost of leasing land became prohibitively higher and many tenants were evicted. From the 1870s to 1890s Ireland experienced much political and legal activity around inequities in land ownership. The Irish National Land League was established to improve the lot of poor tenant farmers and attempted to bring about redistribution of the land from landlords (especially absentee ones) to those who had occupied the land for decades or longer.

In response, the UK government introduced a series of laws (Irish Land Acts) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries designed to improve the lot of the tenant farmers. The law of 1903, the Wyndham Land Purchase Act, was what spurred my grandfather to action. In that act: a) sales agreements were to be agreeable to both parties; b) the land was to be offered at fair market value; and c) the government was to step in to pay the difference between the price offered and the actual value. This effectively ended landlordism in Ireland and by 1914 about 9 million acres had been bought up by tenants.

Here is what came in the mail today.

This letter and the next essentially state that he missed the May 1, 1907 deadline as specified by the Evicted Tenants Act of 1907. Given what is stated in the Globe article, that is odd.

 This letter is from Patrick's solicitor (attorney) in Ireland, John O'Connell, LLD. It is dated Tralee, 28 October 1914, and is stamped [received] "Estates Commrs 26,573 - 29 Oct. 1914."

It reads:

Dear Sir:         Estate of Francis Pierce, Co. Kerry

I am instructed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald of 12 Lamson Ct. East Boston Mass. USA to inform you that he claims an interest as evicted tenant in part of the lands of Farnas at present in occupation of Robert Evans. He endeavored to lay his claim to this land but was prevented through non-delivery of his letters. The lands were evicted about 1884.

I would be obliged if you would let me know how the matter stands and what further steps my client should take to prove to you that he is entitled to consideration.

                                    Yours faithfully
                                             John O'Connell

Are you kidding? He "was prevented through non-delivery of his letters?" Sabotaged? Bad postal system? Rotten luck? What happened?? Why had so much time elapsed?

The December 27, 1903 Boston Globe article states "in the past 10 days the United Irish League in Ireland has taken steps to secure the best legal assistance in behalf of all the evicted tenants as part of the program of the national organization." It also says that the act had taken effect on November 1st of that year and "some 50 cases have already been brought before the Land Commission by the officials of the United Irish League of America, and of that number about one half of those affected are at present residents of Massachusetts, particularly in the vicinity of Boston. Among the number are the following:" And then he goes on to interview my grandfather. Well that explains how he was able to afford a lawyer.

I know this is my Patrick because the address he gives is the same street where the family lived when my father was born. For now, I am satisfied that Patrick did pursue restitution of his family farm. But it is still only his word that he was evicted, though there's really no reason to doubt it. I wonder if one of his brother's tried for it. He did have two brothers who remained in Ireland, John and James. John seems never to have left Ireland, but James went back and forth to the US and I haven't been able to find a marriage or death for him yet.

Does the No. 26,573 refer to another case file? I will request it and hope for further information, but something tells me I won't get it. I'll also now write to the archivist and hope he can give me some more ideas, but for now I guess I'm satisfied.

Wronged Again

Irish cottage, County Kerry, 1989

Other posts in this series:
1. "Back to the Old Home--Genealogical Research in Dublin"
2. "Digging for the Truth at the National Archives of Ireland"
3. "How Many Repositories Can I Visit in One Day?"
4. "Irish Land Records Not Just About Land!"
5. "Wronged Again"
6.  "He Endeavored to Lay Claim to This Land But Was Prevented"

I have been feeling mighty discouraged at the National Archives of Ireland's inability to locate a file in the Evicted Tenants collection which I am quite sure treated the eviction of my great-grandfather from the 75-acre FitzGerald family farm in Farnes, Kilgbarrylander, County Kerry, in 1883-84.

I have to say I was a little surprised at my reaction to the file not being found. It went beyond disappointment in not finding a record and instead felt like a slap in the face after all my grandfather had been through. He had been defeated by the system and so had I. I even felt a tear well up, and my friends will tell you I'm not the weepy type. This was pure frustration, passed down and brought to life a century later by one missing file.

What little I know of my grandparents came from my father. Both of his parents were dead by the time I was born and no one ever spoke much of them. They had been simple, hardworking folk, uneducated farmer types trying to survive in the swirl of greater Boston. They had thick brogues and couldn't read or write. My older siblings tell me that Patrick was strict and used to swing his cane at them, and Annie, his wife, liked a good snort of booze on a Friday night.

A first generation kid, born in the teaming tenements of East Boston in 1910, my father did everything he could to distance himself from his provincial parents. By the time he graduated from high school they had lived for nearly a decade on a little dairy farm in Lexington, Mass., just a stone's throw from Lexington Common, scene of the "shot heard round the world," and quintessential New England town. Pops was not one of those Irishmen who longed for the old country. It wasn't his country: he was an American. He didn't celebrate St. Paddy's day, didn't attend parades, hang out in pubs or drink much beer. He self-identified more as a Yankee than an Irishman and even went so far as to marry a Priscilla Barnes, a Protestant Mayflower descendant (below).

Priscilla (Barnes) FitzGerald standing on farmland previously owned by her father-in-law
Patrick J. FitzGerald's family, Farnes, Kilgarrylander, County Kerry, 1989

Because my father virtually ignored his Irish heritage, I just never imagined that his parents had wished to go home so very badly. So it took time for me to realize that Patrick really did not want to be here in the United States--he wanted to go home to his farm in County Kerry. He had come over just to make a little money to send home to his mother, and probably hoped he'd be home in a few years. Even after he met my grandmother Annie and settled down he did not stop longing for home, as we have seen by the 1903 article. At that time they had three children and would go on to have another three. He still lived in East Boston, an area heavily settled by immigrants.

I very much want to tell his story, and without that file I cannot. I'm pretty sure it is somewhere at the Four Courts. I wonder if it was pulled and filed in another later file, perhaps. I haven't given up. But at the moment, I'm denied that file. However, just the fact that there was a case in the index that matched what Patrick recounted provided some support to his statement that they had been evicted, though not nearly enough for me to feel confident in citing it as proved. With Irish research you have to be content with the tiniest of steps toward your goal, so I was ready to accept that.

In my previous posts I described the process for obtaining those files. First you have to request the "Evicted Tenants Index and Registers." These are held offsite, at the Four Courts and take a day to be retrieved. Once you have the index and registers you can search each one for your person of interest. They are a jumbled mess of three overlapping systems, in about 12 volumes, all of which must be searched. Some but not all information gets repeated. The volumes were not always labelled and some titles were illegible. The registers gave very little information beyond what the indices had, but sometimes very little is enough.

One set of indices includes people in all counties, arranged alphabetically by first letter, then first vowel of surname, and finally by county. So, for instance, I go to F for Fitzgerald, then at the top of the page you can see "i" above the columns, indicating the first vowel is an i, then I skim down to those in Kerry. At that point they are not in alphabetical order, so you have to look at all of the Kerry entries.

Above is the entry in the index for the file that could not be found, number 1624 for Patk Fitzgerald of Kerry. There was no further information, so I went to the register. 

Below is the entry in the Land Commission's Evicted Tenants, Register, vol. 4, that supports but does not strongly corroborate Patrick's story. It gives the landlord's name as Rae--a match!. And of course the case was refused, or Patrick and Annie would have gone back to Farnes. But I'd want to see more to be sure. The file being not found left me at a dead end.

So what do we do at dead ends? We reverse back up the lane a bit and see if there is alternate road we can explore. I had, in fact, found another possible file on my last day in Dublin. I could order it but it was offsite and wouldn't be delivered until I had left, so I requested that it be sent to me and paid a fee. Here is the entry, below, right page, then left.

 It was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. This time he is Patk J, and my grandfather was Patrick John. Best of all, the townland is "Fainas"–close enough to Farnes to make me hopeful. The 1884 year of eviction is close enough to 1883 to give me more hope still. But the landlord was wrong.  What happened to Mr. Rae? And what was the outcome?

But OMG, the page is shredded along the left side where the file number would be. I panicked for a second until I realized that in this particular register the files were in numerical order. So I went back a page and counted forward, hoping that the gaps in numbering that I had seen elsewhere would not be a problem here! I came up with number 13,324, and I ordered the file to be sent home to Massachusetts. 

Now we wait...

Irish Land Records Not Just About Land!

Registered Papers (left), Prison and Criminal Records (back wall)

This is part of a series of posts about a research trip to Dublin.

1. "Back to the Old Home--Genealogical Research in Dublin"
2. "Digging for the Truth at the National Archives of Ireland"
3. "How Many Repositories Can I Visit in One Day?"
4. "Irish Land Records Not Just About Land!"

5. "Wronged Again"
6.  "He Endeavored to Lay Claim to This Land But Was Prevented"

You may have noticed by now that we spend an awful lot of time examining records having to do with land. From Evicted Tenants records to Valuation to Deeds, much can be gleaned from land transactions.

After a somewhat leisurely awakening and breakfast I meandered over to the National Archives on  Thursday. I had a little more time to go through the remaining boxes of indexes to Evicted Tenants and found further reference to the entry I had found earlier which pretty much confirms it is my guy, or makes it very likely. The landlord was said to be Rae (yay!) and the year of eviction is 1884. the only sad thing is that his application was refused. With great hope in my heart to finally getting to the bottom of Patrick's family's eviction, I submitted the form and made myself wait one more day to find out.

No time for lunch. Donna and I stopped by the GRO again while on our way to the Registry of Deeds. I was the only person on the tour to opt for the Registry of Deeds. And I only did because of my husband's ancestors, not my own. My poor Irish Catholic farmers would not appear in these records. But landowners, and those entering in a marriage interested in protecting their assets would make special arrangements, so I had lots of good luck there. A person could spend many happy days there! Life would be a lot easier if they allowed us to use cameras to record the memorials, though. I transcribed like a fiend all afternoon. I am going to guest blog on Donna Moughty's Blog about it, so you can read more about it there.

I walked all over creation on Thursday and was really tired (a running theme!) by the end of the day. It was raining all the way home so I arrived like a drowned rat. We decided to dine in the hotel and had another two-hour relaxing meal.

Finally on Friday (today) I was to get the information I had been seeking. I came to the archives full of hope but before I could even set down my computer the man at the desk told me I had no file.* "It's not there." He was still convinced the number was too low, so I had to retrieve the index and show him the entry. He then made a phone call over to the remote site. They couldn't find it but did locate another John FitzGerald file. I ordered that and it will be mailed to me, but I'm afraid I'll never get the real story of what happened to the FitzGerald farm. (See next post for update!)

Dejected, I turned, finally, to the Registered Papers. Another fail! I had a box full of mostly mundane paperwork, generated by lots of different agencies, from all counties. The numbered case files I had ordered did not fall between the numbers contained in the box, so it was useful, if interesting.

Finally, one last trip to the GRO for some more John Fitzgerald death certificates. I keep thinking that to straighten it out I'm going to have to do a one-name study but unless I can involve my kids in it, I fear that's a project without end because I'd never finish it in my lifetime!

* I thought he said "You have no foil!" and that I had violated yet another rule. Took me a minute. Hey, it was morning!