THE DAY

Road to the path to the house

Jareth Rooney's home across from homestead

I took this picture in Kilkeel and Monica informed me that that whole block had been owned by a wealthy relative and then sold years ago.

Sean at the local pub that gave us directions

Monica and George in front of the
Patrick Rooney original homestead.

path to the homestead. The original part would be the right hand side but only one story.

view of homestead from Monica's house

This was the day to go to the family homestead. I read in some information from BeBe Daniels' trip that Arthur at the Kilmorey Arms hotel in a neighboring town to Ballymartin knew the Rooneys that live in the homestead and could arrange a visit. Off we went to the Kilmorey Arms in search of Arthur. It turns out that Arthur died three years ago and nobody had any help for us. I was devastated. What were we going to do now? I wanted to eat dinner with some relatives and it was looking like Subway on one of the gravestones in the cemetery was going to be the closest
I would get. But..we had come this far so we were determined.

NEW PLAN...

We went back to Ballymartin to the only Pub in the town. Sean, the pub owner(pictured above) assured us that the house we took a picture of was indeed the original Rooney homestead. He told us to just go up and start knocking on doors and someone would take us to visit. We ask him if that was okay to do. He said "sure..luv...tell them you have lost your way and they'll help you." Sooo, that's what we did. The first house was a Rooney but he had just passed away and his wife was unable to help with the family history. She sent us across the road to Monica (Rooney) Sloans' house which is her sister-in-law. Monica answered the door and ushered us right in and couldn't have been nicer. Jareth, her brother, was on holiday but her two bachelor brothers lived in the family homestead. She rang George(bachelor brother) up at the house down the lane and off we went. It was really neat to walk down the path(sorry, the lane) that you knew your relatives 100 plus years ago walked.

George was my kind of guy. Typical old bachelor with a twinkle in his eye and a dog named Jill that wanted her tummy scratched. We got along right away. He took us into the house and dug around for a book where he kept old family photos. He gave me a photo of Edward "Ned" Rooney 1808-1896 and Mary Cannon 1825-?. It was AWESOME!!!

I have to send it back as they seem to treasure the old photos. George was very hard to understand due to his thick accent so I had to ask him to repeat almost everything. He told us that he loved Obama. Here was this 70 year old crusty bachelor saying that he was sure Obama would save the world. He told me that if I had lived here we would have had "crack" this evening. I asked him to repeat this several times. Monica explained that "crack" was defined as a fun time in a pub. Imagine our relief...we did not want to come home and say our relatives introduced us to "crack."

Monica showed us several photos and spent about three hours with us. It was fascinating. She has 8 children 6 boys and 2 girls all over 21 years old and 6 still live with her. It was the best day of the trip!!!

They said that relatives stop by occasionally and one name Charlie showed up in a taxi with his own chauffeur. We remember Charlie and totally related to that. I think it didn't have the effect on them that he hoped. All Monica said is it seemed like he was not short on money. "Crack" was not mentioned.

Off to Dublin tomorrow and a whole new adventure in driving.