Irish Family Stories

We invite you to participate in our current project to save and preserve Irish Family Stories. If your family has a great story or two, write them down and send it to us as a word document attachment by email to bridget@joebanjoburke.org. Or, if you are not great at writing, just tell the story on tape or CD and mail it to Banjo Burke Memorial Fund, PO Box 32, Addison, NY 14801. We plan to publish stories of your family’s life in Ireland; the journey to America, or whatever part of the world your family came to; the friends and foes, sorrows and joys they found here; Gaelic sports; Irish Folk Tales; songs and poems. So if you don’t have a good story, just send your favorite song or poem with a few words about why it is a family favorite. Our editor will decide which stories to publish. Specify whether you want your stories included in the book for general publication, or you want a private publication for just your relatives. Here's a story about two of my great great aunts, for an example.

A Tale of Two Bridgets

Back in the days of the famine and coffin ships, Bridget Lynch was forced to leave Ireland. Her family was heart-broken and held an American wake with the neighbors all round the night before she left. Weeks went by with no word from Bridget. Then the family was devastated by the discovery of her fiddle washed up on the shore. They were sure she had perished in a shipwreck. When the new baby came, they named her after her sister.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s ship, grossly overloaded with people desperate to escape the famine and accompanying plagues, had indeed sunk in a storm. There was no such thing as a life preserver. There were not enough life boats and not enough time to launch most of the ones they had. Bridget found herself in the water and she could not swim. But she was wearing all the clothes she had, including two large hoop petticoats. On the way to the water, the petticoats filled with air, and kept her bobbing on the surface for some time. Eventually the weight of the sodden clothes was pulling her under, but one of the lifeboats came up to her just in time. There was quite an argument on the overloaded boat as to whether one more could be brought on, but it was finally decided in Bridget’s favor. The life boat was rescued by a ship bound for Canada, so Bridget had to make her way down to southern tier New York to meet up with her brother, Darby.

Twenty years later, the two Bridgets met in New York, two sisters with the same name.