DE FACTO: Clare Islander remembered with affection

About 1918, a young woman from Clare Island moved into Westport to take up a job as an apprentice seamstress. She was used to open space yet moved to a market-town bustle, even living on the main street and meeting strangers every day.
Margaret Flynn took it in her stride. Most of her siblings had already headed off to the USA, one bringing out the other. Margaret probably had her own hopes to travel, but something was holding her back. Not long after arriving in Westport she met a young man. Edward Moran from Drummindoo had stopped her in her tracks.
Or had he? Because she moved to Queen’s County (Laois) to work for five years. There was no correspondence between them in that time, yet, when she returned, they were married within the year, in 1925.
On January 3, 1933, in a letter to her sister Norah in America, Margaret described the joy at receiving a letter from Norah just before Christmas. “I can’t explain how happy I felt when I recognised the old familiar writing on the envelope.” She says that she hasn’t heard from home (Clare Island) “for the past few months, as the sea was rough and Michael hasn’t been in Westport for some time”.
She tells her sister how cattle are now transported from the island to Westport Quay in motor boats. “There is no steam boat like the Granuaile for years.” Dev’s government (in power since the previous year, 1932) isn’t flavour of the month because “cattle and all farm produce are only fetching half-price as we’ve lost preference on the English markets”.
She notes that things are also “slack” in America with rumours that most of the lads from home are only working half-time. She writes how Mikey Ruddy who married Sissie Grady in Chicago was expected home with the family.
“Most of the boys from home are married to Clare Island girls. Pat Winters and Maggie Schofield, John Winters to Winnie Paddy, Sissie Bob to Michael Schofield, Janey Burns and Dominick Bob. Tommy Flynn is home since last summer. I haven’t seen him. He is staying most of the time in Dublin with Sissie.”
She states that children in America have more opportunities than children in Ireland “where there is nothing for them but emigration and their parents hardly ever see them again”.
On her husband, she wrote: “I’m quite satisfied and I think couldn’t have done better no matter who I’d meet…You also mentioned what height and looks. He would be Charles’s height, dark hair, age about 40 now. Looks are a puzzle to answer, will leave them medium of course. I don’t know what others think about him. I please myself by thinking he’s good-looking.”
She went on to state: “His sisters are very nice to me. Indeed he has three sisters married around here and a brother, also a brother in New York and one who was a baker down in Achill Sound… It might be he and you met on the train when you were going to Newport. One of his sister’s is married near here to a man of the name Walsh and he had a sister in San Francisco some years ago. She is a Mrs Fitzmaurice who knew some of ye well (maiden name Maggie Walsh) because after we were married she wrote home and asked if I was any relation to the Flynn family from Care Island who were in San Francisco.”
She tells Norah that she had a letter from Sissie in London, who ‘hasn’t got married yet’. “I think she is too hard pleased. She has no trouble in getting boys as she is very good-looking but they would want to be made to order to be to her taste.”
Margaret eventually had ten children. She died in 1940, aged 41, from a suspected brain haemorrhage. Last week, eighty-four years after her death, 120 descendants (American, Australian, English and Irish) fondly remembered her during the Global Moran Reunion. The youngest, Rosie Vaughan (three months), was welcomed by the 90-year-old elder, Maureen Clarke. Kiernan Hackett, born three weeks ago to Brendan and Cameron in Chicago, is expected ‘home’ at the next reunion! Beannacht Dé orthu.