Sisters Ellen and Catherine Connors were both born in Ballyhooley in or around 1810. Their father was a publican or, as they used to say back then, a vintner; relations still own and operate the Roundy House in the village. Ellen married Batt Arnold, my grandfather’s grandfather, in 1834. Three years earlier, Catherine had married Patrick Barry. A son of that marriage, Daniel Barry, was a first cousin of my great-grandfather Daniel Arnold. My own grandfather, Batt Arnold, was a second cousin of Patrick ‘Patsy’ Barry NT.

It was in Bartlemy Church, this very week in the year 1904, that Patsy Barry and Ellen Arnold got married. At the time, he was teaching in the old National School in Monanig, which was built in ‘Black ‘47’, when the Famine was at its awful height. Initially, the newly married couple lived in the Dower House belonging to Standish Barry of Leamlara House in the next parish of Lisgoold. The Dower House had been built for Standish’s mother and sister, but they never actually lived in it. The Barrys were there for maybe a year. Then, when the ‘new’ Bartlemy School was built at Hightown, the Barry family lived for a while in Mellifontstown, Bartlemy. All the while, a new Teacher’s Residence was being built in close proximity to the school. When completed, the Barry family moved in.

It was in this house on January 10, 1916 that Margaret Barry was born. The Barrys had 14 in the family, with Patrick dying shortly after his birth, and Peggy passing away at 13 months in 1909. The next son born was also named Paddy. Margaret Barry often used the Irish version of her name, Mairead, but from an early age was known by the ‘pet name’ of Meg. A bright, bubbly and outgoing child, she attended the school ‘next door’ where her father taught. Patsy and Ellen Barry bought a farm at Mondaniel, just outside Rathcormac. From here, Meg attended the Loreto Convent School in Fermoy as a day........

© Evening Echo