Ancestry

Here is a paper that I had to write for English class that I wanted to share:




Ancestry
English 102
Jessica Salmon
July 11, 2010




Mary Anne, Susan, and Betsey crowded near their mother, Betsey, as she rummaged through the precious “Ireland” trunk. It has been years since the family had come over from Ireland during the wretched potato famine. “Beginning in 1845 and lasting for six years, the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused another million to flee.” (www.historyplace.com) The McAdams family had been part of that “million to flee.”
“Mother,” Mary Anne pleaded, “please show us the journal you kept while we still lived in Ireland.” “Yes,” the other girls chorused loudly. Only Mary Anne and her older brother, John, had been born in Ireland and in 1850, when both children were still mere babes, their mother left Ireland following her husband, William, who had made his way to America two years earlier in search of a suitable dwelling and life in the new country. “It must be here somewhere,” Betsey said. There was always a faraway look to her eyes whenever she opened the trunk that kept those precious memories of her beloved Ireland hidden deep inside. She was so grateful to God that her family had made it out of that wretched nightmare of a life that had rocked their life and countless other lives in Ireland; yet, one can never truly forget one’s homeland. The memory of those emerald green hills, beautifully tilled potato fields, and quaint cottages was a world she escaped to whenever she opened up that trunk from Ireland.
“Ah, here it is!” she exclaimed! Gently wiping off the dust and reverently placing a kiss upon its weather beaten cover, she felt as if she were touching and kissing a sacred relic. Betsey had started writing in her journal the day before her wedding to William. She hadn’t written in the book faithfully but from time to time she would pull it out of her desk drawer or from beneath her pillow and pour out on its pages the contents of her heart. Betsey had not had an easy life. In fact no one in Ireland really had and “easy life.” “Ireland in the mid-1800s was an agricultural nation populated by eight million persons who were among the poorest people in the Western World. Only about a quarter of the population could read and write. Life expectancy was short, just 40 years for men. The Irish married quite young, girls at 16, boys at 17 or 18, and tended to have large families, although infant mortality was also quite high.” (www.historyplace.com)
Although Betsey’s family was poor, her parents tried to the best of their ability to make sure their children were properly educated. They did not believe it was necessary for Betsey to marry at an early age only to become a bed slave to her husband. Betsey was intellectual and smart and they encouraged her to become a teacher.
“Mother, Mother, you are day dreaming!” “Please Mother, show us the journal,” the girls protested. “I’m sorry,” Betsey said as a tiny tear trickled down her pure white cheek, landing gently on the closed book. “You girls be very careful and gentle with this book, do not bend the pages, I must get supper now.” The three girls had never before asked to read her journal but when their Mother had mentioned having kept one during the great potato famine they could not be denied the opportunity to read for themselves the first had account of life in Ireland.
“Be careful,” Mary Anne chided as Susan opened the journal. “Oh, the date, look,” cried Betsey. 1846, the year Mother and Father got married. “Mary Anne, you read,” Betsey said, and so the girls huddled around, wide eyed in anticipation as Mary Anne began:


Dear Journal,
June 3, 1846
My Dear William gave me this little journal as a wedding gift. He wants me to write in it whenever he is not here for me to talk to him and since he is not here at the moment I have decided to start an entry. It is so hard to believe that tomorrow is my wedding day! I felt that I was turning into an old maid and was unsure that I would ever really fall in love. Most of my childhood friends are already married and well established with their husbands, farms, and children. It seemed that until I met William my heart was locked to all other men. I had no interest for their company until I met him.
I first met William when I visited Drumconda to see my sister after she had her first child. There are so many beautiful houses in Drumconda so early one evening I left the house of my sister and started wondering down the alleys and side streets. One such lovely mansion caught my full attention and I as stood looking at it in awed silence I heard someone call out, “Hello!” Startled, I whirled around, embarrassed that I had been caught gazing at this enormous mansion. As I turned, my eyes met a pair of the kindest eyes I have ever looked into. His hands and clothes were soiled from a hard day’s labor and beads of sweat laced his forehead. I soon learned that this “William” was the gardener for the royal family that lived in this most amazing house.
It wasn’t long after our meeting that I realized I loved William. His kind eyes and gentle ways were so uncommon for the Irish men that had tried to court me before. I was totally captured by his love. I had to return home but we wrote back and forth to each other and two months later he came to visit me and asked my Father’s permission to marry me. William is 30 and I am 23. We both had felt that love wasn’t meant to be for us but when we met each other we knew all that had changed. He is the love of my life and I cannot wait until tomorrow when I become, “Mrs. Betsey McAdams.”
~Betsey


The girls continued reading journal entry after journal entry. They read of the first happy year of marriage that Betsey and William shared in spite of the potato famine that was beginning to take its toll on the nation. No one knew that the famine would last for six long, grueling years before relief would come. The pain and misery that accompanied the famine was terrifying and death was starting to look into the windows in Drumconda, Ireland.


Dear Journal,
March 1, 1849
This year William and I had our first son! I am adjusting to the newness of motherhood, however; the joy is so overshadowed with the famine. I fear everyday might be our last and here we have a small helpless child depending on us for its survival. I feel greatly overwhelmed and sometimes question, “Why?” There is so much death and sadness around me that it threatens to pull me to the grave as well. People are desperate for food. William doesn’t have much work as royal family has fled the country and that has been our source of income until now. Oh, what will we do? William keeps talking of going to the new country, America. He says that in America we can have a better life, plenty of food and enough work for a lifetime, and that our children will have opportunities that we never had. I am so scared. He has decided that he will leave with a company of men to find a better life for us in America and we cannot go until he calls for us. My heart feels so torn, I am so scared. What if we die, oh God save us…… ~Betsey


William did leave several months later with a company of men bound for Covington, NY. With fear and trepidation he bid his wife and young son a tearful farewell. In their two years of marriage they had not been separate so much as one night. Death and dying was everywhere. Starvation was rampant and William knew that out of the deep love he had for Betsey that he had to make this journey alone for her. The memories they had shared, the love, the joy, the deep commitment, this is what would carry him through the next two years without her. They may have been separated in the flesh but they were bound together with the tightest cords of love. William left Betsey with her sister and set out. Several months later Betsey realized she was pregnant yet again and fear of the death and starvation around her almost drove her mad. Yet she knew that William wouldn’t give up and neither would she.

Dear Journal,
June 4, 1850
Today is our three year anniversary. I haven’t seen William in two years and my heart aches at his absence. John and Mary Anne are not doing well and I am so scared that death will knock at our door any day now. William sends letters whenever he can, he has found work in Covington, New York in America and he said that soon he will send for the children and me. I know that he has worked so hard to send for us. I am so sad to leave my loved ones yet so many of them have already passed away. My dearest sister died a few months ago with her precious baby. Her husband and the rest of the children have already fled the country and now it is just the children and I in Drumconda. I am so scared all the time but this famine will not break me. I will see William again; I know he is waiting for me.
~Betsey

Soon after this last journal entry William sent word that Betsey and the children were to board a ship headed to Covington. The thin and bedraggled little family was reunited at the end of 1850. They had endured most of the famine but unfortunately many did not make it. The great courage, perseverance, and love of William and Betsey McAdams make me grateful to God for having such wonderful people as my ancestors. The names, some of the dates, and great escape from Ireland during the potato famine are true yet I have added a fictitious account of what it must have been like for John and Betsey McAdams my great, great, great, great, great Grandparents coming over during the potato famine. William and Betsey both passed away in the same year of 1897 just a few months apart and I can’t help but wonder if their live was an epic romance better than any paperback novel?