My great grandparents were James and Jane (McDonnell) Hughes, they lived in Balgee, Naul, when my grandmother was born on the January 10, 1887, so the pictures of Naul are of very special interest to me. James and Jane Hughes had nine children. There were two girls, Mary Jane (Molly) who was my grandmother and Elizabeth, and seven boys Patrick, Bernard, James, Charles, Joseph, Edward and John (he died young).

My mother was Mary (Molly) Hughes, she was born in the Balrothery Union Workhouse on October 31st, 1905, and grew up a few miles from where she was born in the town of Balbriggan in North County Dublin. She was the child of a single parent, Mary Jane Hughes, who was very young when she was born and was not able to care for her baby herself, in those days there was a lot of shame involved when a baby was born out of wedlock and you were not accepted because of this. Times were hard and people were very poor so my grandmother had to leave the village where she lived and she left my mother with a family who lived in the neighborhood, I have been told they were named Harford and they had a daughter called Bridget who, we have also been told, “reared” my mother. My mother attended Ring Commons School and after completing school, moved into the City of Dublin. It was usual in those days for the young girls who lived in smaller towns and villages who could not find work, to move away from home and go into the bigger towns. My mother was quite young when she went “into service” and went to work for a family in Dublin.

I do not have a lot of information on my mother from her early years because my mother and father didn’t talk very much about their family back in Dublin we didn’t know why and when we were young we were told not to ask questions, and it is still a mystery to us why they didn’t talk about their family, and we have always had more questions than answers about this. My parents had a lot of Irish friends and we always had a house full of people, my father sang all the old Irish songs but his favorites were Danny Boy, The Rose of Tralee and Galway Bay, he had a very good voice and he was always the life and soul of the party.

My mother never talked of having brothers and sisters, but I did hear her talk a lot about Balbriggan, and Dublin, “the workhouse”, "the black and tans” and about a long walk to school everyday through fields, and of the lovely countryside and farms where she lived. My mother told us she had very long hair when she was a young girl and she could sit on it; she seemed to have had a happy childhood. These were all just general things that any parent would talk about to their children but it was the things they didn’t talk about that have in recent years become of much more significance to me.

One of my sisters and I always said that we would go to Ireland some day to see if we could find any of our relatives, we always felt they were there even though we didn’t know anything much about them. Little did we know then what was in store for us when the time was right!!!

We had a very happy home life, both of our parents worked very hard to give us a good home, they never had a lot of money but they had lots of friends, they did a lot of kind things for others, they taught us to help other people, to be honest and truthful, and to go to Church on Sunday always with money for the collection. On Friday night my father always took us to the local grocery store to buy sweets and comics. My mother was a wonderful cook, she made great Irish stew and she baked Irish Soda Bread and Potato Scones every Sunday afternoon. Our Sunday dinners were the best we always had Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding made in a large sized baking pan, with lots and lots of roast potatoes, and lots of vegetables and gravy, we couldn’t wait to sit down at the table to eat our Sunday dinner. Our dessert on Sunday was always Rhubarb pie and Custard. She never measured any of the ingredients when she cooked and baked, but everything turned out perfect every time. My mother was also a great seamstress and she made all our clothes when we were young she stayed up late into the night sewing for us, she never used a pattern and we were always well dressed. It would be true to say my mother lived for her family and her home was definitely her castle, she was always cooking, cleaning and dusting and polishing, you could have eaten off the floor.

My mother was a “gem”, a totally giving person, very humble and kind, and the best mother in the world, who came from such a humble background, I am proud she was my mother, the odds were against her really and yet she made the very best of it. It begs the question “Whatever happened to all those other babies born in Balrothery Union Workhouse” I can only hope they had a good life and have children and family’s who are just as proud of them as well.

My mother married my father Patrick Joseph (Joe) Carberry, in St.Mary’s Church, Haddington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, on her 23rd birthday October 31, 1928, my father was age 20, he was born on June 5, 1908, in Belfast, his family originally came from Drumcar in County Louth, his parents moved to Belfast and were married there, they lived in Belfast for some years then moved to Dublin around 1924. There were eight children in my father’s family and his parents were James and Mary (Butterly) Carberry. My father was the eldest child in his family the other children were Margaret, Mary, Clare, James, Peter, Thomas and Veronica. My mother’s address when she married was 15 St.Mary’s Road, Ballsbridge, Donnybrook, Dublin. My father’s address was 22, South King Street, Dublin. He worked for Kehoe’s, as a Grocery Assistant.

For some reason my mother and father were married secretly, they never told anyone in the family they were getting married. My father left Dublin a couple of months later. He went over to London to find work, and my mother followed him early in 1929. They settled in Islington. My father wrote several letters to his mother after he moved to Islington to let her know he was doing well, and telling her not to worry about him, yet he never mentioned that he and my mother were married. I have copies of the letters that he wrote to his mother in 1929, 75 years ago. His family has the originals; I am amazed they kept those letters for all those years. I also have letters that my father wrote to me when I was only 11 years old so my letters are 62 years old now.

My brother James was born in December 1929, and I was born in November 1930, in Islington. After I was born our family moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands, where my sister Rose was born in 1933 when I was three years old. My father worked for a Builder, who later asked my father to set up a branch of the business in Guernsey, so we moved over to Guernsey. Then in 1940 the war started and we were evacuated to Lancashire, in England for five years. We lived in Hollymount Convent in Bury, Lancashire during part of the war, and my mother became the head cook, whilst my father served for five years in the Royal Air Force. My sister Frances was born in 1941 when we lived in Bury. When the war ended in 1945 we moved back again to Guernsey, and then back over to Jersey, my father went back to work for the same Builder as the General Foreman. My mother looked after our growing family and worked part time as a Cook. My brother Michael was born in Jersey in 1949, there were now five children in our family, myself, my brothers James and Michael, and my sisters Rose and Frances. Sad to say, my brother James and my sister Rose have now passed away.

On my first visit to Dublin I obtained a copy of my parents Marriage Certificate. My mother’s address on the certificate was 15 St.Mary’s Road, Ballsbridge, this house was on the street immediately behind the Church she was married in (St.Mary’s Church, Haddington Road). We got a copy from the Church Register as well, and saw the entry. Then on my second visit to Dublin my husband came with me, and we did a Tour of Ireland and spent several days in Dublin. I went back to see the house where my mother lived again, I wanted to take a photo of it, and I decided to knock on the door explain why I was there, and see what happened. The current owner is Mr. John Dolan, and when I showed him my parents Marriage Certificate and told him my mother used to live in his house in 1928, he invited me in and he gave me a tour of his house, he showed me the area that my mother would have had as her room, it was just off the kitchen and is now a patio, she would have been the maid in those days. In the kitchen there were bells and lights above the door that would have alerted the maid when the Master or Mistress of the house might want her attention. Mr. Dolan was so warm and friendly and very interested in my story, he even got out the Telephone Directory to see if he could find any Hughes or McDonnell families living in the area, he was actually trying to help me find more of my relatives! I was overwhelmed by his interest and his hospitality.

In 1953 my parents decided to immigrate to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and since by then I was married my husband Roy and I followed them to Canada in 1955. By this time we had started our own family. So then our whole family was living in Toronto. We had never had any relatives that we knew of, but our own family was increasing because my sister Rose was also married to her husband Ken and soon they started a family.

Apparently, my grandmother, Mary Jane Hughes, who was born in Streamstown, Balbriggan, in 1887, and was Baptized in Naul, had some years previously immigrated to Canada. My sister Frances remembers my mother taking her and my younger brother Michael out one day and she told them she wanted to find her mother, that was shortly after they came to Canada, in about 1955 or 1956, so she must have somehow known that her mother was in Canada. They went to a house in Toronto and were told that the lady had died, my mother cried all the way home and accepted that her mother had died. They probably went to the wrong house because we have since found out that her mother was alive for another four years after that, and in fact was living in Toronto with her family at the same time as our family, and they were not too far away from each other. Two of my father’s sisters Clare Carberry and Veronica McGuirk were also living in Toronto at the same time having immigrated to Canada as well, they moved to Marathon, Ontario later on, and yet none of them ever connected with each other either. Clare has since also passed away, what a shame. It took years and years later for my cousin Francis Thackaberry and I to re-unite the family alas, too late for some of them, and to think that I live 3000 miles away from Ontario, and Francis lives across the sea in Dublin! Most of the credit for re-uniting our family after 70 years must go to my cousin Francis because he was the one who put the message on the Internet after the family had a re-union and started talking about their long lost brother Joe, I was just the lucky one who found his message.

As the years went by I had my own family, four daughters, Suzanne, Janette, Beverly and Amanda, and now we have six grandchildren, Sarah, Amanda, James, Stephen, Corey and Nicole and a great grandson, Ryan. I am very sad to say that our youngest daughter, Amanda (Mandy) was killed in a serious car accident in August of 1979, at the age of 17. She had traveled to Oshawa, Ontario, just outside of Toronto, to attend a National Music Camp put on by our Church and this was to be followed by a Young Peoples Bible Conference. She left us with many happy memories of her life, she was a lovely young Christian girl, just about to enter her last year in High School, and had planned to attend a Christian University on Graduation.

Then in 1999 we got a computer, that’s when things started to liven up. I was afraid to use it at first, I had heard of computer’s “crashing” so it took me about 6 months to go near the computer. But in December 1999 I built up the courage to try using the Computer, to search on the Internet and I wanted to learn how to send e-mail, my grand children are very good on Computers so I got lots of tips on how to do things. I searched randomly on Genealogy sites, because everyone said this was how you could find your Ancestors. On December 19, I999 I found a message, it was unbelievable. This is what the message said:

“I am trying to trace information on Patrick Joseph (Joe) Carberry (or Carbery) who was born on June 5th, 1908 in Belfast to James and Mary. The family moved to Dublin in 1922 and Joe immigrated to London in 1929 and soon lost touch with his family. Any information or advice to Francis Thackaberry.”

I sat looking at this message for some time, because I couldn’t believe it and it was very emotional for me, this was the kind of thing that happens to someone else but never to you, and for the first time in my life I saw my grandparents names, Mary and James Carberry. This happened late on Saturday night, I sent an email immediately to the sender, and it was returned “undelivered” this e-mail address no longer existed. So now what could I do? I contacted our local Library on the Monday morning, and the young man there took the trouble to help me by going onto Infobel, the UK Telephone Directory, which can be found on the Internet. There was only one Francis Thackaberry listed, with a London address. So I phoned the number and the person who answered the phone said he knew Francis and had rented his flat from him. Fortunately for me, he hadn’t bothered to change the phone into his own name, and had left it in Francis’ name. He gave me Francis Thackaberry’s phone number in Dublin. I phoned Francis, and got an answering machine. I left a message and said I would call back later. When I did, Francis answered immediately. I told him who I was and why I was calling. He asked me a few questions after I told him that I had found his message on the Internet and that Patrick Joseph Carberry was my father. I wasn’t sure he believed me at first but we talked a little more and after that he said he was the son of one of the 8 children in my father’s family and therefore was in fact my first cousin. I was in shock! His mother was Margaret (she was the aunt I was named after). Francis proceeded to tell me that my father still had a brother living in Dublin, and a sister living in Canada. I must say this was incredible news.

After the initial shock of all this Francis needed a few days to advise everyone that the family of their missing brother had finally been found. Seventy years had elapsed. The message was placed on the Internet on August 16,1998, and I found it on December 19, 1999, so it was floating in Cyberspace for 16 months. My father’s family had tried to find him long before this but couldn’t find any trace of him. Eventually, they have told us they thought he may have been killed in the war, or had gone to New Zealand or somewhere, or had just died. Another reason why they didn’t find us could have been because for reasons unknown our family name was spelt Carbery, and not Carberry by the time the children in our family were born. We still don’t have any idea what happened to that second ‘r’ but everyone in our family spelt our name with one ‘r’ and everyone in Ireland spelt theirs with two ‘r’ s.

This all happened a few days before Christmas and just before the new Millenium, the excitement was very overwhelming to say the least. There were a lot of cards, e-mails, and telephone calls exchanged. This family was huge, with over a hundred new relatives we would now have to meet, bearing in mind we were brought up without the knowledge of a single relative except our own family, as you can imagine, our trip to Ireland was now getting closer to becoming a reality. This trip had to happen, and in fact my sister Frances and I went to Dublin in May of 2000 to meet our new relatives. We had a great time, the whole family is wonderful, and we love them all dearly, the minute we met them it was as if we had always known them, my Aunty Hannah (Uncle Tommy’s wife) told us “they claimed us as their own”. It was lovely to meet Uncle Tommy and we are glad we went to Dublin when we did because he passed away not long after we went to visit the family. They had a grand party for us to meet as many of the relatives as we could, and we had a wonderful time with them.

During our visit to Dublin one of my new cousins Theresa and her husband Michael Kelly offered to take us out to Balbriggan to see the town that my mother came from since it was only about 20 miles away. We walked around the town, commented on what a lovely little place to live, bought some Post Cards etc. and then I saw a gentleman walking down the road who looked nice and friendly, so I thought I’d ask him if he knew anyone called Hughes living in the town. He said he did know some Hughes’, and told us to go over to The Rowans where we would find them. This gentleman’s name was Paddy Gorman and to you Paddy a big thank you.

My cousins took us over to The Rowans the next day, and we had to stop and ask directions because we were lost. We stopped at a house called “Cosy Cottage”, the family there were the Whelans, they were very helpful and friendly, and said they knew the Hughes family who just lived up the road a bit, they invited us in for a cup of tea and some nice hot Soda Bread just out of the oven. Not many people in Canada would invite a perfect stranger into their home, so we were very impressed with their hospitality. Eventually, they directed us to Jim Hughes’ house and we found Jim and his wife Kathleen waiting for us outside their house when we arrived, the Whelans had phoned to tell them we were on our way up the road and who we were, Jim invited us in for a chat. He looked very much like my mother, and he was soft spoken just like my mother. I had goose pimples and felt strongly that he must be a relation of ours. He told us he knew of this baby (Mary Hughes), being left in the village after her mother went off to Canada many years ago. Since then we have found out that Jim’s father Joseph Hughes and our grandmother Mary Jane Hughes were brother and sister. Since meeting Jim and Kathleen, I have also now met Jim’s son Patrick and Jim’s sister Jane May, and Jane’s daughter Clare O’Hara and her husband Christopher and son Paul, and Niall Hughes, who is Jim and Jane’s nephew. There are also other relatives in Balbriggan also related to my mother and her family, some of them live in Dermotstown, Ring Commons and their last name is Kennedy. I also believe that we have a connection to a Guildea family as well.

My mother was baptized in St. MacCullan’s Church in Lusk, my cousin Theresa, told us that she thought that all the Catholic babies born in Balrothery were baptized in St. MacCullan’s Church, so we decided to pay a visit to the Parish Priest, Father John Fitzgibbon and we asked him if he could find the entry for my mothers Baptism, we had her Birth Certificate with us, he found the entry in the huge Registration Book which was stored in the fireplace with glass doors which was situated in the corner of the room. He gave us a copy of the Record.

Through Jane May I found out a bit more about my grandmother. She had indeed come to Canada many years ago. She had married a Mr. Harris, and had one son Albert who died when he was six years old, and then she had twin sons, Donald and Charles. Jane sent me the address of Charles and Marjorie Harris and I found their phone number through the Internet Telephone Directory, I phoned the number and spoke to Marjorie, the wife of Charles, and told her we were related and how, and she was both very surprised and pleased, however, the news of our existence and family connection came as a complete shock to her because my grandmother had kept her secret very well and she had not mentioned to her new family that she had a baby in Ireland when she was very young. Charles was in hospital and not well, and has since passed away, but I did meet him. He was my mother’s half brother that she knew nothing about. Donald had passed away some years ago. I also have met Charles and Marjorie’s family, Denise and Eric and some of their family and we have been busy trying to bring the family history up to date on both sides.
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I have also met my Aunty Vera (Veronica McGuirk) my father’s youngest sister, and her husband Charlie and most of their family when I went on a visit to Marathon two years ago. I have four first cousins from that family and they have children, so there are more cousins there as well. I am deeply sorry that I did not get to meet my Aunty Clare my father’s sister who came to Canada with the McGuirk’s. She never married and was the one who apparently had always spoken about finding her brother Joe, and talked about him often. If only she had been alive to see the family all now found and re-united, she would have been thrilled. There are 22 first cousins in our family now, and many second cousins as well. I don’t know what my parents and my grandmother would think of all this coming out now but it seems to me that they would be thrilled that all of this is now out in the open, and it’s making a good story for me to tell anyone who is interested. Aunty Vera has a wonderful memory and has filled in a lot of our family history for us.

These are a few of my memories of my parents but just like a jigsaw puzzle there are still many of the pieces missing and these may never be found, but my search for answers will be ongoing!

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Written by Margaret Cornick, daughter of Mary Hughes, almost 100 years after she was born in Balrothery Union Workhouse, Balbriggan, North County Dublin.