As I mentioned in my previous post, visiting Rathmacknee Castle was one of two goals we undertook the day we spent visiting County Wexford. The other goal was to find Trimmers Lane in Wexford Town (picture above) – and see where my Great-Great Grandfather Patrick Rossiter lived with his family before he and his brother John left Ireland ca. 1815. Figuring out where they lived in Wexford was not as difficult as I thought it would be which was mostly due to the generosity of a local expert on Wexford history.
Our family has always known that our Rossiter ancestors lived in Wexford County (highlighted in green above), but nothing more specific than that. Brendan O’Grady’s book (yes, the same Professor mentioned in my previous post that terrified me my first year of University) Exiles and Islanders: The Irish Settlers of Prince Edward Island (2004) provided me with the first context in which to place my ancestor’s immigration. In his book, O’Grady classifies Irish immigration to PEI into three groups: (1) The colonial pioneers (1767-1810); (2) the southeastern immigrants (1810-1835); and (3) the Monaghan settlers (1830-1850). A newspaper reference found at the PEI Archives and Records Office established that Patrick and John were both living on PEI ca.1820, which means the Rossiter brothers where part of the second phase of immigration of overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Irish immigrant settlers from southeastern Ireland.
Every family has its own genealogist. In our family, it is my cousin Melvin. For years, he has traced and documented our family’s vital stats and compiled a wealth of information. It was Melvin’s digging that resulted in uncovering the names of Patrick’s parents and other siblings in 2003. In January, I decided to start the New Year off on the right foot and decided I needed to start making my own contribution to our family history by uncovering where our Rossiter family lived in Wexford. Not being familiar with the Irish genealogical primary sources, I decided to take the easy route and pay someone to do it for me. Before going on the website for the National Archives of Ireland, I shot off a couple of emails to local heritage institutions for the heck of it. I told them that I knew Patrick was one of four children of Anthony Rossiter and Mary Waddick and I had the dates of birth for all four children. In addition to finding out where they lived in Wexford, I was basically looking for any other little nuggets of information that could be uncovered.
One of these institutions I emailed, the County Wexford Centre, was closed so they took it upon themselves to forward my email request to the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), who was coincidentally in the process of transcribing and scanning all of the Wexford County parish registers and accompanying data into their database. The IFHF emailed me back and told me that they searched the available Wexford data in their possession and located baptismal records of five children of Anthony Rossiter and Mary Waddick (There was a fifth child, Lucy, of whom we had previously been unaware). Although they were not able to find any information concerning the marriage of Anthony Rossiter and Mary Waddick, they were able to tell me that the records of my Rossiter ancestors were located in the Roman Catholic parish of Wexford Town. The IFHF were incredibly generous in the information they provided, especially as I had not paid any money for it. With this one simple email exchange, I already knew the town where Patrick had lived. Suddenly, I was hooked and found myself hot on the ancestral trail.
My next step was to go to the National Archives of Ireland website where I found a list of certified researchers and genealogists and decided to begin with the researcher who specialized in Wexford County. My excitement at the discoveries via the IFHF quickly fizzled when this researcher explained to me that because the time frame in which I was looking for information was prior to the beginning of many of the church baptism records and before the creation of Tithe Applotment books (ca.1837) and Griffiths Valuation (the first survey of property ownership by Irelands Valuation office, 1853) it would be very difficult to get anything concrete. He further explained that because there were no real combined records for the County of Wexford it would entail searching each parish individually. As an Archivist, I knew this potentially meant a colossal amount of work.
In my head I already had the image of me spending hours upon hours having my eyes ripped out of my head by looking at microfilm at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. That was enough to spur me into making one last attempt and I decided to contact the local Wexford Archives next to see if I would have any more luck there. The Archivist got back to me and stated that “Although we do not generally recommend individual genealogists, there was a local man who is very thorough in local history research for clients. His name is Hilary Murphy.” I couldn’t believe it. Here he was again - the same Hilary Murphy whose book twenty years previously had led me to the discovery of Rathmacknee Castle. I was suddenly excited again and wondered if this Hilary Murphy might too lead me to my Wexford roots? I sent him an email and hoped for the best.
Hilary replied to my email within a day and expressed regret that the early Wexford parish registers did give addresses. He then wrote, “I sense you know of the references in Kathleen Merryweather's book The Irish Rossiter to Anthony Rossiter and Mary Waddick living in Trimmers Lane in the 1780s/90s? A Tobias Waddick is listed as a tenant there in Griffith's Valuation, published in 1853. He would, of course, have been resident there for a number of years previously.”
I remember sitting at my desk and upon reading this email said out loud “Ahhh – no?” There it was – right in front of me – the answer I had been looking for. And it was Hilary Murphy again, who led me to it. When I told him how grateful I was to get this information he then took it upon himself to email me a scan of the page of the book that referenced Trimmers Lane. He also gave me his phone number and told me to drop by with my parents for a visit when we were in Wexford. How do you thank somebody like this?
So within a very short period of time and after only a handful of emails, I had the answers to the questions I had sought – and it was all due to the generosity of the researchers I came across. I contacted Kathleen Merryweather via her website with the plan to purchase a copy of her book before going to Ireland but that didn’t happen. The book was 20 Euros and the shipping was 20 Euros (ca. $55) and I simply didn’t have the money. As luck would have it, however, we actually found her book for sale at the Dunbrody Famine Ship Interpretive Centre in New Ross, Wexford and purchased it on the spot.
When we did finally go to Wexford Town, I found it very surreal walking through the main streets of this quaint little seaside town where my ancestors once lived.
Naoko forged ahead in search of Trimmers Lane and I stumbled along behind her, completely pre-occupied with taking in all the sites around me. Medieval walls run through the city and narrow laneways run steeply from the main street – some of which date from the Viking period over thousand years ago. Trimmers Lane turned out to not be that easy to find. None of the locals we asked had heard of it and once we finally did find it, there were no signs marking it.
The Trimmers Lane of today is very different from what it would have looked like 200 years ago. What I discovered when we finally found it is that there is a Trimmers Lane East and Trimmers Lane West. In Griffiths Valuation of 1853 there were 20 houses with yards noted in Trimmers Lane West. No longer the narrow little lane with rows of small dwellings, the uninhabitable houses of Trimmers Lane West were demolished in August of 1919 and the lane widened. It has been developed into an attractive centre with a few restaurants on one side and professional and business premises on the other.
Trimmers Lane East, however, still shows its age:
Once again I am grateful to Hilary Murphy. I regret not having been able to meet him while in Wexford as our time there was so very limited - but it is my hope to return very soon. I look forward to being able to knock on his door, give him some sort of Canadian souvenir and gift of thanks and perhaps have a cup of tea with him. Hilary led me to both Rathmacknee and Trimmers Lane and I was so happy to have been able to find my way back. I hope ole Paddy was happy too.
