 I suppose
every family has its secrets and mine is no
exception. My great-great-grandparents, Bernard
and Hannah McGurk, were living in County
Tyrone, Ireland, when the potato blight decimated
that country's major food staple. Hannah and her
four children, Barney, Cornelius, Margaret, and
Mary Jane, emigrated to escape the famine,
arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, in October,
1849.
What about Bernard? When I was just a boy I was
told that he died in a fire. Many years later I
learned a darker story about Bernard McGurk. It
seems he was arrested for theft, tried in a
Belfast court, and sentenced to seven years in
prison - in Tasmania. One family member claimed
that Bernard's crime was stealing a loaf of bread
to feed his family. How much truth there is in
that I may never know.
 Hannah and her
children settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, near
Boston where Hannah was employed as a domestic
worker until her health deteriorated. Then her
children were taken from her and placed in a state
school in Monson, Massachusetts. Hannah died in a
state hospital, but her children survived and
thrived. Barney and Cornelius served in the Union
Army during the American Civil War, then settled
down, married, and raised families. Margaret and
Mary Jane also married. Mary Jane had seven
children, one of whom was Clara May Rowena Amadon.
That's where my connection comes in, for Clara
Amadon McMaster was my grandmother. I have vague
memories of her living with our family in
Southbridge, Massachusetts, during the last few
years of her life. My father was one of five
children born to Clara and Robert T. McMaster (my
namesake). Once their children were grown, Clara
held a position as a reporter for the Worcester
(MA) Telegram.
I've always dreamed of one day connecting with my
McGurk relations in Ireland, and in a way Rose
of Glenkerry has been a fulfillment in
fiction of that dream. Ciaran McGurk, the central
character of my book, lives in modern day Ireland.
His father was a newspaper editor and Cary aspires
to pursue a similar career. Writing and journalism
seem to run in the family.
I was a teacher for some twenty-five years, in
public schools at first, then for the last twenty
years as a professor of biology at Holyoke
Community College in Massachusetts. In 2011 I
began working on an historical novel set in
Holyoke during the World War I era. Ten years
later there are four books in that series. In 2017
I shifted gears and began work on a biography of
the 19th-century geologist and paleontologist,
Edward Hitchcock, published in 2021.
But my family ties to Ireland and my lifelong
interest in the Emerald Isle could not be denied,
and so the story of Rose of Glenkerry began
to take shape in my imagination. Now it's
in print and I am hopeful that it will be enjoyed
by hibernophiles in the US as well as by readers
in Ireland and elsewhere. Meanwhile I'm hard at
work on Book 2 of the County Wicklow Mysteries.
The Trolley
Days Series of Historical Novels
Biography of Edward Hitchcock
 
|
