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John
Cassidy and Kitty McGinty
By John Cassidy of
Clogher and Dublin
John
Cassidy married Kitty McGinty, born 1806 in the
townland of Barnesmore, County Donegal. They
settled in the townland of Clogher in the parish of
Townawilly, County Donegal. The townland
of Clogher, which means “stony place” is situated
three miles north of Donegal Town,
just off
the main Donegal/Ballybofey Road. It is surrounded by mountains. To
the east is Clogher, to the north is Barnesmore, and to the west is
Townawilly and the Bluestack Mountains with their mesmerizing
waterfall, known as The Greymare’s Tail that rushes from its summit
into Lough Eske in the valley below. It was into such surroundings
that John and Kitty Cassidy settled and raised six children – three
boys and three girls.
Their small holding consisted of the following – a two-roomed
thatched cottage and ten acres of land. Their annual rent was three
pound for the land and ten shillings for the cottage.
Today all that remains of their home is a few large stones that are
still close to the original site. Also visible is the plot of ground
where they grew their potatoes, and, although it was in the middle
of a hay field, thankfully, both my grandfather Hugh and my father,
William, preserved it in its original form.
John shared a further two acres of land with his neighbor Bryan
Moss. It was there that he grazed his sheep. Each year John would
sell some of the flock in the market in Donegal Town. The money
gained from those sales was used to pay the rent and meet other
family needs. Anything that disrupted that way of life would have
meant financial ruin and possible eviction.
We – the present generation – cannot even begin to imagine how
difficult it must have been for John and Kitty Cassidy to rear their
family during an era of a cholera epidemic, two potato famines
(1831-33 and 1843-47). These two disasters alone saw the population
of Donegal fall from 296,448 in 1841 to 255, 158 in 1851. That
downward trend continued through emigration, right up to 1971 when
the population of the county stood at 108,549. The fact that our
ancestors survived at all was a miracle. Not only did they survive,
but quite a number of them helped to shape the Ireland of today.
John Cassidy died in 1882 at age 80. His wife Kitty died in 1890 at
the age of 86. Their grave, which is located at the rear of Saint
Agatha’s Church in Clar is marked with a large Celtic headstone that
was erected by John’s son Hugh (my granddad) in memory of his
parents and his first wife Ann Mulreany (1863-1884) of Screen,
Donegal, who died at the age of 21 in childbirth one year after they
were married.
As already mentioned, their oldest son, John, immigrated to the US,
as did their daughter Hanna. The youngest member of John and Kitty
Cassidy’s children was my grandfather Hugh, who was born in Clogher
in 1851.
Another son was Frank. He married Sally Freel.
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