Revisiting John

n the day after St. Patrick’s Day, we ran into John Reynolds in Mohill. He was very happy to see us and could hardly believe his eyes. He was on his way to an appointment so he asked us to meet him later that night at Chris Reynolds' Pub. He mentioned something about story telling but we didn’t really know what he was talking about. When we went to Reynolds' Pub to meet John, we learned what “story telling” meant. Each week a different speaker would come to Mohill and go from pub to pub telling stories of olden times. This week it was a young woman who also sang old songs and everyone joined in, except us as we didn’t know the words.

From there we went to Casey’s Bar and met John’s sister Anne and her husband, who we had met in 1998. We had a wonderful time that night and it seemed as though we had never left Ireland! The next day we took a ride out to Drumgrania to see the farm house. We drove through the Leitrim Estate and ran into John driving his jaunting car with Anne, her husband and another couple. John asked us to join him the next day at McKeon’s Pub in Keshkerrigan where he would be catering an event.

We continued on our way to Drumgrania, commenting on how much the area had grown. The farm was at the end of the road and we stopped to take some photos. Afterwards we went to Clarke’s Pub which was a couple of miles away. Sean Clarke wasn’t there because he was working in Mohill at the hotel he had purchased. We took a ride to Cloone from there and went into the old cemetery.

We had learned new information during the seven years we had been back in America. We had found the 1901 census records on the internet which showed what had to be Terry’s great-grandfather’s family. Bernard Reynolds and his wife, Winifred (Una) Shanly Reynolds, lived somewhere in the town of Cloone. We didn’t find them in that cemetery or in Mohill. We did find a Casey family plot in the cemetery in Cloone. It was very old and some of the names matched my ancestors, except there was no Anna. There wouldn’t have been as she had stayed in Vermont and is buried there. I took a photo of it to show my two sisters, Andrea and Mary Lou.

We went back to Mohill for supper at Clarke's Pub, as they had been advertising St. Patrick's Day recipes for the week that were true to traditional Irish food history. Sean Clarke remembered us from 1998 and that Terry's grandfather had married a Clarke. His grandfather Clarke had married a Reynolds and John Reynolds seems to think there might be a link. They both have ancestors with the name Hugh! We said our goodnights and retired back to our room at O’Brien’s.

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