Bridget Feeney: Immigrant Stories

Do you know what last night was? No, you don't. Yes, I do. What? The 26th. I'm repeating. No. It wasn't Wednesday. It was Mama and Papa's... Wedding anniversary. Great grand anniversary. Yep. It was still Wednesday. He wasn't wrong! Every person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 second-great-grandparents, and 32 third-great-grandparents, and so on into infinity. Generation after generation, a completely unbroken line of secession, one spanning centuries, languages, and borders. The story of our genealogy, and by extension of us, is not monolithic. Each branch carries its own leaves, its own story. One such story, a my father's matrilineal line, begins centuries ago across the Atlantic Ocean in a remote farming village in East Galway, in the community of White Park. On August 25th, 1885, my great-great-grandmother, Bridget Feeney, was born to farmers Michael Feeney and Catherine Costello. Bridget grew up in the lush, rural countryside in a time without electricity or running water. Both Michael and Catherine Feeney were also the children of local farmers. Bridget was one of six daughters born in total. Molly, Kate, Bridget, Francine, Maggie, and Sarah. All of their lives changed when Molly decided to go and live in the United States of America. In 1900, she boarded a ship and landed in Boston, beginning her work as a maid. Eventually, a few years later, 17-year-old Bridget decided she wanted to follow in her older sister's footsteps and come to America. Um, she came here with, God, I have to, I have to ask Michael, with very little money. Mm-hmm. And you had to have a sponsor. She had an older sister who lived here, who had come ahead of her and who sponsored her. Mm-hmm. And then that sister went back. I don't know when, but she did not stay. She didn't do just as well as my grandmother did. Sailing from Queenstown aboard the SS New England, Bridget watched Ireland shrink into a tiny green speck before eventually being gobbled up by the big blue that surrounded her. Like many Irish women, also named for Ireland's patron, St. Bridget, she renamed herself Delia, thinking it was more modern and American. She left in April 1902 and arrived in Boston on the 2nd of May. Upon her arrival, she lived with her older sister Molly and similarly entered service as a private cook for a well-to-do Newton family. Eventually, she married Irish-born blacksmith Michael Long on November 23, 1910. During their marriage, Michael Long and Delia had three children. The first among them was my great-grandmother Kay, whom I had the profound privilege of knowing up until her death in October 2004. During her lifetime, Delia only returned to Ireland once after the birth of her first daughter. She didn't want to go back. She went back after my mother was born and took my mother back to meet her family left in Ireland. She never had a longing to go back. She wasn't one that said, I'm sorry I came.