This remote web page is devoted primarily to the Gillespies from KILCAR, DONEGAL, IRELAND. I want to assist those Gillespies or any Gillespie looking for their yet to be found relatives. Perhaps we will all meet someday again. If you are new in your search for your Gillespie ancestors, try SW Donegal Irish Genealogy & Our Donegal Heritage. To make the most of your Gillespie search, see my list of Gillespie Forums & Links. To see my Gillespie ancestors I am searching for, try My Search for Gillespies of Donegal.
Finally, I would like to thank my distant cousin Jimmy Dunne for all his work to provide a forum for those seeking their Kilcar roots. See the Kilcar Genealogy Home Page
My paternal grandparents came to America from Kilcar, Donegal, Ireland in 1913. They were by no means the first to leave Ireland. Like many seasons before, they were among another wave of immigrants that left her shores. Though my grandfather, Peter Gillespie, was well reknown as a weaver of fine wool making Donegal Tweed, he found work in the shipyards of Belfast and Glasgow to pay for the crossing. With a young wife, he couldn't work for passage to America on the many freighters plying the shipping lanes as many young men and his older brother Patrick leaving Ireland did in 1898. I wondered what thoughts the fisherman may have had as they waved good-bye to those sons of Kilcar.
In 1992, I had the chance to visit the homes of both my grandparents in the hills above Kilcar, Donegal, Ireland. Donegal is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Everything is so green and lush. The thick grass all but consumes the lichen grey stone. The coast is constantly bathed with a fragrant ocean breeze. After morning showers and fog that hid the lush peaks subsided, flocks of sheep dotted the green hills of Donegal. The native forests were long gone. Sturdy white cottages and stone walls seen from the road were time tested survivors of the wind and water. In the valleys, the moist ground feels like a thick carpet and the tall grass nearly swallows up the grey stones that protrude through. Later, I discovered that the soggy soil was the bog which still provides peat for cookstoves and fireplaces. The peat was the brown coal of Ireland.
How could anyone leave this paradise? At the time, I could not imagine. To think of what it was like, to give up all that was safe and secure, and to embark on a new journey to a new land filled with unknowns, I could not imagine. I wanted to know more about my ancestors. I was and continue to be drawn to them wanting to know more about them and their lives. I admired them for their courage and their strength. I want to draw from their strength and perhaps have something more to share with my family and the children I hope to have someday. While most of that generation are long gone, their life stories passed on by living relatives found and those yet to be continue to share the poignant moments of their lives both good and bad. From what I have learned, I am inspired by their piety, work ethic, their love, and despair. I am no different than they. I am a part of them. I live in my own Angela's Ashes.
I would never insult my relatives nor my hosts and say that I thought I was so fortunate or better off than they. Anyone who has made many contacts with distant family members understands those feelings never expressed. I can only appreciate what I know and learn and I thank them for sharing their rich lives with me. Ireland's past has had its share of famine & poverty. My cousin, Paeder, indicated and the records show that 140 years ago, three times the people had once lived in the area when the Great Famine struck. Even today, poverty is a relative word. What we need is constant; what we have is never enough. How cleansing adversity in one's life can be. I began to understand that no one makes such a journey until the situation has made it a matter of survival or mental well-being. Through the tears and struggle came new life in a new land. Ireland was the land that bore me; she was the mother I never knew until then. I had not realized upon what bones I tread.
KJG