I love St. Patrick’s Day! It has always been special. I don’t know why, but it has. Maybe it’s because my mom always told us that we were part Irish on her side of the family. We used to ask her why she had green eyes and she would say it was because she was part Irish. She told us about a relative on her mother’s side, that was Irish but she didn’t know exactly how it all worked out.
While researching my maternal family tree back in the very early 2000’s, I learned that my mom was right. It hadn’t been a made up story. There really was an Irish man in our family. It goes back to my great great grandfather in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico when a young lady came from Ireland to study. She was given a job as a babysitter on the ranch my ancestor owned. Before it was time for her to go back to Ireland, she was pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. She couldn’t take him back home with her to Ireland when she left, as in those days (the very early 1900’s) it would have been scandalous for her to keep the baby, so my great great grandfather and his wife adopted the baby and raised him as their own. The young mother went back to Ireland without her son.
There are also more than a few stories that say that the adopted Irish baby was actually fathered by my great great grandfather, which is entirely possible. Records show that he was very well to do. He had a lot of property and many employees and more than a bit of a reputation for drinking in town and running with women. All that is certain is that the baby was raised by the family and took his adopted father’s last name, Saldana. His nickname, according to several accounts, was Big Red because of his red hair. There is no record of the Irish mother’s name, or at least none that I could find.
It’s very interesting to find the story and some documentation of it but it’s also very sad to me to read of this young woman who had to live her baby behind. I think of how afraid and alone she must have felt and then how she must have been haunted by the facts once she left her baby in America to return to Ireland.
Wow–that’s some story! She was lucky that the baby was adopted, though…unusually lucky.
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yes a sad story- have you seen the movie Philomena based on her search for 50 years to find the son she had to give up? Great movie, but heartwrenching
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I haven’t seen it. I’ll have to find it and stream it. Thanks for stopping by!
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Wow what a story, and on a human scale so sad. Mind you it was amazing they adopted the baby.
If you get a chance do watch Philomena which DailyMusings suggests it is a wonderful true story and it happened to hundreds of women over many years.
Thanks for the tip off with the day that’s in it I might have missed this one.
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Ah, well our ancestors were only people. It’s a shame the young woman had to abandon her baby. But if that baby hadn’t been left here, there may have never been a you.
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My grandfather was so proud that he was Swiss and my grandmother was Swiss that he conveniently forgot to mention that her mother was a quarter Irish! I think there’s Irish in a lot of people’s family and people just don’t know it.
Nancy
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