Connections to Meagher and Murtha on the NBC Show

A week ago Friday my Aunt called in the evening from LaFayette Manor to tell my Mom that she was watching a show about Rosie O'Donnell, and that the name of Rosie's mother or grandmother (my Mom wasn't clear on this) was Murtha. My Aunt did not know which show or station she was watching, so my Mom began flipping through the cable channels. I googled, and eventually discovered that my Aunt was watching an episode from the second season of the NBC show Who Do You Think You Are. In Tucson the show would begin a half hour after the call. I never watched any episodes from the first season, imagining them to be one long commercial for ancestrydotcom. On the contrary, I enjoyed the Rosie O'Donnell episode. It emphasized travel to the original locations, even to the point of literally fingering the original records. Although my Aunt was interested in the Murtha connection, I was more excited about the last 15 minutes or so of the program, specifically that latter segment's connection to my ancestor Ellen Powers (mother-in-law of Thomas Meagher--see the previous post, Ellen Powers).

First, the Murtha connection: My cousin Jim Naureckas has information on his Jim's Genealogy Pages about our Murtha ancestors. They were from County Cavan, close to the northern border of Co. Meath. Our great-grandfather was not a Famine Immigrant; he left Ireland about 35 years after the Famine. My understanding from the show is that Rosie's ancestors were from the northern part of Co. Kildare, close to the southern border of Co. Meath. The Murtha/Murtagh surname is centered on Co. Meath. (You can explore the frequency of the Murtha/Murtagh surname in Ireland by doing a search at the Irish Family History Foundation site. Registration is not required to obtain merely a summary of the total number of relevant records of various types for each county.) So we are interested in the connection between Murtha families on the northern and on the southern fringes of Co. Meath. My guess is that the common ancestor would go back considerably more than 200 years, although we may never know for sure.

Rosie O'Donnell was fortunate to find a Famine-era record from her ancestors' Poor Law Union (PLU) showing that her ancestors had been approved for emigration. The expert on the show explained that this meant that her ancestors would have needed to stay in the local workhouse for a certain period. Thre were well over 100 Poor Law Unions established in Ireland, each containing a workhouse. Intially the PLU aid system was shunned by the poor. But when the Famine hit, the system was overwhelmed.¹ Continuing with the show: Rosie went on to visit what is considered to be the best surviving workhouse complex in Ireland, similar to the one where her ancestors would have stayed. She visited the Birr Workhouse (aka Parsonstown, an earlier name for Birr), which happens to be the workhouse where the Powers family (see the previous Ellen Powers post) would have gone. Their parish, Kilcormac, is only about 8 miles northeast of Birr. Four-year-old Ellen Powers could easily have spent the winter of 1846-1847 in that very workhouse. More likely, the Powers family would have fended for themselves that winter, before being evicted by their landlord in the summer of 1847, then making their way south to Cobh. Still, even with that scenario, Ellen may have known less fortunate orphaned friends who spent their winters in that attic. Viewing the reaction of Rosie O'Donnell to the workhouse setting is especially moving, realizing that the Powers family must have at least passed by that very complex, also imagining the conditions inside.

1. Peter Gray, The Irish Famine, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1995, 191 pp., ISBN 0-500-30057-7