GOT GREEN? BLOG O'HOP

Friday, March 15, 2013

Are you ready for Aloha! Mark Koopman's GOT GREEN? BLOG O'HOP?


 Here’s the simple concept behind the Got Green? Blog O’hop:

I'd LOVE to hear your Irish stories, real or imagined...

For example,

·         What does St. Paddy’s Day mean to you?
·         What are your family traditions on Paddy’s Day?
·         What Irish food do you cook, if anything?
·         What are your favorite memories, or future plans to visit the Emerald Isle?

 (Flash fiction is more than welcome for these or anything else you might want to share... I mean, seriously, we're only here for a pint of the dark stuff and a laugh.)


So, go ahead... share some great "Oirish" memories – or just tell a tall tale or two about the wee Leprechauns that lived in the basement of your oul’ granny’s house.

The Word Count total is set at 333 (and if you think that's a weird number... say it in an "Oirish" accent, it makes more sense :)

* * *

Visiting Ireland has been a dream of mine for a long time. It’d be like returning to my Irish roots.

Edward “Ned” Breen, (1776 – 1802) a farmer of Barnahasken, Co. Carlow, Ireland, moved his wife Mary Wilson and their nine children to England, where in 1828 the family again moved to Southwold, Elgin County, Ontario, Canada. In 1834, Edward’s oldest son Patrick (1795-1868), moved to Springfield, Illinois with his wife Margaret Bulger (also an Irish immigrant).

A year later, the couple again hit the trails for the Irish friendly Territory of Iowa. They settled in Lee County, where they had six children and acquired a half-section of productive farmland about three miles North West from Keokuk.

It is believed religious unrest between the Catholic’s and the growing Protestant community was the determining factor in Patrick Breen’s decision to join a passing wagon train headed to California. Encouraged by the writings of Lansford Hastings, the Donner Party opted to take a new, faster route traversing Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, and then across the Great Salt Lake Desert, and finally over the Sierra Nevada’s into California; a journey that should have taken a mere four months.

Of the 48 survivors of the Donner Party, only the Reeds and the Breen’s survived with their families intact. Both families eventually settled in the Catholic friendly area around San Juan Bautista.

So which of the surviving Breen children am I descended from? I have no clue. The geneology I have access to follows only the Breen marriages and births within California. Several of the family members over the years returned to Ireland or spread east.  My grandfather, Thomas J Breen, (1852 – 1930) born in Ireland, married Catherine Roache (1864-1940) also of Ireland, and they immigrated to California after their marriage in 1886 to re-unite with California branch of the family. One of their daughters, Irene B Breen (1898 – 1945), married Max Paul Wielputz (1896 – 1971) of Missouri, and their youngest son, Eugene Paul Wielputz, (1928 – 2002) was my father.