My McPolin great-grandparents, Bernard and Anna, came to the U.S. shortly after they were married in 1872. Bernard was born in County Down in 1851. Anna was born in Kilkenny c 1850. They came to Pennsylvania where Bernard worked in the coal mines in West Mahanoy. Their son Edward James (my grandfather) was born there in 1873, and their son Richard in 1876. In 1880, he is recorded as still living there. He was injured in the mines after which he moved his family to New York. In 1891, he owned a stationery store where his wife Anna worked as a clerk. Anna passed away in 1902, in Bronx, New York, at the age of 52. Bernard died six months later. They had been married 30 years. They are buried in Old St. Raymond’s Cemetery. I have written–around these basic facts and some research I did on mining in Pennsylvania at that time–a tale of how it might have been .
BERNARD
He had been shaped by mountains, by the wildness of the coast, the waves breaking sharply without care to what or where they broke, washing ancient rock out to sea along with anything or anyone else in its path. Relentless. These waves molded a wild breed, a breed weathered by storms, unsuited to the close quarters of mines–the black tunnels and coal and breathless air.
He sucked air to breathe. He walked pitching forward in a breathless motion, gulping in short pockets of air. He was a squat solid man, red haired, shocking to see in the colorless landscape of the Pennsylvania mines, and blue eyed like the Irish sky he had left behind, eyes not yet hollowed by the mines in which he worked.
In the crossing he had not known he was leaving sky behind—could not have imagined. Yet here in Pennsylvania, the piles of slag from the mines blocked the sun and brought night on early, so that he entered the mines in the dark and emerged from them in darkness as well.
On the boat from Ireland there had been those who looked back at the mountains and the coastline, wistful, and there had been those who looked out to sea in search of a new horizon. He had been one of those. He had looked at the vastness of the ocean and built dreams upon it.
–Lynn DiGiacomo
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Lovely , some one told me once my grandfather from donegal ,also came here n worked in the cold mines In Pennsylvania ,hazel something ,I forgot.tried to find out more but couldn’t .times were hard there .it may have been hazeelton .how are you doing . Still here on glover ,longest resident living here. Just heard that Tanya Snyder ,Carolyn daugther , her brother Eric ,carolyns grandson ,died a hit n run dien in Georgia that is all .take care mary ann
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