A Tale of Three Graveyards
My son, Sean, and I spent a rainy afternoon walking the cemeteries in the area of Cappawhite. We had seen the new Cappawhite cemetery on the way into Cappawhite from Cashel, but it was evident that there was nothing there dating back to my grandfather's time. Still, we carefully worked our way through the cemetery, and I tried to take a picture of each Buckley gravestone we found. For someone who never met a Buckley outside of his own immediate family before, there seemed like a lot. In one spot off to the right as we entered, I even found some Carews laid alongside some Buckleys, which seemed fitting because I knew my grandfather's mom was a Carew. It felt a bit like a family reunion right there. But no one I knew.
We were staying at a B&B outside of Bansha at the time, and the lady of the house put us in touch with Mike Buckley, a butcher in Tipperary town. Mike treated us like the long lost relatives we imagined ourselves to be, and told us we needed to go to the cemeteries in Toem and in Doon. Mike's Dad, himself, is laid to rest in Doon, and Mike told us where to find the spot.
We followed Mike's directions and found the cemeteries in question, and we visited with his Dad, too. We started in Toem, which we reached by the most circular route imaginable. It is a very picturesque cemetery, with a sort of ruined stone church that is featured in a couple of photos on this site.
Once there,Sean and I split up and we searched the small grounds. I was very disappointed to find many stones were unreadable, and I wasn't finding any Buckleys at all. I was just pausing over the graves of some of the Breen family from Ayle (a name I recognized from Bill Buckley's family tree), when Sean called to me. He was standing over the only Buckley we found there: Jeremiah Buckley, the brother of my grandfather. The stone was in the nature of a memorial marker that set out some of the family history right there. My cousin, James, had told me we were connected to a family named Flood, and Jeremiah's memorial recited that his daughter Mary A. Buckley, had married a man name Edward Flood. I paused there a long time thinking about the family members recalled there in stone.
We next made our way to the cemetery in Doon, which was large and easy to find. When we got there, we found Mike's Dad right away: a beautiful and well-maintained spot. Since it was raining, we then made what you might call a quick, thorough search for other Buckleys in the Doon cemetery, taking photos of each one we found. There were a good number, especially from Doon and Glengar, and I think I came back with information from these gravestones that I haven't yet fully taken in.
We visited one other cemetery in the area, the old cemetery in Donohill. It was in a very out of the way spot in the countryside, not far from a famous holy well. It was locked away behind a sturdy gate at the top of a hill at the end of a narrow track. It looked a bit like a spot out of a movie, but the grounds themselves were rather over-grown, many stones were down, and a very large number -- I want to say most -- were unreadable. It was very disappointing, and sad.
I have to say I expected to find scores of Buckley graves, and was discouraged to find perhaps fifteen in the three sites combined. We have some forty birth records from the first half of the 19th century alone: where did they all go? We asked Mike, but he didn't know the answer. Perhaps a visitor to this site can go to the "What do you think?" page and drop me a note of explanation.
Anyway, herewith are photos of all we found. I used a digital camera, so there is a surprising amount of detail in the large photos that open when you click on the thumbnails. See if you can spot my son Sean in the background of one of the shots. |
