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My mother used to joke that, rootswise, we were “Heinz 57” — a little bit of everything from Western Europe, though mostly English.
Only shortly before my father's death in 2014, did a relative tell me that his background was mainly Scottish. Over the next few years, a DNA test and further research confirmed this and more: My father came from a dominant clan in Scotland with a few ancestors immigrating to Ireland. My mother's roots were also in Scotland but with a web of connections throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland.
I was elated to finally have what I'd always wished for: a clear understanding of where my family was from.
So, two years ago, I decided to explore my newly discovered Celtic roots.
I set off with my husband, Kevin, just after St. Patrick's Day 2018. Our first stop was in Cork, at the Cobh Heritage Centre, an immigration museum housed in a restored Victorian railway station. More than 2.5 million Irish departed from the tidy, colorful harbor town in County Cork (as did the ill-fated Titanic).
The resident genealogist took one look at me and said, “I am guessing your people were originally from Scotland. You are Scots-Irish.” How could he know so much about me in a glance when I went most of a lifetime unaware? When I told him my maiden name, Montgomery, he shared that the clan Montgomery was one of three that led the Scottish immigration to Ireland.
He also explained why tracing your Irish roots can be surprisingly challenging. Most of the records were destroyed during the Irish civil war in 1922 and the burning of the national archives.
Plus, “Nobody had birth certificates, and most of the records were baptismal records in the churches,” he said. What's more, the new immigrants were suspicious of government, so when they arrived in the United States, they often gave either St. Patrick's Day or Christmas as their birth date and might have been vague about where they were born.
As we toured the pastoral island — including Belfast, a sister city to my hometown of Nashville — I felt something I'd never experienced on our other overseas travels: that I wasn't merely an outsider exploring a new culture but, rather, was connecting to a people and place that were already a part of me. The music, the food, the lay of the land and the rhythm of the place just spoke to my heart.
