This is a photograph of my maternal grandmother aka Nana. One of my earliest connections on WordPress was with a fantastic photographer, Ed Mooney, from the old country (Kildare, Ireland). I was astonished that he liked anything on my blog when his was a work of art, particularly the black and white photographs. Recently, I noticed that he had his first guest blogger and asked him if we would consider a blog from me. To my delight he said yes and uploaded it this morning. I am overwhelmed by the response and am truly grateful to Ed for this opportunity. Below is an excerpt from Our Irish Family Secret and a link to Ed’s marvelous website.
I was Nana’s own personal Inquisitor and it must have driven her crazy. She gave limited details of her past not just to me but to her children. We knew that she had been brought up in a middle-class home in Bootle, just south of Liverpool. Both her parents died young and she took over the care of the youngest children until they married. She joined a convent as a novice nun, she was both religious and beyond marriageable age, but before she could commit to God she met and married my very handsome grandfather, Daniel McHugh. To an imaginative child this was my version of the Sound of Music. He had worked as a policeman in Liverpool but once married they both went back to farm some family land in County Sligo, near Mullaghmore. Sligo is in the north west of Ireland underneath Donegal. In quick succession, they had five children and then my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer.
I hope this tantalizes you enough to find out what the secret is and enjoy Ed’s blog. Click here to read the whole story https://edmooneyphoto.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/guest-blog-our-irish-family-secret-by-kerry-duncan/
Postcards from Kerry 
That book about your great uncle is an amazing find! I keep hoping that I will find such a book on one of my ancestors. How cool would it be to find Gladys’s memoirs? Or better still, her parents??
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There is a book about our ancestor who was a doctor in Arkansas but it was written by someone else – perhaps a relative?
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