A Prelude

 It is Christmas Evening, and feeling somewhat reflective, I am writing. Over the past month or so, I have written a couple of historical notes, and will so again. My next backward-looking piece will be about myself, but not now. Right now, I am writing in thanksgiving for all I have and have had. The Birth of the Son steers us all back to light, and in this world, this Holiday marks the advent of longer days, and a return to warmth, sunshine, spring and summer. Remember this now, and always.

 O.K., one more thing. About us Ferriters. I have a sense that every Ferriter family line regards itself as the "Principal Line". Most Ferriters that I have met seem to have this belief closeted away somewhere. I am not quite sure how this arises, but I suspect that it has something to do with having a rare name, and a history that few others know. Living in relative isolation from one another - sometimes unaware of the existence of other people having  the same surname -we  Ferriters have tended to cherish this sense of being singular, which in turn leads to this notion that our particular branch is the Main line.

 No worries! The parts of the Family that remained in Ireland, and flourished there have a better understanding of how our lineages have played out - that there may be parallel lines, but there also may not be any single branch that stands like some sort of primary trunk. We all have equal standing here.

 We all have equal claim to our heritage - it is our common and collective set of experiences, after all.

George Ferriter

Wisconsin, USA

FFG2009

Images From Our Past

For the past few months, I have been surfing the internet and canvassing the family for images of Ferriter faces. My motivation has in part been a desire to put together a “Face Board” collage or poster for everyone’s enjoyment during FFG2009. Also in part has been a life-long fascination with what people in our family look like.

Haven’t you ever wondered what Piarais Feiritear looked like? Or Sybil Lynch? How that original “le Furetur” warrior soldier who traveled in the van of Strongbow’s army might have appeared? Or what our immigrant forebears looked like? Somehow, looking at our individual and collective faces from the past as well as the present seems to go some distance in answering those questions.

Chances are that issues of fashion and diet aside, these men and women probably looked a lot like us.

I am privileged to know that some families who came over have wonderful photographs from the migration years and from the era of settlement within the States. I am equally privileged to know that some who remained in the Mother Country have wonderful photographs of life in Ballyferriter one hundred years ago.

A week or so ago, a photograph of my father Charles Arthur Ferriter as a young man appeared here. Now, taking a step back yet another generation, we see a photograph of my grandfather, John Patrick Ferriter as a young man, also in military uniform.

Now, let it be known, there is a great deal of military service in my line, with over 100 years of combined service under arms by five men across three generations, during the 20th Century alone.

My Great grandfather, John Joseph Ferriter, born in Ireland c1850, served in the U.S. Army, and was dispatched to Alaska when the U.S. took ownership of that place in 1867. His son, my Grandfather, John Patrick Ferriter, b.1875, in Streator, IL, served as an Army Signal Corps officer in WWI and later, having made the Army his career following WWI. He also served earlier, (possibly under a different spelling of his last name, possibly "Feritor" or “Feriter”), as a Private in the U.S. Army on the high plains during the 1890s. Family tradition has it that John Patrick ran away from home, (at that time his grandparents’ farm in Iowa), at 16, lied about his age, and joined the Army. Tradition also maintains he left the service abruptly due to his witnessing the mal-treatment of the Sioux. (There is a strong oral tradition of pro-Sioux sentiment in our line, and I have always suspected that it came directly from him). Quite possibly, he simply didn’t like the Army at that age, and ran away again. Needless to say, we all prefer the former story, and as everything else is lost in time, that is now our history.

The image provided shows young Private John P. Ferriter standing with a group of his fellow troopers. He is the small soldier in the back row, third from the left. As John Patrick was born in 1875, and by tradition joined the Army at 16, the date on this photo would be 1891 – 1892, depending on when he enlisted.

A telling feature of this picture is where it was taken. As seen in the inset below, the photographer was located in Fort Keogh, Montana. This fort was named after Major Myles Keogh, an Irish officer killed with Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. Ft. Keogh became a principal forward operating base for the U.S. Army on the high plains, and was the location from which U.S. forces made their sortie in the maneuvers culminating in the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in late 1890.

One can easily imagine the lonely and dissatisfied young trooper at Fort Keogh, perhaps regretting his enlistment, and disillusioned with the realities of containing the dying tribes by military force. No glory there.

My memories of Grandfather Ferriter are a child’s memories of an elderly man. I recall a quiet, slow moving gentleman. Family accounts describe him as a quiet thoughtful man of great intelligence. With very little formal education, he became an expert in codes, signals, and the electronics of radio and telegraph transmission. As noted above, during his second stint in the United States Army, he rose to the rank of Major, in the Signal Corps.

That being said, there is also evidence that he spent some time in his young manhood playing in a band, and by account may have been a pretty fair musician.

Herein you may see another link in the chain of experiences that comprise our collective family story across time. I have another tale about my Grandfather Ferriter pertaining to certain events that occurred much, much later than his adventure on the high plains of Montana, but I will save that for some future posting.

Seoirse

Feirtear/Feiritear/Farritor/Ferriter Connections

I am writing somewhat early of a holiday weekend morning, and if a certain fuzziness or haze extends into this essay, that must be the cause. I wish to write about our collective family, in the extended sense.

By result of English predations, we have a family with what seems to be an identifiable common root. Not only are we identifiably one family by virtue of our surname, but the genealogy suggests that we extend from an identifiable ancestor, or few ancestors. By virtue of a sustained familial oral tradition, we have maintained a certain sense of identity with that common ancestor, and this has been a continuous thread, through generations. Thanks to the care of ancestors whose memories held the nature of inter-relationships and thanks to Padraig Feirtear who gathered these memories and put them on paper we have a fabric of information to serve as a map for understanding our past, and how were are connected. And most recently, we have the dedication and tenacity of individual family members who have taken advantage of modern research tools, willingness to travel, and an ability to focus on details such that the extensions of the family tree both in Ireland and in the immigrant destinations are being clarified, delineated, and documented.

I am not suggesting that the genealogical work is complete, nor are certain issues dating back to the diaspora all resolved. I am stating that enough is understood such that our common familial sense is validated. I am willing to wager that each of us were reared with an understanding that were were personally connected to the earliest Ferriters, and certainly to Pierce Ferriter. While the certainty of this connection may have varied from family group to family group, the sense of connection has existed in every Ferriter/Farritor/Feirtear that I have met.

So, we have what must be a rare opportunity - that of establishing and strengthening familial relationships that may have not consiously existed, or that may have been remote and tenuous.We have a basis for recounting the individual stories and sagas of our experience, for the benfit of all. We can do this via this blog, or other communication means, and by meeting one another face to face. To that latter end, I am working to organize an "All Ferriter Family Gathering", to take place August 13 - 16, 2009. As plans develop and become better defined, I will keep all interested family members informed.

Meanwhile, I will comb the internet and other sources for Ferriters yet to be located and contacted.

When I was growing up being a “Farritor” meant that your family was from Custer County, Nebraska, where story telling remained strong. And where in the 19th century on a lonely homestead on the grassy Plains of North America, Farritors spoke to young ones living in a dugout on the side of a hill of a far away place called Ireland where Ferriters were once great landowners, of a town named Ballyferriter, of the remnants of a Castle sometimes called Sybil’s Castle, and of cove on the sea called Ferriters’ Cove. I took the above photograph last summer, on the former homestead of Robert Garrett Farritor. This is the hillside location where the Farritors built their first home, a simple earthen dugout shelter. Later a whole valley became known as Farritor’s Valley and a one-room schoolhouse built on donated Farritor land was known as Farritor’s school. The descendants of this family today live all over the United States and the World, but a few are yet farmers and ranchers. Michele Farritor McMurray

(Farritors are from the Ferriter family, the name was spelled as Farritor on the Naturalization Papers of our immigrant ancestor Sean Lucais Feiritear in 1845 in a Pennsylvania Courthouse; he was illiterate in English and could not direct how his surname should be recorded, and it became the standardized spelling for our family.)

An American Ferriter Story

What follows is a bit of history and a bit of background, for the greater understanding of our collective family. First, please understand that I am not a genealogist. While I have always cherished a love of family history, and an interest in learning more about our past, I have neither the discipline, nor the patience to execute the hard and detailed work necessary in genealogical research. A fair analogy would be found in my love of maps – while not a cartographer, I love to pore over maps, envisioning places and terrain features, and imagining what being there might be like – in similar manner, I love family trees, wondering about the lives of the people identified, and what those people lived and felt.

My father was Charles Arthur Ferriter, deceased now these past 37 years. Since those who knew him well are diminishing in number, I will offer a snapshot of what I know, such that the cousins he never knew might have some understanding of his role in history, and of his place in our family. C.A.Ferriter was the son of the son of a Ballyferriter area Irishman. His father, John Patrick Ferriter was raised in the Midwestern United States, amongst people who were themselves immigrants, or the sons and daughters of the same, many of them still speaking the Mother Tongue. John Patrick passed along to his son a firm sense of what it meant to be an Irish-American, and to be a Ferriter. Romantic by nature, my father conserved and passed along those famous stories involving the early Ferriters, the FitzGeralds, of Pierce Ferriter’s brave fight against the Cromwellians, and of his martyrdom at the hands of the English. When I was small, he would bid me good night and lights out with the sign of the cross blessing recited in Irish.

Commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy as a member of the United States Naval Academy Class of 1924, C.A Ferriter, (nicknamed “Thug” during his midshipman years), went on to serve 30 more years in the service. Thug Ferriter served first in submarines, then in cruisers, followed by command and staff duties in a variety of surface vessels.

He married my mother Ann Patricia Flanigan in 1932, and began a family, which grew to four sons, (Pierce, Charles, John, and Nicholas), by 1941. When WWII began, he was on duty with what was then called the Asiatic Fleet, commanding the U.S.S. Whippoorwill at Cavite Naval Base, on Manila Bay, in the Philippines. During the initial Japanese attack on Cavite, which followed Pearl Harbor by about 48 hours, Lt. Commander Ferriter, at the helm of the “Whip” was instrumental in saving a crippled destroyer and her crew, and action which earned him the Navy Cross, for valor.

Under orders to leave the Philippines ahead of the Japanese, Thug took the Whippoorwill and sailed alone across a thousand miles of enemy controlled seas to the Dutch East Indies, and then to Australia, where surviving U.S. forces regrouped. During these months in early 1942, my mother did not know if he was alive or dead.

C.A. Ferriter served continuously at sea for the entire war, in the Pacific. He was the Executive Officer, (second in command), of the heavy cruiser “Indianapolis” during many of her key engagements, debarking for a new assignment prior to her ferrying the first atomic weapons to Tinian Atoll, and her tragic sinking. He set foot in Japan prior to the formal treaty signing ceremonies.

Following WWII, Thug returned home, and my sister (Sue) and I were born.

As the Captain of the U.S.S. President Jackson, my father participated in the Inchon Landing, the key amphibious operation of the Korean War.

Charles Arthur Ferriter retired from the United States Navy as a Rear Admiral in 1955. Post-retirement, he returned to school, and obtained a Masters Degree in Education from the University of New Hampshire in 1958, and completed a career in the employment of the State of New Hampshire as an administrator at a state hospital.

Once fully retired, my father devoted himself to his family, to writing, historical research, and religious activities. When my mother passed away in 1966, he became more fully focused on spiritual matters, becoming actively involved as a lay brother, 3rd Order of Franciscans. He died on August 13, 1970, and is buried next to his wife in a small military cemetery on the U.S. Naval Shipyard, Kittery Maine.

As an epitaph, I would like to provide a clear understanding that my father lived a rich and complete life, and was successful by almost anyone’s standards. For all of his tremendous service under the Stars and Stripes, he never parted company with his “Irishness”, and passed this sense along to his children. He represents a fine example of the fruition of an immigrant family in America, and his life should be recognized as having been a stout cord in the cable that is our collective heritage, across time.

George (Seoirse) Ferriter, Wisconsin U.S.A.

An Fear Marbh (The Dead Man, or Sleeping Giant)

I took this shot 2 years ago, its of An Fear Marbh, which is part of the Blasket Islands.
In the past the whole group of Islands was referred to as Ferriter's Islands. From the end of the 13th Century the Ferriter family leased the Islands from the Earls of Desmond, and from Sir Richard Boyle after the dispossession of the Desmond Geraldines at the end of the 16th Century. This shot is taken from the shore at Clogher Beach, on the road from Ballyferriter to Dunquin, a very dangerous tide to swim in because of the strong under-currents.

Hello everyone...

My name is Morgan Ferriter, I live in Donegal, Ireland. I have had quite a bit of contact with other Ferriters and relatives of Ferriters over the last few years through my own website, so out of curiosity, I checked to see if there was a Ferriter Blog on the web. There wasnt, so I have just created this one so anyone interested can type a few lines and let us know who you are and where you are . I also have a fair amount of history associated with the Ferriter name collected.

"All-Ferriter Family Gathering" to be held in Wisconsin, U.S.A., during the summer of 2009 to be phased with the annual Doylestown WI Picnic, and the Milwaukee WI, Irishfest. Main organiser; Mr. George Ferriter. More to follow....

Other breaking news...latest member of the Ferriter family born today, Drogheda, Ireland. Baby boy...Congratulations Eoin & Louise Ferriter (my brother & sister in law)