Crisis in Numbers: The Ferriters of Corca Dhubhine During the 1500s

Many members of the Ferriter Family today are aware of the legend that maintains Piaras Feiritear as the last of his tribe. The facts do not support Piaras as the last – certainly we know that his father lived to become a grandfather, with Piaras’ son’s furthering the line, and certain evidences exist that suggest Piaras may have had at least one brother or a cousin. Those things said, that the Ferriters were a rare breed during the early 1600s seems doubtless. With the family having been established in West Kerry for over 300 years before Piaras came along, the idea that there were only a handful of Ferriters extant does not correspond with what we know about the growth of families over time.

Although beautiful beyond reason, the lands held and inhabited by the Ferriters are harsh and stingy to a farmer’s eyes. Most of the rocky hillsides were and are suitable for grazing only, and the more fertile bottom lands are not spacious. The saving grace of the locale was the ocean – and surely the Ferriters fished, and fostered other fisherman, with the resulting bounty going some distance to feeding the inhabitants of the locale.

The size of the family in Corca Dhuibhne was always limited by what the property could support. Sub-infuedation and tenancy by family members could only continue to the extent that the farms could produce sufficient food to support the tenants. Fishing was always vigorously pursued, under the conditions of the grant from the Earl of Desmond. These things being said, Ferriter men often left the area, either via the sea, or under arms. Whether they were sailors, or whether they were soldiers for hire, once departed these men were doubtless most often lost to the family.

Yet the 1400s had been a relatively prosperous and peaceful period for Ossurys, the cantred wherein Ferriter’s lands lay. Dingle, Ventry, and Ferriter’s Haven all supported trade and fishing. There were no large scale wars, and the occasional raids or dust-ups under Desmond colors were not destructive in a general sense. The Ferriters had shared in this sort of prosperity, and their numbers had certainly increased over time.

By extrapolating familial propagation over the two and a half centuries following the Ferriter arrivals in Ossurys cantred, an expectation that the area would have been replete with Ferriter families can be reached. 100% of the land would not have been occupied by Ferriter families, but making an estimate that most of it was can be seen as reasonable. For the purposes of this discussion, a conservative projection of 15 Ferriter Families across the various townlands of Marhin, Dunurlin, and Ferriter’s Quarter is established for the year 1565. These 15 families would have accounted for perhaps 60 to 80 individuals. These people would have acknowledged kinship ties with one another, shared a sense of family, and probably gave a degree of fealty to The Ferriter, An Feiritearach, the chieftain of the little sept.

Note the details of “Jobson’s Map of Mounster”, c1585. Here we see no fewer than four place names associated with Ferriter: Fereter’s Cove, C. (Castle) Fereter, B. (Bally) Feretor, and The Fereter’s Island.

75 years later, there were perhaps one or two families comprising at most a half dozen souls. What happened?

The destruction of the Ferriter Family must have gone something like this:

During the period of sharp numerical decline, three devastating wars occurred, along with sustained anarchy during each period of conflict.

Several authorities have posited that the population of Kerry may have been reduced by 30% to 50% during this period, which alone does not explain the radical reduction in numbers evidenced within the Ferriter family. Nor does leaving the area – all records available, along with onomastic evidence as available via surname distribution both suggest otherwise - the Ferriters stayed on in their home area. Aside from a very early occurrence of the name in Dublin that persisted for several generations before disappearing, Ferriters did not reside outside of Corkaguiny until recently.

As late as Ireland’s 1911 census, only two Ferriters resided outside of the home area. Many Ferriters had emigrated to America or elsewhere by 1911, but such an option did not exit in the 16th century. As noted, the younger sons may have often sailed away, or marched off to serve under arms, but that is not emigration. The Ferriters did not leave during the 1565 – 1605 time period. Whatever happened, it played out in West Kerry.

There may have been diseases and famine attendant with the periods of conflict, and certainly this speaks to the name becoming less common in the area. That the decrease in numbers corresponds to the decrease in numbers of other families in the area would be expected. The Trant and Rice families endured the same period of difficulty yet seem to remain relatively numerous in citations following the warfare, so what happened that was unique to the to the Ferriters?

When discounting an estimate of number reflective of the difficult times, the result does not correspond with what seems to have been the case for the Ferriter family, and the realization that something beyond famine and disease happened becomes apparent. Some analysis of the mechanisms that may have borne on the situation is warranted.

As mentioned, three separate wars occurred:

1569 - 1573 First Desmond Rebellion (James FitzMaurice)

1579 - 1583 Second Desmond Rebellion (Earl Gerald)

1599 – 1603 Munster Rising of O’Neil’s Rebellion (Sugane Earl of Desmond)

Each of these rebellions was replete with slaughter, famine, and destruction of humanity:

“I saw sufficiently ensampled in those late warrs in Mounster; for notwithstandinge that the same was a most ritch and plentyfull countrye, full of corne and cattell, that you would have thought they could have beene hable to stand longe, yett eare one yeare and a half they weare brought to such wretchednes, as that anye stonye herte would have rewed the same. Out of everye corner of the woode and glenns they came creepinge forth upon theire handes, for theire legges could not beare them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spake like ghostes, crying out of theire graves; they did eate of the carrions, happye wheare they could find them, yea, and one another soone after, in soe much as the verye carcasses they spared not to scrape out of theire graves; and if they found a plott of water-cresses or shamrockes, theyr they flocked as to a feast for the time, yett not able long to contynewe therewithall; that in a shorte space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentyfull countrye suddenly lefte voyde of man or beast: yett sure in all that warr, there perished not manye by the sworde, but all by the extreamytie of famyne which they themselves hadd wrought.” (“A Veue of The Present State of Ireland.”, Edmund Spenser, 1596.)

“For might it but please her Highnes under her owne hand to sett downe, that noe principale Traytor (especiallie those of Mounster){This would marre theyr mirth.} shall have any pardon or find anye favour …And lett that principall Traytor whom they call the Earle of Desmond be the first.{One after another and serve all alyke.} Then the White Knight alias Edmond Macc Gibbon, Piers Lacye, the Knight of Kerrye and the Lord Fitz Morris. These are the principall Traytors who have lands.{One occasion is too much and one pardon too manye.} Yf these or anye of these shall refuse to come in in manner…. Then lett proclamation be made that whosoever shall take or kill anye of these Traytors lands and hould them in the same sorte that the Traytors did. Yea though he be a Traytor and a leader of men amongst Traytors{Give the Devill his due yf he do a good turne.} that shall happen to doe this service. Let him not only have the landes of that Traytor whom he shall kill” (Captain Thomas Lee, Elizabethan soldier, c1580)

Note that these citations reflect the eyes and ears of a primary source. While reports taken from the field of and by Englishmen often play down English losses, these reports are quite sanguine regarding the fate of the Irish.

Taken together, these wars in Munster have a common thread in that they had members of the Desmond FitzGerald family as principal actors. Collectively, these wars could as easily be called the Geraldine Wars as anything else.

The Ferriters were Desmond’s men. The lands that they held were held of Desmond.
At the onset of the Geraldine Wars, this relationship had been in place for over 200 years. The Earl was their Earl, and they were his people. Certainly by the 1500s, marriages were occurring between Ferriter men and Geraldine women, ladies of the more local cadet branches, extending from the nearby Sliocht Edmund, (a Geraldine Clan around Castle Gregory) or the grand-nieces or the great-grand nieces of early knights of Kerry. It is known that a Ferriter lady married into the family of the Knight of Kerry c1565, and there exists no reason to imagine that she was the first.

Kinship bonds, and the oaths of fealty associated with landholding were powerful connections. In all likelihood, some Ferriter men had joined with James FitzMaurice in 1569. That “the Felleterache of Ballysibbel” appears on an Elizabethan pardon of 1574 along with other rebels confirms this.

Almost certainly, Ferriter men went out under the Geraldine banners as soon as the Earl declared himself in rebellion, in 1580. Via the marriage cited above, Maurice, Piaras Feirtear’s grandfather would have been the likely brother in law of William MacRuddery, brother to the knight, John, both of whom are known to have been rebels. The family connection, along with the requirements of fealty as given to the Earl would have mandated that Maurice and other Ferriters rode with these men.

Black Tom Butler, Earl of Ormonde

The English were already mobilized, having moved to address this second Geraldine rebellion in it’s infancy in 1579, so conflict flared immediately. The Dingle Peninsula experienced unparalleled savagery in the year 1580. Pelham, The Black Earl of Ormond, Winter, Bingham, and Lord Grey all had a turn in despoiling the land of Corkaguiney and slaughtering the inhabitants. Of these, perhaps Ormond’s Raid during the spring of 1580 was most destructive:
In Jan 1580 two Italian vessels with powder had arrived at Dingle, bringing news that Desmond might soon expect other forces from abroad. In response, as spring opened Pelham and Ormond passed through the rebel counties in separate companies, consuming with fire all habitations and executing the people wherever they found them. As noted below, the Irish annalists say that the bands of Pelham and Ormond killed the blind and the aged, women and children, sick and idiots, sparing none.

“The Erle of Ormonde…never slept his time, but was always in readiness, being the first with the foremost, and last with the hindermost…they met and divided their companies into three partes, and so marched to Dingle-a-Cush, and as they went, they drove the whole countrie before them…all such people as they met they did without mercie putte to the sword. By this means the whole countrie having no cattel nor kine left, they were driven to such extremeities that for want of vittels they were either to die and perish for famine, or to die under the sword.” (Hooker’s Chronicle, 1580)

“He (Pelham) sent loose marauding parties…wheresoever they passed shewed mercy neither to the strong nor the weak. It was not wonderful that they should kill men fit for action, but they killed blind and feeble men, women, boys, and girls, sick persons, idiots, and old people…The Lord Justice (Pelham) proceeded with his army (of which Ormond’s forces formed one wing) to Kerry, making no delay, until he arrived at Daingean-Ui-Chuis (Dingle) on which occasion he devastated and ravaged a great part of the territory of the Geraldines of Kerry.” (“Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters”)

How bad was it?

“The extent of the devastation became clear in the aftermath of the rebellion. Sir Henry Wallop…after the rebellion, described how the population had been so decimated by “sworde, and by Justice, but cheeflie by famine” that he found the province between Dingle and Cashel completely barren and desolate….The general impression of the destruction of the province thus supports Spenser’s view that Munster had suffered a social and economic trauma on a massive scale.” (“The Social and Economic Consequences of the Desmond Rebellion of 1579-83”, Anthony McCormack, May 2004)

One modern source has suggested that the generation of the Desmond Wars may have sought refuge elsewhere. While some may have, refugee status certainly was no assurance of salvation:

“ Ferriter must have fled northwards…In the aftermath of this violence famine became widespread and local inhabitants forced to migrate, as explified in the case of a young heir to a minor Geraldine branch in the area.. ‘who died for famine on Fereters Island, aged 12 years’. Maurice Ferriter probably died in Iraghticonner as a refugee from this violence and famine” (“The Ferriters of Kerry”, Paul MacCotter, 2003)

Never having known any adult male Ferriter to “flee” from anything, I would differ with Dr. MacCotter in his reasoning as to why Maurice was in Clanmaurice rather than at home. In all likelihood, he was part of a rebel band, of which there were many across West Kerry. That issue aside, the terrible price of the Geraldine Wars is clear. Where perhaps as many as 60 or more Ferriter family individuals were living at the advent of the period of conflict, perhaps a half dozen souls survived it.

Piaras Feiritear seems to have grown to manhood lonely with respect to the company of other Ferriters, and absent the large extended family that should have existed two generations before. His father Eamon may have borne witness as a child to the worst of the slaughters, and may have participated in the final round of conflict, the rebellion of the Sugane Earl of Desmond. That his name appears on the final round of Elizabethan pardons associated with this rebellion confirms involvement.

Occam’s Razor identifies that the simplest solution to a problem most often is the best. For the vanishing Ferriters, there really seems to be no mystery. Certainly Occam indicates that these people were killed in war, either directly in combat, as collateral damage, or due to ancillary consequences such as famine and disease.

The Ferriter Family was victim to a sort of political and ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Elizabethans: Pelham, Butler, Drury, Malby, Raleigh, Grey, et alia. The goals were manifold: to exterminate the Desmonds, to solidify political control of Munster, and to prepare the way for the transplantation of English settlers to the province.

When Piaras himself sallied away to do battle with the English in 1641, he had scant family to accompany him. Before the Confederate Wars were over, perhaps three of his sons had participated in the fight, and following the war in 1653, we know that three Ferriter men, two of these most certainly the sons of Piaras, were serving the Catholic cause on the Continent. A real possibility exists that Dunurlin and Ballyferriter were devoid of any Ferriters during the Cromwellian interlude, from the death of Piaras in 1653 until the return of Dominick in 1660 or 1661. The restoration period marks that time when the Ferriter family began to increase in numbers once again.

How might things have been different?

During the 1560s, if “The Ferriter” had made overtures to the government of Queen Elizabeth, had acknowledged the Church of Ireland (see: Ormonde (Butler) and Thomond (O'Brien)), and had become an active agent for the crown, everything would have been different.

Conformance, submission, and assistance to the crown in the several Geraldine Wars would have been rewarded with patented grants and titles - knighthoods and baronetcies. Others of similar social station did those things, and were rewarded in the manner described. Of course, to have gained these things the Ferriters would have become traitors to their faith, their bonds of loyalty, and their culture. To have done this was not in the make-up of these people.

By the 1570s, it was probably too late, and certainly after 1584, the loss of station and property was irreversible.

Those things said, the world in which these men lived, the inertia of history, and the inevitable view of the world that they inherited almost certainly precluded any course of action other that that taken.

When one's world ends, even identifying that it's happening; much less understanding how personal impacts might be mitigated might not be possible.

So, did Oliver Cromwell, bloody though his hands were, destroy the Ferriter Family? No. Thank Elizabeth Tudor and her cutthroat minions for that. That a great man such as Piaras Feiritear arose within another generation, and that the Ferriter name has now spread to far places and is associated with many wonderful attainments, is a tribute to the strength of the line, and to the will of our ancestors.


“The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (William Faulkner, c1930)

The Captain of the Whip: December 10, 1941, Cavite, P.I.

The following account is as written in my father's own hand after the action. His account is somewhat longer, and there are other parts of the larger story that may be posted on this blog later. I chose this date for this excerpt, as tomorrow marks the anniversary of the day upon which the events occurred. Most people know of the action recounted, which followed the attack on the base at Pearl Harbor by someting like 48 hours. Here is a piece of that history:

The Captain of the Whip: December 10, 1941, Cavite, P.I.

The commands: “General Quarters!” “Heave Around!” got the Whippoorwill to Battle Stations and under way. We headed for Manila. Submarines were coming out as fast as they could from their buoys and from alongside tenders. They submerged when they were clear of the breakwater.

Then we saw the enemy. All sorts of planes, light bombers, fighters, heavy bombers, were there. There appeared to be over a hundred of them. Our big, slow-moving flying boats were flying toward Corregidor, keeping close to the water.

An attack was started on our starboard side, toward Nichols Field, an Army airport. We shot at a number of planes in that direction. Two planes were hit and crashed. We were shooting at them but so were a lot of other people. Every once in a while a submarine would show his conning tower, so we would not run over them. They became quite a nuisance, and it seemed that we annoyed some sub or other every time we turned.

After we neared the breakwater we turned and headed toward San Nicholas Shoal. Bombs were dropped on Manila Harbor among the merchant ships, but only one was hit. The attack on the navy yard was now in progress. We kept up a fire on low flying fighters and dive bombers coming out from attacks on the navy yard. One came very near to us, coming up on our port quarter. The after machine guns fired at him, and some light colored smoke came out of his fuselage. He tried some kind of maneuver, banking his plane and putting a burst of machine gun bullets about 50 feet ahead of the ship. We put on full left rudder and went from “Ahead” to “Full Astern” in an effort to let him get ahead of the Whip. He crossed close aboard ahead of us and fell into the water, sinking immediately.

Cavite Navy Yard was a mass of flame. We headed for the yard to see if we could help, and to see if our boat was still there. The wooden boat had been left in Canacao Bay to reduce the splinter hazard on board the Whip. We had left one man with the boat, the boat engineer, armed with a Springfield rifle.

About this time the Isabel reported over the radio telephone that she was in communication with the navy yard. I asked her to have the navy yard tell me where they needed us most. The navy yard never answered. We saw the yard signal station. It was flying a distress signal - I said, “Boy! she isn’t lying! She is in distress if anything ever was!” It was difficult to decide where to go. The Pidgeon was playing her hoses on some barges that were burning at the end of Guadeloupe Pier. I made out a destroyer at the small pier between Machina Wharf and Guadeloupe Pier.

I sent the Pidgeon a signal: “The Whip is going in and take out that destroyer.” We went in between Guadeloupe Pier and Machina Wharf. It was a mess. It was the Peary. The ship had many little fires all over her. She had been strafed and had been struck by bomb fragments and debris. The war heads and torpedo air flasks in the torpedo overhaul shop on Machina Wharf next to her were exploding. The air was filled with clouds of debris.

A small motorboat under the command of an Ensign, a young reserve officer, attached to Inshore Patrol, assisted in the efforts to take out the Peary. The heat and explosions made ship handling difficult. The pressure would be on one side and then on the other. The Ensign tried to take lines from the “Whip” to the Peary without success as we made our approach. We put our bow against her stern. We made fast with a 6-inch line. We backed and parted the line. The heat or a falling fragment might have caused the line to part. We tried it again. Again the line parted. It became more difficult to keep in position for backing out. The wind and the current kept working to put the Whip broadside to the end of the pier. This was bad.

Guadeloupe Pier and Machina Wharf each attended a good distance beyond this little pier. We came up to the Peary again. We went quite far up on her port quarter. This was the side away from the pier. I sent a man over to the Peary to make sure that she had no mooring lines to the pier. The Whip’s man reported when the lines were clear. We backed and she came away.

We backed clear of the dock. There was shoal water not far from the piers. We went alongside the Peary. This was more easily done than jackknifing her. The Whip went between the Peary and the burning barges off Guadeloupe Pier. We had all of our hoses going all of the time. Once in a while we played the water on the bridge to cool that place off. The men on deck were kept cool by hosing them down when it became too hot.

The Peary was short of men. Some of her officers and crew had been killed in the navy yard where they were working. Others were in the navy yard but unable to get back to the ship.

We went out of the navy yard searching for the target raft mooring buoy. I asked the acting executive officer of the Peary whether he had any other ideas to suggest concerning the Peary. He replied in the negative. There was a great deal of loose gear floating around in the water. It seemed that we might not be able to find the buoy. The Peary had no anchors aboard. We connected one of our bower anchors to a heavy piece of wire rope which was led from the bow of the Peary. After getting ready to anchor the Peary we found the buoy and moored her to it. The Peary and her surviving crew were saved.

Is é Seo Mo Scéal Agus Táim Ag Fanúint Leis

For the Feirtears, no doubt those years of famine, and the longer decades of poverty and degradation came enshrouded in grief and loss. Beyond that there was the family. For twenty generations perched at the tip of the peninsula, itself on the edge of the island, on a windswept and sometimes harsh landscape, a landscape possessed of a raw grandeur and sweeping beauty. Home.

Home. From Mount Brandon, westward down to the sea, along the rocky shore, with the small coves and harbors, and for some centuries the abandoned fortress, once the family’s seat and symbol of power. All lost, yet lingering in memory as an echo, replete with names and memories of some small greatness – Eoghan, Muiris, Eamon - names of vanished Feirtearaigh, or Ferriter chieftains, yet still given to the babies of the family at birth, generation to generation. And then the glory of Piaras Feirtear, the last Irish Chieftain to surrender to the English, martyred at the hands of the Cromwellians – only memories.

What do we know now of the lives of these people – tenants of Lord Ossory and of Lord Ventry going into the period of the Great Famine? While the 15th century may have been a time of prosperity and even of joy for the Irish of Corca Dhuibhne, the times thereafter offer a spectacle of gradual and sometimes sudden decline – for the area, and for the fortunes of the Feirtear family.

When the great Lord FizGerald, Earl of Desmond, went to war against the crown in defense of his prerogatives as the Palatine Lord of South Munster, the Feirtear Family must have been in his service, at least at the beginning. That the Feirtears would bear arms in Desmond’s service extends from the enfiefment granted by the FitzGeralds of the lands inhabited by the family since the Norman incursion. As the fortunes of the FitzGeralds of Munster waned, so did the fortunes of the Feirtears. Despite efforts to remain aloof from the final act of Desmond’s fall, at the close of the 16th the family was of much reduced circumstances.

The two great wars fought in Ireland during the 1600s, first the Cromwellian War, and finally the Jacobean War completed the denouement of the old Irish, and of the Hiberno-Norman families who did not renounce Catholicism. In each of these conflicts, Feirtears fought on the Irish Catholic side and lost both times. How many male members of the family left with the 10,000 who followed Sarsfield to Europe after the Treaty of Limerick was signed, we do not know. That any Feirtears who remained on what had been family lands were poverty stricken and largely dispossessed is certain.

The Catholic tenant population in Ireland following the Jacobean defeat lived lives of grinding poverty and unrelenting misery, this we know. Introduction of the potato as a food staple allowed population to increase, as the amount of land required to support life diminished with this crop. Tenant plots became smaller and smaller with each succeeding generation.

Excerpt from a description of his tour in Ireland by Gustave de Beaumont (1830s):

"Imagine four walls of dried mud (which the rain, as it falls, easily restores to its primitive condition) having for its roof a little straw or some sods, for its chimney a hole cut in the roof, or very frequently the door through which alone the smoke finds an issue. A single apartment contains father, mother, children and sometimes a grandfather and a grandmother; there is no furniture in the wretched hovel; a single bed of straw serves the entire family.
Five or six half-naked children may be seen crouched near a miserable fire, the ashes of which cover a few potatoes, the sole nourishment of the family. In the midst of all lies a dirty pig, the only thriving inhabitant of the place, for he lives in filth. The presence of a pig in an Irish hovel may at first seem an indication of misery; on the contrary, it is a sign of comparative comfort. Indigence is still more extreme in a hovel where no pig is found... I have just described the dwelling of the Irish farmer or agricultural laborer."

And one might wonder why anyone stayed. Home. So, many did leave, in singles and in small groups. Fathers hoping to later bring their wives and children, bereft wives with children, in search of men since departed, since vanished. Men, women and children – across Ireland, in their millions, and of these millions, some dozens of Feirtears. Lost from home, forever.
Some came to Boston, some to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans. All great entry points for the Irish. Some were sent to Quebec, and some died in the coffin ships outside Grosse Isle, at the port of Quebec. The Ferriter name is there, carved into the memorial along with thousands of others..

The Gaelic inscription reads: "Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of the foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48. God's loyal blessing upon them. Let this monument be a token to their name and honour from the Gaels of America. God Save Ireland."

At that time, and for decades thereafter, Irish Ferriters left their homeland for America. Once ashore, and recovered from travel, these men and women struck out, in the manner of the times, to establish themselves in the new land. During the early years, from the 1830s to the 1860s, most were barely literate, if literate at all, and most spoke Irish as their first language. So off they went, in the company of other immigrants, at least some of whom spoke their language. If not family, at least countrymen. Off to the mills of New England and New York, to the mines of Pennsylvania, to the docks of Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans.

We – that would be us, the followers in time, the successors, have pieced together some of the travels, some of the pathways taken by our lost and scattered ancestors. From the forests of Maine, the mills of Massachusetts, the dark and dangerous coal mines of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, some found safe have westward on farmlands in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. Onward - westward to the mines of Montana, and to the shimmering possibilities of California. Within a succeeding generation or two, Ferriters are appearing in positions with the railroads, as lawyers, as politicians, and as people of property, on the land.

For most of these people, up until the dawn of the next century, the 20th, there would be little contact with other Ferriter family groups, save for when by chance there might have been settlement in the same town. Many Ferriters settled in the factory areas of the Connecticut River Valley, from Hartford up through Springfield, and Brattleboro Vermont. Surely some of these people knew of one another, and as successive waves of immigrants arrived, renewed a certain familial sense. Not so for most, scattered afar, and out of touch, clinging to their Catholic faith, and with a sense of their past, but with no knowledge of their lost kin.

For six generations, the earliest Ferriter Immigrants have lived this way. Sometimes in the same cities with cousins they knew nothing of. The tiny families and small kinship groups that formed after the Diaspora, grew, and in a few case became extended families in their own right: witness the Farritors of the Nebraska Prairies, who struggled and prospered, now numbering in some dozens of families, or the famous Butte Ferriters, hardrock miners who have been a feature of the Montana landscape now for generations.

With each wave of emigration, a greater possibility of retaining contact with extended families existed, sometimes seized, sometimes not. With the coming of the 20th century, the means for reliable and consistent communication with the homeland came to be, and at last the terror and grief of immigration was relieved. Irish Ferriters arriving after 1900 often kept in touch with those back in Ireland, and brought over relatives when circumstances permitted. For these people, an active contact with Kerry and the villages of the Dingle Peninsula has often been sustained.

The 21st Century has arrived, and with it, easy and commonly accessible means to communicate across vast distance and to locate people virtually anywhere have come into being. Seven generations after the first great wave of emigration, and after the first exodus from the family’s Irish Homeland, Ferriter Family members have the ability to consider where the collective experience of their ancestors have taken them, and to take sure and certain steps to understand the relationships that have all along existed between their families, and other families who share the same name.

The fact that we have Farritors, Ferreters, Ferritors and Ferriters is incidental. These spelling variants are accidents of translation, bureaucratic mistakes, and pronunciation – nothing more. Like some Irish who use the Irish spelling, Feirtear or Feiritear, and the Anglicized version Ferriter interchangeably, the choice exists to honor the past by sustaining the spelling that has been given, but also to freely accept that this is, in fact one family.

That the past not be forgotten, for the summary of the lives of all of those who have gone before us sums up to form the ground of experience upon which we tread. From Sybil Head to Grand Isle, to the mines, the mills, and the factories of the Americas, and thence to where the Ferriter Family stands today. All a part of one thing.

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