St. Patty's Day/My Irish Roots!

Well Hell, turning 60 wasn't all that bad yesterday, even though I never thought it would be. Other than my back acting up, probably in anticipation of baseball season about to start, all went well. My first umpire assignment is at Lima Central Catholic this Thursday...a scrimmage game, but after a 10 day stretch of that, the real season begins March 30th...and you just know plenty of cold weather games will follow. Gives me frostbite just thinking about it.

It won't seem like winter for the next 2 days in west central Ohio however. 73 is slated from a high today...that has to be somewhere near a record high, must be that damn Global Warming! Tomorrow 68, but thunder storms moving in, and cooler(48) for Thursday, with sunshine.

March 17th...St Patrick's Day...the Irish Patron Saint or something like that. Which brings me to today's rant.

Although my surname Houseworth(nee Hauswirth) is about as German as it gets, my family is pretty mixed in it's European Ancestry. Since I have been a student of Genealogy for about 10 years, I have broken down my "roots" in percentages...and they come out about like this.

German 40%...Irish 40% English, French(which we refuse to claim) and American Indian make up the rest...and I'm sure there are a few other mixed breeds somewhere in that mess. I knew little about those 'roots" of mine until I decided, in 1999, to go hunting dead family members in grave yards, libraries, and the Internet.

Anyway, on to St. Patrick's Day and that is where the subject of today lies.

------

My Great Grandfather was named Patrick Feeley and along with his wife, Mary Boyle Feeley, arrived from Ireland about 1860 or so in Philadelphia...Patrick lived the rest of his life in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he was on the City Council as a Republican back in the early days of the 20th century. I got my name and probably my politics from him(although my Grandmother Houseworth was a hard core right wing Republican back in the 1930s and 40s when FDR ruled...Wilda and I also had politics in common). My oldest brother Michael was born in 1946...so mom and dad already had the first half of the "Mike and Pat" team when I came along in March 1949. I guess mom tried to hold out for a St. Patrick's Day birth...but alas! She came up 6 hours short, me being born at 6PM or so on March 16, 1949. Close enough though, so Patick I was.

My dad's side also had a bit of Irish in them...my Great-Great Grandmother was named Mary Gibson. The Gibson clan, or at least my side of that family, arrived from Ireland in the mid 1840s...not sure how they would have got along with the Feeleys though, the Gibson's being Protestant and the Feeleys and Boyles being about as Irish Catholic as you can be.

So there you have it...if I choose, I can wear Green today, and it would be my right, because I have plenty of Irish blood flowing through these veins, and plenty of Beer and some Irish Whiskey has passed my lips on occasion as well.

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY...

Now go and make it a good one!

back later>>>>>