ANTECEDENTS
The Stories of Us!
"Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”
― Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
Things I Know Today
James Cruise
THINGS I KNOW TODAY. My children’s great-great-grandparents were born at the turn of the 1800s. Their great-great-grandfather, James Cruise, was a tenant farmer from Clashaganny, Milltown, Co Galway, Ireland who paid tithes to his landlord. Life was hard in famine Ireland then, and when he died in 1861, he left behind young children, a baby on the way, and a wife who would survive him by almost as long as he lived.
Stephen Cruise
THINGS I KNOW TODAY. He died tethered to a land he neither had rights to nor owned. He never saw his youngest son born, but this son, Stephen, would be the sole descendant, the one who would bring my children to me. So, I am grateful for his feudal toil and family care! As this fatherless son grew up, he became a land owner and parent of many children, though only one of them would have a child, my children’s grandfather, Michael Martin Cruise. Destiny indeed!
Family Grave in Kilcooney Cemetery, Milltown
Image of some of the Cruises in early 1900s
Michael Cruise
Michael Cruise
1924 at age 20 Springfield MA
THINGS I KNOW TODAY. In his turn and at a young age, this grandfather would leave behind his home and the only life he had ever known in Ireland, sailing to his destiny in the US. I don’t know what he felt on that journey. I imagine he had many emotions as he crossed the vast Atlantic, all which are now lost to the rolling seas. And the past.
Still, THINGS I KNOW TODAY, as parents, we let go, our hearts filled with joy and trepidation, often in equal measure, as our children go towards their future. Yet when we look back, we smile. I suppose it’s because we are hearing the sound of love passing through the generations!
Adapted from Gail Cruise Facebook Post, July 2013