Have you ever stood in the middle of a moment of history and known that God had His hand on you even before your parents took their first breaths?

When Cindy asked me if I’d like to play substitute for her this week, I didn’t have to wrack my brain long before I knew what to share. I’ll tell you about my experience with that surreal moment in time.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known how to verbally trace my ancestors back several generations. It was something my father drilled into my sister and me as we grew, mainly because he was teased as a child and called a liar. However it wasn’t until I was in high school that I learned about my great, great, great grandfather’s great, great, great grandfather—Antoine Deseaure Permonette de Crocketagné, the first Crockett in the linage of Davy Crockett. My mother wanted to find college scholarships for us and went on an in depth search for documented proof—Davy’s father fought in the American Revolution so we would qualify for entry into the DRA if we could come up with the evidence, another possible source of college money. Mom located the documentation she needed in a long out-of-print series of books called Notable Southern Families housed in the research library at the Alamo. The book on the Crockett family listed the generations from Antoine through my grandfather—she already had birth certificates for the rest so this was an amazing find.

It also set my brain to whirling about all those people mentioned who made at least a physical contribution to me.

Fast forward a few decades and I finally stopped just mulling over the names and started looking for more. My plan had been to write their stories so I began sending out e-mail queries and reading through tons of research on the eras and locales. I learned that Antoine’s third son, the one in my lineage, is the one who brought the family to what was then the American Colonies. His name was Joseph. A few discrepancies with dates gave me a story idea that wouldn’t let go. I learned Joseph had married Sarah Stuart and they had lived in County Donegal, Ireland before moving to Bantry Bay and then across the Atlantic to New Rochelle. So I took a chance. I found a small newspaper in Donegal with an e-mail connection and wrote the editor to see if he might know of someone to be my eyes and ears there. He printed my letter in the paper and I received numerous replies, among them a note from a librarian who was highly interested in what I knew—enter Belinda.




Then my daughter, Alyssa, got a job at the airlines.

Alyssa and I flew over and spent the week of Saint Patrick’s Day 2005 in one of the most amazing places on earth. Belinda picked us up bright and early our first morning and played tour guide non-stop for two days. She took us to Edenmore, the Crockett ancestral home, and we visited with people who now call it home, people knowledgeable about the area.


I saw buildings that had been built about the time Joseph and Sarah left Donegal and a two hundred year old map of what Edenmore looked like at the height of its prosperity. It was more than I had dreamed.

Then Belinda asked if I’d like to see where Sarah grew up.



I think I must have nodded because I’m sure no words could escape my mouth. I had no idea I would get to see anything so concrete. Sarah had lived and bloomed in my brain for years but this was different. I was about to touch what she had touched, walk where she had walked.


I don’t remember much about the drive, just arriving and getting permission from the owners to walk about the ruins of the tower house Sarah had called home on the banks of Lough Swilly. Though there wasn’t much left and trees grew up in places that had once been rooms, there was enough to see what it had been. Then Belinda shared the traditional story of how Sarah had walked to the landing and taken a boat across the lake to the abbey at Rath Mullin where she married Joseph Crockett.

Belinda knew where they had married?



After a walk toward the banks of the lake where Belinda pointed out Rath Mullin, we climbed back in her car and took the less romantic trip around to the abbey. Again there was little left but enough to see and touch and experience the room where Joseph and Sarah pledged their love, a love I hoped I could honor well in my writing. Just for a moment, I think the DNA of those ancestors that still races through my veins recognized where I stood.


My own blog is called Abundant Blessings. I call it that because God has proved over and over that He loves us and blesses us even when we don’t see. But at that moment, I could see. He's had His hand on me and my father and my children even as Sarah and Joseph knelt at that alter.


I love that Ireland will always feel a bit like the home I never knew. But most of all, I’m blessed, now and always.

Thanks, Cindy for letting me share. I'll be back tomorrow with another thought about our yesterday.

Abundant blessings, all!