Julia Lydon Folan (Foley)
Son, John and John's Children, Martin and Julia
Father James Costello
History written by Sarah Costello, 1959

Father was born in Keroun, Ireland, a suburb of Galway. His old home was built by his great grandfather and according to a description given by my mother, Julia, and her brother Martin, it was a lovely old place on the bay. The large stone house was heated by two immense fireplaces, one at either end of the house. The little farm was enclosed by a stonewall as stated earlier. All was overgrown with ivy. Bordering the roadway were hawthorn trees that were masses of pink blooms in May. We never had so nice a place in this country. Father was reluctant to leave the old homestead, but he knew his children would have greater opportunities in the United States than in Ireland.
 

He remembered going with his father in 1846 to hear the great Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell speak at an immense open-air gathering. O'Connell was trying to get rights for Catholic Ireland. He fought so valiantly for his people that even the English Parliament sat up and took notice. It seems that rights were not to be granted just yet. The great famine struck Ireland in July of that year. Starvation took people by the thousands and even by the hundreds of thousands.
 

Daniel O'Connell went to England and spoke for the Irish people, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house, yet little was done.
O'Connell then went to France to try to get aid for his people, but all of this activity over taxed his strength and he died in France.
Many Irish Protestants, too, worked for the rights of their Catholic neighbors; most notable amongst them were Grattan, Parnell, and Robert Emmet.
 

As stated above, Father was born in a small town on Galway Bay about the year 1840. The town was called Keroun and the surrounding country is called Costello Country.
 

Father's ancestors had lived either in Galway or in its area for several centuries. Galway was a beautiful place, having a setting on the shore of an expansive bay and mountains in the background. It is a town of about 100,000 people. Like the rest of Ireland, Galway suffered greatly from religious persecution in the past. Up until the Reformation, it had some very fine missionary schools founded by Ireland's great St. Columkille. Today it has a fine university.
 

Galway, in ancient times, was called the city of tribes, having fourteen in all. In the year 1320, the church of St. Nicholas was built. Each of the fourteen tribes had its own small alter or chapel. Five thousand people could be comfortably seated in this church. It was a famous and beautiful church, but it is now in ruins.
 

Tradition has it that Christopher Columbus attended Mass at St. Nicholas while visiting Galway. St. Brendon, an Irish missionary of the 6th century, had presumably reached America on one of his mission voyages. His maps and records were stored in St. Nicholas Church. Columbus had gone up to Iceland to study the maps of Leif Erickson, and on his way back to Spain, stopped in Galway to study the maps of St. Brendon.
 

According to tradition, a Galway man went with Columbus on his voyage. He was said to have been a man of great wealth and helped Columbus with his expenses.
 

On account of its fine harbor, Galway has had from earliest times, a wide spread commerce with Western Europe. After the discovery of America, Galway became the distribution center for Northern Europe, and the home of many Spanish merchants and seamen. These people married amongst the Irish, and so, perhaps, it is from this source that we get our Spanish name, Costello. Spanish architecture was common in Galway until recent times.