THE IRISH HISTORY
Mother, Julia Folan Foley
By Sarah Costello

In order to get the history of the family, it is necessary to site a little of Irish history, as it was with all Ireland a long fight to maintain their Catholic religion against terrible oppression over several hundred years.

The English kings left the Catholic Church and substituted a religion of their own. They tried to force it on the Irish people. Attempts to force another religion on them, by their conquerors, would be regarded by an Irishman, as the attempt of a spy to persuade a soldier to forsake his country.

Mother's people were well to do land owners in Ulster, North Ireland. Around 1650, King James I, took all land away from the Catholic owners and parceled it out to his English and Scotch protestant friends. The Catholic landowners were driven from their land by point of swords and driven down into Connaught to barren and rocky spots, because it was thought impossible for any creature to survive there.

The government's cry for the Catholic of that day was "Hell or Connaught". Mother told about her ancestors with their Catholic neighbors and parish priest making the trek from Ulster to Connaught. They followed the seacoast in order to get fish for survival. She said that for years afterward the great piles of seashells along the West Coast were a reminder of that journey. Hundreds died on the way. The English officers who were to see that the Irish would eventually arrive in Connaught, no doubt, felt sorry for them. One of the officers asked the priest how long he thought English rule over Ireland would last. The priest answered, "Until yesterday turns back." The officer took it to mean that it would last forever; however, in Irish it gave a different meaning. The yesterday of that year was Annunciation Day; also, it was Good Friday. The Irish hoped that sometime in the future years when that happened again, Ireland would gain its freedom.

It was not until the year of 1916, a year that Good Friday fell on Annunciation Day that the revolts began through which Ireland would win her freedom. It was not through the military might of little Ireland, but to the fact that England was at war and needed the good will of the Irish people in the United States. Many Irishmen, who in the years of oppression and famine had come to the United States, became influential citizens. It behooved the English to be more tolerant of the Irish and in order to keep in the good will of the United States it was necessary to give Ireland better rule and finally independence.

Generally, the English people and Irish Protestants favored Catholic Emancipation. Protestants such as Robert Emmet, Edward Burk, James Stewart, Parnell, Gratten, and many others favored better laws for Catholic Ireland.