A heartfelt story of the Irish, and the aftermath over a 100 years later
Discover how Bill St Pierre, despite being born in the U.S. and orphaned quite young, was able to maintain his Irish heritage and culture. Furthermore, his children were able to discover their roots and visit Ireland for his 80th birthday, which led to uncovering much information about his parents and Irish roots.
This story was submitted by Karen St Pierre as part of the EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum’s temporary exhibition On The Move: 100 Years of the Irish Passport
In 1919, 29-year-old Mae Davie boarded the SS Columbia bound for New York, waving goodbye to her Irish home and generations of Irish family forever. Few traces of her were to remain – a baptismal certificate at St Patrick’s in Cork, a family census in Antrim, a ship’s manifest in Belfast. She could not have known that over 100 years later her future family would come to Ireland to find her and embrace a new appreciation for their hidden Irish heritage.
Mae’s time in America was short. She passed away from cancer at the age of 47, and her husband, Edmond St Pierre, not long after. My father, Bill St Pierre, who was seven years old when she died, was raised in Irish Catholic orphanages in Philadelphia with virtually no knowledge of the life she once led or the Irish home she left behind. Despite this, my dad was a life-long member of the ‘Sons and Daughters of Ireland’ and enthusiastically engaged in all things Irish.
To celebrate my father’s 80th birthday, I planned our family’s first visit to Ireland with the hope of touring the places that Mae had once lived. My research unearthed a trove of documents including the possibility of a baptismal certificate in the vaults at St Patrick’s in Cork. My research also opened up the possibility that my father was still a citizen of Ireland. I soon began an application for his foreign birth registry and Irish passport with the hopes of bringing Mae’s Irish heritage full circle home for her son and grandchildren.
Our motor tour in 2011 took us through the beautiful vistas and villages of Ireland with a meaningful stop in Cork where Mae was born and baptised. After months of correspondence with the church archivist, I had arranged an appointment to visit the St Patrick’s Church archives.
There we saw the book where Mae Davie’s 1889 baptism was recorded. Upon seeing this, tears welled up in my father’s eyes as his mother’s beginnings came into view. The archivist brought us to the baptismal font where she was christened and, as we gathered round, we realised that we were standing in the same place as our great-great grandparents, grandparents and family once stood and prayed for a blessed life for Mae. At that moment the generations of our family were one and our family bond to Ireland reclaimed. That visit is now commemorated with a plaque near the font, forever memorialising our family’s connection to a mother and grandmother we barely knew.
My father’s passport arrived soon after as well as one for myself and brother, Bob. It is a symbol of the “welcome home” embrace that the Irish have perfected. The joy I feel as I build my life in Ireland – now at the University of Galway’s Burren College of Art – is the joy of knowing that my family bonds are part of this land and my Irish passport is Mae’s abiding gift to a grateful grand-daughter.
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