My 2xgreat grandparents , Peter and Eliza (Lynch) McCarron, their three sons, John, James and Peter and two daughters , Mary and Catherine, arrived in Nova Scotia in 1851 from the hardships of living in Ireland after the Great Famine of the 1840’s. They came from the small village of Ballinode in County Monaghan to Halifax. The Intercolonial Railway was where the father and his two oldest sons worked. In 1864 Peter was killed on the train as it approached Richmond Depot. He had fallen onto the tracks from the caboose and his body was discovered later in the day. His wife died later that year from Pneumonia. His oldest son married in 1867, and was about to become a father when he was killed in a terrible train accident outside of Truro. Three weeks later the next son, James, was also killed in another horrific train accident. This left Peter at 19, with his two sisters not much older than he to look after themselves. Tragedy struck again and both girls died in their early 20’s from ill health. Peter survived and married Catherine Shea and had a large family of 18 children. Eight of these children died young, three died as young adults and the remaining four girls and three boys survived and married. My grandfather, Thomas Francis McCarron was one of the three surviving boys. He married his childhood sweetheart 4 months after the Halifax Explosion.
I knew very little of this large family until I started researching their origins. One thing struck me deeply was that after such a hard struggle of leaving their homeland, coping with tragedies practically all of their life, they managed to be survivors but never had the opportunity to connect with their loved ones back in Ireland.
I was fortunate to have travelled there last Fall with my brother and our spouses to rediscover our roots in Balinode and decided to bring back a bit of Irish soil to place on the graves of these precious family members. Since they couldn’t go back to the old sod, I am bringing the old sod to them. Mount Olivet in Halifax is their resting place and I am hoping to gather some of Peter and Eliza’s descendants to have a small gathering and sprinkle this bit of Ireland on their graves.
