TP's GRANDFATHER & 'GRANNY'

TP's grandfather, after whom he was named, married Sarah Clinton on 23rd November 1890 and they had ten children together before Sarah died in childbrith. She was just 33.

At about the same time, TP had a cousin, Peter, who had emigrated to America and trained as a doctor with the army. He had married a Louisiana girl named Anna but she was widowed when he died in a railway accent.

In mutual condolence, the two widows, fell into correspondence and a friendship blossomed. This resulted in Anna crossing the Atlantic to visit Mullagh in 1908. She never returned and stayed to help TP raise his family.

TP junior takes up the story: "The woman I knew as my granny was, in fact, my grandfather's second wife and she was an extraordinary lady. She had no Irish blood in her at all; she was born Anna Sceibell in Louisiana, America and was part German. She arrived in the village of Mullagh, Co. Cavan, in 1908 when my father was a child, and she helped bring up the children.

"You're the Yankee," they used to say to her in the Mullagh street to which she'd respond with a refined Southern poise, "No, I'm an American."

TP's 'Granny', Anna

I was the first grandchild and she used to read to me from a very early age, maybe two or three. She would read a great deal of Dickens and other writers of that kind. All I can remember is that she used to sit me on her knee and that she had a lovely Southen lilt to her voice. Then she had a stroke and I missed this business of hearing stories every evening so much that I started reading at a very early age."

The McKenna Family as they appear in the 1911 census