Fascination and amazement at the prospect of meeting new relatives and learning more about the history of an illustrious ancestor have marked a special trip to Ireland by the McKay family.
Patrick McKay, his daughter Emilia and son Simon, from London, are on a whirlwind journey that yesterday included a visit to The Irish News offices in Belfast and will today take in Croke Park and a meeting with GAA president Jarlath Burns.
Patrick is the great-grandson of one of the founders of the GAA, Co Down-born John McKay – but until four months ago he had no idea he had any Irish heritage on his father’s side, never mind a direct link to the birth of a cherished national sporting organisation.
John McKay joined The Irish News as a reporter three years after its establishment in 1891. This followed his return north following a period in Cork, during which he was at the centre of events leading up to and after the 1884 founding of the GAA at Hayes Hotel in Co Tipperary.
He moved to London in 1912 to be closer to his two sons and remained in the city until his death in 1923.
“I am fascinated and definitely want to find out more. It is a complete change to what I thought was my heritage, I thought it was Scottish,” Patrick said.
He was speaking at an engagement in The Irish News College Street offices where John McKay’s Ulster History Circle blue plaque is now displayed, following a relocation from the newspaper’s old Donegall Street headquarters.
Patrick added: “The more I find out about the GAA – it is amateur, it is a huge undertaking – it is the ‘big society’ years and years before it was even thought about.”
The family are also learning more about how connected the beginnings of the GAA, and their near ancestor, were socially, politically and culturally to the Irish nationalist movement in the late 19th century.
Simon McKay first fielded a call from historian Dónal McAnallen on December 11 last year. It so happened to be the third anniversary of his mother’s passing.
The McKay family history – with, says Patrick, all the skeletons, the happiness and sadness – gives a clue to how there was no knowledge of any connections to Ireland.
His father, John McKay’s grandson, left the family home after the marriage broke down. Patrick was around eight but even before then his father was rarely around as he had been in the navy.
“My mother never talked my father down. It was just the marriage did not work out,” he said.
But it also meant there were then no connections to the McKay side of the family thereafter. Now there are, and that “has opened up a whole new family side I never knew existed”.
Gatherings with Irish relatives are part of the itinerary during their visit to Ireland, which also featured a visit to the McKay family homestead hosted by Down GAA and the RGU Downpatrick club.
Patrick (73) recognises he may not have a great deal of time to enjoy the new-found connections but he and his brother’s children and grandchildren will have plenty of years.
He is thanking the dogged persistence of Mr McAnallen in first chasing down the details of the previously near-forgotten founder of the GAA, then completing the family tree.
