Hello, I'm Pat

I' a fourth or fifth generation Irish American, born in Albany, New York, as were my mother, grandmother and great grandmother (born in 1859). My father's ancestors came from Ardee, Co. Louth, in 1844, and settled first in the Hamlet of Mexico, Town of Salisbury, Herkimer County, New York Until the 1950's, most of them remained in that area.

When I wrote the four essays that describe our relationship to our family’s earthly origins, I didn’t know the power of their creeks and rivers! They run through and around the places our ancestors chose to call home, creating boundaries and livelihoods and sweet spots in our stories. Their waters have carried away our debris, as well as our precious timber and topsoil, to greater bodies of water that flow and empty themselves, over and over, until they are home, at last, in the sea that links us, here, to them, over there, in Ireland.​