Edward Neafcy October 2015.

The Extra Mile

The Life and Times of Father Gerald Swift, S.T.
The Swift
connection
with Achadh
Mr
surfaced
again
following
Gerry
Ruanes
piece
on Patrick
Crean in
Glr 2014. The ancestral farm,
where Gerry now lives in Derryea
first had the family name of
Crean. Bartley Swift of Cigi
married Annie Kate Crean in 1942
and the Crean surname was
superseded at the farm. Gerrys
grandparents Anne Kate and
Bartley had a daughter, Gerrys
mother, whose maiden name was
Eileen Swift. Eileen married
William Ruane and the name at
the farm changed again.
Gerrys mother, Mrs Ruane, was
related to Father Gerald Swift,
who was in Ireland last in 1994
and celebrated mass in Knock and
perhaps elsewhere. He had been
born in England but ministered all
his life in the US. Mrs Ruane for a
long time had letters and
photographs and recalled that
Father Swift had been in
Mississippi. Gerry was called after
Father Gerald. He proposed that a
piece should be written in Glr on
Father Swift. As I had written
about the Swifts before, Joe
Byrne asked me if this Father
Swift was someone I knew. Of
course, and I thought it a good

idea to write about Father Gerald

being as he was a link between
Ireland, England and the USA.
Gerry knew that on his first visit
to Ireland, Father Gerald had
stayed at the Railway Inn in
Kiltimagh and that he
subsequently stayed at Burkes
B&B, Eden House, Shanvaghara.
Father Geralds two sisters stayed
at the B&B as well and also his
elder brother Michael and Mikes
wife Ivy. I knew that the Burke
family had taken care of Father
Geralds elder brother, Michael
after his mother had died in the
flu epidemic of 1919.

The photo shows Willie Burkes

house in 1970. Mike Swift is on
the left. His wife, my mother Ivy,
Mikes second wife, is in yellow. I
am on the right. The Burke family
are in the centre.
A call to the family in England and
the USA produced some material,
particularly an Interview with

Father Gerald in a publication by

the Missionary Servants of the
Most Holy Trinity, 9001 New
Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring,
Maryland. This 1998/99 article is
the most useful source of
information. Gerry Ruane had
information and photographs.
Peter Crean came up with
fascinating census, shipping and
US immigration records.

Shanvaghera. The photograph

shows the family home. Better if I
werent standing in front of it, the
house has been cleared since the
photograph was taken in 1970.
Her surname was spelled Neafsey
in the baptismal book of St John
the Baptist church, Knock, two
years before the Apparition there
of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The

Its a long way from Mayo to

Oklahoma. The Interview shows
that Father Gerald spent four
years of his ministry in that state.
I am showing Oklahomas state
flag because it has two peace
symbols on it: the olive branch
for the states European peoples
and the calumet, or peace pipe,
representing the Native
Americans. The shield is

the battle shield of an Osage

warrior. Crosses on it are Native
American signs for stars,
representing high ideals. This has
been a year of flags. It is a
subject Ill come back to.
It is the Mayo connection that has
prompted this story. Father
Geralds mother, Ellen, was
baptised on January 24th, 1877.
She was a younger sister of my
grandfather, Edward (Ned) and
like him was born in

man she married was Bartley

Swift. He was baptised at St
Johns church as well, a year or
so later. The family story is that
his parents were unsure what
name to give him. The parish
priest, Archdeacon Bartholomew
Cavanagh, said, Ill call him after
me! This is how the name Bart
came into the family.
Bartholomew and Bartley seem to
have been very popular anyway
and interchangeable then and for
some time afterwards. Ships
records have Bartley coming from
Daghtaboy, which is obviously
Aughtaboy, Aghamore, with the
initial D being a misreading of
A.

The year 1879 was not only the

year of the Apparition. In the
same year, so the song has it, the
Irish Land League was founded
and it was founded in Co Mayo.
It campaigned for the Three
Fs for farm tenants: fair rent,
fixity of tenure and free sale. The
English language got the word
'boycott' out of this, Captain
Boycott being a land agent for
Lord Erne. The atmosphere at
that time and long after must
have been pervaded with the
issues of the Land League and the
Apparition.

record: Bartley Swift married

Ellen Neafcy in Philadelphia,
1903, marriage licence 166617.
The family understanding is that
Ellen wanted to stay in the USA.
She was already in Philadelphia in
the 1900 census. However, Knock
records have Thomas Austin
bapt. 14 Aug 1904 (born 11th),
son of Bartly Swift and Ellen
Kneafsey, Shanvaghera.
(Spellings from the record). The
photograph is of Ellen and Bart
Swift in 1905.
Subsequently they were in
Liverpool in an area called 'Over
the Bridge' centred on Athol
Street, which was a
neighbourhood almost 100%
Irish. My grandfather and his wife
Bridget were there too. Michael
Swift and Michael Neafcy were
both born here. From here the
two families went separate ways.
The Swifts went to Boswell Street
in Bootle, then back to America.
The Neafcys - as they came to
spell their name - went inland to
the Wigan coalfield.

It was a time of emigration. It

was also evidently a time of toing and fro-ing. Bartley first sailed
to Philadelphia from Queenstown,
Cork, in 1900. The relative who
had asked for him in the USA was
his sister, Mrs McLoughlin, in
Philadelphia. On the Ancestry site
there is an index transcription

The couples youngest son was

called Bartley. He chose Gerald
for his name as a priest. He was
born in 1916. The family were
then living in 29 Boswell Street,
Bootle, which now has the postcode L20 4RP. (a Liverpool postal
district, but just outside Liverpool
itself.) Mike Swift remembered
the King coming past the end of
Boswell Street. A Google enquiry
shows this to have been July 11th,
1913. It was King George V and
Queen Mary. The archived edition
of The Bootle Times for the day

says 12,000 bronze medals were

given out to Bootle schoolchildren
to commemorate the visit and the
parade from Gladstone Dock
through the centre of Bootle and
out to Walton, Everton Football
Club and Knowsley was a festival

of colour. I imagine there was a

lot of blue, as Everton football
players wear blue shirts. Mike
supported Everton, which was the
Catholic team. The fans of
Liverpool FC were Protestant.
Liverpool footballers wear red
shirts. The opening of the
Gladstone Dock was one of the
highlights of the visit. The SS
Mauretania was there and the
King and Queen went aboard. The
Mauretania at 32,000 tons was
until 1911 the largest ship in the
world. She was the sister ship of
the Lusitania, famously torpedoed
in World War I. A crew of 813;
passengers 560 first class; 475
second class; and 1,300 third
class.
Number 29 Boswell Street is the
reddish/brown one in the photo,
taken 2015.
The influenza epidemic of 1919
was devastating. One and maybe
two of the Neafcy kids died. Ned
Neafcy said he would never play
his flute/whistle again. Father

Geralds mother, Ellen Swift

(Neafcy) died as well, in January
1919, aged 40. She was buried in
Ford RC cemetery north of
Liverpool, grave number RD 942.
Graves in section RD were
brought into use 1900 1924. I
have made several visits over the
years with relatives visiting from
America. In September this year,
I was with Ellens granddaughter
Nancy with her husband Jim
Justice. We spoke to the foreman
in charge of the cemetery who
said you had to be well off to be
buried in RD. There were so many
of the flu deaths that many who
might have been RD were buried
in paupers graves. These graves
are in a wide grassed area with
no headstones or other indication.
He said the flu caused more
deaths than World War I.
Glr 2008 has a couple of photos
of World War I war graves, which
my brother David and I took
whilst visiting the memorial
inscription to Patrick Neafsy of
the 2nd Irish Guards at Loos,
France. There is cemetery after
cemetery of the fallen, each with
acre upon acre of grave
headstones. It is hard to imagine
that a disease killed even more
people and in a shorter time.
You are unlikely to see the word
pauper on a plan of Ford
cemetery. Evidently the word
public is preferred nowadays.
Curiously, opposite the public
area, there is a large memorial
called the Fenian Monument. It is
dedicated to 16 Fenians of 1867
interred in this cemetery. The
foreman, in his blue jacket with

Everton badge, said he didnt

know how this memorial ever got
permission.

half of the green house in the

photo. At some later time our
house and the one next door were

Bartley Swift had no one to mind

his children while he worked.
Young Bart was sent to live with
my grandparents, the Neafcys, in
a place we called Simms Lane
Ends in Ashton in Makerfield. Mike
Swift was sent to Mayo where he
stayed with the Burke family and
went to school in Cigi. The
three sisters, Nora, Mary and
Kathleen went to an orphanage in
Crosby, a prosperous suburb
north of Liverpool.

knocked into one. The photo is

September 2011. They were
painted white in our day.

Bartley remarried a year or so

after his wife's death. His second
wife was Bridget Mulkeen. The
plan was then to go to America.
There are shipping and
immigration records which are
fascinating and a study in
themselves. Keeping it short,
there are records of voyages from
1921 to 1927.
The record of SS Adriatic has step
mother Bridget Swift arriving on
May 8th, 1927 with Bartholomew
and his sisters Catharine
(Kathleen), and Norah. Bart was
eleven when he arrived in
Philadelphia. All other members
of the family had arrived well
before 1927. Young Bart was not
told until after her death that his
fathers second wife was not his
birth mother.
The houses in Bootle and Ashton
would have been rented. They
would have been similar in
accommodation as well. Ours had
three bedrooms. It was the right

Father Gerald would have lived in

that house for some time after
1919, or late 1918 possibly when
he was 3 or 4 years old. I lived
there myself, 1945 to 1951, from
2 to 8 years old. At that time we
had fixed gas lights downstairs
and portable paraffin lamps
upstairs. Posh houses had gas
upstairs. Bootle, being urban, was
probably more advanced and may
even have had electricity. I never
asked.
Bridget died in the September
following their arrival in May
1927. In 1928 still in Philadelphia,
Bartley married Margaret Levins,
marriage licence 568140. Within
three years the family had moved
to Hoboken, New Jersey, and it
was aged 13 or 14 at Our Lady of
Grace School that young Bartley
first heard of Holy Trinity,
Alabama. In October 1931 he
made the decision to go to Holy
Trinity. It was there he met
Father Judge and others of what
became his community. He
stayed for four years of high

school and prep seminary and in

June 1935 entered the novitiate
and was professed the following
year. He became
a US citizen in
August, 1937.
This is his photo
on the
naturalisation
document, found
by Peter Crean. It is signed
Bartley Swift.
Father Geralds first assignment
was to St Augustine Military
Academy in Rio Piedras, Puerto
Rico. He was there until 1938 and
his job was to run the office and
keep the accounts of the house
and the students. Following that
he was two years at college in
Holy Trinity, Alabama. He was
ordained in 1946.
His first mission was to Old Town
Alexandria, Virginia. 1948 saw
him in Tennessee in Savannah
and Bolivar. Savannah had been
the HQ of Union Army General
Grant at the Civil War battle of
Shiloh, 1862. This was the third
bloodiest battle of the war and a
defeat for the South.
There were few Catholics in the
area at that time. Father Geralds
mission was to safeguard their
faith by bringing the Mass and
Sacraments to them. Most of his
non Catholic neighbours
welcomed him, but not all. His
house had his living quarters on
the ground floor and a small
chapel upstairs. A cross was
erected and set ablaze at his
mission. The burning cross is a
well known Ku Klux Klan

signature. It was a reminder that

the KKK had moved on from its
post Civil War days being antiblack, to being anti-Catholic and
anti-Jew as well.
He was averaging 60,000 miles a
year driving. After Tennessee he
was assigned to Hitchcock,
Oklahoma, to a small community,
98% German. They all spoke
German and English. They were
exceptionally good Catholics. In
four years, he never heard a
mortal sin in confession. They
were all farmers. Several of the
older ones had the original land
bought from the Government as it
opened for sale. The government
had confiscated the land from the
Native Americans and settlers
received a parcel of a given
number of acres. There werent
many paved roads and in winter
the wheat fields would get
crusted with ice. Parishioners
would cross the fields on hay
racks bundled with children and
blankets to get to church. If the
church needed any kind of
maintenance or repair, they
would fix it. Their conservative
and old customs were observed.
In the church, the little boys sat
with their fathers on the Gospel
side, whilst the little girls were
with their mothers on the side of
the Epistle. In the parish hall, the
women would be one side doing
quilting and knitting, and the men
would be on the other pipe
smoking and playing pinnacle. On
his first visit to the parish hall,
Father Gerald made the mistake
of walking to the womens side to
say hello. A man touched him on

the shoulder and said, You

belong up here with the men.
Different customs prevailed in
Camden, Mississippi, Father
Geralds next assignment. It was
a split parish. The white parish
was the Immaculate Conception.
The black mission was the Sacred
Heart. Father Geralds comments
are recorded in the Interview,
some paragraphs of which I have
reproduced below:
There was definitely a very
strong sense of bigotry. That was
the reason the black kids could
not go to the white schools. The
sheriff was very rough on the
black people. Father Malcolm
OLeary, a black priest, joined the
Society of Divine Word. He had
gone to high school and grew up
in that little village. Everyone
knew him. He used to mow lawns
and the people knew his parents
and grandparents. When he was
ordained, we had a big
celebration on Sunday at Sacred
Heart. However, on Monday,
when he celebrated his first Mass
in the white parish, only five or
six people attended. His white
friends, people who had known
him all his life, wouldnt go to his
Mass. And they refused to serve
him breakfast afterwards. It was
a way of life with all those
generations. But, if black people
got sick, the white people would
bring them medicines and make
sure they were okay.
The order built the only black
Catholic school in the diocese and
in the whole state of Mississippi.
The Ursulines were the ones who

taught there. In the Catholic

school, the tuition was very small,
seven dollars, books included.
But psychologically, the idea of
paying gave people a sense of
dignity and independence. As in
all Catholic schools, the kids wore
uniforms very simple ones that
most of the mothers made out of
cotton.
What I would like to mention is
the indebted gratitude we owe
the Ursuline Sisters. They came
out of Louisville, Kentucky, and
they were a community dedicated
to the education of girls in
finishing schools and academies,
and they felt that they should do
some missionary work. They
volunteered and stayed there for
forty-seven years and all during
that time they never took a penny
salary or expense money for
utilities or food. It was great what
that Order did. Their Mother
House took care of them. None of
the Sisters, as far as I know,
were stationed there. They were
all volunteers. The Mother
General would ask who would
volunteer to go to rural
Mississippi and work with black
people and thats how they
replaced them as the years went
on, but no one was ordered to go
there on assignment. They should
get some tribute. Too bad that
over the ages the people have
never recognised what we owe
them.

To come up to date, Sacred Heart

was closed and Immaculate

Conception came to serve Catholics

irrespective of colour. Then
Immaculate Conception was closed.
A new church and parish centre
opened in March 2007, called Sacred
Heart, comprising a 200 seat church,
conference room, kitchen, gym,
games room and fitness centre. It
opened a few months before Father
Gerald died.

Father Geralds assignment path

continued in Virginia, Kentucky,
and Mississippi. He was auxiliary
chaplain in the naval base at
Colonial Beach, Virginia. At St
Pius, Norfolk, Virginia, there were
maybe 1,600 families 80%
Navy personnel. They were
excellent Catholics, very orderly
and systematic, generous and
hard workers.
Father Gerald was a very sociable
man, loved debate, loved to get
people talking, singing, reciting
poems. On the other hand he was
28 years alone. Asked about
cooking, he said he was strictly a
meat and potatoes man.
This photograph is of Father
Gerald on the left on vacation in
England with his brother Mike and
his sister-in-law Ivy, my mother.
It was at a concert of their

cousin, my uncle, Tom KneafcySwift, the English National Opera

tenor, July 12th, 1973.
In America, on his long trips,
Father Gerald would sometimes
take nephews and nieces along
for experience for them and
company for him. I have a tale of
an early visit he made to England
and his tour in a car he had hired.
On this occasion he took my
brother David. We only discussed
the trip when he came back to
where we lived. British cars then
still had chokes and nobody had
told Father Gerald: he had had a
hard time starting the car every
morning. Also, our cars had
manual gear shifts: the pedals
were small and close together
and there too many gears! They
had visited Stonehenge, the world
famous Neolithic monument in
Wiltshire. Like many of his
generation Father Gerald was a
smoker. He was disappointed
there were no souvenir ashtrays
for sale at Stonehenge. Tobacco
brings me by way of the
Oklahoma peace pipe to the
subject of flags.

Starting with Ireland, Northern

Ireland used to have the Ulster
Banner as its state flag. This was
dropped in 1972 when the UK
Government put the Northern
Ireland Government on hold. It is

still used in the Unionist

community but it has no official
status now and may not be flown
on government buildings. This
restriction also applies to the
saltire of Saint Patrick. This
means that Northern Ireland is a
state without a flag. I suppose
there is no point in putting flag
design on an agenda, because the
communities would presumably
not reach agreement on it. Where
and when and what flags might
be flown still causes disputes in
Northern Ireland.
On the other hand, in the UK, it
seems people can wave with
impunity the black banner made
familiar by Isis, or Isil. I dont
know if it is a flag really. Its just
words that have been going since
the seventh century.
In July 2015 a white man opened
fire on black people at church in
South Carolina. He had a
Confederate battle-flag in his
home. The state of South Carolina
thereafter lowered the flag from
its capitol and had it put in a
museum. It took hours of debate
to get approval for this. South
Carolina had been the first state
to secede in the American Civil
War. Whatever Johnny Reb and
his descendents thought was at
issue, the flags problem today is
that it is perceived to be the flag
of slavery supporters. For the
state of Mississippi, the issue is
more complex. Its tricolour recalls
France, whence the state was first
colonised. The Confederate
battle-flag is in the canton of the
official state flag and is there as a
result of a referendum.

Father Gerald loved a debate. I

would have liked to have
discussed the flag issue with him
and why the abolition of slavery
had needed a war. After US
independence, Britain still ruled
slave islands in the Caribbean.
When they moved to abolish
slavery in the 1830s, the UK just
bought off the slave owners. The
islands didnt secede from the
British Empire. We dont forget
this because the UK Government
spent more compensating the
slave owners than they spent on
helping out with the Famine in
Ireland, not very many years
later.
It would have cost a lot for the
US Government to buy off the
southern slave owners, but there
wouldnt have been that many of
them, and the cost would have
been nothing compared to the
cost of a war. Confederate
General Robert E Lee had freed
his slaves anyway. It was a
devastating war, with
unprecedented loss of life. People
can see mementoes of the
Confederacy all over the South in
commemorative place-names and
street names. The flags of
Maryland and Alabama may be
seen to recall the Confederacy as

well, but by nothing so well

known as the battle flag.
Attitudes change. The Oklahoma
pipe of peace introduced in this
piece the issue of smoking
tobacco. When Oklahoma became
the 46th state of the Union in
1907, tobacco was perceived as a
good thing. It had long been seen
as a comfort or as health-giving.
In plague stricken London in
1603, at the coronation of King
James I, smoking tobacco was
one of the things that might save
you. In 1609 there was reference
to the smoky breath of the
Shakespearean theatre audience.

British soldiers in the First World

War sang, While youve a Lucifer to
light your fag, smile boys thats the
style. In the early 1970s a young
man not much older than me on
the next desk to me at work,
smoked a pipe. He was a trainee
solicitor and a musician. His doctor
had recommended the pipe for his
nerves. When he started smoking,
Father Gerald would have known
only these positive perceptions of
smoking. We are becoming so PC
sensitive now. I wonder how long
Mississippi will be able to keep
the Confederate battle-flag in its
own flags canton, or even how
long Oklahoma will be able to
keep a tobacco pipe on its state
flag. (On October 27th, the
University of Mississippi took
down the states flag on its
campus).
I started this story in Mayo in the
1870s. What happened as a result
of the Land League? By 1914,

75% of occupiers were buying out

their landlords, mostly under
legislation initiated by the Land
League. In all over 316,000
tenants purchased their holdings
amounting to 15 million acres
(61,000 km2) out of a total of
20 million acres (81,000 km2) in
the country. Sometimes the
holdings were described as
"uneconomic", but the overall
sense of social justice prevailed.
You could say this happened
within the 40 year lifetime of
Father Geralds mother, Ellen.
What happened as a result of the
Apparition? The pilgrimages,
papal visit on the centenary, the
basilica, the airport. I suppose
Father Gerald and the rest of us
would have come back anyway,
but it makes Knock a special
place to visit.
About 100 family members
gathered in Virginia to
celebrate the 60th Anniversary of
Father Geralds ordination to the
priesthood. Here he is with some
of them.

The family donated money to the

Missionary Servants to build a
small church at one of their
missions in Mexico. The church
was named St. Bartholomew. So
the name of Father Cavanagh of
Knock has found its way to

Mexico! This is an artists

impression of the church.

Father Gerald had retired to the

Father Judge Missionary Cenacle
in Adelphi, Maryland, which he
had helped design and build. It
was designed to be a big family
home rather than an institution.
One time after his brother Mike
died, my mother, my wife and I
were guests there of Father
Gerald. We met again his friend
and co-designer, Father Bob
Shay. You could tell Father
Geralds car: it had an Erin go
Bragh badge at the front.
Father Gerald had given me two
books of Irish songs in the past
and he asked me to sing one or
two on that visit. It would be the
last time I saw him. He asked
also for a Scottish song, The
Road and the Miles to Dundee.
Its a beautiful tune with
intriguing lyrics. Having similar
taste in songs, I could see why he
liked it. Like Father Gerald in his
country, I had travelled to jobs all
over my own, including Dundee,
though nothing like his 60,000
miles in a year. Yet I didnt know
the words to The Road and the
Miles, as you will hear the title
abbreviated in Scotland.

It was much later, when I read

the words and found all the
verses, that I realised just how
appropriate the words were. The
singer encounters a mystery
young woman. She looks like an
angel and wants to be helped on
her way. He goes out of his way
to help. He walks with her until
they can see in full view the
church spires of Dundee. They
part. In the last verse he exhorts
listeners not to be unwilling
literally to go along with someone
to help them find their way, if its
only to show her the road to
Dundee. Now isnt that Father
Gerald? A man who knew the
road and the miles, and who
would go the extra mile.
Father Gerald died 12
June 2007, aged 91.
His relations in the
USA and in England
are grateful to Gerry
Ruane for proposing
this tribute; to Glr

Achadh Mr for making it possible;

and to Peter Crean for clarifying the
links between us all. These are the

prayers Father Gerald chose for

his memorial service:

Love a man even in his sin,

For that is the semblance
Of a Divine Love
And the highest love on earth.
Dostoevski
Help me Lord
The sea is so wide
And
My boat is so small.
Breton Fishermans prayer
I pray that one day
We shall all meet together
Merrily in heaven.
St Thomas Moore