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 Bartley Swift of Cigi married Annie Kate Crean in 1942 and the Crean surname was superseded at the farm.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