A Family Tree

To have been born to live off our deaths – Caesar Vallejho

            One of the most important aspects of maintaining balance in life, for me anyway, has been coming to an understanding of my origin and its influence on my perspective. I don’t mean the beginnings of being human, but rather, the beginnings of being a specific human, a McGarrah, who lives in a diverse society with cultural influences from a myriad of different places. Harmony must be found between nature and nurture. It’s like a getting along in a marriage but involving one person. Some days balance between the elements is 50/50 or 20/80 or 30/70 or even 10/90. But both are always there in a strange symbiotic relationship.

My cousin is a good man. If he has a vice, it is only this minor one. Mike has always bragged about being the first McGarrah to graduate from a university. I don’t think it should even be considered as a vice for him to think this way, after all he’s Irish. That’s our nature, find some event in life and make a story out of it. Then, fill that narrative like the pint glass we’re drinking beer from, only with blarney instead of Guinness. We all celebrate his success and between family members the story grows, expands into pitchers, and eventually, into kegs until the tavern is full of Irish people drunk on pride from all the invented details. Pretty soon, Mike has slain dragons, banished snakes from his rose garden, and deposed the English from our neighborhoods.

            This isn’t a bad thing. It makes for entertaining family reunions and important fireside instruction for future generations who will continue to embellish the history of our clan and keep the family connected. Perhaps, the myth would be a problem for a historian sitting in a dusty tome-filled library searching the McGarrah genealogy. Memory is a fractious child that plays in the same room as imagination and Mike’s remembrance is more a product of the latter than the former. Truth be told, his recollection missed the mark by four generations. Fortunately for me, I don’t give a damn because his memory triggered my imagination and I’m a storyteller by trade, not a historian. I began to wonder who the first McGarrah graduate might have been really and what he did with his education. Most importantly, how did this first graduate fit into the story of my family in America.

Mike’s wife, Rosemarie, is a great researcher and has spent much of her spare time uncovering that fact, which intrigued me even more. Everyone would like to believe they know where they came from, even if the answer isn’t exact. We need just enough knowledge of our origins to establish a foundation, not only for how we got here but why we are who we are. Nothing is more important to understanding what makes a person tick as family, what exists in the shadow self, as Jung called it, that generates conflict, drives attitudes, discerns health patterns, causes things like bravery, honor, love, fear, integrity or lack thereof, spiritualism, and a sense of belonging.

I’m going beyond simple external forces here, although those certainly influence some of these qualities, to seek the primal urge that comes from some place deeper than the conscious mind, something that transcends reaction to situations, but rather dictates the internal motivation required to say ultimately, “I did this or that because I am a McGarrah, and this is the way McGarrah’s do things. This is who we are.”  It may not sound like an important distinction, or even one that many people consider. But I believe the force of genetic inheritance may be the strongest of all motivators for the direction and consequence of our lives, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

By looking at the first college graduate in my family, I was able to determine the two inherited factors that have generated the building blocks through centuries that make me a McGarrah, religion and whiskey. I don’t mean a spiritual energy, all of us possess an indescribable quality of wonder. I mean that the McGarrah family began life in America with its first university graduate and formal religion. An inherent desire for spiritual structure is part of our very nature, and it developed with the very first one of us that was born with the academic curiosity that led to theology. Of course, the tediousness of theology and the intellectual questions it raises often give rise to liquor, especially where the Irish are concerned.

Before I entered the story of minister James McGarra(g)h, patriarch of the American McGarrahs, born in Donaghadee, County Down, Ireland in 1751, I needed to understand what exploited these qualities and expedited their development. This is important because it also shows a penchant for rebellion in our nature, which helped, in turn, generate a foundation for our clan in America. We have been warriors, poets, farmers, tradesmen, scholars, scientists, and preachers. We have rebelled against success in some of these fields of endeavor, but very often in our history, we have rebelled against the status quo and in so doing become people willing to struggle and sacrifice for what seemed right even against the strongest opposition and at the highest cost.

Let’s begin our journey into the past by considering the soil from which the McGarrah consciousness and conscience sprouted. I suppose that is, at least indirectly, with a monk named Martin Luther at a time when the whole of western Europe lived under the auspices of Rome and the Catholic church. In 1517, Luther presented a paper containing 95 reasons why the Church had failed its people and could not be considered as the all-knowing voice of God on earth. This paper of 95 theses opened the door for other religious revolutionaries and created a revolution called Protestantism across the continent, including Scotland. By 1560, the Reformation parliament in Scotland declared the country Protestant and the Church of Scotland was born. We all know what happened next. If one dude figured he had the answer to salvation outside the Catholic Church, then plenty of other dudes justified their understanding of the same process. Or, to quote my old man, John Bill McGarrah, “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one and they’re all different.”

Consequently, in 1647, a group called the Scottish Coventers broke away from that holy body and established the Reformed Presbyterian Church. We all know what happens with the worship of God. If you say your way of salvation is better than my way, then I’m going to kill you to prove it isn’t. Between 1661 and 1690, 18,000 Coventers were slaughtered to emphasize that point. Many others fled Scotland to Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland in the area of Ulster. This is where my people, the Scotch-Irish, or Highlanders, came into existence as a separate, but not so different, tribe of crazy Celts. That diaspora didn’t stop the persecution, of course, and by the 18^th century, the Scotch-Irish sailed to the new colonies of America settling in western Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, and Vermont.

Now begins the story of James McGarra(g)h, minister, scholar, rebel, rake, my namesake and the rise of the great McGarrah clan that has grown into hundreds, maybe thousands, of ministers, scholars, rebels, and rakes over the course of the last two hundred years.

How did I recognize this connection without any more factual evidence than a few paragraphs that Rosemarie uncovered miraculously in ancient records? Simple, I sat down at my writing desk with a bottle of damn good Irish whiskey and put on a recording made by the Chieftans, I think. It was called “Mother’s Blessing” and when the cacaphony of Uilleann pipes, fiddle, flute, tin whistle, harp, concertina, and bodhran rose in the air around me to blend perfectly into the melody, goosebumps broke out over both arms, shivers ran down my spine. And, by the third shot of whiskey, I cried like a wee bairn.

For me, this ancient electricity called cultural music was enough to establish my lineage and make me proud to be a McGarrah, to be an Irish American. Side note: Now, if that’s the case for me, then why would we assume as many folk do in this 21^st century that this miracle of cultural inheritance only works for white people who came to this great country centuries ago? Why would we believe that modern immigrants from all over the world don’t have a right to the same feelings simply because they may be yellow or brown? It seems kind of hypocritical to think that immigrants who get teary-eyed at Spanish or African or Asian or Arabian music can’t be good Americans as well.

But, I digress and that’s just my opinion—a reflection for another time. Back to religion and whiskey and James McGarra(g)h.

*** 

            To be born into a world rife with diseases now considered obsolete such as tuberculosis and smallpox was a remarkable achievement. During the year of 1751, James and his mother paced the dirt floor for several hours in their ramshackle home with a midwife trailing closely behind searching for a comfortable spot from which he might safely pass through the birthing canal and enter his autonomous life. Outside, his father waited anxiously with a clay pot full of cheap gin while several of his neighbors reassured him between drinks. When the baby finally arrived and the mother lived despite the lack of sulfa drugs, or any other basic antiseptic practices, the midwife cut the umbilical cord, wrapped the tiny bundle in a swaddling cloth and carried him gently out to show the proud father.

            “You have a son to carry on the line,” she shouted, and everyone cheered. Tears of joy flooded the father’s eyes and there was much back pounding and much more drinking of gin. The father praised God and the local minister blessed the birth, signifying a passing on of responsibility from mother to father.

James’ father was a good man who took that responsibility seriously and as James grew from early boyhood into adolescence continued with the moral and spiritual upbringing of his son between drinks. The boy studied catechism, Latin, French, classical literature, and played sports common to the highlands such as tossing the caber, tug of war, and cross-country running.

            Young men were apprenticed early or sent to university. Apparently, the humanist concern for education that evolved in the mid eighteenth century influenced the McGarra(g)h family since James was sent back to Scotland to the university in Glasgow at the age of sixteen. No records exist as to how this arrangement developed since education was expensive and normally reserved for the boys of wealthier families, especially since James was born in the highlands of Ireland and not the highlands of Scotland. My guess is that national boundaries were porous between the two nations.  Somehow it did develop because written proof of his graduation in 1781 remains available for viewing.

            James studied theology for another full year after his graduation and was licensed by the Reform Presbytery of Scotland in 1783. Unlike the various denominations of Christendom today, those who practiced, especially those chosen to minister, were held to a strict standard of obedience and service based primarily of a protestant view of the Bible from which they developed a doctrine called the Westminster Confession of faith. If you grew up in a god-fearing home you will recognize some of the basic tenets, but probably not the scope of involvement required by them. To be a member of the church was a way of life. Every minute of every day, every action taken on the farm, in the blacksmith shop, at the local schools, during meals, and while engaged in the normal daily activity of survival in a harsh environment be it urban or rural, was devoted to God. Salvation came from more than faith and didn’t depend solely on works. Certainly, both were deemed necessary, but a predestination by God was the ultimate qualification. Unlike Catholics, confession or the buying of indulgences had no bearing, and the worship of saints was horrific idolatry. As a matter of fact, the Reformed Presbytery taught its members that the Pope was the antichrist on earth.

            If that sounds harsh, it’s because it was, and this division of faiths caused much bloodshed in Christianity before the body count from wars with other religions was even considered. There seems to be nothing more inciting to a true believer than a true believer who believes something different. As the philosopher Montesquieu stated on this point, “I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.”

            On the other hand, the Westminster Confession of Faith held common ground with many other Protestant documents at the time. Presbyterians accepted a Holy Trinity and believed that the Bible was the inspired word of God, beneficial for “teaching, reproving, and setting matters straight.” Every page contained infallible truth. The doctrine of predestination, or the understanding that one could not be called to salvation through an outward force, but only through an inward voice of God already implanted and coupled with the idea that God’s way of dealing with man was through covenants—hence the term Covenanters—drove James to accept his call, receive grace and be ordained in 1789. As the McGarra(g)hs have continued to do, he acted on that intense emotional pressure and prepared to sail for South Carolina in America where he would serve a small congregation of Presbyterian Covenanters. Perhaps during this voyage, the doubts generated by reason and logic began to infect him, especially when confronted with mortality, though years would pass before they blossomed.

            James served his congregation well for several years until his wife died. At this point he discovered the forbidden fruit that would bring his downfall within a church that forbade anything considered fun, and that forbidden fruit was whiskey. Like any explorer, he examined its therapeutic effects to their farthest boundaries and quickly became victim of another one of my father’s pithy proverbs to live by—“ain’t nothing wrong with a man taking a drink unless the drink takes the man.” Consequently, the church elders deemed his fall from ministerial grace too abrupt and too far for him to continue service to their stern god and his stoic followers. Putting things in a rather blunt context, they kicked his ass out of the church.

            Don’t let that overwhelm you with sadness. We McGarrah’s are a resilient clan and to quote a line from my mother’s favorite movie The Sound of Music, “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.” James soon married again. This time it was to his housekeeper who also liked her fair share of Uisce beatha “the water of life” or what is referred to in English as whiskey. Between the two of them, they managed to stay drunk, raise a family, purchase and farm a rather large estate while James became a revered local school teacher, redeeming himself enough within the community to soon be allowed back into the church, albeit as a parishioner and not a preacher.

Religion and whiskey. Whiskey and religion. These two inherited factors have proved to be key in the development of my family for generations. James’ daughter, Lynn, as well as several other family members, moved from South Carolina during the westward expansion circa 1825 and established family roots in the land that is now southeastern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, although you will see our name pop up in small enclaves from New York to Arkansas. Most of us have remained true to our history, although we tend to lean a little one way or the other. For example, my grandfather leaned more toward religion while on any given night, you might expect my cousin Mike and me to be leaning more toward the whiskey.