Friday, March 25, 2011

Luttrellstown Castle Belonged To My Ancestors

I recently discovered, while viewing my ancestrial chart on my grandmother's side, that my family are descendants of the Luttrells (that, I knew) who owned Luttrellstown Castle in Dublin, Ireland (that, I didn't know).  My grandfather (by 11 times) was Sir Thomas Luttrell.  He was born in the castle in 1496, a couple hundred years after the Luttrells started the castle.  He died in 1554.  He was a Knight, and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland. His first marriage took place when he was just a youth, to Anne Aylmer, whose brother, Sir Gerald Aylmer, was a judge and enforcer for King Henry VIII of England at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  He later married Elizabeth Bathe. The Luttrells were the first family to own Luttrellstown castle, and it stayed in the family for 450 years before being sold.  Now it is a 5-star resort with a golf course on the 567 acres.
Prior to the Luttrells coming to Ireland, they lived in England, and also owned Dunster Castle.  This castle was purchased by Lady Elizabeth Luttrell in 1376 and remained with the Luttrell family for 600 years until it was given to the National Trust in 1976.  Now it is a tourist attraction. There is some information that states that the Luttrells originated in France, then went to England, then to Ireland, until some of them started immigrating to America in the 1600s, where more interesting history has emerged.  No doubt there were other castles owned by the wealthy and notorious Luttrells!  At one point they were the biggest landowners in Ireland.
I got interested in all of this when my dad's cousin, Kim, sent me an invite to ancestry.com. He has an incredible amount of information on there, dating back to the 1400s.  I decided to do some research on the internet and I was able to put some pieces of the puzzle together.  Imagine how excited I was to learn our family came from royalty!  Nobody ever told me this before, but I have no doubt my relatives in Indiana know all of this stuff.  I just never see them or talk to them.  I know that they have done a lot of research and even have a website.  (The spelling of Luttrell changed to Luttrull during the time of the Civil War).  I do remember some stories my grandmother told me long ago.  One was that my great, great, great.....and so on, grandfather, fathered his first child at the age of 13.  That may have been Thomas, I don't know for sure.   And something about someone beheading a king.  hmmm  There's so much information out there, and I have been so fascinated with what I have learned so far.  I have to thank Kim for getting me started on this. There's so much more just waiting to be discovered!




Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Memories Sparked By a Pepsi

I just opened a can of diet Pepsi and immediately the fizz and taste brought me back to a time when I was about 14 years old, and I had just finished mowing the grass and trimming the bushes on a very HOT summer day.  I got up early on a Saturday morning and cleaned the house prior to tackling the yard.  Sometimes I would do the yard one day and the house the next.  But on that day, I did both.   It was always scary going out to the garage, because our lawn mower was real fickle.  It was hit or miss if it was going to start up or not.  If it didn't, I would get out the old fashioned push mower if I was determined to get the grass cut, and I was always determined.  It was the kind of mower that looked like a roller with blades on it...dull blades, I might add.  The only power it had was from the person pushing it.  And with my small frame, it wasn't far.  Numerous times Grandma and Grandpa would get a phone call, and they never failed to come to my rescue.  Grandpa almost always got the lawn mower started for me.  Can you imagine?  A teenager, excited about the roar of a lawn mower?

The breeze cooled my body as I sat down on the lawn chair, underneath the walnut tree in the front yard, with my bottle of pepsi.  I looked around at the yard and felt so good about how nice it looked. I watched the cars that drove by, hoping they were all noticing our nice yard and the work it took to make it look that way. I knew Mom would be happy when she came home from work.  She never said too much about me doing the yard work back then.  I just did it and never thought it was a big deal.  But when I got older she told me over and over again how proud she was of me for taking on so much responsibility as a young girl. 

I was the oldest of five girls, and Mom had to work, sometimes two shifts a day, just to make enough money to take care of us.  So I did what I did to help my mom.  I had time for my friends when Mom came home and I was relieved of my responsibilities.  All of my sisters were easy to babysit.  They usually paired up in twos and either played in the house with their dolls and toys, or with their friends in our yard, or at a nearby neighbor's house.  Sometimes us girls would each pick a room in the house to clean, and we would make a contest out of it.  When Mom came home from work, she would pick the room she thought was the cleanest.  We couldn't wait for her to come home and see our efforts to make our simple home look like a Better Homes and Garden home. Mom would walk in the door and we would all run to greet her and look at her face as she made admiring comments about how nice the house looked.  Mom probably had other things on her mind, like paying the bills, getting supper ready, and probably just wanting to lay down and rest for a bit.  But she never disappointed us when she walked in the door.  Her eyes, her words, made it all so worth it.  We actually looked forward to Saturdays, and not because there was no school and we could watch Saturday morning cartoons, but we could do something that made us all feel good, and help lighten the load for our mom, and put a smile on her face.

Over the years, even after I had my own family and yard to maintain, I sometimes stopped by to help Mom with her lawn.  She always appreciated it.  She would work with me on the yard, pulling weeds, trimming, etc.  We would have great conversations during that time together.  When we finished, we would sit on the back patio and talk some more...while enjoying a cold glass of ice water. The last couple of years I did her lawn numerous times and it reminded me of those younger years.  Those same problem areas are still there...the dip in the lawn by the neighbor's chain link fence, where the wheels of the lawn mower would always get stuck, the piece of cement behind the garage that sticks out and catches the blades of the mower, the hill, with the rocks, tree limbs, bushes, and steep back side, and the special area on the hill where we buried our pets...cats, hamsters, and even fish. Those days are over now since Mom is not in good health and is no longer living in our family home.  The house will be sold eventually.  But the memories will always be with me.