The Stick

Desmond

I was in my surgery one morning in 1982, expecting my next patient, and was surprised when a very healthy looking lady of approximately seventy years,, entered and immediately said “I am not ill,
I have come to give you something that I think should be owned by an Irishman, and preferably by you, Dr Mc Donald”. She was American and I had seen her only once previously, for something trivial. She went on to tell me that her Christian name was Maureen and her maiden name was Mc Donald, and asked if she could have fifteen minutes of my time later in the day. I agreed and brought her back just before lunch time, at which time she gave me a present of a stout stick, which she said had been left to her by her father, and added that although she was married she had no children and therefore had no one of direct descent, or of the name Mc Donald to leave it to. I was told that it had been in her family’s possession since the mid 1700s and that there was a long history attached to it, too long to recount at that moment, and for that reason she had written it down. She then gave me the stick wrapped in brown paper and a bulky letter. I thanked her and brought them home with me to open after my dinner.
It proved to be a stick made of particularly hard wood, which I later found to be walnut. It was 32 inches long, the handle end being three inches in diameter, the shaft straight, but the other end finishing as a club, over 9 inches in diameter and studded with almost forty nails driven deep into the wood with the ends flattened and protruding. The handle end had a circle of similar nails to prevent the stick from slipping out of the hand, and had a hole bored through it to take a stout cord, which could be placed around the wrist, again to prevent it being lost. It was altogether a formidable looking weapon and had obviously seen plenty of use, as there were several groups of notches cut into the surface, probably to depict victories or even deaths. I couldn’t wait to read the accompanying letter giving the history of this stick, which had survived since the 1700s. The Mc Donald family described are probably not in any way connected to my family, but it certainly makes interesting reading.



Gerald

It starts with a Gerald Mc Donald, born in Co Kilkenny, Ireland around 1710, at a time when the land of Ireland was being annexed by English and Anglo-Irish families and the original Irish people being reduced to tenant farmers, and having to pay exorbitant rents to landlords who were mostly absentee. By 1740 only 6% of farms were owned by Irish and there was a law stating that a farm could not be left to one sole person, which resulted in outsiders gaining possession, or by the farm being broken up into smaller and smaller holdings. Understandably this caused great resentment and unrest and was responsible for many evictions. At this time Gerald was thirty years of age and was forced to divide up the family farm with three brothers when his father died, rather than be evicted. Like many others he joined a group of young men to try to make an impression on the government, calling themselves The “Whiteboys”. They made almost no impact, so they resorted to damaging property and burning houses to attract attention. Weapons were strictly prohibited by the general public, so people made weapons from almost anything that would be of use, like pieces of metal etc. A few years before Gerald had seen a very rare walnut tree and had spotted a stout straight branch, and immediately decided that it would make a great club. He cut off the smaller branches where it began to divide and hammered several nails into the end. By the next year the wood had grown around and buried the nails, so he repeated the process, and continued this for several years, until a sizable bulbous end was formed, consisting of more than 50% iron. He then cut it from the tree and moulded it into a sturdy club, capable of inflicting severe damage. He embedded several nails in the handle end, so that it wouldn’t slip from the grip and he bored a hole through that end, through which he put a strong rope to help attach it to his wrist.
During 1740/1741 there was a severe famine in Ireland and many evictions when people couldn’t pay their rents. This caused even more resentment and the activities of the Whiteboys became more daring, attracting more and more attention from the British army. Gerald carried his stick with him on these raids and was eventually forced to use it one night when an army unit laid a trap surprising his group. Shots were fired and two men were killed, before a hand- to- hand struggle ensued. Gerald wielded his weapon and found that nobody succeeded in getting near him, while he inflicted wounds to several, and may have killed one. He fled with the rest of the group and had to lie low for a long time because of army and police activity. Having cut a notch in it, he hid his stick in a small loft over the open hearth, which was used as a storage place for all kinds of rubbish. Between 1741 and 1798 the stick was used only around the farm, so it spent most of its life in the loft.



Gerald’s grandson Sean

In 1797/1798 rumours of impending rebellion against the crown were rampant, and Sean, who was almost thirty, joined a group of rebels based at the borders of Kilkenny and Wexford. When the planned insurrection started in’98 liaison between Dublin and other parts of Ireland was very poor, and resulted in independent action in various parts of the country. The Dublin leaders were arrested very quickly, mostly because of information from traitors, leaving Wexford as the main scene of fighting. Sean was involved from the start, distinguishing himself in all battles, culminating in the final scene at Vinegar Hill. He had the stick with him in all, and after his escape to Kilkenny he reckoned he had accounted for at least eight of the enemy. He cut notches in the handle of his stick and then returned it to the loft, where it remained hidden for another fifty years, apart from the occasional use on the farm.


Sean’s grandson Patrick

The years 1800/ 1850 saw stringent Penal laws in Ireland, with land being divided into ever smaller farms, education forbidden, and more evictions than ever. When the great famine started due to failure of the potato crop, people found it almost impossible to pay their rents, family after family were thrown out of their houses, which were then razed to the ground. People died by the thousand, with almost no help being given by the British, apart from the Quaker fraternity who did their best to feed the starving population. Anyone who could afford the fare to America made their way to Cork to join ships heading for that country, others went by the hundred to Dublin to take ships to England, where most of them settled in Liverpool, Manchester and Glascow. The population in Ireland in 1800 was eight and a half million, compared with eight million in England. By 1850 there were only four million left in Ireland, the rest had either died or emigrated. Sean’s family starved and three of them died, so one day his father advised him to try to get to Cork and escape to America. At this time he was six feet in height and just under ten stones in weight, having reduced from twelve stones because of semi starvation, and with food becoming more and more difficult to find he decided that if he left, there would be a little more left for the others. Reluctantly he decided to leave, so after saying a tearful goodbye and taking the stick he made his way south. On the journey he met many others heading for the same place, some of them just walking skeletons barely able to walk, and he passed hundreds of corpses, just lying in the ditches as nobody felt well enough to bury them. As he neared one village he saw an apple tree with two apples and made his way to get them. Just as he was about to pick them two young men spotted him and immediately set about him with intent to take the apples for themselves. One man produced an ugly looking knife and made to attack, but Sean neatly stepped aside and hit him with the stick on the arm, hearing the bone snap. The other man jumped Sean from behind, knocking him to the ground, but fortunately the club stayed attached to his wrist so he swung it and hit that man across the legs, forcing him to release his grip. This ended the struggle so Sean walked away and spent the night in a shed near the local church and was awakened the following morning by the Parish Priest, who begged him to assist in burying four parishioners. Not having much option he agreed leaving himself absolutely exhausted, but was rewarded by receiving the large sum of £3, which was a small fortune in those days. This was to prove invaluable when he arrived at the ship, which was about to leave for America, as nobody was allowed on board unless he could pay £2 and have a little left for food. He was able to board safely feeling sad and a bit guilty at leaving hundreds of men and women milling around the docks begging to be allowed to board. The ship was full of people in a similar plight and it was difficult to find a suitable place to lie down in comfort but eventually Sean found a corner where he could rest with his back to the wall and view that part of the deck. It was a wise decision, as he had to defend himself on several occasions from rogues trying to steal what little money or valuables they could from people less able to defend themselves. However when he produced the wicked looking stick they thought twice. The only time he had to use it was to defend a pretty young girl who was being terrorised by two ugly brutes. They had forced her to the ground and were trying to strip her while looking for any money she had, when Sean intervened wielding the stick across their shoulders and forcing them to desist. He then invited her to sit near him. She introduced herself as Doreen O’Shea, saying that all her family had died from hunger and she had just managed to get enough money together for her fare. They became great friends and remained together during the voyage. The food was bad and as time went on hygiene practically vanished and conditions became almost intolerable. It wasn’t long before Typhoid broke out as rats were everywhere and people fell ill at the rate of eight of ten per day. Several died and were buried at sea and others were ill in all corners of the ship. There was no treatment and no nurses or doctors and it was easy to see how these ships became known as coffin ships. Sean escaped but Doreen fell seriously ill and hovered between life and death for almost three weeks. Sean attended to her as if she was married to him even though half the time she was unconscious and there was no doubt she would have died without his help. Suddenly she improved and after that they were inseparable and they determined to stay together when they reached America. It surprised them to find that they had to stay in Ellis Island for some time to insure that they were healthy enough to enter America. The authorities wanted to take the stick away from Sean but relented when he told that it had been in his family for four generations. On being allowed to enter the country eventually they made their way to a famous Irish owned Public house called The Shamrock where they were advised where they could find lodging, one room which they were glad to share. When opportunity presented they found a priest and got married. Over the next few months Sean had to defend the two of them several times with his stout weapon as the city was completely without law of any kind and robbery was common. In this way several new notches were cut into the handle. Rumours of free land available inland tempted Sean to join a wagon train heading west. He spent his last money buying a covered- wagon and two horses and joined a group of around fifteen others of various nationalities, all with the same ambitions. He had to fight his fellow travellers four or five times to prevent some of them molesting Doreen and again a few notches arrived on the stick. When they reached the central plains, without warning they were attacked by hostile Indians. Fortunately Doreen was safely ensconced in one of the wagons. By now Sean had acquired a gun and he helped repulsing the attack. It came down to hand to hand fighting in the end and Sean was able to wield his stick freely and he estimated that he accounted for at least six of them and later he notched that number of marks on the weapon. Several months later there was a decision to be taken as half of the party wanted to head south while the remainder went west. Sean joined those going south, seven in all, and they hadn’t gone far when Doreen found she was pregnant. There were four separate attacks by Indians during the next few months as they travelled and Sean proved he was a great fighter, accounting for ten of them and afterwards notching his victories on the stick. Doreen’s baby boy was born in the wagon as it moved, arriving without any trouble or complications in 1855. They called him Senan, after Doreen’s father. Travel weary and with numbers decimated they found a pleasant valley in Tennessee, not too far from present day Memphis, and Sean built a house and fenced off a sizeable tract of land for farming. The next seven years passed quickly and found them prospering and with three children. All this ended with the Civil War, which forced Sean to join the Confederate forces, leaving Doreen to survive as best she could. He saw action in many of the major battles and accounted for dozens of the enemy, but managed to survive without serious injury. His stick by now was well notched. With the defeat of the south Sean found himself cheated of most of his land and the family almost penniless, though fortunately they had survived in spite of various tribulations. He decided to leave the area and having heard of the new transcontinental railway he got out his old covered wagon and put his few precious possessions into it and with his small family sought out the rail company. He had no problem getting employment and was able to sleep at night with his family. There were several attacks by Indians and again Sean proved invaluable in beating them off. The railroad was finished in 1869 with the golden stake formally driven in at Promontory, Utah, and Sean was now free to move on. He didn’t like the thought of settling in Utah so he moved to Wyoming, where it was easy to acquire land. On arriving there he found a fertile valley with a fine spring and a fast flowing stream, and quickly started to build a house with Senan’s help. Senan was now almost fifteen and nearly as big as Sean and was quite strong. Money was now available so they stocked up with cattle and within a couple of years profits started flowing in. There was plenty of open land, which they used, and more and more cattle were fattened, and a fine ranch house was built, and several cowboys employed. Senan could ride from an early age and by the age of twenty- two he was a very experienced horseman and had grown into a very strong man, bigger than his father. Sean on the other hand was only a poor horseman, which proved disastrous for him as he had a bad fall while rounding up some cattle. He fell heavily and fractured his spine and although he lingered for a week he died in the arms of his faithful wife. All hands carried guns, a rifle and a hand - gun worn in a belt around the waist and both Senan and Sean had acquired skill in their use, but Sean always carried his well - worn stick attached to his wrist. It was still there when he fell, and following in the family tradition Senan continued carrying it in the same way.


Senan

Senan took control of the ranch in 1879 and built a second house for his younger brother, Patrick, who was six years younger. He married the daughter of a neighbouring rancher who bore him twin boys two years later. There was a great demand for cattle and the profits rolled in for several years, until the sheep farmers arrived. They arrived with huge flocks in large numbers, fencing off large tracts of open land, which the ranchers had been using as their own for years. Inevitably this caused range wars, with the ranchers trying at first to frighten off the sheep-men by running off their stock, destroying their homes and even by using force. Sean acted in all these ways and succeeded for a while, but in the end the sheep-men joined forces and armed themselves, and got the backing of the law by registering claims for their land. Sean’s acreage shrank and his profits dwindled, so he joined with a few of his neighbours and several hired men to make a stand and decide the issue, one way or another. Armed to the teeth and numbering around thirty they raided the area of the sheep- herders, only to find that they were prepared for them. A gun battle started with many deaths on both sides and it culminated in a hand to hand fight in which Senan excelled using his tough stick, killing at least four. He was engaged in a tussle with a farmer when a shot rang out and he was badly wounded in the chest. The range-war was won by the sheep-men, and the days of serious cattle trading in that particular part of the country were over. Patrick found Senan mortally wounded with his stick lying beside him. He took him home, where he survived for ten days and buried him after he died on a hill- side overlooking the house. It was 1895 and he had lived to the ripe old age of forty. His fortune was considerable, so his widow, Ita, was surprised to fine that she was quite a wealthy woman. She was very pleased to have Patrick to give her advice and even more so when he said that he would look after her interests.




Patrick

Patrick was thirty- three years old and the twins were fourteen, while Ita was thirty- six. He had never married, having had always secretly loved his brother’s wife since they had first met. He didn’t lose much time in proposing to her and was rather surprised when she accepted him immediately. He got on very well with the twin boys, Dermot and Niall and when the wedding took place in1897 they accepted him without question. Later that year they had a family conference and the decision to move to California was made. Travel was much easier now that the Indian wars were over, and Indian nations more or less confined to reservations, consequently the family packed their belongings into covered wagons and travelled overland. They had plenty of money and had no trouble in buying a home and it wasn’t long before Patrick realised that there was a great opportunity in building for the hundreds of people that thronged to the city every year. He called his company Mc Donald Homes, with equal shares for all four members of the family. The houses were mostly built of wood, easier to construct and cheaper for the newcomers to buy. San Francisco was a pretty lawless city at that time so Patrick always carried his stick attached to his wrist and was forced to use it on many occasions, until his reputation grew as a person not to be trifled with. He wasn’t long in seeing that he could acquire old tenement houses for very little money and rent them out for rather high rents. These old houses were death traps, mostly made of wood, riddled with rats and spreading Typhoid and Tuberculosis. They should have been demolished years before, but at the same time they housed the thousands of newcomers that arrived per month. Patrick moved to a magnificent home in Nob Hill and joined one of the exclusive clubs, and was soon recognised as one of the most influential people in the city. Life was very good for the family for the next eight years, which saw them buying more and more houses and building less and less.
All went well until 5.12 am on the 18th April 1906,when practically everyone in the city was asleep. Suddenly every building shook and most of them collapsed when an earthquake happened without warning, killing hundreds of people. The quake involved 296 miles of the San Andreas Fault, from Oregon to south of Los Angeles, and inland to Nevada. All the old tenement houses were the first to go, and to make matters worse fire started and spread quickly, finally covering 4.7 square miles of the city. Patrick, and his step - sons, Niall and Dermot, woke to find their house shaking and ornaments crashing, and dressing quickly they went down into the city to try to help. They could see fire spreading everywhere and before long it seemed to involve every bit of the city except Nob Hill. Chinatown was a mass of fires and all the way down to the sea saw fires breaking out everywhere with people screaming and panicking. With a group of others Patrick tried to bring some kind of order into the situation. He got separated from the other two who were trying to help in Chinatown. He directed all he could towards the comparative safety of Nob Hill. Time flew by and suddenly it was evening and as it got dark some of the less respectable people started to loot. He had his stick around his wrist as usual, and without hesitation when he saw a group of thieves he waded in, wielding it with great effect for a few minutes until one of them struck him from behind with a knife in his back. He collapsed, bleeding profusely, pulled himself forward, half staggered to his feet and fell again, this time partly into one of the fires. He died in agony even though some person dragged him from the fire and he lay there until late that evening when Niall and Dermot found him, having searched for two hours. He still had the stick attached to his wrist. Onlookers later told that he had accounted for four of the robbers. The twins were twenty- three at this time They were both saddened, as they had both loved and respected Patrick. With so many dead they had to bury him themselves in the little cemetery behind Nob Hill. They drew lots as to which of them should have the stick and Dermot won and one of his first acts was to cut the notches into the handle.



Dermot and Niall

After the funeral and when the fires were eventually extinguished the family gathered for a conference and quickly realised that they were broke, all their properties had been destroyed in the fires and all they had left was the house in Nob Hill. The bank building, which had kept their money and securities, had disappeared as it had never existed, and the manager and most of the staff had died in the fire. However they were better off than most and Niall was quick to realise that they could borrow with the house as security. The two young men were interested in the building trade and they decided that they would immediately start to reconstruct the city and build modern homes and stores etc. The first step was to demolish the rubble and remains of the old quarters and as they did so the rats and sources of disease disappeared. Labour was cheap and everyone worked to capacity and it wasn’t long until a whole new city started to take shape. This was the beginning of the formation of one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the two young men became two of the wealthiest in the city. Ita lived to see their prosperity and to see them both married, Niall to a beautiful half Chinese girl named Ching, and Dermot to an equally lovely girl of Irish descent named Maura. Both couples produced four children each, all girls, except one, a lovely boy who unfortunately died from Diphtheria at the age of seven. In time all these girls married well and all settled down to live in San Francisco, apart from Maureen, the third daughter of Dermot and Maura, who married an Englishman, whom she met while he was on holiday in the city. They went to live in England and eventually settled in Ashford Middlesex where they had two daughters. Maureen’s husband died in 1979 and a few years later she decided to take a trip to see her relatives in San Francisco where she hadn’t been for years. After many reunions it came time for her to return home and she was surprised to find that her sister had brought the famous family stick, which she remembered well. The whole family had agreed that Maureen should bring it back to England and that she should endeavour to find an Irishman who would treasure it, preferably a Mc Donald. In due course she found a Dr Desmond Mc Donald and presented it to him