It was my great-great grandmother Bridget that inspired the generations that followed her. She followed her husband to Concord almost two centuries ago, leaving the land where she was born and raised to venture towards opportunity. The potato famine was raging in Ireland, thousands perished as the Irish tenant farmers crops were subjected to blight. The leased land planted but the crops failed, the tenant farmers did not have a crop to sell to pay landlords. Without income, shelter or food they perished one family after the next.
Bridget and her husband, Martin Spain, only sought a future that would provide for their children. Martin and his brothers placed their mark on a legal contract indenturing them for the coming years in a mill located in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was with heavy heart that Martin left his young bride on the shore in Galway Bay and sailed to this unknown place.
Great-great grandfather Martin arrived in Boston with his brothers. Martin, Michael, Thomas and James Spain met with their fate on the docks and were quickly ushered to the mills. Rooms and meager meals were provided to the Spain brothers freshly arrived from Ireland. Their thick Irish accents evident they found themselves surrounded by like minded people, all victims of a similar nature. Grandfather and his brothers set to work for the next two years and worked the mills arriving in the darkness of the morning and returning exhausted in the darkness of night. The hunger and weariness became a way of life, but it was the letters to and from his beloved Bridget in Ireland that nourished young Martin more than any meal ever could.
The four Spain brothers toiled each day in the mills for years until the very last day of the contract they now despised.
Word quickly spread that there was plenty of work just to the north in a place called Concord. The granite industry had taken hold and convict labor was not enough to sustain the demand for fresh granite. Granite used to build new buildings, provide curbing in the big cities to the south and cobbles to line the unpaved streets. So, on the last day of their indentured servitude, the four Spain brothers walked 18 miles north to Concord where they were greeted by other Irish friends that arrived before. One particular friend, Luke Bray, provided rooms for the arriving Irishmen in the north end of Concord near the quarries on Rattlesnake Hill. For cents per month grandfather and his brothers worked hard labor cutting and transporting granite from Rattlesnake Hill, bringing it to the granite cutting sheds on North State Street for processing. Once processed the granite was loaded onto transport barges in the Merrimack River destined for places like Haverhill, Lowell and Boston for further marketing and transportation to the ultimate purchasers.
It was a few years later that Martin sent for his wife. Bridget had her single trunk packed with her few belongings and bid the housekeeping work that supported her in Ireland a splendid farewell. Bridget Madden Spain would never return to Ireland for the rest of her life.
As she sailed into the port of Boston, she greatly anticipated her new life in Concord where she would meet her husband once again. In her pockets there were few belongings.
Upon arrival Bridget used the few dollars Martin had sent months before to purchase a ride from Boston to Concord aboard the horse-drawn coach. The ride provided her a wonderful view of the New England wilderness as she crossed the state line into New Hampshire. She would settle at the Luke Bray rooming house with her husband and venture into town to seek employment. Her husband was now a quarryman but, in her heart, he would always be her tenant farmer, and she simply the tenant farmers wife.
It was a short time later Martin and Bridget became the proud owners of their very own home. This was an amazing feat during this period of time when poverty was very common. It was within this home the young coupled grew their new family, a son named Martin and a daughter named Bridget, just like her mother.
The tenant farmer’s wife now grew a family instead of crops. With her new home she turned over the soil and planted her little seeds. She planted and planted, tending her small crop as much as she did her two young children. When the rich Concord soil sprouted her first crop she was elated, a bit of Ireland had returned without the blight and sadness. In the coming years she planted and grew her crops and harvested her bounty while increasing her hoard of seeds for the coming year. Her meals were sumptuous and her Irish Soda Bread provided a heavenly scent to those walking about in the north end of Concord.
As the children grew, Martin and Bridget aged. Martin passed before his time and sadness now prevailed in Bridget’s heart. Her love remained until her final day and her planting sustained the now broken heart. She instilled so very much to the family that descended from her. A strong will and the stubbornness to survive. She never gave up and she passed here planting skills to her son and daughter.
Today she rests eternally at the Blossom Hill Cemetery with Martin, not far from the little duck pond.