The Hennesseys and the Elliotts

"The Hatfields and McCoys" . . . . . . "The Hennesseys and the Elliotts". . . . Do you notice a similar ring to those phrases? 

My grandfather, Thomas R Scott was a bit of a wanderer as a young man – as Daddy would say, he had an itchy foot. One day he found himself in West Virginia, hunkered down on a hillside, watching the Hatfields and McCoys shoot it out down below. If the Hennesseys and the Elliotts had met up down in West Virginia long ago, I wonder what might have happened……..

I think I was about 16 when the Hennesseys moved to Pinesdale and started building their house next door to us. I went to college the next year and majored in genealogy. At some point, on a weekend at home, Jim Hennessey and I started talking genealogy and I found we had something in common – he was Irish, and my great-grandfather came from Ireland. We knew grandpa George Elliott had been born in Ireland, but Daddy’s mother told him that her father’s sister, Jane, would say, “Just because ye were born in a barn, doesna mean ye’re a horsie!” – the idea being that the family had originally come from Scotland – Ireland just being a stopover, so to speak. I told Jim these tidbits, also mentioning that George Elliott was an Orangeman. And that’s when I learned a few things! I learned that an Irish Catholic (like Jim Hennessey) and a protestant Irishman (like Grandpa Elliott) were the worst of enemies 200 years ago – and didn’t have much use for each other even now.

Jim, of course, didn’t have any intention of turning old differences into a modern feud, but he often reminded me of the fact that Grandpa Elliott was an Orangeman – and a natural enemy to the native Irish. I decided I’d better do some research about Orangemen and Irishmen. So I did. I’m still doing it. And I’m still trying to understand. . . . Well, the whole situation with Northern Ireland just plain bothers me!

(The picture is Grandpa George Elliott and his sister, Jane)