Never mind, the Big Sis and I have now made up for that omission. With the help of several Parish Priests and the lovely people at the Civil Registration Service in Roscommon, we located where she was baptised, obtained a copy of her Baptismal Certificate and used that document to register her birth. Almost 100 years after the event, we now have in our possession her official Birth Certificate. Our next step is to apply for Irish Passports. So watch this space!
While the birth registration application was being processed, the Big Sis and I spent the best part of a week in Arva. We weren’t able to locate the actual house Mum was born in, but we did see where she was baptised, the school she attended and the area she lived in as a child. An added bonus for me was to find out that the hotel we stayed in, the Breffni Arms (pictured), was built on the site of the RIC barracks that were captured and burned to the ground in 1920 by Seán MacEoin and his men, including my grandfather, as described below. I was also told that the last of the Corcoran children mentioned in MacEoin’s account of the raid passed away in the 1960’s. It’s a small world is Arva.