Elijah

This bit from last the lectionary for last Sunday (19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year B), seemed particularly appropriate for this blog:

Elijah went a day's journey into the wilderness,
and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.
He asked that he might die:
"It is enough; O Lord, take away my life,
for I am no better than my ancestors."

Why do people make up lies that aggrandize their ancestors? My family certainly did. And does.

The Costigans lived at 4 North Street in Saint John's Sailortown during the last half of the 19th century. North street ran down to the waterfront and the numbering system started at the harbour. Number four was the second house in up from the waterfront on the north side of North Street. My great, great grandfather James Costigan first shows up in historical documents as a retail liquor dealer at that location and he stays in that business until sometime in the 1870s when he becomes the proprietor of a sailor boarding home at the same location.

What did retail liquor dealer mean? Did he sell bottles of booze to seamen fresh off the ships? Or did he have a bar? Perhaps he did both. Given what we all tend to assume we know about 19th century port life, it seems like it must have been a pretty rough world. And I cannot think of any reason to think otherwise. Even had he not gone into the illegal trade of crimping ( and I think I'm very close to finding the smoking gun that proves he did) he must have lived in a world full of rough characters and rough ways. And he must have been a pretty tough guy.

He was also a Catholic. Roman Catholic. What was the nature of his religious belief and how did he square that with his day trade of selling liquor to sailors? What did he make of the prostitutes whom he must have seen on the streets not far from his business?

(One of the reasons some members of my family are so nervous about my research into his life is a fear that I will come up with proof that there was prostitution taking place under his roof. I think it very unlikely I will find such evidence for reasons I will discuss sometime in the future but it's telling that they worry about it. They sense there is something scandalous here and they have latched onto the only scandalous way of earning money they can think of.)

But what of his religion? Where did he go to church and how often? How did his parish priest see him? As just another Irishman? Or as a lamentable example dragging down the reputation of his countrymen? I have no idea about any of these questions. It will be fun trying to answer them.