This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Tag: Lars Larsson

St. Patrick’s day 2018, final episode of Vincent and Lars Larsson

Photo: Chris Grayson

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Humans of Listowel, March 17 2018


Here are some more photos I took before and during the parade on St. Patrick’s Day 2018

Christy Walsh washed his van in preparation for the parade.

Martin McCarthy and Ailís OSuilleabháin were preparing to welcome Rith and Micheál O Muircheartaigh to Listowel.

A Zumba session was in full swing in Main Street.

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A Chance Meeting illustrates that Truth is surely often stranger than fiction


Read yesterday’s and the day before’s episodes to get the full story…… 

(Vincent Carmody is St. Michael’s Cemetery with two Swedish visitors who are looking for a grave.)

When we went the grave, which is marked by an inscribed flat stone with
iron railings, it was covered by thick low branches of a thorn bush, with the
stone unreadable, I went across the road to a garage and got a shovel. Returning,
I quickly cut away the bush, which allowed the details to be seen,

Lars Larsson, 1872-1929.

So, on that lovely summers evening in the 1990’s, I stood and heard the
visitors recite the Lord’s Prayer in their native tongue. They were delighted
to have found the grave of the man which they learned of first, on a page, in a
foreign language.  I was happy to have
been the conduit through which I first learned of the Swede, sitting with
Dotie, many years previously.

James Cronin was married to Ellen O Sullivan on November 27th
1900

Ellen Cronin died 1926

James Cronin died 1940.

Mary Ellen Cronin (Dotie) 1901-1993.

Lars Larsson was born in Sweden in 1872; he came to Listowel to work as
a Creamery Engineer/ Fitter at the behest of George R Browne, who was
proprietor of a number of private creameries in the North Kerry area.

Larsson lived in lodgings at Upper Church Street with an O’Connor
family; he is listed as a boarder in both the 1901 and 1911 census. In these,
his place of birth is given as Sweden and his religion is ‘Protestant
Episcopalian’

Lars is listed in Civil Records as ‘found dead’ on the 21 January 1929; an
inquest on the 27th January found that his death was due to heart
failure.

The house, now number 76, was subsequently bought by Ita Brosnan, who
afterwards married Willy Keane. I spoke to Paddy Keane about Larsson; he told
me that his father once came across some papers which might have belonged to Lars;
Paddy assumes that they were thrown away. He also told me that on a web site
that allows you access to old newspapers, to which he is a contributor, he came
across at one stage, a piece detailing notables from the town who had made
financial contributions to the local Feis.  Larsson had given five bob, which, as
Alo Sheehy would have said, was “not to be sniffed at”.

 



(Concluded)



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In the papers


Examiner of 17-4-1924 

Promoters of Listowel Toffee Factory held meeting in the premises of the old factory. Mr Medill presided. Present were George F Gleasure. P Browne, J J Walsh, P Landers, E Stack, T Corridan, T F Cotter, T O Connell, assistant clerk of the union, William Elder, H Larsson, T T Cronin, Etc. They hoped to open the business to provide employment, a deputation was to canvass businesses in the town to enlist support, could open within a month or six weeks.

    

(It would appear that that canvass was successful as the Toffee factory di open and provided employment for many years.)

More Humans of Listowel in March 2018, Lars Larsson in Listowel and local people collect for Daffodil Day

Photo: Chris Grayson

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RTE Mass from St. Mary’s Listowel on March 17 2018

The church was filling up nicely as parishioners made their way to St. Mary’s.

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Continuing Vincent Carmody’s tale of Lars Larsson and Dotie Cronin

………..So began my friendship with Dotie, baptised Mary Ellen Cronin in 1901,
which lasted until her death in 1992. As I grew older and became more aware of
local history, I realised what a font of knowledge she had. Sadly, I realise
now how much more valuable our question and answers would have been if they
had been recorded or written down. Even though she once told me that she had
never travelled outside Kerry, she did however see most of the county, many of
these excursions, in the company of her father, following and supporting the
Listowel Brass and Reed band and the town’s football team of the day, the
Listowel Independents.  Dotie also was an
avid daily newspaper reader, often recalling national news, the Rising, Civil War,
Truce, Treaty, and world events that shaped the world that we know today.

One evening as we sat there, having spoken for some time, she tired and
said, ‘off you go now, you know enough’, Just as I was going out the door, she
said, ‘Did I tell you about the man from Sweden?’

 “Who’s that?’ I said,

I sat down again and she started telling me. ‘My mother died in 1926,
afterwards I looked after the house.  Some
years later, on one Sunday, when my father had gone to a football match, a stranger
came to our front door. He was a foreigner, he explained that he had previously
contacted my father and arranged for him to put up a memorial gravestone over
the resting place of a Swedish man, Lars Larsson, who had died in Listowel in 1929’.

The man had visited the cemetery and was happy with the work that had
been carried out, so he wanted to pay the remainder of the bill. He then paid
Dotie, also giving her two half crowns for herself. Before leaving, he left an
address of a family in Sweden, where he requested Dotie to ask her father to
formally write to confirm completion of the job and receipt of the cash. As I
was unaware of the grave, Dotie then told me where the stone was to be found,
which I visited, out of curiosity.

One fine evening in the mid 1990’s, I had been up at the Sportsfield to
see a game, on coming down past the cemetery I went in to visit our family
grave. Inside the gate were two heavily laden sport bikes. As I went down the
central pathway I was approached by two people, by their style of dress, I
guessed that they owned the bikes. They had been looking at the graves. On introducing
themselves, they enquired if I was a local, was I familiar with the various
graves, or if not, would the local authority have a record of the graves.’ I
would have a fairly good knowledge of the place, so out of curiosity, I asked.
‘What particular grave or stone are you looking for?

They were brother and sister, in their early twenties, from Sweden. They
explained that when they were young, they had been on vacation at a relatives
home in rural Sweden. One wet day, they had taken refuge in the attic of the
house. While up there, they came upon an old trunk, opening it, they found old
clothes and some old letters. Looking through these they found one which was
not in Swedish. Taking it downstairs and showing it, it was explained that it
came from Ireland and concerned the burial of a relative who had lived in that
house and that had died in that far distant land.

So after all these years, the brother and sister, who had found James
Cronin’s letter in the attic trunk, now found themselves back in the town where
Cronin, the stonemason, lived, and where their relative, Lars Larsson had died
in 1929. I found their story amazing. I said, ‘you are lucky, you have just met
the only person that knows the whereabouts of the grave and the history behind
it’.

(more tomorrow)

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More photos from town on Daffodil Day 2018




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