I am going to Ireland in June and would love to find the cemetery mentioned in this family letter. Any help, any leads, is appreciated. Thanks to all in advance and sorry the excerpt is long--didn't know what info would help the most!
From a letter written in 1957 by Anne Ellen Coxen, sister of Thomas Frederick Rice (my great-grandfather)
“I will try to describe the old burial ground, it is called Ford (may be a word similar?), and it is top of a small mountain. All the neighbors go to a funeral, certain ones are selected to go up and open a particular grave. They have to be in line, by descent or relatives. There are no paths on this rugged cemetery, one just steps on up and down over rises or boulders. But there are some flat places and these are spacious and five families of Rices have buried there.
Our grave is a large one and five families bury in our grave. I knew them all, half are cousins and distant cousins all around Bellurgan Point. But what amazed me on my first visit there, it was Uncle Peter’s funeral, it was so high up, no carts could come to the last few hundred feet. We had to leave the carts and horses and walk up. And when we reach the top, there are no real paths, we follow the footsteps of all who have gone before us.
And each family knows where their own plot is. On our grave there is old slate stone. The writing on it is nearly worn away, next to us and over there is a large family and one of their boys is Owen Rice, oldest son and a school master. I'm told we came from the same family tree, but so far back that it was lost. They didn't bury in our grave, but quite near, on the next level piece of ground. He told me the first name on the old slate slab was Owen Rice of Bellurgan a lot more detail.
I can't write now, but to be born in a large city like Liverpool, it was quite impressive. But it is a quick changing world, will scatter all these memories. They have built a new cemetery near Dundalk and the prelates advertising the young generation to bury there. It is progress I suppose but the old folk want the old burial ground.”