Slack-

The surname Slack occurs in a Pipe Roll of the reign of Edward 1 1272 – 1307, where a certain William le Slack of Derbyshire appeared as first mention surety for a friend. From the form of his surname it seems probable that this man was the founder of the family; but whether this was the case or not the Slacks were soon established in Derbyshire whence they spread to other counties. The first grant of a coat of arms to the family had on its crest a snail. The motto was "Lente sed Certe" which means "Slow but Sure." The surname le Slack has been variously taken to mean "dweller at a hollow or a pass between hills" but a more likely meaning is "The Slow". Slack is an Old English word meaning slow or maybe the "le" is French. The fact that there is a snail on the crest supports the argument that the name means "swollen Ireland is "Lente sed Certe" but the snail has been replaced by a lion on the coat of arms. In "The Slacke family in Ireland" by Helen A. Crofton, the only history of the Irish branch of the family, it is stated that three brothers arrived in Ireland from Slacke Hall in Derbyshire in the latter half of the 17^th century and all the Irish Slacke families are descended from them. One of them settled in Leitrim and the Slacke family there are his descendants. But Rev. Robert Slack was appointed to the Diocese of Clogher in 1619 and in 1622 Rev. James Slack was appointed to the Rectory of Enniskillen. In England the Slackes were concentrated in Derbyshire and Cheshire and were seldom found south of there. The three brothers from whom the Irish Slackes are supposed to be descended settled in Leitrim, Kildare or Dublin and Monaghan. Helen Crofton when writing the book could find no other Slackes or Slacks. When trying to trace my branch of the family I often thought that they might have changed religions and so been cut off from the Slackes mentioned above. Very often a younger son would have no inheritance. The eldest would inherit the property, the second would join the navy, the third the army and the fourth become a clergyman. So we might be descended from a fifth or sixth son who married a catholic tenant or servant and became catholic himself However in the Palmer Papers in the Public Records Office now the National Archives in Dublin I came across the names of two Slack brothers Thomas and Henry who came to Crossmolina in County Mayo as tenants of the Palmer landlord of the time in the middle of the 17^th century. Thomas is a great family name being the name of my father, grandfather and brother ;Henry is also a Slack family name being the name of my uncle Harry who settled in Leeds. They were Catholics, so it seems the answer to the question of our origin is clear. We have always been farmers, tenants until the Land Acts of the end of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries made them proprietors of the land they farmed. During the troubled period of the rest of the 17^th century and the Penal Times of the 18^th century there is no record of the family unless the landlord they rented their land from kept one. Around the year 1800 and maybe much earlier the family are tenants of a landlord called Robinson in Aclare, County Sligo. The last Slack lived in Aclare up to the 1950's when my father worked there and met him. There were two branches of the family but both have left the area. However their descendants often turn up in our house looking for any trace of their family. By 1827 the Slacks were living in Carradoogan. Family tradition says they were evicted from their lands by the landlord for running a shebeen, in other words making and selling poteen. However they were still tenants of the Robinson landlord so maybe they were just banished from the area and given lands in another area. Under the Tithe applotment Act each rector made a list of the tenants and what they were to pay for the support of the Established Church which was the Church of England. Even Catholics had to pay the tithes which was one tenth of the value of the crop they grew. Tradition also says they were bargers for the landlord and one old man told me that he heard of a Mickey Slack who would beat with a stick anyone taking fish from the river. Of the family born in Carradoogan Thomas and Chris live within five miles of the village. An older sister Mrs. James Henry of Attymass died in 1996. In the previous generation Martin b. 1901 emigrated to Chicago, Mary b. 1905 emigrated to New York, Charles b. 1907 emigrated to New York, Thomas b. 1910 stayed on the farm, Henry (Harry) b. 1912 emigrated to Leeds, Jimmy b. 1916 died in 1932. Two other children Margaret and Harriet died while very young. Their father Thomas b.1877 worked as a migrant labourer in England and died of sunstroke in Lincolnshire in 1923 while hay making on a farm. Because of the costs of transporting a body back to Ireland he was buried in Lincolnshire. Thomas' wife Mary died suddenly while hanging out clothes in 1937. The family have never traced Thomas' grave in Lincolnshire. Thomas had one brother Charles b.1873. He emigrated to Scranton but returned at the death of his brother and stayed for a few weeks before returning to Scranton in 1923. At least three generations of Slacks attended Currower School, which is two miles of a distance. The route to school was typical with shortcuts through fields and over hills. The latest Currower School was built in 1896 but is now a ruin.

Chris Slack-May 2003.

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Irish Hunger Memorial

Where Did It All Begin?

The idea of the Irish Hunger Memorial began in 1999 when Timothy S. Carey, President and Chief Executive of the Battery Park City Authority, one of the richest municipal authorities in New York, accompanied Governor of New York George E. Pataki on a trip to Ireland. The pair were visiting Pataki's ancestral home in Co. Louth. Governor Pataki had already signed a law making instruction on the mass starvation in Ireland a part of the New York curriculum. New York schools are now instructed to teach courses in patriotism, citizenship and human rights issues. However they both wondered if they could do more to educate Americans about the horrors of the Great Irish Famine in Ireland.

The two men began to discuss Vesey Green, a half-acre square in Battery Park City as a possible site to create a memorial. Their mission was to design a contemplative space devoted to raising public awareness of the events that led to the 'Great Irish Famine' of 1845-1850 and which would also serve as a catalyst towards addressing world hunger. Upon their return Governor Pataki charged James Gil, a native of Co. Sligo and Chairman of the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority, with overseeing the design of a memorial on this site.

Battery Park City

Battery Park City is located on the lower tip of Manhattan in New York. It is a wonderful waterside haven with 30 acres of gardens, playgrounds, a one-mile esplanade, public art and views of the Hudson River. Battery Park has also fine views of harbour islands – Governor's Island, Staten Island, the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island and Ellis Island, the famous immigrant gateway to America (1892-1954) for ancestors of one in four present-day Americans. Battery Park City is the future home of the Skyscraper Museum and the Museum of Women - The Leadership Centre.

Irish Hunger Memorial Competition

An international competition was held in 2000 and Hunger Memorial organisers began the artist selection process by looking at the work of 150 artists. Committee members and their chairmen were also charged with selecting a theme, message and goals for the Famine Memorial. The only conditions were that the memorial be a contemplative space, retain the harbour view and incorporate text. Decision-makers whittled the number of candidates down to fifteen and then five. At that point the finalists were each given a $10,000 stipend to design a model. The eventual winner was artist Brian Tolle who collaborated with David Piscuskas, Jurgen Riehm of 1100 Architect and with the landscape architect Gail Wittwer. The selection of Tolle's model was all but unanimous.

Brian Tolle

Brian Tolle is a resident of New York City. A graduate of the Yale School of Art, MFA, Parsons School of Design, BFA and SUNY at Albany BA, Tolle's public commissions include- Waylay, Whitney Biennal 2002, Central Park, NY- Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,Queens Museum Eureka, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium 2000- Witch Catcher, Public Art Fune Metrotech Centre, Brooklyn, NY 1997.He has presented his work in solo exhibitions in New York, Santa Monica & St. Louis, and in group exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, Houston, London, Oslo, Ghent & Seoul.

Inspiration

After receiving the commission Brian Tolle took a trip to Ireland. His visit included a trip to the deserted village of Slievemore on Achill Island. Small stone farmhouses dotted the land, many of them abandoned and in a state of ruin. The forlorn, silent site made Tolle's thoughts turn away from a memorial that might have been an artist's rendering of, say, hungered and poverty-stricken Irish people leaving Ireland for America

Instead, he saw the scene as "a fragment torn from Slievemore, and transplanted to Manhattan. Too many memorials are representational. This memorial will make the viewer the actual subject," said Tolle. Slievemore was abandoned as a permanent settlement some time in the late 1800s. Undoubtedly the Great Famine (1845-49) would have been a significant factor.

Centrepiece of Memorial

The centrepiece envisioned in Tolle's design was "an extraordinarily humble place, the interior of a ruined fieldstone cottage, now emptied of the family life it once sheltered." Tolle had a real dilemma, was he going to simulate an Irish house in the States or was he going to be a colonialist and take a house away from Ireland. However he soon learned that the old houses in Ireland weren't protected. Therefore ten members of the Irish Hunger Memorial Committee and New York City officials went to Ireland in 2001 to attempt to locate a replica Irish farmhouse for the Irish Hunger Memorial. The delegation visited several counties in the West viewing different sites that would be suitable.

Carradoogan Cottage

The Memorial Committee found what they were looking for in a small townland called Carradoogan in the parish of Attymass in County Mayo. The fieldstone cottage belonged to the Slack family. Six generations of the family had lived here and it had been in ruin since it was deserted in the 1960's. It was a coincidence that this cottage was chosen in the way that Mr. Tolle found himself leafing through a family album and found a photograph of the cottage taken quite a number of years ago. The photo album belonged to Maureen Clyne, whose son Brian, is Tolle's partner and who worked on the computerised renderings of the memorial project. Brian Clyne's grandmother who was Mary Slack had lived in the cottage and also was an immigrant to the US. Another coincidence lay in the fact that the parish of Attymass was the first to officially record famine deaths.

Brian Clyne immediately contacted his cousin Tom Slack in Ireland to enquire about the current state of the house and to ask for permission to transport the cottage to New York. The Slack family in Ireland were delighted and presented it as a gift in memory of all the Slack family members of previous generations who emigrated to America and fared well there. The cottage was seen as a generous gesture between two families and a poignant gift between two nations.

The Slack Family Cottage

By 1827 the Slacks were living in Carradoogan so it wasn't long before the lives of the residents were upended by the potato famine of the 1840's. The actual cottage was built of field stones picked from the surrounding fields. It had been originally thatched but in later years part of the thatch was replaced by a tin roof. The fences or ditches as they are called locally were also built of field stones and several hundred tons of these were also transported to the New York site. The Slack family farm comprised about 10 acres of grazing/tillage land with a plot of bog for peat and some rough grazing as well rights to commonage on the Ox Mountains. The family grew enough potatoes and vegetables to be self-sufficient. Oats were also grown for fodder for cattle and the straw used for thatching. Hay was saved for the cattle for the winter. The cottage never had its own electricity or running water. Cooking was done on an open fire and fresh water was got from the well nearby. The early 1960's was the last time that the cottage saw life in it. Therefore it had been in ruin for nearly 40 years before it made the trip across the Atlantic.

Transportation of cottage

The work to transport the cottage was mainly undertaken by a local community group called FÁS who numbered and bailed the stones from the site. More than 330,000 pounds of imported fieldstone was used to create walls and the cottage. It took 47 shipping containers to bring the stones from Mayo to Manhattan. The cottage was disassembled in Ireland in accordance with guidelines provided by the Irish Historic Trust. Nigel Copsey, a mason trained in traditional stone construction, supervised its reconstruction in New York. Mr. Copsey prepared a traditional lime mortar, imported from France, which is flexible and does not break apart like the more rigid Portland cement. Much of the work was done by Irish Natural Stone Products of Boston, MA. Builders had to receive specialist training to handle the stonework.

Progress

The groundbreaking ceremony was held on St. Patrick's Day 2001. The original date for the official dedication was St. Patrick's Day 2002 but when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre crashed down on September 11^th 2001 the half-completed Irish Hunger Memorial a block away was enveloped in the dust storm that followed. Work was called to a halt as lower Manhattan became a recovery zone and rescue workers requisitioned building material and machinery.

An American flag was positioned at the gable end of the field stone cottage. The flag was hoisted by Frank Rubinic of Cashin Associates, the construction management firm at the site, in the spirit of patriotism after the attacks. There was a five-week break in construction and when work resumed the authorities soon realised that the site would not be fully ready for the planned opening in March. It took sixteen months to be constructed and the overall cost was in and around $5 million

Opening

The Irish Hunger Memorial was unveiled on Tuesday, July 16^th 2002 by President Mary McAleese, New York Governor George Pataki and other Irish and Irish American dignitaries. Before the official unveiling there was a special mass celebrated at 10.00 a.m. in the Embassy Suites Hotel which is located directly across the road from the memorial. The Celebrant of the Mass was Fr. Jack Finucane of Concern Worldwide. Timothy S. Carey, President & CEO of the Battery Park City Authority was master of ceremonies at the dedication and was assisted by Adrian Flannelly, also a member of the memorial's committee. Ciaran Sheehan & Aideen O'Donnell provided song and music for both the Irish and American National anthems. Cardinal Edward Egan opened the dedication, reminding listeners that the memorial was about "the tragedy of man's inhumanity to his fellow man." Readings from the Wall were presented by the Irish Repertory Theatre, which included Bob Geldof, Frank McCourt as well as his brother Malachy.

Speeches from former Mayor of New York Rudolph W. Giuliani, Chairman of Battery Park City Authority James Gill, current Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, Governor of New York George Pataki and President of Ireland Mary McAleese followed. Addressing the audience McAleese said, "wherever people suffer, you will find the Irish bringing hope. Because of the hardship of the Famine and immigration experience the Irish had developed determination and grit and today Ireland is a first world country with a third world memory."

Also present was Paddy Reilly who pleased the crowd with his rendition of "The Fields of Athenry" The ceremony ended with the ribbon cutting as the dignitaries and guests went on a tour of the site.

Description of site

The Irish Hunger Memorial is located on a sloping half-acre site in Downtown Manhattan. In its downtown surroundings, amongst skyscrapers and traffic jams, the pristine, suspended slope hints at peaceful, happy times and not the graveyard it is meant to depict. Its exact location is at the corner at Vesey Street and North End Avenue just a step away from Ground Zero. To have it so close to the site where nearly 3,000 people perished on September 11^th 2001, many of them Irish American, merely heightens emotions the memorial is meant to evoke. The site overlooks the Hudson River and it offers visitors a stunning view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This is fitting given that these landmarks have greeted generations of Irish immigrants to New York City.

Visitors to the memorial will be able to stroll onto it at street level, before slowly winding up a dirt road, which ultimately rises nearly 30 feet. A walk up the hill becomes a journey from the Old World ruin to the New World redemption. At the bottom stands the ruined fieldstone cottage belonging to the Slack family from Co. Mayo. The derelict, part roofed cottage has been painstakingly reassembled in its derelict form to help recreate the air of desolation which pervaded Ireland for many years after the Famine which mercilessly decimated the native population through death or emigration.

However it hasn't been all re-assembled in its previous form; the modern corrugated tin roof has been removed and the cottage left as an exposed ruin. As it stands there are two rooms but when the cottage last stood it comprised of four rooms. Also, because of New York's seismic and general building codes the rubble filling between the fieldstone rock layers was replaced by modern concrete. These are minor details in what is an otherwise beautifully designed memorial.

Along the pathways are abandoned fields of overgrown potato furrows and rocky heathlands of indigenous grasses, weeds and wild flowers specially chosen to withstand the harsh New York winters. 85 species of grasses, bushes and flowers were taken as seed from the Attymass site. Only the soil was mixed in America as U.S. officials balked at allowing soil from an area with a recent foot-and-mouth disease incident into the country

The 96-by-170-foot field rests on giant concrete slab that is raised up and tilted on a huge wedge-shape base. From the river side the towering end wall of the plinth is shadowed by a broad overhang of the concrete slab, and cut by a ramped entrance that leads into the back of the cottage. The plinth is lined with glass-covered bands of text that mingle terse facts about the Irish famine with similarly disturbing statistics about world hunger today along with quotations from Irish poetry and songs. The sentences that gird the limestone base from bottom to top have been gleaned from contemporary reports, newspaper editorials, parliamentary debate and parish priests.

Both Mr. Tolle and Mr. Carey relished the idea that the memorial can change and grow. Paths that form through the grass will be kept. Therefore Mr. Tolle devised an ingeniously flexible method of mounting the texts: they are silk-screened onto strips of clear Plexiglas that are simply leaned against the glass bands from the inside. When lighted, they appear to be etched, but they can be easily changed, injecting new facts about world hunger or additional history about the famine. As visitors entered the passage to the memorial an audio recording will inform them of the details of the site as well as details of current famines.

Also part of the site is a 'special stone' from each county in Ireland. Governor Pataki wrote to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern requesting stones from every Irish county. This was arranged by Mayo County Manager, Mr. Des Mahon who got his colleagues countrywide to arrange delivery of a stone from each of their regions. The Mayo stone came from the foot of Croagh Patrick and is erected along with others right around the memorial site.

Barry Slack May 2003.

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