After retiring as a CPA nine years ago, Jack Bodkin turned his energies from crunching numbers and filling ledgers to investigating and, ultimately, recounting -- and embellishing with poetic license -- his family's history in Ireland and America from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Following five years of rigorous online and boots-on-the-sod research, interviews and writing, the Wheeling resident published his first novel, "From Briarhill to Brooklyn: An Irish Family’s Journey to Freedom and Opportunity,” in February 2021.
Drawing upon historical information he gleaned during his painstaking research and travels, the "creative nonfiction" "From Briarhill to Brooklyn" tells the story of Bodkin's Irish Catholic ancestors' migration from County Galway in Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, in 1848, in the midst of Ireland's Great Potato Famine. Brothers Dominic and Martin Bodkin and other family members arrived aboard the sailing ship Cushlamachree in New York, and, eventually, several of the male siblings found themselves involved in the Civil War besieging their new homeland.
Excerpts from "From Briarhill to Brooklyn" capture early moments:
• Cushlamachree, April 1848: “John and Eleanor ... you represent our community’s strength in the search for freedom and opportunity.”
• New York’s South Street Seaport, April 1848: “Four street musicians played for coins … a fiddle, a flute and a bodhran … the voice of a beautiful woman … filled the immigrants with hope that much of what they loved about Ireland would be found … in Brooklyn.”
• Civil War, Mobile, Alabama, April 1865: "Dominic woke with a start, his body awash in sweat. The Union cannons on either side of the river roared in celebration, but his mind swirled in dread.”
"It's been a truly amazing experience," Bodkin said during a recent telephone interview from his Wheeling home. "I probably had thought about writing a book -- as I would read a book, I'd think, 'I could do this.' Then I put together this family tree, with the usual names and dates. I got into it, and as you work on it yourself, you sort of imagine what people would have been like in the Civil War and the early 1800s -- and you develop a sort of affinity with them. I decided to make it more interesting.
"My family members weren't as interested [in the family genealogy], so I figured, 'OK, I'll try to write it myself.' I didn't have enough facts to make it an actual family history, so I decided make it a novel and use as much history as I knew from the timeline and the locations. I knew about the ship they were on, the Cushlamachree. I just wrote a novel -- I don't know how it happened."
Jack Bodkin was born in Brooklyn in 1947, living for his first two years with his family at 325 Clinton Ave., roughly a football field's distance from his great-great-uncle Dominic’s onetime home on Clinton Avenue. His family moved to Merrick, Long Island, in 1950. Bodkin graduated from Chaminade High School and Wheeling College, returned to Long Island and worked in New York City until he and his wife, Christine, moved to Wheeling in 1977.
To delve deeper and more authentically into the roots of his family tree, Bodkin visited Ireland three times. "I took my first trip ever to Ireland in August 2016 with my brother and my son," he said. "I pushed for the trip for the three of us to go. I hadn't been, and it was a great time. I had started writing the book, but it was in the very early stages of the five-year project.
"I figured I'd go see where we came from. I knew we came from Galway and the church outside of Galway where five of the family members had been baptized. We spent our entire time in Galway, seeing the dock where they probably left from. We met the parish priest, Father O'Reilly, and his assistant, and they showed us the baptism records.
"I enjoyed it so much my wife and I went back in 2018 and 2019."
The pandemic has postponed return visits to Galway, but Bodkin hopes to return either later this year or in 2023. "I can't wait to get back."
Before that, Bodkin will be taking part in the 2022 West Virginia Book Festival on Oct. 21 and 22 at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center (visit www.wvbookfestival.org for a full schedule and more details).
"I'll be there all day on Friday and Saturday," he said. "I'll have a booth, being manned by me, on Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday."
Bodkin said he never foresaw the reaction his first-time novel has elicited so far. "When I started writing the book, I didn't know I was going to write a book. That wasn't a plan initially. By the point there was a book, I wrote the dedication page for my granddaughter. It was something for her to pass on to her grandchild in 50 or 60 years.
"I didn't really have any idea I'd sell a lot of books. The more books I sold, the more people contacted me, basically through Facebook. I've connected with Bodkins from all over the world who are somehow realted to me."
On Sept. 24, he met with three distant relatives -- seventh or eighth cousins, he conjectures -- at an informal breakfast gathering in Pittsburgh. "We're all from different lines of the Botkins family tree," he said, "but we still haven't been able to make the connection. One of them has 29,000 people on his family tree.
"It's been so exciting to hear from people that I didn't know about. My grandfather and his uncle were significant doctors in Brooklyn in their careers. Their specialty, apparently, was obstetrics. I've heard from so many people who said, 'Your grandfather delivered me' or 'Your grandfather was our family doctor,'" Bodkin said.
"Briarhill to Brooklyn" is 436 pages long, available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions, at various online outlets as well as bricks-and-mortar bookstores in Wheeling.
More information about “Briarhill to Brooklyn,” including how to purchase the historical novel, can be found at briarhilltobrooklyn.com. Bodkin can be contacted at BriarhilltoBrooklyn@gmail.com. He also maintains a "Briarhill to Brooklyn" Facebook page.
Bodkin revealed he has been tinkering with a second novel for the last six months, crafting about 10,000 words so far, but "I keep changing my mind about which direction it's going. In the last month, I've been following one particular path I think I like."
Following five years of rigorous online and boots-on-the-sod research, interviews and writing, the Wheeling resident published his first novel, "From Briarhill to Brooklyn: An Irish Family’s Journey to Freedom and Opportunity,” in February 2021.
Drawing upon historical information he gleaned during his painstaking research and travels, the "creative nonfiction" "From Briarhill to Brooklyn" tells the story of Bodkin's Irish Catholic ancestors' migration from County Galway in Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, in 1848, in the midst of Ireland's Great Potato Famine. Brothers Dominic and Martin Bodkin and other family members arrived aboard the sailing ship Cushlamachree in New York, and, eventually, several of the male siblings found themselves involved in the Civil War besieging their new homeland.
Excerpts from "From Briarhill to Brooklyn" capture early moments:
• Cushlamachree, April 1848: “John and Eleanor ... you represent our community’s strength in the search for freedom and opportunity.”
• New York’s South Street Seaport, April 1848: “Four street musicians played for coins … a fiddle, a flute and a bodhran … the voice of a beautiful woman … filled the immigrants with hope that much of what they loved about Ireland would be found … in Brooklyn.”
• Civil War, Mobile, Alabama, April 1865: "Dominic woke with a start, his body awash in sweat. The Union cannons on either side of the river roared in celebration, but his mind swirled in dread.”
"It's been a truly amazing experience," Bodkin said during a recent telephone interview from his Wheeling home. "I probably had thought about writing a book -- as I would read a book, I'd think, 'I could do this.' Then I put together this family tree, with the usual names and dates. I got into it, and as you work on it yourself, you sort of imagine what people would have been like in the Civil War and the early 1800s -- and you develop a sort of affinity with them. I decided to make it more interesting.
"My family members weren't as interested [in the family genealogy], so I figured, 'OK, I'll try to write it myself.' I didn't have enough facts to make it an actual family history, so I decided make it a novel and use as much history as I knew from the timeline and the locations. I knew about the ship they were on, the Cushlamachree. I just wrote a novel -- I don't know how it happened."
Jack Bodkin was born in Brooklyn in 1947, living for his first two years with his family at 325 Clinton Ave., roughly a football field's distance from his great-great-uncle Dominic’s onetime home on Clinton Avenue. His family moved to Merrick, Long Island, in 1950. Bodkin graduated from Chaminade High School and Wheeling College, returned to Long Island and worked in New York City until he and his wife, Christine, moved to Wheeling in 1977.
To delve deeper and more authentically into the roots of his family tree, Bodkin visited Ireland three times. "I took my first trip ever to Ireland in August 2016 with my brother and my son," he said. "I pushed for the trip for the three of us to go. I hadn't been, and it was a great time. I had started writing the book, but it was in the very early stages of the five-year project.
"I figured I'd go see where we came from. I knew we came from Galway and the church outside of Galway where five of the family members had been baptized. We spent our entire time in Galway, seeing the dock where they probably left from. We met the parish priest, Father O'Reilly, and his assistant, and they showed us the baptism records.
"I enjoyed it so much my wife and I went back in 2018 and 2019."
The pandemic has postponed return visits to Galway, but Bodkin hopes to return either later this year or in 2023. "I can't wait to get back."
Before that, Bodkin will be taking part in the 2022 West Virginia Book Festival on Oct. 21 and 22 at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center (visit www.wvbookfestival.org for a full schedule and more details).
"I'll be there all day on Friday and Saturday," he said. "I'll have a booth, being manned by me, on Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday."
Bodkin said he never foresaw the reaction his first-time novel has elicited so far. "When I started writing the book, I didn't know I was going to write a book. That wasn't a plan initially. By the point there was a book, I wrote the dedication page for my granddaughter. It was something for her to pass on to her grandchild in 50 or 60 years.
"I didn't really have any idea I'd sell a lot of books. The more books I sold, the more people contacted me, basically through Facebook. I've connected with Bodkins from all over the world who are somehow realted to me."
On Sept. 24, he met with three distant relatives -- seventh or eighth cousins, he conjectures -- at an informal breakfast gathering in Pittsburgh. "We're all from different lines of the Botkins family tree," he said, "but we still haven't been able to make the connection. One of them has 29,000 people on his family tree.
"It's been so exciting to hear from people that I didn't know about. My grandfather and his uncle were significant doctors in Brooklyn in their careers. Their specialty, apparently, was obstetrics. I've heard from so many people who said, 'Your grandfather delivered me' or 'Your grandfather was our family doctor,'" Bodkin said.
"Briarhill to Brooklyn" is 436 pages long, available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions, at various online outlets as well as bricks-and-mortar bookstores in Wheeling.
More information about “Briarhill to Brooklyn,” including how to purchase the historical novel, can be found at briarhilltobrooklyn.com. Bodkin can be contacted at BriarhilltoBrooklyn@gmail.com. He also maintains a "Briarhill to Brooklyn" Facebook page.
Bodkin revealed he has been tinkering with a second novel for the last six months, crafting about 10,000 words so far, but "I keep changing my mind about which direction it's going. In the last month, I've been following one particular path I think I like."
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