Monday-Thursday, Sept 12-13

Well, I am finally back to telling about the rest of our trip. As our previous email stated, we stayed with Dan White Spunner near Nenagh, Tipperary.

Dan's wife, Joan, died last November, and Dan was nice enough to take us to the old cemetery where she was buried. The location is by a decommissioned church shown below. The church is now owned by a famous movie actor who plans on selling it. No one lives there now.

Below is a picture of Joan's headstone. Dan has taken it upon himself to take care of the graveyard. He hires someone to come in and mow the grass, etc. Without Dan's efforts, the cemetery would probably be very over grown.

The White Spunner's are descendants of Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner. We are descendants of their daughter, Elizabeth White. One of their sons was named Thomas Spunner White. Later in his life, he changed his name to Thomas Spunner White Spunner when he inherited the Spunner estate. All of the White Spunner's come through this line. There are descendants in Ireland, England and the United States.

The church where Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner were married was the Shinrone Parish Church of Ireland. Many of Elizabeth Spunner's ancesters were also christened or married in this church. This church is still functioning and Dan's sister-in-law, Janet White Spunner is one of the Reverends for this church. Below is a picture of the Church.

Also shown in this picture is Charlie's back, Janet White Spunner and Dan. Below are pictures inside the Shinrone Church.

The below picture shows the back of the church. Notice that on the right side of the door is a framed marble plaque next to the book case.

The plaque is a memorial of a sister of Elizabeth White and Thomas Spunner White Spunner. Her name was Benjamina Ann White, who died in 1816. We knew about her, but never knew what became of her. She died at age 18. At the bottom of the plaque, it states that two infants are interned here. We don't know if this includes Benjamina or if two other children of Benjamin White and Elizabeth Spunner died as infants.

We also visited Milltown House, which is the old Spunner/White Spunner estate. This house is really something. While it is somewhat worn out inside, it must have been magnificent in the 1700 and 1800s.

Behind the house, there is a courtyard. The courtyard is in the middle of a square of buildings, composed of the house, shops, servants quarters, carriage house, etc. Below are pictures of the courtyard.

Inside the house, there are a lot of antiques. Below is a sample of the beautiful craftsmanship around the top of each wall in one of the rooms. We have a lot of other pictures of antiques, etc. that we are not posting on the blog because this is getting pretty lengthy.

Dan's brother, Richard (Janet White Spunner's husband), has been in a rest home with alzheimer's disease for a few years now. He is the present owner of Milltown. When he dies, it will pass on to his nephew, Barney White Spunner, who is a general in the British Army.

One of Dan's daughters, Katie, lives near Dan. Below is a picture of Katie, her daughter, Clarissa, Charlie and Dan. They have a beautiful home on a hill over looking Lough Derg, one of three lakes that the River Shannon flows through.

The next two pictures were taken from Katie's front yard.

Thursday morning, we headed back to the Dublin airport to return to Stockholm, Dwight and Astrid.