Maggie O’Farrell grew up hearing that one of her ancestors had helped draw the first maps of Ireland. For years, the story remained a vague family legend, until a relative’s death brought a hand-drawn map and an old photograph into her hands. The map depicted an imaginary place, but a tiny tableau in the corner showed a British soldier with a theodolite and a man holding a measuring chain—the same man from the photograph, her great-great-grandfather.
Determined to learn more, O’Farrell searched the Ordnance Survey archives in Dublin. She discovered that Irish survey workers were not allowed to sign their own work; all documents had to be certified by a British officer. Among the archives, she found a memorandum listing labourers’ signatures, including that of her ancestor. The slanting script, she noted, resembled her own handwriting.
The memorandum was dated June 1853, just after the Great Famine (1846–1852), which killed over a million people and forced another million to emigrate. O’Farrell was struck by the contrast between the official document and the devastating historical context. Her ancestor’s presence in the records offered a tangible link to a past that had long been shrouded in family myth.
For O’Farrell, the discovery transformed a childhood fantasy into a real, researched story. She reflects that fiction often emerges from what we don’t know, and that the gaps in history can be as compelling as the facts. The journey to find her ancestor became a way to understand not just her own family, but also the broader history of Ireland under British rule.
