They Can’t Take the Kids: The Mooney/McCarthy/Gillan Legacy

PEI author Frank Gillan launched his book They Can’t Take the Kids: The Mooney/McCarthy/Gillan Legacy in May. 

This story of two remarkable widows, left with young children in harsh times, is also about their Irish ancestors, who over several generations passed on qualities that enabled the two women to endure. 

The widows are Gillan’s grandmother, Jennie Mooney McCarthy of Morell Rear (now Green Meadows), and his mother, Marion McCarthy Gillan of Charlottetown. 

Their story begins in Ireland in the 1820s, when many Irish Catholics, including the McCarthy and Mooney families, left their homeland because of relentless British oppression. It follows the Mooney family to Nova Scotia and then to Lot 46 in Eastern Kings, PEI; the McCarthy family to the Morell area of Lot 39; and the Marion McCarthy Gillan family in Charlottetown.

It is the courageous story of how the two matriarchs, determined to keep their families together, carried on after their husbands’ deaths, at a time when women—especially married women with children—had few rights, no public financial support, and no power.

Books can be purchased at Bookmark in Charlottetown, the Co-op in Morell, MacPhee’s Market in Souris, or directly from the author (fgillan@hra.ca).