A portrait of Denis Melican and The Melican Chest which has been donated to Clare Musuem || Photo Credit: Elizabeth Odell
A CHEST carried to the United States by a Lissycasey man in 1899 has returned to Clare, where it will become part of the collection at Clare Museum.
Denis Melican emigrated from Lissycasey to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1899, following his brother John. Born in 1876, he worked as a brewery labourer and married Susan Hurley, whose parents were from Kilmaley, in 1905. The couple had four children.
Denis died from tuberculosis in 1919, aged 43. Four of his brothers and one sister also emigrated to the United States.
When Denis left Ireland, he brought his worldly possessions with him in a small chest. Made of lightweight, brown-coloured metal, it bears his name in large white stencilled letters, with his destination written underneath.
Over the following 127 years, the chest was stored in the attics of Melican family homes in Worcester, Paxton and Spencer, Massachusetts.
After the Second World War, it was used to store family letters and papers, helping to preserve it in relatively good condition.
Denis’s grandchildren, twins Elizabeth and Denis Melican, recently decided that the chest should return to Ireland and offered it to Clare Museum.
Elizabeth, who made the initial contact with the museum, said the chest had provided a tangible connection to a grandfather she never knew.
“We never knew our grandfather, and my father also had few memories of the man who was his father, so this chest has been a tangible connection to him. However, it is time now to return it to Clare. He must have purchased the chest in Ennis, so it is fitting that it should return to Ennis again,” she said.
Her twin brother, Denis, recalled the impact of their grandfather’s death on the family.
“Our father, the eight-year-old son of Denis, remembers being at his father’s funeral in 1919. He remembers being told that he was the ‘man of the house now’, even though he was not the oldest boy. He never forgot it. It was a powerful memory that stayed with him,” he said.
Curator at Clare Museum John Rattigan welcomed the donation.
“We are delighted to receive this chest for the museum collection. It is not often we get artefacts associated with people who emigrated in the past. Objects with their stories tend not to return. This chest, and its story, is a valuable contribution to our telling of the history of Clare,” he said.
The chest will now be catalogued and assessed by a conservator before being placed on long-term exhibition at Clare Museum in 2027.
