My great grandmother Anna Downing moved from County Kerry to Rhode Island at age sixteen. Though far from home, she would knit traditional Irish sweaters, with symbolic stitches that could tell a story to anyone who knew how to read them. She wove a familial tradition of life on the sea into cable stitches, good luck wishes to fishermen. She wove stitches that might depict landscapes, or honeycombs, a symbol of hard labor. She was an American, who wore the traditions of a foreign land on her back.             I am too young to remember Anna. I cannot ask her all of the hundreds of questions I have about her life, and I cannot recall the tremendous love that she is said to have held in her heart. But I have her sweaters, and in this way, I am able to keep her, and Ireland, with me. 

– Brighidnora Gutch

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more