Those who argue that there’s no place quite like Connemara may have to revise their position – because the west of the county is not the only area on the planet to lay claim to the name.
Travel ten miles out from the city of Atlanta in Georgia and there it is on a street sign – “Connemara Road”. Then close to Indianapolis in Indiana there are two areas known as Roundstone and Clifden.
Nobody knows the origins of the former – the name of a mansion and massive ranch – but the explanation for those Connemara place names in middle of America is straightforward. 
The developer visited Connemara and brought back very happy memories with him – happy enough to baptize the location of his expenditure and his houses in honour of Clifden and Roundstone. Prices for the houses range up to €1m.
However, an old mansion and ranch in North Carolina, which bears the name “Connemara” is steeped deeply in the social history of the United States in the 20th Century.
“Connemara” is located in Flat Rock, close to the Blue Ridge Mountains as you move into the American South. It is a National Historic Site which is administered by the National Parks Agency of the United States Government.
The reason for this status accorded to “Connemara” is that it was the home of poet and writer, Carl Sandberg, for 22 years up until the time of his death in 1967.
Sandberg was an iconic figure in American literature; he was known as the people’s poet because of the strength and simplicity of his writing and his biography of Abraham Lincoln remains the seminal account of the life of the legendary United States President.
The 250 acre ranch and house in Flat Rock was known as “Connemara” long before Sandberg set up home there for himself and his family in 1945.
Miriam Farris, at “Connemara”, explains that the estate was so named by Ellison Smyth, a wealthy businessman who owned the place from about 1900 to 1945.
Miriam says that Smyth named it “Connemara” in honour of his Irish ancestry and “the beauty of the land of his forbears”.
Interestingly, Smyth’s lineage goes back to the Belfast region to about 1800 and his involvement in textile factories in in Carolina appears to mirror the linen industry in Northern Ireland.
It seems the place name “Connemara” was mentioned when Carl Sandberg decided to buy the house and ranch but he was very happy with the name and with the story behind it.
Do some of the 80,000 visitors who come to “Connemara” every year ask about the background to the place name?
“Yes, they do, and we give them the basic story about how it came about,” says Miriam.
However, neither she, nor any of the nine staff in “Connemara”, has ever been to the real Connemara but she plans on coming sometime.
She cannot say if Ellison Smyth who named the property “Connemara” over 100 years ago was ever in the real Connemara either.
When Carl Sandberg died in 1967 the then President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson spoke of him in remarkable terms: “Not alone was Carl Sandberg the voice of America; Carl Sandberg was America”.
Maybe it’s time the real Connemara established links with the “Connemara” which houses a deep semblance of the cultural and social heritage of America.
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