The Silver Bowl

Flight of Fear

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:45:00 +0000

On December 21^st, 1962, as our family was returning to Canada from my father’s RCAF posting in Metz France, the cabin of our plane suddenly lost pressure over the Atlantic. When I recently spoke of this with my brother Brian, he added that we had been in a four engine turbo prop Yukon – guys tend to recall that kind of detail - and that we had immediately dropped from 20,000 feet to 10,000, supposedly because of a shattered windscreen. At the time, I had recorded that we had lowered to 1,000 feet, but it turns out that Brian was most likely to be right.

In the event of a cabin depressurization, pilots will initiate an emergency descent to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) or lower. This altitude is considered safe for passengers and crew to breathe without needing supplemental oxygen, as it provides sufficient oxygen levels for normal, unpressurized breathing. SOURCE: AI.

NOTE: After I uploaded my post, my brother Brian emailed me some key bits that add to the story:

Couple of things from your high school story which are different from my recollection. The windshield was cracked, nor shattered and we dropped from a cruising altitude of about 30,000-33,000’ to around 10,000’ - as you mentioned in your blog. There was no announcement about the landing gear but what tipped the passengers off as to a problem was the flight sergeant came down the aisle to a point behind the wing and used a flashlight to see what was going on with the landing gear. Being experienced flyers, when the plane was circling for an extended period of time we could hear rumblings from those in the know, likely including Dad, that we were dumping fuel. It’s possible that the lack of any announcement was to keep the passengers calm though many were undoubtably anxious. It is a lovely story.

After our emergency landing, the pilot parked our plane well away from the hanger. Obvious reasons. We hurried across the tarmac as best we could in the bitter mid-night cold, me holding the hand of my youngest brother. I remember being thankful for my sealskin topped winter boots, the ones that I had worn a couple of months earlier in this class photo beneath. The plane was more than a city block distant from the waiting room. I wished that we had gloves.

Our school was on the base in a one-storey H-hut.
(SOURCE: War Museum - Oral History Program. Interview with Tony Humphreys ).

Weeks later, after starting in Grade 10 at my new school Lemoyne D’Iberville High School in Longueuil Quebec I wrote my account of our Gander emergency landing for a class assignment; What did you do in the holidays. The version published that spring in our yearbook included fourteen exclamation marks. I had yet to learn that when it comes to punctuation, less is more. (NOTE: I was in Grace 11 in France and subsequently Grade 10 in Quebec. Quebec’s version of Grade 10 was equivalent to Ontario’s Grade 11, the system used at Canadian military bases.).

Flight of Fear

The engines of the Yukon droned on monotonously. I rub my eyes drowsily; my mind was still fogged with sleep. Gradually I became aware of the insistent tapping on my stiff shoulder. What was the matter now? I had been sleeping on the floor under my chair. As I settled into my chair I noticed my younger brother anxiously pointing at me as he whispered “Seatbelts, Sharon. The sign says do ‘em up. Will you do mine up, please?”

Simultaneously the intercom squawked, “Attention all personnel! You will have noticed it's getting cold here. That is because the windshield has shattered and we are losing pressure. We must lower to one thousand [sic] feet. We must fly slowly since a minor flaw in our landing gear makes it necessary to fly with it down to avoid major difficulties. We must reroute to Goose Bay and will arrive there in 15 minutes. Please keep your belts fastened. Thank you!”

Twenty minutes later over the announcement system the voice droned expressionlessly, “We are now circling over Goose Bay to burn off excess fuel. We should land in twenty minutes. Do not worry. Everything is under control.”

Now I was not too dense to realize our situation! I knew that we were burning fuel so that we wouldn’t explode when we crashed! I took out a little white book that tells you what to do in case of an emergency. I put the book back. I had read it before not realizing the time that I would have to use its advice!

I looked at my four younger brothers who were happily playing the game, “I spy with my little eye.” Telling myself that I was worked up over nothing I suppressed a shiver and glanced out of the window.

Nearly screaming I gazed petrified at the scene below! We were very near the ground now, and I could make out the shapes below. I could count the number of clearly-defined vehicles. There were seventeen fire engines and ambulances! Did the stewardesses really say not to worry? I recounted the shapes on the ground. The ominous total of seventeen echoed hollowly in my mind. Seventeen was my unlucky number!

The plane started to land. I shut my eyes and felt myself stiffen. That was the wrong thing to do. The white book is said to relax. Impossible! I took a deep breath and relaxed slightly. I remembered Browning’s poem about hating that Death bandaged his eyes, and I resolved to see my death scene.

I looked out of the window. We had stopped! We hadn't crashed! I was alive! Seventeen wasn't an unlucky number after all! Or was it still? The plane made the number eighteen on the ground!

Once we had landed in the dark, albeit without incident, we waited in a cavernous waiting room with something like 120 men, women, and children. There were only two toilets, and the lineups were long. It would take time for the the arrival of the crew which had been called in to weld the undercarriage in place, a not-unusual MacGyver kind of move, and probably not the last or first time it had been used on such planes. As we waited, my brother Brian watched a toddler carefully stepping from arm rest to arm rest overtop the seated passengers. Then he misjudged, stumbled, and landed with one foot planted firmly in the crouch of an unprepared officer. Oops.

Brian also added other details to the bits that I had recalled: The plane didn’t leave from Metz, as Metz was the RCAF Command Centre and had no airfield. We actually left from Marville (#1 Fighter Base)*. We left late (3-4 hours) as the plane was delayed for unknown reasons. (Hmmm …) I remember flying over London and seeing all the lights so it would have been dark. We arrived at Gander at around 3 AM. I too recall the lights over London. As it was our first time to take such a flight, the sight of the lights snaking outwards from the heart of London was particularly striking.

It was daylight in Gander when the undercarriage of our plane was finally secured, we were refueled, and our plane was finally deemed good-to go. Because of the cracked windscreen, there was still no way to pressurize the cabin, so we flew much lower than normal. Beneath us, outlined by the winter snow, we could see granular details of people’s backyards and of cars driving on roads.

Late last year, I did a digital search to check out how accurate my memories of the incident had been, and perhaps to learn more. Surely, I thought, there must be a record online by now. There were lots of details when I searched “Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Canadair CC-106 Yukon crashes”, but nothing was a perfect fit with our event. There was no AI summary at the start of this initial query. Fair enough. Perhaps there was nothing on line. So, I tried a couple of Facebook queries. My first was to the “Ottawa’s Aviation History Since 1858” group:

“On Dec 21, 1962, our family flew from Metz France and were headed for Trenton when the cabin on our Yukon lost pressure (cracked windscreen?), and we had to detour to Gander. We arrived in the middle of the night, after circling to burn off fuel. Later, we flew to Trenton from Gander on the same plane, but with the undercarriage welded down. Any record of that? There were about 120 people on board - mostly families.”

My second Facebook query was to the Aviation History Gander Airport group. A posted photo of an emergency evacuation fit some of our known facts, but it was in daytime, and in warmer weather. Still, I asked: “What date was this?”, and also added: “I was on a plane that landed in Gander on Dec 21, 1962. We had been told that there had been a windshield problem. We then flew from Gander to Trenton with the landing gear welded on. I was 16 years old, and traveling with my family. We were returning from Metz, France.” Kent Peyton, admin of this site, replied to the query about this photo: “Nose wheel did not extend”.

Kent Peyton. Nose wheel did not extend.

That nose-wheel detail was a definite fit with our experience. The fact that this was clearly not a one-off made me even more curious. Had all of us - 120 men women and children – had an closer meeting with a possible death than we had been led to believe?

Two weeks later, in a follow-up search, an AI summary topped the response. Interestingly, this search response included all of my details – ones that I had only recently uploaded to the two Facebook pages. This was info which was mostly not to be found anywhere else online:

AI Overview

A specific Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Canadair Yukon aircraft made an emergency landing at Gander International Airport on December 21, 1962, after experiencing a pressurization failure due to a cracked windscreen.

Details of the Incident

Aircraft: An RCAF Canadair CL-44 "Yukon", a turboprop transport aircraft.
Date: December 21, 1962.
Route: The flight was en route from RCAF Station Metz, France, to RCAF Station Trenton, Ontario, carrying approximately 120 people, mostly military families returning home for Christmas.
Emergency: The aircraft experienced a rapid decompression (cabin pressure loss), reportedly caused by a cracked windscreen.
Action Taken: The crew initiated a rapid descent to a lower altitude where the air was breathable and diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, as an emergency landing site. The plane circled Gander to burn off excess fuel before landing in the middle of the night.
Outcome: The landing was successful, with no injuries reported.
Subsequent Travel: Following temporary repairs, the aircraft continued its journey to Trenton, but as a precaution, its landing gear was "welded down" to prevent a potential hydraulic failure from affecting the landing, meaning it flew at a reduced speed and altitude for the remainder of the trip

The fact of this confirmed what I had already been suspecting about AI. The way that it scrapes and uploads data with no indication of source or of accuracy. Perhaps I should have added something outrageous to my queries, such as ‘The interior of the plane was pink”. Would that “fact” then get included in an updated AI summary?

In one of the links in this subsequent search, the Canadian Warplane Museum linked me to more details about the Yukon planes.

CASPIR Warplane Serial # Search

· Yukon serial 15501 Crashed and destroyed at Alto de Toledo, 24 km west of Medellin, Colombia, on 22 February 1975.

· Yukon serial 15927 Disappeared on flight from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile, over Andes Mountains, on 20 June 1972. Wreckage has never been found.

· Yukon serial 15928 Scrapped after leaving runway on landing with gear partially extended on 10 October 1979. Hulk burned, apparently before any official investigation of the accident.

· Yukon serial 15931 Disappeared on flight from Lima, Peru to Maiquetia, (near Caracas) Venezuela on 27/28 August 1976, never found. Presumed crashed, written off.

· Yukon (Serial No. 15501, renumbered to 15921, later renumbered to 106921). Harold A. Skaarup Photo Military History). No. 437 (T) Squadron, RCAF Station Trenton, Ontario, shown beneath on the tarmac at 1 (F) Wing, RCAF Station Marville, France, 20 June 1963. This Yukon was later renumbered (Serial No. 106922). Sold 18 November 1971 to aircraft broker Beaver Enterprises. No Canadian civil registration known. Sold to Societe Generale d'Alimentation (SGA), registered as 9Q-CWN. First flight with these markings, in Canada, on 12 November 1973. Named "Hoto Mbio". Delivered, Montreal to Toulouse, on 18 November 1973. First commercial flight, Toulouse to Kinshasa, Zaire on 23 November 1973. Later stored in Luxembourg. Operator name changed to TRAMACO, Transports et Manutentions Commerciaux, by 1 February 1977, when commercial flights resumed. Stored at Kinshara from 1978. Scrapped there, 1 April 1983. (RWR Walker)

The fact that so many Yukon planes crashed, also made me reconsider my adolescent use of exclamation marks. Were they warranted? Perhaps? Unfortunately, I do not know the serial number of our plane, so I don’t know whether it met its end in a blaze of unglory. Perhaps some plane aficionado who stumbles across this post could winkle this fact out for me.

MISC: Some history of the 106 Yukon.

Firstly, the RCAF required a replacement for its C-54GM North Star. In 1954, a licence was issued to Canadair to build a derivative of the Britannia, which became the Canadair CC-106 Yukon/CL44. Canadair built 39 of these Yukon turboprop Rolls-Royce Tyne-powered aircraft, comprising 12 CC-106 Yukon for the RCAF and 27 CL-44D4 passenger/cargo variants for the civil market. SOURCE: Bob’s Gander History

POSTSCRIPT: I embarked on writing this post mostly for my family, my brothers, and their children, but also in case there might be any others from that flight, who might stumble across this post. Perhaps they will be able to add more. If I have misremembered or misrepresented any details, please let me know. Corrections will follow ASAP.

Grandma’s Brain

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 18:47:00 +0000

Yes, I know my mind is a fickle little bee
doting on a thousand thoughts, but I’m getting
better at chasing my mind back to the moment.
Traci Brimhall. This Beautiful Confusion.

For most of my life, I had assumed that I was pretty much neurotypical, but a young friend recently questioned me on this assumption, and I had to agree that he had a point. Now, at the start of my 8^th decade, I have also become more curious about whether uncommon brains might age differently than neurotypical brains? How are our strengths and weaknesses revealed in age-related cognitive tests? Is there anything that I should consider changing in either my expectations of life going forward or in how I live in the moment?

For several months last year, my husband and I kept losing the word for nectarine. Why was that word so elusive? Or was it not the word itself, but that once a word is lost, then it becomes harder to re-find? This elderly kind of forgetting - creeping aphasia - sounds like a weed. So how does this slowly invasive weed impact on my usual non-neurotypical approach to research and writing? How does it impact on what I am still good for?

About a decade ago, I passed out while driving (thank you vasovagal syncope) and later uploaded a piece about the experience (Crash test Dummy). There were two upsides to the aftermath of this event. One was that the only lasting damage was to the car (and a few bushes). The second was that a scan of my brain revealed that I had an age-appropriate brain. I loved that label. The image of my brain revealed the presence of dozens of small white specks. They looked like snowflakes – as if they had landed at the start of a light flurry.

No doubt, there have been more flurries since then, but in spite of this there is some research which hints that there may be some upsides to living with an aging brain.

As your brain matures, it actually gets better at many important things. One of the biggest strengths that comes with age is the ability to recognize patterns. With years of experience to draw from, decision-making often improves, especially in real-life situations that require careful thought. You also tend to get better at managing your emotions, and problem-solving becomes more effective because you’ve faced and learned from a wide range of challenges.

Your knowledge and use of language also continue to grow. Even if you occasionally struggle to find the right word, your overall language skills stay strong. In fact, your vocabulary usually keeps expanding well into your 70s, and your general knowledge increases over time. Many people also find that their storytelling skills improve—they become better at sharing ideas and experiences in ways that are thoughtful, clear, and meaningful. These strengths are a natural part of the brain’s evolution and a reminder that aging brings valuable mental abilities. Your Amazing Aging Brain: How It Changes and Thrives Over Time. Dr. Susan Borgaro, Clinical Neuropsychologist

My lifetime of being not too shabby at pattern recognition - and also of thinking outside the box - were both key to my being able to cobble together some bits of Irish history in my post: Seeking Ensign Jackson, although it wasn’t easy for me to find the flow. My creeping aphasia meant that I had to keep looking things up – not once, not twice, but again and again. Certain names kept slipping away with the same regularity as nectarine. It took me forever, and made me ask myself: why do I keep doing this? Then, I came across a quote which I had written at the opening page of my 2021 diary:

I wonder what writing is or can be. There is a prophetic or mysterious quality to it sometimes – when you are on the brink of something, and even before that, when you are attracted to a subject. It is a kind of magic …. It is an odd sensation, when on the trail of research, to also feel that the research has, in a feeling that cannot be fully articulated, been on the trail of you." The Ghost Orchard. Helen Humphreys.

Am I tracking a thought, or is a thought tracking me? Or do both happen simultaneously? It has always been true that when I am in the early stages of having a thought that it begins in a totally wordless form. Do such pre-thoughts begin in the so-called lizard brain? Or in the pre-frontal cortex? Elsewhere? Everywhere?

In Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst, the neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky opens with a chapter called The Behaviour, followed by the 2^nd chapter One second before, and then in subsequent chapters he tracks the hours before, then the days before, and then Back to the Crib, Back to the Womb and so on. He also explores how little control we have over where our thoughts take us.

Essay on Adam Robert Bringhurst

There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell.
Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four:
he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him.
Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam.

The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth,
fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth,
nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between:
he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these

is only an issue of whether the demons
work from the inside out or from the outside
in: the one
theological question.

Thinking is akin to an autonomic function. Like breathing, it keeps chugging along, with or without words, whether we are paying attention or not and whether we act or not. My own pre-thought moments - when I am conscious of them - feel as if they originate in that spot just behind my forehead. Perhaps this is a common experience. Perhaps this gave rise to the myth of how Zeus gave birth to Athena.

The "forehead of Zeus" is famously associated with the birth of the goddess Athena, who sprang from it fully grown and in full armor. After Zeus swallowed his first wife, Metis (the goddess of wisdom), he suffered a terrible headache. Hephaestus split Zeus's head with an axe, and Athena emerged, representing wisdom, strategy, and defensive warfare. AI Overview.

In order to take the next step - towards wording a thought - I am often drawn to locate a particular text. It is always my body, not my mind, which will know which shelf of books will hold the key to my thought, which book it will be in, and it is my fingers – again not my mind - that know how far to flip in from the last page. I always start at the back of a book, never the front – why? – I don’t know, but once I get to the right page, I always know exactly where the needed words will be. It is then that my non-verbal thought can begin to take shape. In words.

A couple of years ago, when Robert Bringhurst and his partner Jan Zwicky were visiting, I told them both about this, and Jan laughed out loud. Apparently, her brain also worked like that. More recently, after hearing Dennis Lee speaking in Vancouver, and then after rereading his latest book, Wrestling With Cadence: essays on writing and intuition, I came to suspect that so-called non-neurotypical thinking is perhaps not so uncommon. Lee’s own version of his pre-thinking experiences connect him to jazz, so it makes sense that he named them cadence.

We don’t have a word in English for “an array of blurts & squirts of non-verbal energy that take you over but they can’t be seen or heard by anyone else.” But I had to call the fool thing something. So I hijacked the closest term I could think of – “cadence.” There was nothing sacrosanct about the word, though; I could have called it Fred. p 18

Fred? That made me laugh. A few years ago, when my husband was dealing with recurrences of a tumour in his head (thankfully now long gone), we always referred to it as Fred in the Head. There is something about being able to name things that crystallizes thought. So, cadence it is.

Lee also described how the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam experienced the first stirring of his poems as a hum. His widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, described this and she believed that this was a not uncommon approach for poets:

As many poets have said – Akhmatova (in “Poem Without a Hero”) and M, among them – a poem begins with a musical phrase ringing incessantly in the ears; at first inchoate, it later takes on a poetic form, though still without words. I sometimes saw M. trying to get rid of this kind of “hum”, to brush it off and escape from it. He would toss his head as though it could be shaken out like a drop of water that gets into your ear while bathing.

But it is not only poets who begin their thoughts like this. The famous physicist Richard Feynman, would writhe on the floor on the floor and emit loud howls and whoops when he was in his pre-verbal thinking. For him, there was a visual element to this:

What I am really trying to do is bring birth to clarity, which is really a half-assedly thought-out pictorial semi-vision thing. … its all visual. It’s hard to explain.

As Lee points out, it is not insignificant that: Some of the seminal advances of modern physics were made during these painstaking joyrides in the intuitive field (p. 21).

As I follow my own joyrides in the intuitive field, the digital age has introduced two new conundrums. What is the starting point for a preverbal digital search? Also, what about community? Thoughts can only progress so far when we think in isolation. We all benefit when we have to work together with those who hold tenaciously opposing views - what is called adversarial collaboration. Engaging with those who would advocate competing hypotheses increases our capacity for self-correction, whereas on-line disagreements often end up in an entrenched stand-off.

Physical presence also matters, and I know that I definitely benefit from boots on the ground, hence my frequent trips to Ireland. Like words in books, it is being in the presence of people and places which both shape and enrich the start of my Irish research thoughts. As I write down the start of what I know – first for myself, followed by a more refined version as I think of sharing these thoughts with others - each thought becomes more complete. Slowly.

A couple of recent dreams revealed to me the probable reason why I chose to even write this post. In the first dream, I had entirely lost the capacity for verbal thought. Worse, it hadn’t felt as if I were dreaming. I felt awake, frozen in terror as my husband slept on beside me, blissfully unaware. The second dream was less terrifying because it clearly was a dream. In that one, I had lost my sight while driving a car. Such dreams tend to give voice to our subconscious fears. For me, they are probably: How long will I be able to think, to learn, and then to write and share and to continue to be of service? If not, when will this stop, and what next?

These days, it already takes me a lot longer to get to the nub of whatever it might be that I am thinking, but this is not unlike my capacity for walking. I can still do the recommended 10,000 steps per day, but I do them more slowly. As for my idiosyncratic approach to research? Well, that’s just me.

Three years ago, my granddaughter (now six years old) drew two circles for heads with eyes and mouths included, and with stringy lines hanging down for legs. The big circle was her father’s head, she said, and the little circle was hers. Together, they took up half the page. There was also an energetic scribble, a very energetic scribble, that took up the upper part of the other half of the page. It felt that it must have been important to her. What is this? I asked. Grandma’s brain, she said.

Intro for Michael Crummey and his novel The Adversary.

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 23:51:00 +0000

Annual Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts | Sechelt, BC. 2025 August

My disheveled hair - oh well- but Michael looks great.

On my hind legs, blathering on.

NOTE: I saved this as a blog post as a simple way to not lose it. By necessity, it was brief. The audience mostly wants to hear lots from the author - and way, way less from the presenter. Done.

After my first read of The Adversary, it was the cadences of Crummey’s sentences that stayed with me – that and his great strings of curses, often invented by transforming nouns into verbs. The way that he accomplished this put me in mind of Dennis Lee, James Joyce and Shakespeare, all masters of cadence.

Then, in my 2^nd read - after reading Guy Vanderhaeghe's essays, Because Somebody Asked me to: Observations on History, Literature and the Passing Scene - I experienced how The Adversary can help us to arrive at a more deeply felt sense of our own times.

The characters of Widow Cain and her brother Abe are textbook examples of what we now call The Dark Triad: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Metastatic evil, such as that which afflicted the fictional community of Mockbeggar, takes root and flourishes when there is a combination of three things: deep inequality; a validating religious and cultural landscape; and no effective feedback loop to rein it all in, to constrain it.

In The Adversary, Abe Strapp’s ruthlessness combines with his feral unpredictability and his insatiable desire for retribution. Serving as Justice of the Peace gives him the legal cover and clout as he arrests his competitors without legal cause. Because of his government post, he faces no effective social censure in spite of his Strip-Me-Naked booze sales, his gambling, and his prostitution ventures. The Beadle - and this character is key – is his Enabler.

What if we substituted the fishocracy of Newfoundland’s early 1800s for our current experiences of the techno-digital-otocracy? Or what if we compared the impacts of the early 18^th century merchants to those of our current oligarchs? The quality of the light and chill suffered by the defenseless who are doomed to live in the underbellies of such times is equivalent.

Thankfully, the extremities of such realities as experienced in the fictional town of Mockbeggar need not continue to be like that forever and forever. In The Adversary, Crummey has also created the characters of three children, all raised by Quakers, whose lives embody love, loyalty to service, and a sense of shared purpose. A more holy triad. One of them even gets the last line in the novel. I plan to hold on to that.

For more links and reviews see: The Adversary

ADDED: Here are bits from Vanderhaeghe's book which influenced my second reading of The Adversary

Because Somebody Asked me to: Observations on History, Literature and the Passing Scene. Guy Vannderhseghe. 2024 Thistledown Press.

Pg	Notes
145	How often do we turn on our television and hear someone say about some grisly event, “You could never have made me believe that this could happen here.” But the novel also explored the phenomenon of evil on the largest stages, evil on a national or international scale, those arena where territorial ambitions run amok, where wars are purposely fomented, where people’s rights are ruthlessly trampled. I waned to show that the perpetrators of evil in the small stage often share the psychology and character of evil that has the greatest scope and consequence. [referring to his novel August in Winter.]
146	History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance … The encounter between character and circumstance is essentiall a story.” [Quoting the Canadian historian Donald Creighton.]
268	“Many historians continue to treat their ‘facts’ as though they were ‘given’ and refuse to recognize, unlike most scientists, that they are not so much found as constructed by the kinds of questions which the investigator asks of the phenomena before him” [Quote from Hayden White The Burden of History.]
270	Stories are not lived; there is no such thing as a real story. Stories are told or written, not found. And as for the notion of a true story, this is virtually a contradiction in terms. All stories are fictions. Which mean, of course, that they can be true only in a metaphorical sense and in the sense in which a figure of speech can be true. Is this true enough? [From Hayden White The Content of the Form.]
317	[Hilary] Mantel knows that historians and historical novelists edit our pasts, but she also knows that every human being indulges in that editing. Mantel writes, “It is the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writinigs, we rewrite their lives.”

Seeking Ensign JACKSON

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:08:00 +0000

Seeking Ensign JACKSON - and the Siege of Derry

2003 was a momentous year when it came to me learning more – way more - about my Irish ancestors. Christine WRIGHT (1941-2022) had given me carte blanche to copy and use all the family history tucked away in dozens of rooms at Gilford Castle by “Aunt Mollie” née Mary MENARY (1872-1946). One of my first discoveries had been a letter from my grandmother about her visit -in the 1920s – to Gilford Castle. With photos of her and my father. It took me the next two decades to record and organize the thousands of family photographs and documents stored at the Castle. When Christine sold the property in 2022, I was a witness on the deed of sale. It felt fitting.

Thanks to each of our families having inherited duplicate silver bowls [Blog posts: The Quest for the Silver Bowl.and Gilford Castle & the Gift of Christine], Christine and I soon discovered that we were both distantly related through “Aunt Mollie”, one of the granddaughters of David JACKSON (1814-1889), and therefore one of my many JACKSON cousins. Mollie was also the grandmother of Michael WRIGHT (1928-1995), my 3^rd cousin, and Christine’s late husband. I later learned, much to my chagrin, that Michael and my father had once duked it out over a shared – albeit small - family inheritance from one of their cousins, a bachelor farmer who had died in Australia [George Austin Thompson BROWN (1902-1963)].

Although there are no more unseen Gilford archives for me to record, I continue to make new discoveries. A letter - 1960 November 1 -from Aiken McClelland to James Francis Wright – included a sentence which recently hooked my curiousity:

Through the Jackson and White family you could also claim relationship with the Chichester-Clark and Clark of Upperlands families.

Two decades later, I had learned enough to suspect that the Jacksons of Tobermore would be the most likely JACKSONs to be closely related to the CLARKE aka CLARK family of Maghera, although nothing had connected them – yet - to my JACKSONs of Liscalgat & Urker, Co. Armagh. who in turn were probably descendants of the JACKSONs of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland and Coleraine, Londonderry.

In what follows, I have highlighted words such as possibly, probably, allegedly, likely, and supposedly so that certain “facts” don’t get taken as certainties. With that in mind, here goes.

Tobermore and Maghera are only three miles apart.

In his 1823 publication, Rev. John GRAHAM (1744-1844) alleged a connection between CLARKs and JACKSONs by quoting the following line:

From Tubbermore we Ensign Jackson saw. [Stanza XXVII]. From Londerias (1699).

and following it with:

Messrs. Alexander and William Clark, of Maghera, and Alexander Clark, of Upperland, Esq., are descended] from this Ensign Jackson.” SEE: 1823 Derriana, Consisting Of A History Of The Siege Of Londonderry And Defence Of Enniskillen, In 1688 And 1689, With Historical Poetry And Biographical Note. .

MY NOTE: An Ensign was the lowest-ranking commissioned officer, an entry level position for young men. They carried the regiment's colors, a task which was not without risk.

CONTEXT: The Pamphlet Wars began in the mid 1600s in Ireland, and continued with the contemporaneous and earliest histories of The Siege. The effects of them were not unlike the effects of today’s social media. Known facts, and gossip were frequently mashed together and then published in versions which could best be described as truthiness, with Presbyterian authors duking it out with Establishment Church authors and vice-versa. Karen A. Holland in Disputed Heroes: Early Accounts of the Siege of Londonderry tracks the impact of these publications on our understanding of The Siege.

· 1689. George Walker, A Vindication of the True Account of the Siege of Derry in Ireland (London: Printed for Rob. Clavel at the Peacock, at the West-End of St. Paul's, 1689), p. 25

· 1690. Mackenzie, John (1690). A Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry. London: Richard Baldwin. OCLC 220182259. Mackenzie's history A Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry or, The Late Memorable Transactions of that City Faithfully Represented, To Rectify the Mistakes, and Supply the Omissions of Mr. Walker's Account each accusation against Walker is paralleled by a reply from an anonymous friend as recorded in "Mr. John Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry, A False Libel: In Defence of Dr. George Walker, written by his friend in his Absence

· 1699. Joseph Aickin Londerias or a Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry (1699),

· 1705. John Mitchelburne in his five-act tragicomedy Ireland Preserv'd or The Siege of Londonderry (1705).

Based on earlier publications, later versions added to the stories– sometimes factually, sometimes not.

· 1794 Derriana: A Collection of Papers relative to the Siege of Derry , and Illustrative to the Revolution of M.DC.LXXXVIII Printed and published by G. Douglas, 1794. NOTE: George DOUGLAS. SOURCE: The Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800.

· !823 Derriana, Consisting Of A History Of The Siege Of Londonderry And Defence Of Enniskillen, In 1688 And 1689, With Historical Poetry And Biographical Notes

· 1861 The Siege and history of Londonderry. (J. Hempton, Diamond;, 1861), by John Hempton, Thomas Ash, John Mackenzie, and George Walker (page images at HathiTrust). NOTE: Just to add another layer of confusion, when Hempton reprinted AICKIN’s Londerias from DOUGLAS’s Derrianna he renamed it: Londeriados.

· 1873 A History of the Siege of Londonderry and Defence of Enniskillen, in 1688 and 1689 by Rev. John Graham. Maclear & Co. Publishers, Toronto. Published 1873, page 338 [on p 216 – or 249 in various pdf versions]

So, was there an Ensign JACKSON and did he come from Tobermore? Maybe yes. Maybe no. It helps to track the sausage-making aspect of how historical truth gets created. It often begins with first creating a case (the gut-casing of sausages is a nice metaphor) and then filling it with scraps of this and that.

THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY OF ENSIGN JACKSON

1699 LONDERIAS

(Thanks to Sean Bardon, Armagh Museum for finding the hyperlink to the original publication)

Londerias
OR, A
NARRATIVE
Of the SIEGE OF
London-Derry
Which was formed by the Late King
James the 18^th of April and Raised
The 1^st of Augst, Anno Dom. 1689
Written in Verse by Joseph AICKEN
DUBLIN
Printed by J.D. and S.P. at the back of Dick’s
Coffee-House in Skinner Row for the Author
and Sold by him at his school near Essex Bridge
and by the Booksellers of Dublin 1699

MY NOTES: Probable connections between people and places

· J. D. - John DUNTON (1659-1733) was a bookseller/publisher who held regular auctions at Pue’s Coffee shop. He founded the Athenian Society to publish The Athenian Mercury, and when he visited Ireland from London for eight months in 1698, he also wrote The Dublin Skuffle. In it, he recounted a meeting with Mr. James JACKSON of Drogheda, son of the Drogheda Alderman Richard JACKSON. I am including this passage because the Drogheda JACKSONs possibly connect to both the Coleraine and Armagh JACKSONs. [For more, see:Jacksons of Drogheda - Detective work and Drogheda and a Perfect Day]:

this gentleman [James JACKSON] resolves to live a bachelor, which I could not but wonder at; for doubtless Nature meant him a conqueror over all hearts, when she gave him such sense, and such beauty (for he's a very handsome man). His wit sparkles as well as eyes; and his discourse charms as well as his beauty; and I found by a little talking with him, that his mind is none of those narrow ones, who know one thing, and are ignorant of a thousand; but on the contrary, it is so very large, that although it cannot be said Jackson knew everything equally well, it is most certain, he can give an excellent account of all things; but though his soul is enriched with every virtue, yet I thought the most remarkable thing in him was his great humility and readiness to serve a stranger (for I might pass as such, never having seen him, but a minute or two in London).

JACKSON introduced DUNTON to Ellis WALKER the ingenious translator of Epictetus, who was a schoolmaster of Drogheda, and who was also a fellow schoolmaster who AICKEN would likely have met..

· S.P. was Stephen POWELL, a bookseller at Fishamble at the back of Dick’s Coffee Shop and partnered with many known printers/publishers and booksellers over the years, including Francis DICKSON. DUNTON described him as a wit whose repartees were ‘quaint, apposite and genteel’, neither scurrilous nor profane, ‘tis impossible to be sad if he sets upon it’. He and his wife Deborah had children baptized at various churches: St. Michan’s, St. Nicholas Within, and St John’s. In the early 1700s, his business was in a building beside the Crown Tavern, on Fishamble Street, a property which was possibly owned by Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706), or at least bordered on some of Samuel's leases at this time. SOURCES: Samuel Jackson - Gleanings of a Life; and Dictionary of the Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800. M. Pollard [aka Mary POLLARD], 2000. London Biographical Society. p 469; and A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland From 1668 To 1725.

· Dick’s Coffee-House in Skinner Row. Dick’s Coffee Shop was established by Richard PUE of Pue’s Occurrences fame, a newspaper proprietor, book seller and coffee-house-keeper, described as a Witty and Ingenious Man, makes the best Coffee in Dublin … has a particular knack at Bantering, and will make rhymes to any Thing. [SOURCE: Dictionary of the Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800 (p. 473)]. The coffee shops were where many of the merchant class, the legal and political class and also printers and booksellers – many with connections to Maghera and Tobermore - gathered to gossip and talk politics.

· school near Essex Bridge Essex Bridge [aka Grattan Bridge] was built in 1676. Many residents in the vicinity had family ties and business interests with families from Derry and Coleraine.

PAGE 32 OF LONDERIAS

From Tubbermore we Ensign Jackson saw.

[Stanza XXVII]. Page 32 in Londerias.

1794 George DOUGLAS’s PRINTING of DERRIANA
Derriana: A Collection of Papers relative to the Siege of Derry , and Illustrative to the Revolution of M.DC.LXXXVIII

MY NOTES:

· Printed by G. Douglas. The Dublin printer George DOUGLAS was based in College Green 1770-1771 when he partnered with William SPOTSWOOD (1753-1805); then he was based in Derry 1772-1796 after which he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1797 probably after printing several issues of the Londonderry Journal. Before emigrating, he married the widow of James STEVENSON (d. 1789), a rival bookseller in Derry. Although the printing and bookselling businesses of DOUGLAS, SPOTSWOOD and STEVENSON were based in Dublin, they all had connections to Co. Londonderry. SOURCE: The Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800. DOUGLAS and SPOTSWOOD were often mentioned in Derry leases in both Maghera and Tobermore. Another connection of them to Derry is that the vicinity of Essex Bridge [aka Grattan Bridge] was also where George DOUGLAS later sold his books, and was close to where AICKEN’s school had been.

MY NOTES:

· The fragment - supposedly with eight pages of the original Londerias missing - was described as An Historical poem, a Fragment. When comparing the text of the 1699 publication of Londerias, I count 5 pages and a blank page to be missing - not 8. This 1794 Derriana version of Londerias was the first to be based on the fragment of the text found in Armagh.

The following "POEM" was lately found in
the Library of a Gentleman at Armagh;, but in fo
mutilated a state, as to want the Title, and the whole
of the two first Sections; it is even to be regretted,
that some parts of the Dedication, with the name of
the "Orator," are also loft. – It evidently was writ-
ten shortly after the Siege; and as it relates circum-
stances not mentioned in any of the “Narratives,”
and contains the names of the principal perfons who
took an active part in thofe perilous times, the Editor
has thought it not unworthy of publication.
L.DERRY 1790

1823: The 1799 DERRIANA was republished in a new edition.
Derriana, Consisting Of A History Of The Siege Of Londonderry And Defence Of Enniskillen, In 1688 And 1689, With Historical Poetry And Biographical Notes, &c. By The Rev. John GRAHAM, M. A., Curate of Lifford, in the Diocese of Derry, 1823,

Just as the 1794 version of Derriana had done, Rev. John Graham, a Church of Ireland clergyman, and a senior officer of the Orange Order, also attributed the origin of the fragment of Londerias to Armagh. He also added his personal opinion of the author of Londerias (my highlights):

1. The homely verse of a manuscript, said to be found in a gentleman’s library about thirty years ago [NOTE: This would have been the fragment included in DOUGLAS’s 1794 printing], and which, mutilated as it has been, by a loss of eight pages in the most interesting part of it], records more of the names and circumstances of the defenders of Londonderry, than any of the other accounts which we have had of the transcartions of that eventful time. The illiterate, but amusing poet, thus describes …–a “rustic poet” [p68; p 66 & p99 in pdf]

2. The poem found at Armagh records so many names and probable circumstances not mentioned by any of the journalists of this siege, that a transcript of the most curious parts of it, with a few verbal amendments, and some attempts to polish its rustic versification, cannot but be acceptable to all who deem the preservation of the history of our country to be an object of importance to posterity. P77

3. This city [Londonderry] is thus ingeniously described in the homely verse of a mutilated manuscript, said to be found in the library of a gentleman at Armagh, about 30 years ago, and published by Mr DOUGLASS, with WALKER’S and M’KENZIE’s Diaries etc in 1794. p239

Was GRAHAM’s repeated use of the word: said done to distance the writer from some inconvenient fact? Who was this gentleman who had a library in Armagh? Some possibilities to consider:

· Since Rev John GRAHAM served as Rector of Maghera in 1809, he would likely have heard several local accounts of the siege. Is it credible that this fragment - found in Armagh - was the only copy of Londerias that GRAHAM would have seen?

· When it comes to DOUGLAS-STEVENSON links to Armagh, a James STEPHENSON of Killyfaddy, Co. Armagh had married into the CLARKE aka CLARK family of Maghera, Co. Londonderry. In a subsequent generation, a member of a Derry-based DOUGLAS family had also married into the CLARKEs. Could either of these STEPHENSONs or DOUGLASs have been GRAHAM’s source for: Messrs. Alexander and William Clark, of Maghera, and Alexander Clark, of Upperland, Esq., were they descended from this Ensign Jackson.”?

Sean BARDEN, curator of the Armagh Museum and author of several books on local history, and one of those helpful mentors to folk like me, recently suggested a few other sources:

In Graham’s Derriana online, p32, GRAHAM mentions the Armagh men who were there and refers to James Stuart’s Historical Memoirs of Armagh (whom he calls Stewart). Stuart mentions the Armagh men who took part in the siege (see p417) with interesting footnotes. He mentions Aiken’s book (not by name) but in one of his footnotes concerning Cochrane he also (rather enigmatically) writes, “Manuscript account of John Cochrane, which belonged to his grandson, the late R. Cochrane”.

Sean asks: Could this be the elusive Armagh manuscript? It seems that the Armagh fragment may have been archived in the British Museum. If so, with perhaps an ex libris bookplate?:

… in a remarkable document known as the Armagh poem, written at the time of the siege, or immediately after, by Joseph Aicken, entitled "Londerias." This fragment, discovered at Armagh, was published in Dublin in 1699, and a copy, of this date, is preserved in the British Museum. Foulis Castle: and the Monroes of Lower Iveagh,1929. Horace Granville Monroe.

MORE ON AICKEN

Contrary to Rev. GRAHAM’s description of Joseph AICKEN as an illiterate, but amusing poet, he was instead a distinguished schoolmaster. He had already published The English grammar of 1693 – intended for schools to be able to teach English: without the Assistance of Latin. SEE: A Cultural History of the English Language. It may be that he chose to write in doggerel because that approach would take root in the semi-literate oral culture. It was also not an unknown form to be used by the educated class. For more on AICKEN, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography adds:

… he flourished between 1693 and 1705 as a schoolmaster in Londonderry at the time of the Siege, and later, in Dublin, and that he wrote works on English grammar.

Given this, perhaps AICKEN taught in both Dublin and Derry. In Disputed Heroes: Early Accounts of the Siege of Londonderry Karen A. Holland in New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 18, No. 2 adds to what we know of AICKEN:

· Although he [AICKIN] never specifically refers to his own firsthand knowledge, Aickin "boldly avers" that in Londeriados he has accomplished the only full account of the events of the Siege of Londonderry as he relied upon a variety of sources "having had my informations from good hands, besides the advantage of the printed Narratives "[NOTE: The Londerias got changed to Londeriados by Hempton in his The Siege and history of Londonderry. (J. Hempton, Diamond;, 1861]

· Aicken chose to record the events of 1689 in epic poetry, reflecting his study of English, Latin, and Greek, which he hoped to impart to his students through "a rational and expeditious method" of teaching.

· The choice to record the events as an epic poem is significant: Aickin consciously selected a genre that traditionally recounts the story of great actions and events that create a nation or a culture, as Virgil had recounted the history of Rome and the foundation of its empire in the Aeneid. Aickin intended to do the same for Protestant Londonderry.

Later accounts of AICKEN allege that he was not a schoolteacher but rather a medical doctor and/or soldier (but without documentation to back up these claims). NOTE: Near the close of the Londeriados version there is at least a reference to a Dr. Aickin’s skill in healing, but there was no reference to his military participation in the Siege. As Holland points out:

· … in 1999, Patrick Macrory and T. G. Fraser provide a very different description of the author of Londeriados, asserting the epic was composed by a doctor called Aickin, who fought valiantly for the garrison of Londonderry throughout the siege. SEE also: Patrick Macrory, The Siege of Derry (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980.

· McBride also refers to Aickin as a Derry soldier. SEE: Ian McBride, The Siege of Deny in Ulster Protestant Mythology (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997)]

It is likely that two similarly named AIKENs were conflated and the newer version dominated in later versions of the history of the Siege. In 20th October 1960, in his opening address to the Ulster Medical Society, Joseph Alexander Love JOHNSTON, the President of the Ulster Medical Society mentioned three doctors being present during the Siege of Londonderry: viz., Dr. Joseph Aicken, Dr. Herman and a Mr. Alexander Lindsay, and the latter was killed by a bomb. Again, no sources. As it is often said: History repeats itself; Historians repeat one another. The same is true for amateur family historians.

It was in the 1932 annotations of Derriana that I first encountered the forename Thomas attributed to Ensign JACKSON. [If what follows is too brain numbing, please skip to IN CONCLUSION.]

1932 FIGHTERS OF DERRY – SKETCHES of PEOPLE in LONDARIAS
Fighters of Derry: Their Deeds and Descendants Being a Chronicle of Events in Ireland During The Revolutionary Period 1688-1699. (published 1932). William R. Young

140 ENSIGN THOMAS JACKSON of Derry.

“Londeriados” in his muster of the forces for defence of Derry, has the following line
"From Tubbermore we Ensign Jackson saw”
This is Tobermore near Castle Dawson. From other sources we know that Ensign Thomas Jackson resided at Drumbally-Hagan Clark; Tobermore in the vicinity of the Jackson Clark’s estate of Largantogher. The Jacksons, like the Dawsons of Castle Dawson, came from Westmoreland, and were connected by association, if not by blood.

MY NOTES – verifying where possible.

· Drumballyhagan Clark, Parish Kilcronaghan, Barony Loughinsholin was where Clark JACKSON, son of William JACKSON of Jacksons of Tobermore held leases, as did Clark’s father William JACKSON sr.

· Jackson CLARK’s estate was at Largantogher, Parish Maghera, Barony Loughinsholin.

· Tobermore, Parish Kilcronaghan, Barony Loughinsholin where Jacksons of Tobermore also held leases.

· I do not know how the William JACKSON sr of Tobermore is connected to other JACKSON lines, including any proven connection to the JACKSONs of Westmorland and Coleraine..

· Thomas: I have found no leases or other sources connecting a Thomas JACKSON to Tobermore or to Drumballyhagan Clark. If there any, documents have yet to be found.

· Dawsons of Castle Dawson, Col Adam DOWNING (1666-1719) married Anne JACKSON (1693-aft 1718), daughter of John JACKSON (1630- btw 1688-1693) of Bellaghy.

The original settlers of the Jackson name came to Ulster in Charles I’s reign. There were two brothers, viz. Lancelot at Ballymacarret, in 1639, and Thomas who obtained about the same time a lien on lands in the vicinity of Coleraine from the Irish Society. Prospering in his undertakings he acquired considerable estate. He built Jackson Hall overlooking the River Bann, and married Susannah, daughter of Sir Tristram Beresford, Bart in 1650 (see No. 45 Beresford) There were three sons of this match: (1) Thomas the Ensign Thomas of this sketch. He was J.P. for Co. Derry in 1677. He served all through the siege, and lost his life at the Battle of the Boyne. (2) Samuel, M.P. For Coleraine, 1695-1703. (3) William, M.P. for Co. Derry in 1697.

MY NOTES – Verifying facts - plus a few corrections

· Ballymacarret [Ballymacaret, Parish Knockbreda (Castlereagh Upper portion), Barony Castlereagh Upper, Co. Down. Residence in Ballmacarrett called “Jackson Hall”: with lawn and garden, all in the very best order, at present in the occupation of William HALL Esq. as tenant from year to year. BNL Apr 9 1864 A year earlier, an article in the Belfast Morning News on Destitution in Ballymacarrett listed ratepayers including William HALL, Jackson Hall; John CLARKE, Ballymacarrett and Hugh DOUGLASS, Ballymacarrett amongst a few dozen other names of interest. Also: April 19, at Jackson Hall, Ballymacarrett, the wife of R.B. Hall, solicitor, of a daughter. BNL Apr 15 1857. NOTE: This Jackson Hall is not the one near Coleraine owned by JACKSONs of Coleraine, although if we could get further back, all bets are off when it comes to family connections.

· Thomas –Given that this Thomas JACKSON signed a lease in 1639, presumably he was of age when he signed it. If so, he would have been born before 1618. Possibly he was a yet-to-be-discovered son of William JACKSON (1575-1626) and Mary SLATER (1575-aft 1626) of Kirkby Lonsdale, hence a brother of the Rev. Richard JACKSON (1602-1681) who was the progenitor of the dozens of JACKSONs of Coleraine. It is also possible that he wasn’t related to any of the JACKSONs who have been proven to be of Coleraine.

o 1622 The Muster Rolls record a Thomas JACKSON residing at Salterstown: The Salters lands were on the eastern border of the Drapers lands. SEE Maps at: Bill Macafee. There is a Salterstown Castle near the western shore of Lough Neagh, south of the village of Ballyronan, in Londonderry. It was built in 1613 by the "The Worshipful Company of Salters". It was a 2-storey house with a bawn with 2 circular flankers, on land granted to them during the Plantation - probably in the townland of Ballyronan Beg, Parish Ballinderry, Barony Loughinsholin,. There may be no connection to the Salterstown Thomas JACKSON, but Pynnar records that a Thomas JACKSON held a lease [sublet by Sir George Mainwaring] on 20 August, 1616, of the poll of Agharaugh [Agharah,?], and two acres of Gortnecoshe [Gartnasillagh?] in Co. Cavan. These places and the timeline are a fit with what Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915) had told his daughter Amy Oliver LLOYD: My Father came of an English family, one of whom went to Ireland as an officer in the Army in Queen Elizabeth's reign- was given a grant of land in County Cavan. There is significant evidence that Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915) was likely related to the JACKSONs of Coleraine. More dots still need to be verified and connected.

· Jackson Hall overlooking the River Bann, 1609. The Clothworkers Company Timeline. The Clothworkers were granted the land on the west of the Bann where they were responsible for building the Clothworker’s building at the end of the Bann Bridge and developing the Killowen area. When King James I granted a lease for the property to the Clothworker’s Company in 1609 there was a cottage located on the castle foundations. William JACKSON (1628-1688) demolished the cottage and built Jackson Hall. Later, it became known as the Manor House and more recently was demolished to form part of the car park at the rear of the County Hall. SOURCE: The Last Coleraine Militia.. THE MANOR HOUSE, Coleraine, County Londonderry, was a building of two storeys over a basement with a dormered attic, and six bays. It was originally built in 1680. It was enlarged and remodelled about 1770 by Sir Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789). He included a roof parapet of curving open-work, Chinese-style; and open porches surmounted by ball finials in front of the dormers. SOURCE: Lord Belmount Blogspot.

· Susannah, daughter of Sir Tristram Beresford, NOTE: These notes by Rev. Graham are inaccurate. Susan BERESFORD (abt 1645-1706) did not marry the Thomas JACKSON who obtained about the same time [1639] a lien on lands in the vicinity of Coleraine from the Irish Society. Instead, Susan BERESFORD married William JACKSON (1628-1688) on Jan 11,1665 and they had 15 children, including another Thomas JACKSON (1680-1751).

· Thomas the Ensign Thomas of this sketch. He was J.P. for Co. Derry in 1677. He served all through the siege, and lost his life at the Battle of the Boyne. NOTE: These notes by Rev. Graham are inaccurate. If a Thomas - J.P. for Co. Derry in 1677. - was the Ensign JACKSON - he could not be the son of Susan BERESFORD. He could be either the Thomas JACKSON who signed a lease in 1639, or else the Thomas JACKSON (1629-bef 1688) the brother-in-law of Susan BERESFORD and a brother of William JACKSON (1628-1688). His pre-1688 death date is a conjecture, based only on the fact that he was not mentioned in the list of living brothers mentioned in his brother William JACKSON’s 1688 will. Also, the Thomas JACKSON (1680-1751), son of Susan BERESFORD, did not die at the Boyne but his younger brother John JACKSON (b. aft 1668-1690) likely did. He was buried at Kirkby Lonsdale, possibly after he had been wounded in battle, and had been returned (dead or alive) to his ancestral home where other members of the family were staying at the time: SOURCE: The Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Registers. "Sepult - John Jackson fil M Susanna Jackson de Ireland."

· Samuel, M.P. For Coleraine, 1695-1703 NOTE: These notes by Rev. Graham are inaccurate. The Samuel JACKSON who was an MP was the Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706), son of Rev. Richard JACKSON (1602-1681), a brother of William JACKSON and brother-in-law of Susan BERESFORD.

· William, M.P. for Co. Derry in 1697 This was William JACKSON (1669-1712), son of Susan BERESFORD (abt 1645-1706) and William JACKSON (1628-1688)

The last of the three brothers left among other issue, William his successor at Jackson Hall, who left a son Richard, also of Jackson Hall. This Richard sat for thirty-nine years as M.P. for the borough of Coleraine, being Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1777 and a member of the Privy Council. He was married three times, and died in 1790. By his first marriage he had male issue (1) George, his successor in the estates, M.P. for Coleraine 1791-1796, losing his seat with the Union. He was created a Baronet in 1813 and died at Bruges in 1840. (2) Richard, who died in 1797. By his third wife, Anne, daughter of Charles O’Neill of Shanes Castle, there was issue an only daughter, Anne, who by her marriage in 1802 with the Rev Nathaniel Alexander afterwards (afterwards bishop of Down, and later of Meath), brought, in the failure of male issue, the representation of the Jackson family into the Alexander of Portgelenone line (see No 176 Alexander).

The old house of Jackson Hall, now termed “the Manor House”, still stands overlooking the Bann at Coleraine to attest the former importance of the Jackson owners.

MY NOTES – clarifying forenames (so many repetitions – they are hard to follow).

· William: William JACKSON (1695-1744) MP of Derry, son of Capt. William JACKSON (1669-1712) son of Susan BERESFORD.

· Richard: Sir Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789), son of William JACKSON (1695-1744) & Frances EYRE (1711-after 1730)

· George: Sir George JACKSON (1766-1840), son of Sir Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789) & Anne O’NEILL (1737-1781)

· Richard Richard JACKSON (1768-1797), son of Sir Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789) & Anne O’NEILL (1737-1781)

· Anne: Anne JACKSON (1766-1837) wife of Rev Nathaniel Alexander (1760-1840)

· The old house of Jackson Hall Now demolished and replaced by a parking lot.

Drapers Guild connections. Another bit hinting at where to look for links between the JACKSONs of Tobermore and the JACKSONSs of Coleraine would be the early deeds made to the various London Guild members when compared to the records of JACKSONs in the London Rolls . The townland of Tobermore, [Parish Kilcronaghan, Barony Loughinsholin] was one of the properties deeded to merchants in the Drapers Guild. Several of the JACKSONs of Westmorland belonged to the Draper’s Guild, as did Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706) - mentioned in Jacksons in London Rolls. He was one of several JACKSON and BERESFORD Irish MP and was also an uncle of William JACKSON (1695-1744) MP of Coleraine. Both Samuel JACKSON and Susan BERESFORD, mother of the probable Ensign Richard, died at Mary Street in Dublin on the same day: January 19 1706. Cause unknown.

Tobermore is halfway between Draperstown & Maghera.

NOTE: Ensign Richard JACKSON may have been of Draperstown, as some sources allege, but I have yet to run that to ground.

Another circumstantial link which increases the likelihood that Ensign JACKSON was in fact Richard JACKSON (1673-1730) are several family ties which surface in the regimental lists. After the siege was lifted in August 1689, the remnants of (1) Skeffington's Regiment were amalgamated with (2) Crofton's Regiment to form a new unit which was officially absorbed into William III's Irish Army as (3) Colonel Mitchelburne's Londonderry Regiment. NOTE: Col John MITCHELBURNE (1648-1721) married Susan BERESFORD (abt 1645-1706), widow of William JACKSON (1628-1688), mother of Richard JACKSON (1673-1730).

1698 JUNE 8. JOURNAL OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS VOLUME 12.
SEE ALSO: Siege and History of Londonderry ed Jon Hempton. John Hempton. 1861 p.468

IN CONCLUSION

Although both Rev. GRAHAM and Aiken McCLELLAND alleged that there was a family link between the JACKSONs and CLARKs - without documentation - I still cannot prove how the CLARKE aka CLARK family of Maghera are related to the Jacksons of Tobermore, let alone to the JACKSONs of Liscalgat & Urker, Co. Armagh nor to the JACKSONs of Coleraine.

What I have come to understand is more about how this sausage-making of history happened with respect to the initial Ensign JACKSON morphing into Thomas JACKSON of Coleraine. Even though I disagree with many of the assumptions included in Thomas Young’s 1932 Fighters of Derry: Their Deeds and Descendants Being a Chronicle of Events in Ireland During The Revolutionary Period 1688-1699, it deserves to be more widely read because of it’s extensive notes – largely accurate, I suspect, in spite of the factual disagreements that I have raised - about many of those who served on both sides of the Siege of Derry, not only about those who had served on the winning side.

It always bears remembering that all of us understand historical events from the perspective of our own particular culture and our own time and place. For me, writing and reflecting as a 21^st Century woman (a very old one), I find that homing in on what little we know of Susan BERESFORD and her children helps me to better understand Ensign JACKSON as well as the the impacts of his family on future generations.

Birth order shapes us to some degree, so it is likely worth noting that Ensign Richard was the 6^th child of fifteen live births. Most were still minors when their father William JACKSON died a year before the Siege of Derry. Here are their ages during the Siege (although some of them may have died before then):

· Age 19: Sarah JACKSON (1670-?),

· Age 18: Dorothy JACKSON (1671-?),

· Age 16: Richard JACKSON (1673-1730), married Anne BATES, then Elizabeth BOYD

· Age 15: Beresford JACKSON (1674-bef 1730) ,

· Age 14: Unnamed JACKSON (abt 1675-?),

· Age 12: John JACKSON (1677-1690), died age 13

· Age 12: Susannah JACKSON (1677-?)

· Age 9: Thomas JACKSON (1680-1751),

· Age 8: Rose JACKSON (1681-1738), Married Thomas BUNBURY of Cranavonane, Parish Tullow, Co. Carlow

· Age 7: Samuel JACKSON (1682-?)

· Age 6: Otway JACKSON (1683-?).

· Age 4: Jane JACKSON (1685-1744) married Henry WRAY of Castlewray, Co. Donegal.

Their mother, Susan BERESFORD, had been 44 years old at the time of the Siege and would live for another 17 years. The events of the Siege would have been seared into the emotional landscape of both her and her children, and then into their children as well. It is possible that the story suggesting that Thomas was the Ensign took root, because perhaps he himself had a memory of marching - unofficially or not - alongside his brother Ensign Richard. It is also possible that either Thomas and/or Richard had been staying with one of the JACKSON or CLARK families of Tobermore during the Siege, and that those families had passed on their version of events to be included in Derriana.

POSTSCRIPT: The Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne were not the only traumas that these children experienced in their early years. The death of their father, wich had been not long before the Siege, was followed by the marriage of their mother a mere seven months after the end of the Siege to Col. John MITCHELBURN. That marriage was short-lived and their mother moved to Dublin to live the last years of her life with her bachelor brother-in-law Samuel JACKSON, on Mary Street. Several of the children likely joined her there.

After Susan BERESFORD’s death, her son Ensign Richard commenced court proceedings against Col John MITCHELBURNE, the hero in many of the histories of the Siege of Derry (some of which he himself had written), but was no hero within the family. The Court ruled against him and ruled that the inheritance which Susan BERESFORD had received from her first husband, William JACKSON, belonged to Richard and his siblings. It is one of the flukes of history that the benefits of this judgement against MITCHELBURNE continue to flow to the current residents of Armagh. This is because the Richard JACKSON (1722-1787), who was the son of Richard JACKSON (1673-1730), became the resident landlord at Forkhill, Co. Armagh, and served as one of the more generous landlords of his time and place. As a result of having no surviving male issue, he left a considerable financial legacy, the remains of which continue to fund a charity which continues to dispense bequests to worthy local causes.

One last tidbit. Given when and where he lived, the Richard JACKSON (1722-1787) of Forkhill would probably have known the owner of the library in Armagh who had owned the fragmentary copy of Londerias that Rev. John GRAHAM had used. If we could nail down who this person was, it might add to how the story of Ensign JACKSON began, took root, and got passed on.

Regrettably, although some of the side bits of tracking this story have been great fun, I have failed to solve the mystery which triggered the start of it all. As Samuel BECKETT said in Worstward Ho: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. And I plan to.

ADDENDUM:

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History -- Siege, 1688-1689 -- Poetry

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History -- Siege, 1688-1689 -- Sources

A Particular relation of the great victory obtained by the Protestants in London-Derry, and the taking of the Duke of Berwick prisoner to which is added, an account of the English courage of Robert Caston, master of a small vessel, that engaged two French privateers, with the particular of that action. (London : Printed for Robert Baldwin ..., 1689)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History -- 17th century -- Early works to 1800

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History -- Early works to 1800

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- History -- Siege, 1689

Filed under: Londonderry (Northern Ireland) -- Siege, 1688-1689

Derry and Enniskillen in the year 1689 : the story of some famous battlefields in Ulster (W. Mullan, 1873), by Thomas Witherow (page images at HathiTrust)
The Siege and history of Londonderry. (J. Hempton, Diamond;, 1861), by John Hempton, Thomas Ash, John Mackenzie, and George Walker (page images at HathiTrust)

History by the Ounce

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 22:04:00 +0000

Thought experiment. I am standing beside a tall man who is much older than me. He has reddish auburn hair, whiskey on his breath and an air of certainty about him. He is dressed in a jacket, vest, shirt, breeks, stockings and boots. He is holding onto the reins of his horse, which stands quietly beside him.

This man is George JACKSON (abt 1718-1782), my 5^th great-grandfather. In my thought experiment, an inner voice tells me that I am limited to three questions. I could get it all wrong, spook him, and learn nothing. I fret that our memories, both his and mine, will have been shaped and reshaped by our culture, friends, family and more. My recent reading of a book of essays - Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit - is tangential, but it has been reshaping my approach to family stories. Solnit reflects on the need of truth seekers such as Orwell's character Winston, and at the same time the value of taking a meandering path to the truth.

… Winston's attempt to hold on to the truth of truisms – ‘Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth centre’ - is itself a desperate gesture of political resistance.” Elsewhere in the book, Orwell declares, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” which makes direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world likewise acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. P44
Thinking about Orwell’s roses and where they lead was a meandering process and perhaps a rhizomatic one, to deploy a word that describes plants such as strawberries that send out roots or runners to spread in many directions. The word was adopted by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to describe a decentralized or non hierarchical model of knowledge. “Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be,” they declared. “This is very different from the tree or root which plots a point, fixes an order”. The branching of trees and roots is often used as a model of lineage of the evolution of species or languages, as a family tree, as any chronological, branching transmission, which is why they say later, “The rhizome is anti genealogy.” p.125

I don't believe in ancestral guilt, but I do believe in inheritance, and Orwell came from people who benefited from the imperial enterprise and the domestic hierarchies and who sometimes held real power. Perhaps the most telling thing for me is how easy it was to trace his ancestry back for generation after generation. The very traceability is about people who were entered into the record, who were recognized, official. They were in the picture. p 168.

Michael Crummey, the 2025 winner of The Dublin Literary Award has also been shaping my approach:

“The only way to write a story that will have any kind of universal appeal – your only hope for it – is to be as specific and as local as you possibly can, so that the world you’re creating feels authentic even to people who don’t know the details,” he says. “If you’re able to do that, then your story has a chance of travelling.” Interview with Michael Crummey.

The man in my thought experiment, not unlike the father in the following Crummey poem, would have an unreliable memory and yet at the same time would not recall forgetting:

My father nods toward the coastline,
to the bald stone shoals almost as old as light.
That was 50 years ago, he says,
as a warning, wanting me to understand
that what's forgotten is lost
and most of this he cannot even recall
forgetting.
From What's Lost. Michael Crummey, in Hard Light. London, Ont.: Brick Books, 1998.

There is an approach to history called: history by the ounce which means starting by assembling all the small bits, and then niggling away at those things that do not fit. It has helped me to learn (as many others had learned long before me) that the Catholic King James and the Protestant William of Orange, who were warring against each other in the late 1600s in Ireland and elsewhere, were not only combatants but also father-in-law and son-law. Not only that, but the funding for their armies came from two competing Popes. One Pope backed the Catholic King James while the other Pope backed the Protestant Prince William. You can’t make this stuff up. It is this kind of forgetting – the kind that we cannot even recall forgetting – which deepens divisions when it is coupled with rock-hard certainty.

… it should also be noted that the seventeenth century bloodbaths became enshrined in Irish historical memory to an extent which finds no parallel elsewhere, not even in Germany, despite the devastation which that country suffered during the Thirty Years War. Thus, Ireland was atypical not because of the experience of religious conflict or its severity, but because of the way its memory and commemoration divided the country for the next few centuries. SOURCE: The Protestant Minority in Southern Ireland. Eugenio F. Biagini in: The Historical Journal. Vol 55. Issue 04. December 2012 p 1165

In 2019, as I was packing up after giving a talk to the Creggan Historical Society, a woman approached me – with some urgency in her voice – to tell me about a disturbing dream that she had kept on having. She had first had it in 1986, when she would have been a child, but it kept on being repeated and had haunted her ever since. In a follow-up email, she added more detail:

[I was] ... a very young child 7 or 8 years of age … on the left hand side of the river travelling in the direction of the church. There was a school house on my left hand side, long and narrow, with the gable facing towards the river. I was aware of the depth of the door in the palm of my hand as I opened it and could even feel the grain down the side of the door. The feeling inside the building was not good so I ran out quickly. I was aware of the sound of children in the background (like the noise you would hear in a playground).

In her dream, she was running as fast as she could along the river towards the church.

the river was flowing towards me and I could hear it roaring in my ears. Interestingly, there was a black and white collie/sheepdog running with me.

A friend who works with dreams and who stresses that a single dream can benefit from many interpretations, told me that the sheep dog, running along-side the dreamer (not chasing her), would generally be considered as both a powerful, and a positive symbol - an ally (sheep-dogging memory?). The message of any nightmare is: Wake up. Pay attention. The trigger for it could be personal, or it could be part of an archetypal journey representing the quest for identity. The depth of the door could come from the experience of the depth of the religious traditions entrenched within the schoolhouse or it could reflect the depth of the dreamer’s desire to explore, to understand. The feel of the grain down the side of the door is one of those particulars which adds a deeply visceral sense of texture to the meaning. Finally, rivers are historically seen as a source of spiritual strength, even when they are roaring and somewhat scary.

This child, this innocent, was travelling alone. Where was her family support? Her cultural support? Her spiritual/emotional support? What can this dream teach us about what to look for?

Martin Luther King’s most famous quote I have a dream is an example of how one person can transform memory into a shared dream and from there into a collective force for change. The private dreams that we all have, the ones that play out as we sleep, can also be a force for change. They can free us from the cultural forgetting which constrains us both as humans and as citizens.

Virginia Satir: SOURCE: Wiki.
Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem

In group therapy sessions which the psychiatrist Virginia Satir held in the 1980s, Satir would ask participants to describe an incident in their life which felt significant. Their fellow participants were then asked to act out the incident. The person who shared the story would then direct their fellow participants about where to place themselves on the stage, what tone of voice to use, and how, when and where to move. As in the novels of Michael Crummey, it was the particulars which mattered to Satir. The tilt of the head. The direction of the gaze. The position of the shoulders.

Sometimes a participant could not recall a family scene and so Satir would encourage them to simply invent one. This is where an intriguing kicker comes in. Afterwards, when these participants went home and told others about their experience, the invented details were often corroborated. The memory - supposedly invented - had turned out to be true.

Unfortunately, truth is not always remembered let alone honoured. Think of Cassandra - cursed by Apollo to see the future but to end up with no one believing in her predictions. The truths of the past can be dismissed as readily as the prophecies of a Cassandra. When the Creggan Parish dreamer made numerous enquiries at that stage as to the possibility of a school along that stretch of land she was assured there was nothing of the sort. But there had been such a school, probably right where her dream had found it. Probably with a gable facing towards the river.

Using old maps and memorials of deeds, and starting with the local particulars, there are two likely spots for this schoolhouse, both within the twenty-nine acres which had been deeded for the use of the school. An archaeological dig might supply the evidence needed to prove this.

· 1738 Jul 5 ROD: 97-166-677727 Image 383 Btw Thomas BALL of Urker [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper], Co. Armagh Esq. of the 1 pt & John HANSARD Esq. Secretary to Incorporated Society for Promoting English the Protestant Schools in Ireland of other pt. demised to John HANSARD Lands of Urker then in possession of Incorporated Society containing 29 acres or thereabouts as the same has been enclosed by said Incorporated Society – map annexed - Parish of Creggan Barony of the Fews for use of the Incorporated Society from 1^st May 1736 for lives [of royalty]for yearly rent of £3 12s 6p. WITNESS: Laurence PAIN of City of Dublin, Gent & Benjamin JOHNSTON Public Notary City of Dublin.

· 1740 Feb 13 ROD: 102-303-70250 Image 179 Frances HALL of Strangford Co Down Esq. Demised to John HANSARD Secretary to the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland all that part of the lands of Urcher [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper] then in possession of the said Incorporated Society ...29 acres.. to hold for the use of the Society from the 1^st day of May 1736... for lives of [royal princesses] John HANSARD [SEAL]

John Donaldson, in his Account of the Barony of Upper Fews, mentions that Protestant families connected to the linen industry had settled along the Creggan River prior to the opening of the school. Since a school would need road access, there are two roads leading to the river that are worth focusing on. The road at the Milltown bridge is down river from another road up-river at Liscalgat, the townland where JACKSONs had lived before they moved to Urker Lodge.

Even though the odds are that the school would have been sited on the river, there is a third possibility of a site for the school: Ball’s one acre [#28 – circled in red in the map beneath] was also deeded for the use of the school:

· 1737 Aug 24 ROD: 98-67-67647 Image 57 Thomas BALL of Urcher [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper] did make over to Hugh HILL. Minister of the Parish of Creggan. Trevor WILLIAMS Alexander McELROY, church wardens of said parish, one plot of land est. one plantation acre. being part of the Demesne lands usually occupied with or reputed as a Demesne of his Mansion or chief Dwelling House bounded to the east by the lands of Liscalgot [Liscalgat, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper]to the north to the Glebe [Creggan Bane Glebe, Creggan, Barony Fews Upper]] on the west by the lands of Urcher on the south by the said lands of Urcher. To hold to the said Church Wardens and their successors forever in Trust for the sole use of the resident Protestant Schoolmaster to teach the English tongue in the said Parish forever. said conveyance witnessed by John JOHNSTON & Hugh McMASTER both of the Fews of Co. Armagh, Gent.. Also witnessed by George MIDDLETON of Dublin. Signed Thomas BALL.

We still may not have an exact location for the school, but at least there is a short list of likelihoods. We might need shovels and trowels and the expertise of archaeologists to become certain. Until then, this dream has made the feel of this location visceral in a way that a map cannot. Dreams and maps offer us two ways of looking, and there is a third. Genealogy.

My ancestral connection to Creggan Parish Charter School in Co. Armagh, probably the school described in the dream, begins with my earliest proven JACKSON ancestor, my 5^th-great-grand-father, George JACKSON (est. 1718-1782), a man who we refer to as Old George. In 1735, he was hired as the first schoolmaster and lived on site.

Master George JACKSON received his 1^st quarterly salary of £2.10.0 Dec 3 1735.

SOURCE: TCD 5419. NOTE: If this date is correct, and it likely is, George would have been receiving payments for two years before the school opened. If his estimated birth date is correct, he would only have been seventeen years old, and unmarried when he was first hired. Since both are unlikely, his alleged birth date needs more verification.

In spite of his mismanagement of the school, mismanagement which was documented while he was still in the job of schoolmaster, he remained in that role for a full forty-seven years. After his death, his wife, Margaret McLAUGHLIN (1722-1797) - aka O’LAUGHLIN, served as mistress for another eighteen years while two of their sons, George & David, were the next two schoolmasters. For decade after decade, the benefits of child-labour flowed to my family, as it did to other owners of nearby farms and local linen-related enterprises. The beneficiaries of the labour of children were predominately, but not exclusively, Protestant. The students were predominately, but not exclusively, Catholic.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, several members of my family recorded the bones of our family history, and their version was that the school-mistress Margaret was supposedly a descendent of the Royal House of Tara. This is not impossible, perhaps through the Uí Néill dynasty, but there is no proof of this. It may be that this family account arose out of an attempt at some whitewashing of their family’s history while living in a predominantly Catholic parish.

Other than her death date, what little we have about Margaret comes from the Creggan Church parish records: 1744 "Mrs JACKSON to be payed for working ye surpus & the linen for the communion table and keeping ye vessels clean. As for Old George, our family stories describe him with some frequency as a gambler, and not a very good one, having lost significant family assets in a game of Ducks and Drakes. As a result of this, becoming a schoolteacher may have been his best (and perhaps only) option.

Mary Cumiskey’s Creggan Charter School 1737-1811 describes some of the JACKSON family’s decades-long time with the school, and their impact on hundreds of children – many of them named - during the decades of the JACKSON’s (mis)management:

· 1737 School opened. New Master, George Jackson and his wife Margaret ...knowledge of the linen trade was essential.... the position of Masters and Mistresses was filled by patronage. p28.

· 1781 Sept 28: An unscheduled inspection of Creggan revealed children in rags, many of them barefooted, the beds extremely dirty and the house in general, dirty and in great disorder p. 32

· 1799: Creggan Charter School was in deep crisis. The epidemic of scurvy was still raging, the Master’s reports were very incomplete, the children’s writing was bad and no inventory of furniture was sent, nor a catalogue of school books. The Society continued to send reprimands but with little response. p. 40

· 1808 – all the students sick with distemper. p23.

· 1809 December: In the opinions of this Committee, Creggane ought to be suppressed, the house being so old and originally ill-contrived and deficient of the necessary offices not adapted for 40 children and requiring a considerable sum of money to repair, or rather rebuild it, before it could be rendered commodious or creditable to the Institution.

· 1810 March: That the Master be informed, in answer to his application on the subject that the land must be delivered up to the original owner upon suppression of the school. He may go on in the cultivation of it in the usual manner for this season. p.45.

· 1811 School closed

SOURCE: Creggan Charter School 1737-1811. Mary Cumisky. See also my 2011 blog post: The Voice of Patrick Flynn.

In her History of the Jackson Family, Amy Oliver LLOYD (1874-1962), one of my 1^st cousins twice removed, recorded that Old George was not only a gambler, but was also locally (in)famous for his philandering. The ever-increasing accuracy and effectiveness of DNA tools could be useful in further pursuing this. As Amy recorded: He was noted for a wonderful skin, also his fondness for women! So much so, that even his great-great grandson, [Sir Thomas JACKSON (1839-1915)] said, whenever any girl for miles round had a particularly good complexion, the local people would say "Ah: She must be one of George Jackson's."

Records show that Old George’s son, George JACKSON (aft 1743-aft 1820) was a chip off the old block when it came to non-marital liaisons. After being found guilty of immoral interactions with Rose JOHNSTON, a daughter of a member of the Charter School board, he was fired and had to leave Creggan Parish. Based on parish records, he probably wasn’t even buried there. Had he been it might have been tricky. The twin walled enclosures of JOHNSTON and JACKSON graves are adjacent to each other and even their dedicated pews in the church were side-by-each.

Trinity College records: TCD 5240: Committee reports 7 October 1789

The Local Committees Report of the 29^th Septr the Revd Doctor Hamilton’s Letter of the 3^rd instant, the Petition of James Johnston and Rose Jackson otherwise Johnston his Daughter George Jackson the Masters Memorial and the Local Committees Certificate with respect to the said George Jacksons faithful discharge of the duty of office read: Resolved that it is the opinion of this Committee that the said George Jackson has by no means exculpated himself from the very immoral Charge alleged against him as stated in the said Petition and therefore that he is a very improper person to have the Care and Management of a Charter School and that it be recommended to the General Board to direct his removal from the office of Master of the said School and from the further service of the Society.

Family letters from the late 1700s, as well as a handful of legal documents, record that George jr. was living and practicing as a lawyer in Dublin, at least until the early 1820s. I have no idea what happened to young Rose. Did they marry? Perhaps. They were both of a similar social class.

These days, in Canada, Ireland, and in many other countries, we are at long last wrestling with the inter-generational legacies of residential and church schools. Thanks to the inspiration of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, our collective culture is taking a new approach towards addressing the truths of our pasts. Those of us who are descendants of the dominant culture are encouraged to atone. With my Old George being one of the skeletons in my closet, I find myself challenged to consider what actions I should take and what that word atone might mean.

In some versions of Christian theology, it is said that to atone means to seek to be at one with God. Our current secular version of morality seeks to be at one with Truth and Justice, but even this is not straightforward. What if we are guilty of confirmation bias, or what-aboutism, or of cherry-picking that particular set of facts that works best to put our own community of friends, relations and ancestors in a better light? What about the impact of power imbalances? What about availability bias – the impact of values on the algorithms used in digital searches?

The path to becoming at one with Truth can benefit from a whole range of approaches: songs, poems, dreams, stories – both oral and written – archives, archaeology and DNA. A deeper understanding of epigenetics may also come to add more to our understanding of inter-generational memory. At present it is indicating - in some studies - that at least some of our emotional wiring comes from the effects of juice around our genes (it is more complicated than this, but for now lets just call it juice), juice which is changed by experiences such as stress and can function like an echo from the past as it messages which parts of our inherited DNA to turn on or off (but not by changing our inherited DNA).

In 1983, my husband was in the midst of writing a fictional story about a woman who was a compulsive hoarder, but he was baffled about why she did what she did. So, he made an appointment with a therapist to have his character analysed. With a Carl Jungian level of synchronicity, the therapist’s next patient, who was waiting in a separate room, also happened to be a hoarder. Long story short, the therapist, believing that this could help her patient (and it did), gave my husband’s phone number to her patient. After this patient invited him to her split-level home, she toured him through all the rooms and hallways that were so full that entrance to many rooms was almost impossible. Then, she took him down to the basement. Down there, were dozens of boxes, filled with dismembered dolls. Heads in one set of boxes, limbs in other, torsos in another. Eventually, the therapist’s patient came to understand that her hoarding was an unconscious attempt to bury her memories of sexual abuse.

Since this therapist had never visited the home of her patient (understandable), it was a fiction writer with an eye to the real-world specifics that her patient needed to hear from in order to begin to heal. This approach has much in common with the history by the ounce kind of truth but is also an instance of the importance of imagination and intuition.

When Eudora Welty wrote Where Is the Voice Coming From?, a short story which had been triggered by the murder of the civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, there was no way that she could have known the particulars of his murder. The murderer had not yet been found. Even so, the particulars in her story accurately described the kind of man this murderer was, as well as many specific aspects of the time and place. Years later, Welty was interviewed about this:

“What I was writing about really was that world of hate I felt I had grown up with and I felt I could speak as someone who knew it.” Welty’s story was so accurate, her characterization of the murderer so precise, that The New Yorker changed several important details: Medgar Evers became Roland Summers, the time of the shooting shifted to a few hours after midnight, and Jackson became the nonexistent Thermopylae.

“The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what’s told alive.” Yet, for Welty, the novel is not an apolitical or morally neutral genre: “Indeed, we are more aware of [the novelist’s] moral convictions through a novel than any flat statement of belief from him could make us.” The novelist contributes to social change in ways that the journalist cannot.

“Great fiction,” Welty wrote, “shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean.”

New Yorker: Murder in deep summer.

Where Is the Voice Coming From? is included in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, and its powerful five pages are as visceral as the dream about Creggan School. This is how individuals and communities can come to internalize the why of the doll parts in our collective unconscious. Such stories take us more deeply into an emotional understanding of that 1970s slogan: the personal is political. The truths in fiction are best taken seriously. Informed intuition can take us further than how far we can go just with the tools of science (which also matter).

Two good examples – both are worth reading.

In Words to Shape My Name, McKenna’s novel follows several of the lesser known people connected to the United Irishman Edward Fitzgerald [see: Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald]. Much of the detail, like Welty’s, is invented (by necessity), and like Welty’s is probably true. While reading it, I recognized that my own feet had - in the 21st century - walked the same streets as Fitzgerald's. When one of the characters sang a verse of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or the Lament for Arthur O' Leary by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, an 18^th Century lament by a wife for a murdered husband [p237], this triggered another recognition for me. It is the poem which had inspired Doireann Ní Ghríofa to write her memoir A Ghost in the Throat. In it, she finds her own voice. Both books use the power of the particulars in ways that enable our feelings to not only anchor us more deeply in history but also to take us deeper into a revitalized understanding of the present.

Given that the personal is political it can also be true that both the personal and the political can be – and often are – intergenerational. As Colin Woodward points out in his many books and articles there is tantalizing evidence which suggests that our actions and values are like some unseen baton which keeps on being passed from generation to generation. Centuries-long immigration patterns have shaped the current day perspectives and values of America, and can help us to understand why their politics has become so divisive. By studying settlement at the level of electoral districts, which is more precise than going county by county, he has linked inter-generational cultural impacts to today’s voting patterns with startling conclusions (at least startling to me).

The Perplexing Geography of Abortion Opinion,

… there has never been one America but rather several Americas, most of them developing from one or another of the rival colonial projects that formed on the eastern and southwestern rims of what is now the United States. These regional cultures — “nations,” if you will — had their own ethnographic, religious and political characteristics, distinct ideas about the balance between individual liberty and the common good and what the United States should become.

… Absent a national abortion ban, the states in which women can terminate an unwanted pregnancy will largely be determined by the legacy of events, migrations, and conquests in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and the political science incentives they created in some places and not in others.

America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy and in The surprising Geography of Gun Violence
The geography of U.S. life expectancy — and the policy environments that determine it — is the result of differences that are regional, cultural and political, with roots going back centuries to the people who arrived on the continent with totally different ideas about equality, the proper role of government, and the correct balance point between individual liberty and the common good. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into Americans’ overall health and longevity are revealed, along with some paths to improve the situation.
… The reason the U.S. has strong regional differences is precisely because our swath of the North American continent was settled in the 17th and 18th centuries by rival colonial projects that had very little in common, often despised one another and spread without regard for today’s state (or even international) boundaries.
At Nationhood Lab, a project I founded at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, we use this regional framework to analyze all manner of phenomena in American society and how one might go about responding to them. We’ve looked at everything from gun violence and attitudes toward threats to democracy to Covid-19 vaccination rates, rural vs. urban political behavior and the geography of the 2022 midterm elections. This summer we’ve been drilling down on health, including a detailed examination of the geography of life expectancy published earlier this week. Working with our data partners Motivf, we parsed the rich trove of county-level life expectancy estimates calculated from the Centers for Disease Control data for the years 2017-2020 by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s County Health Ranking and Roadmaps project. We wanted to answer the bottom-line question: Is your region helping extend your life or shorten it?
“We don’t have these differences in health outcomes because of individual behaviors, it’s related to the policy environments people are living in,” says Jeanne Ayers, who was Wisconsin’s top public health official during the Covid pandemic and is now executive director of Healthy Democracy Healthy People, a collaboration of 11 national public health agencies probing the links between political participation and health. “Your health is only 10 percent influenced by the medical environment and maybe 20 or 30 percent in behavioral choices. The social and political determinants of health are overwhelmingly what you’re seeing in these maps.”

As I was writing this piece, the French historian Peter Nora had just died - days earlier - at age 95 [NYT, June 3, 2025]. Although much of his work had long fallen out of fashion, it had illuminated the role that chosen memories and identities play in the writing of history. We are all shaped by which events, people or actions our community has chosen to remember. He called them our lieux de mémoire. Sites of memory. Symbols of our shared identity. Recently, historians have become more focussed on what we are choosing to forget. When the bodies of neglected and forgotten babies are unearthed at Tuum in Ireland or when multiple children’s graves are discerned on the grounds of residential schools in Canada and the USA, we are unearthing more than long-dead children. We are unearthing our own ghosts in the throat. Our lieux de oubli.

Alex Haley in his books and TV series Roots: The Saga of an American family, and Queen: The story of an American Family used the story of his own family history to reveal much of what had been forgotten – and repressed - about the complexities of the lives of slaves. His version of the experiences of his great grandparents - somewhat fictionalized, but not necessarily untrue - became something of a lieux de mémoire for an entire nation. Written as popular history, it resonated with a vast audience.

In a startlingly romantic presentation of a relationship between a slave and her master, the slaveholder, Col. James Jackson Jr., professes undying love to Easter even as he prepares to leave the plantation to join the Confederate Army. Their affair is no secret to Colonel Jackson's wife, Lizzie. Both villains and victims come in all colors in this production: Queen, who calls herself Little Miss In-Between, is abused by blacks as well as whites, and a white character mouths anti-Semitism. NYT The tangled roots of Alex Haley.

This James JACKSON (1822-1899), was the son of James JACKSON (1782-1840) of Ballybay, Co. Monaghan, and was also a grand nephew of Henry JACKSON (1750-1817), the United Irishman who had fled Ireland after being charged with making cannonballs and pikes in his Dublin factory to be used in the fight to overthrow British rule.

Genealogical research, including the work done by writers such as Alex Haley, continues to add to history by the ounce. It is a sad irony that the United Irishmen motto: Equality: it is new strung and shall be heard did not reliably include the idea of slaves being valued as equals and free.

Since reading Haley’s books, I have became even more curious how much the behaviour of the slave-owner James JACKSON closely mirrors aspects of Old George's behaviour. Patterns of inherited tendencies of behaviour are not as predictable as eye colour and such, but it seems that there are discernible echoes. and it may be that future DNA studies will find links between these two JACKSON families. After all, the distance between the Ballybay JACKSONs and the Urker JACKSONs was close to a half day's horse ride from one home to another and they often visited each other for lengthy stays.

When it comes to financial inheritances, there are a number of reasons why none of the benefits that Old George might have gained from his exploitation of children didn’t get passed down to future generations. Old George’s 3^rd great-granddaughter, Amy Oliver JACKSON, recorded that some years before the school closed in 1811: [Old George’s] eldest son David, married Margaret Bradford, a violent-tempered red-haired woman, who, disgusted at the money being spent to get back the Mt. Leinster property, burnt all the Title Deeds. Her description of Margaret BRADFORD (1739-1820) may have been influenced by hearing the story as told by her grandmother, Elizabeth OLIVER (1814-1903) who would have been understandably peeved over the impact of this on her family, but the lost JACKSON lands were never recovered. The truth was that red-haired Margaret would have brought COULTER and BRADFORD money into the marriage while her husband David does not seem to have added to the family coffers. Perhaps because his focus was elsewhere. On gambling to gain back past losses.

A second disruption to the family's financial resources was that David and Margaret's only son John JACKSON (1780-1817) died young, leaving his wife Elizabeth McCULLAGH (1788-1880) with four children under the age of six to care for. Sadly, their youngest child was born on the day that John died. For decades after his death, his widow Elizabeth struggled financially, until in 1846 (early on in the Great Famine) the bailiff seized all her cows at Urker Lodge for failure to pay rent. It wasn’t until the late 1800s, when Old George’s’ 2^nd great-grandson, Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915) made his fortune in Hong Kong as CEO of HSBC, that the JACKSONs of Urker were finally able to pay off their loans.

I have come to accept that memory is like ketchup, a thixotropic liquid. It remains solid until you shake it up a bit. Shaking things up can open up doors to becoming at one with our ancestral origins. Another is to incorporate stories (both oral and written), dreams, as well as local and family archives, legal documents and archaeological finds. The history by the ounce approach. We also learn more when a wider community walks the path by the river with us, and follows the rhizome-like paths of family, friends, politics, money and memory. It is the many friends who I have made while on this journey who have helped me to drill down into the niggly parts that didn’t quite fit. Some still don't fit.

People say that if you go back in time and step on a butterfly, it could change the whole future. Which is terrifying because I’ve stepped on loads of things, and now I’m wondering if I caused Brexit. Diane Morgan aka Philomena Cunk in her role as a comic commentator on history, culture and current affairs.

In spite of the satirical insight of Philomena Cunk, there continues to be more to learn. Stay tuned.

PS My three questions for Old George (my limit is three, and these three are what first came to mind):

What do you think that I am most likely to misunderstand about you and your times?
What has brought you the most joy or the most sorrow?
If you could relive your life what if anything would you change?

JACKSONs and St. Johns Killowen

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Fri, 23 May 2025 18:21:00 +0000

St. Johns - on the western shore of the River Bann.

Because most churches tend to be locked mid-week, I had not expected to gain access to St. John’s Killowen in Coleraine on a Monday in February, but even so I tested the door and my Irish luck prevailed. Since the cleaning staff had the week off, a handful of parishioners had subbed in for them. They let me in and could not have been more welcoming. In the following quote, I have highlighted the date of the construction of this version of St. John’s. In the paragraph which follows, you will see why this matters.

The original parish church, which was part of a priory founded in 1080, was, in 1830, converted into a school-house; and a small neat church, without either tower or spire, was built at an expense of £1000, towards which £300 was given by the Clothworkers' Company, £100 by Bishop Knox, £50 by the Irish Society, and £170 as a gift and £380 as a loan by the late Board of First Fruits. SOURCE: Genuki.

Inside the church is a memorial which had been erected by Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789) in memory of his 2^nd wife Anne O’NEILL (1737-1781). Obviously, he had died decades before the current St. John’s was completed, so it is likely that this plaque had first been installed in the earlier church and then reinstalled in the new one after the original church was converted into a school. Lesson to self: keep an open mind about where one might find things. UPDATE: April 27, 2025: A plaque in praise of William KINKEAD was installed by Richard JACKSON at St. Patrick's, Coleraine and was similarly effusive.

SACRED
to the memory of ANNE,
the Wife of the
Right Honourable RICHARD JACKSON
of Jackson Hall in this Parish.
She was the only Daughter of CHARLES O'NEILL Esq.
of Shane's Castle in the County of Antrim.
Her Virtues cannot worthily be celebrated
by the most exalted monumental Panegyric
Or by the Strongest Testimony of Approbation
Which a frail Mortal can bestow.
Yet justice to her Memory demands
That her Name be transmitted to Posterity
As an illustrious Example
of eminent natured Endowments improved
by a Variety of most valuable Accomplishments.
In her Acts of Piety whether public or private
She was uniform, constant, unwearied.
In her observance of the Sabbath scrupulously exact.
Steering equally between Luke warmness and Enthusiasm
In her relative duties. Domestic, Conjugal, Parental.
She was tender, steady, condescending, faithful.
She was with MARTHA studious of Oeconomy.
(Frugal without Parsimony and liberal without Profusion.)
But with MARY, She chose that one good Part
Which she considered as the ONE THING NEEDFUL.
In her Charity to the Poor. She was judiciously diffusive.
In her Conversation, affable, obliging, & instructive.
In her whole Deportment, humble, upright, conscientious.
Her example shewed Truth embodied.
And, while it displayed the Excellency of Virtue,
demonstrated its Practicability.
She exchanged the Frailties of this mortal State
for the Blessings of a glorious Immortality
And her hopes of glory were perfected in Fruition.
Through the old sufficient Merits of that SAVIOR
In whom she trusted
On the anniversary of her Father's Death,
August the 6th 1781
In the 44th year of her Age,
Blessed Saint for thee
to die is gain.

Anne O’NEILL’s obit can be seen in the mid-August edition of the Belfast Newsletter:

Early on Monday morning, the 6th inst, died, at Coleraine, Mrs. Ann Jackson, lady to the Right Hon. Richard Jackson; and most deservedly and deeply lamented by rich and poor; but chiefly by a fond and affectionate husband, whose grief and affliction is beyond description, further than by saying that it is in a measure proportioned to his loss, which is immense and irreparable. 14-17 Aug 1781. Belfast Newsletter

Although Richard’s tribute to Anne aligned with the usual list of virtues commonly attributed to women of her class in that era, several aspects of it puzzled me. For example, what did he mean by: judiciously diffusive? Did it mean that she was possessed of diverse and wide ranging (i.e. diffusive) thoughts, but then restrained herself when (judiciously)? expressing her opinions? Also, itseems a bit odd to have a wife praised as both Mary and Martha. Finally, why was ONE THING NEEDFUL capitalized (because it was a biblical reference?)?

King James Version: Gospel of Luke 10:42

³⁸Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
⁹And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.
⁴⁰But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.
⁴¹And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:
⁴²But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Right after the phrase, ONE THING NEEDFUL, Richard follows up with a mention of Anne’s commitment to Charity. This would imply that she led a life of action not a passive life of adoration. Of course, the meanings of words are shaped by the way that they are used, and the contextual shadings of meanings shape-shift over time. Three hundred years ago diffusive was a common word to use in conjunction with morality and virtue. Initially, I had felt that Richard’s use of diffusive, was weird and possibly pretentious. That probably wasn’t fair. SEE: OED:

So how might Anne have felt about her husband’s effusive panegyric? We don’t know, nor do we know much else about her. An engraving of Shane’s Castle, her parental home, was done about 1780 and it gives us some understanding of the level of financial privilege which would have shaped her view of the world. After her marriage, she probably lived at Jackson Hall in Coleraine for the most part. Richard had taken on the rebuilding of the older Hall, and it was now a significant heap (as my Irish friends often refer to such buildings). They also would have spent considerable time in Dublin. Their youngest son was born there when Richard was serving as M.P. for Coleraine.

NOTE: The ruins of Shane’s Castle were used as the setting in the TV series “Game of Thrones”. Much of its narrative describes wars for succession among noble families. This seems appropriate.

As the mother of three sons and three daughters, Anne was described by Richard as: Steering equally between Luke warmness [Luke warmness: a puzzling word choice] and Enthusiasm In her relative duties. Domestic, Conjugal, Parental. She was tender, steady, condescending [condescending: another puzzling – to me - word choice], faithful.

We know little about most of her children, but a catalogue from Adams features a painting of daughter Mary Jane (1773-1802), wife of John Hamilton O’HARA (abt 1756-1822). She has the longish face and a cleft chin commonly seen in many JACKSONs of Coleraine descent:

IRISH SCHOOL (18TH CENTURY)
Portrait of Mary Jane O’Hara
Oil on canvas, 67cm x 55cm
Indistinctly signed and dated 1792

Mary Jane O’Hara was the second daughter of the
Right Hon. Richard Jackson of Jackson Hall, Coleraine
and his wife, the Hon. Anne O'Neill,
only daughter of Charles and Catherine O’Neill
of Shane's Castle and
sister of John O’Neill, 1st Viscount O’Neill.

As Richard’s wife, did Anne tend to agree with what we know of his political and business decisions? He was known to have managed his land-based wealth such that the value of it all grew during his lifetime, and so it is not surprising when he praises Anne for being studious of Oeconomy (Frugal without Parsimony and liberal without Profusion.). Unfortunately, these virtues were clearly not passed on to all of their children. George, their last surviving son and the final inheritor of the family baronetcy, was twenty-three years old when his father died. PRONI has dozens of letters in their collection revealing how often young George keeps on trying to weasel more money to fund his lifestyle from the agent managing the estate. It was thanks to his improvident actions that Jackson Hall had to be sold.

Unfortunately, Sir George was not a financially prudent man. Before he married Anne Woodville, he was spending money faster than he was earning it. This may be why in their married life they kept separate accounts. It wasn’t that Sir George was poor. There were significant incomes from the various family properties that he had inherited, but by 1801 when he was a bachelor living in Beach Hill, Surrey, England, he was short £30,000, and had to borrow from friends in order to pay the interest on his debts.

In 1838, the original Coleraine lease was still connected to him by a slender thread. Leases in Ireland were often given for the term of three lives, which meant that they could be renewed until the last of three named lives died. In the instance of Jackson Hall, which was the main Jackson family residence in Coleraine, George’s was the last life on the lease, the final legal toehold. When he died, all connection of the Jacksons to this land was broken. SOURCE: George JACKSON and email Serendipity.

A couple of weeks after I had stumbled across Richard's panegyric to Anne, I had an appointment booked at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin so I could access Edith Johnson-Lijk’s six-volume masterpiece, History of the Irish Parliament. This book includes the political record of Richard and many of his kinsmen. When I'd booked my time in Dublin, I hadn’t known that these books were (supposedly) stored off site and I was told it would take another week for them to arrive. By then, I would have left Dublin so I wandered aimlessly and somewhat dazedly in the Reading Room, glancing at the bookshelves while wondering how best to use my time, when I spotted them on an uppermost shelf. Although the set I had requested was definitely off-site, this set was obviously not.

In the middle of the top shelf – 6 vols.

Richard JACKSON’s entry is three pages long and he was only one of many JACKSONs who had served as MPs. His tenure had been preceded by his great-grand-uncle Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706) who had settled in Coleraine in the mid-1600s, then his grandfather William JACKSON (1669-1712), and then by his grand-uncle, Thomas JACKSON. Even his wife’s father, Charles O’NEILL (1702-1769) of Shane’s Castle Randalstown had also served as an MP.

Johnson-Lijk researches more diffusively than many historians. In her History of the Irish Parliament, she often includes telling details of squabbles between members, and tracks how agreements and disagreements played out inter-generationally amongst the various political families. They were not all cut from the same ideological cloth, nor were they all alike when it came to character.

Richard’s father-in-law, Charles O’NEILL, was described as violent by nature and by disposition an enemy of Government, while Richard was described as the opposite: a most worthy and religious man and very timorous in his disposition. He was described as wanting the courage that is necessary for a minister and that he could benefit from support from Chief Secretary Sir George Macartney - to help him bottle up his terrors. He was respected as a quiet decent man and a sensible man of very strict integrity. He never speaks in the House, and (unlike his father-in-law) was reliably supportive of the government.(Lord Harcourt has given his recommendation.) He was known to be detail oriented: Jackson’s most important duty was probably the calculation of the interests and inclinations of MPs and the preparation of the Parliamentary Lists and numbers which the government used to calculate its own strength and that of the opposition.

Although Anne was praised for her Charity to the Poor, Richard’s sense of charity seemed to have been constrained by the biases of his class. He voted against Catholic relief in 1774 and then in 1780 voted against Grattan’s declaration of the rights of Ireland. In this, he was typical of many of the Protestant landowners of his time. Since his kind of Christian charity had its faith-based and class-based limits, it is not surprising that it did include donations to Coleraine’s St. Patrick’s Church:

in 1771 the rector of St. Patrick’s Church, Coleraine, wrote to him about the state of the church building and that the parishioners – many of whom were probably Presbyterian – could not, or would not, raise sufficient sums for its restoration. Jackson expressed a willingness to subscribe £200 personally and persuaded the Irish Society to subscribe a further £200.

This is the same church where I got locked
into the graveyard (while photographing graves)
and had to climb over this fence to get out.

A devoted family man, Richard spent the last years of his life at Holywell, Oxford, to be near his youngest son Richard JACKSON (1768-1797), who like all of his sons (and unlike his daughters), died without issue. His son George JACKSON (1766-1840) would be the final one to inherit the family baronetcy, but the political influence of this branch of the family had already diminished when Richard came to the end of his last elected term in 1783 after serving for decades as the Rt. Hon Richard JACKSON MP firstly for Coleraine, and later for Lisburn and Randlestown.

POSTSCRIPT: Another JACKSON

A final surprise find at St. John’s was the grave marker of Mary GIVEEN née JACKSON. Mary's parents were John JACKSON (1744-1824) & Sarah BRUNKER (1751-1820). Her uncle, Henry JACKSON, (1750-1817) was a United Irishman - one of those in his family who had to flee Ireland for America because of their politics. SEE: JACKSONs of Lisnaboe, Co. Meath.

Here lieth the body of Mary third Daughter of John Jackson of Crieve County of Monaghan Esq. And wife to J. Stephenson Giveen of Cabin Hill. She departed this life on the 10^th of June 1813 in the 28^th year of her Age. As a Child she was Dutiful. As a Wife and Mother Affectionate and tender. And as a Christian Obedient and Resigned. This stone was placed here by her husband as a token of his attachment and esteem.

OTHER SOURCES:

Dictionary of Irish Biography. as well as
An historical account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, ancient and modern NOTE: Some of the JACKSON history here, particularly attributing the marriage of Samuel JACKSON to Susannah BERESFORD, is inaccurate.
Mentions of JACKSONs in rootsweb.

My Conversation With Mark Carney.

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:10:00 +0000

"Value(s): Building a Better World for All" by Mark Carney

NOTE: I borrowed this book from the library, returned it months ago, and have no way to double check the accuracy of my transcription of the quotes I used. I had recorded them using word recognition in a WORD document. There will be glitches. The bolding is all mine, done for emphasis (so readers can skim if they wish and hopefully reduce the risk of glazing over!)

Whenever I read a book, fiction or non-fiction, I experience myself having a conversation with the author - if only in my head. With respect to Carney’s book Value(s), my personal bias and starting point is such that although I will be voting Liberal in this election, I tend to lean towards the Greens and the NDP. Here is how my recent response to a survey based on party positions was graphed:

I was no more than two pages in before I could see how it could be possible that Carney’s values aligned with mine:

For over 12 years, I had the privilege and challenge of being a G7 governor, first in Canada and laterally in the UK. During this time I saw kingdoms of gold rise and fall. I led global reforms to fix the fault lines that caused the financial crisis, worked to heal the malignant culture at the heart of financial capitalism and began to address both the fundamental challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and the existential risks from climate change. I felt that collapse in public trust in elites, globalization and technology. and I became convinced that these challenges reflect a common crisis in values and that radical changes are required to build an economy that works for all. p2

Although Carney identifies as a globalist, his concerns over globalization resonate with me notheless:

… the big drivers of technology and globalization are magnifying market distortions. Technology’s impact on inequality is felt across all economies, while globalization's contribution is principally felt in advanced economies. Moreover returns in a globalized world are amplifying the rewards of the superstar and, though few of them would be inclined to admit it, the lucky, Milanovic argues that these forces are being reinforced by the structure of modern capitalism in which the wealthy have both labour and capital income, earn higher returns on their capital, have better access to top schools (social mobility) and can influence the political class. p137

There is also disturbing evidence that equality of opportunity has fallen, with the potential to reinforce cultural and economic divides. For example, social mobility has declined in the US, undercutting the sense of fairness at the heart of American Society. p 138

He does not advocate abandoning globalization (as if one even could), but rather he wants to steer us towards a values-based globalization:

Globalization has simultaneously brought great prosperity and caused tremendous misery. As a consequence, the principles of international integration are being challenged, and the institutions that underpin it are losing their relevance. This is happening while the forces of integration through technological change continue unabated. We run the risk of haphazard and uncontrolled integration that compromises our values. Therefore the defining challenge of this generation is to build a more inclusive resilient and sustainable globalization as it enters its fourth phase. p 509

One of the weaknesses of Carney’s book is his use [over-use?] of acronyms. Often, I had to stop reading to look up what they stood for. For example: ESG. ESG funds are investments that are graded using ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles. This is no woo-woo headset:

Consistent with their better ability to manage such episodic downside risks, ESG funds are more likely to survive. Morningstar found that on average over 3/4 of sustainable funds available to investors 10 years ago have survived, compared with less than half -46% - of traditional funds. Examining large global and US funds they find consistently higher average returns of around 1PP per annum across various time horizons over the past five to 10 years. p 424

Carney sees the ESG approach as a guide not only for investments, but also for government, and he includes the following list as a guide for both business and government.

· Environmental impacts: climate change and GHG emissions; Air and water pollution; Biodiversity; Deforestation; Energy efficiency; Waste management; Water scarcity.

· Social contributions: customer satisfaction; Data protection and privacy; Gender and diversity; Employee engagement; Community relations; Human rights; Labour standards.

· Governance and management: board composition; Audit committee structure; Bribery and corruption; Executive compensation; Lobbying; political contributions; Whistleblower schemes. p419

Carney points out that the dangers of conflating the interests of markets with the interests of businesses had already been recognized hundreds of years ago (Trump is just the latest example):

[Adam] Smith was wary of the dangers of capture of government by business. He consistently warned of the collusive nature of business interests, including fixing the highest price “which can be squeezed out of the buyers”. He cautioned that a business-dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Consistent with this view, he promoted free trade to break the power of the mercantilists and increase the share of manufacturers in a competitive market [not a monopoly, for example]. p30

Carney drills down on the financial costs of inequality, again not a woo-woo approach:

The symbiosis between just and economic outcomes is increasingly backed by hard evidence. For example, a comprehensive OECD study using data from the period 1970 - 2010 covering 31 OECD countries measured at five year intervals finds that inequality has a statistically significant negative impact on economic growth. In particular it estimates that for a number of countries including the US and UK, cumulative growth between 1990 and 2010 would be more than 1/5 higher had income disparities not widened. In contrast, the data suggests that decreases in inequality in Spain, France and Ireland over the time period helped increase the GDP per capita in all three countries. On the other hand, greater equality helped increase GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland prior to the crisis. p. 125

…unchecked market fundamentalism devours social capital essential for the long term dynamism of capitalism itself. All ideologies are prone to extremes, and capitalism loses its sense of moderation when the belief [ie belief and faith instead of analysis and fact] in the power of the market enters the realm of the faithful. In the decades prior to the crisis, such radicalism came to dominate economic ideas and became a pattern of social behavior.

In the financial system, market fundamentalism - in the form of light touch regulation, the belief that bubbles cannot be identified and that the market is always right - contributed directly to the financial crisis and the associated erosion of social capital. p139

When it comes to the impact of climate change, I was born in 1946 and came of age when the concept of the tragedy of the commons was much talked about. Carney reaffirms the importance of this, but he adds another layer: the tragedy of the timeline. Governments – if they are going to get re-elected – have to be focused on election cycles (4-5 years), while businesses – especially big businesses – are governed by the even shorter timeline of shareholders returns and the short leash of owners’ expectations of future returns.

There is another reason why the tragedy of the horizon is hugely, practically important. Historically, technology adoption follows a relatively predictable life circle, also known as the technology as curve. There are three distinct phases: research and development, mass adaptation and maturity. The first phase tends to be slow, gradual and expensive, until the new technology reaches an inflection point and becomes more cost effective and adoption increases rapidly.

Typically, reaching the second phase of mass adaption takes 45 years, which for climate change, would be too slow to remain within carbon budgets. Moreover, it should be remembered that energy transition takes time …. p286

… public policy provides the foundation for the transition to net zero. The tragedies of the Commons and the horizon mean that private companies and financial institutions will not fully take into account the impact of their actions on the climate. Although leading businesses will anticipate future climate policies and adapt today, ultimately catalyzing a critical mass of private sector actions requires effective, predictable and credible public policies. p332

The policies for achieving our climate goals should be designed to encourage the economic adjustments and technological innovations at the least possible cost, while sharing the burden of adjustment as fairly as possible within countries and across nations. The critical success factors are the establishment of a broad social consensus, the use of clear, consistent communications and the building of credible and predictable track records for government and regulatory policies. The more that these conditions are fulfilled, the more likely that markets will pull forward towards adjustment and smooth the transition to a net zero carbon economy. p339

Carney points out that even though durable consensus leading to effective moral action is essential, it can be damnably hard to achieve:

… trust grows at the rate of the coconut tree and falls with the speed of the coconut. The lesson [for governments] is the same: trust can take ages to build and moments to destroy. p354

Finally, and most fundamentally, experts need to listen to all sides. … reaching out to all stakeholders is essential to maintain social license and to improve performance. When you engage widely, you will find some sharp, firmly held, but often lightly researched differences of opinion about fundamental issues.

Professor Jonathan Haidt argues that this is in part because humans are prone to “groupish righteousness” when it comes to how people reach moral judgments about important issues. This tendency is exacerbated by social media, which provides the ability to communicate exclusively among the like-minded. p360

Finally, in my “conversation” with Carney, I was surprised to read about his personal practice: If I'm particularly busy, I meditate (trust me, it creates time) and then go to work. Nor had I expected to find his emphasis on the need for humility.

Humility … is an attitude to leading and governing. Not an impediment to acting. Humility is recognizing there will be surprises. I have learned that it's worth asking what could happen if things go wrong, even when you think it unlikely. What if subprime isn't contained? What if a cyber attack is successful? What if there is no deal? Humility admits the limits of our knowledge, that there are unknown unknowns which make resilience and adaptability imperative. The humble can plan for failure, even if they don't know how or when it will happen.

Humility allows us to set goals before we know all the answers. If we are humble, we don't think we can make a map of the whole world to chart our course or try to put a price on every value so we can optimize. If we are humble, we can recognize that answers can be found through processes that will bring them out through debate, considering different perspectives and forging consensus.

The humble recognize the limits of meritocracy. Humility admits the role of good fortune and the responsibilities success brings - the duties that should be put into the service of purpose. Being humble is recognizing that we are custodians of our companies, communities and countries. And that all are equal within. That the common good trumps utilitarianism.

Given that Pope Francis died today, his final word seems appropriate to the challenges we all face. I suspect that Carney would agree:

Abigail JACKSON (1683-1763): Part One

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 22:20:00 +0000

Years ago, while in Dublin, I came across an image of Abigail CROFTON and immediately wondered if she might have been the Abigail born as Abigail JACKSON (1683-1763), the grand daughter of Rev. Richard JACKSON (1602-1681). In her midlife, as a widow, this Abigail had married Oliver CROFTON, a family of Castle Moate. I later saw the same image mentioned in Crofton Memoirs and am still undecided. So, here goes. What can we learn?

This miniature was done by Gustavus Hamilton (c.1739–1775), a Dublin miniaturist, and signed "G. Hamn," and "1763.". Pasted on the back had been an old visiting card, with the name of "Lady Crofton" engraved on it. SOURCE: Crofton Memoirs: Unfortunately this card was destroyed by the frame-maker, to whom the repairing of the frame had been entrusted, and ·who had to remove the portrait from its frame. NOTE: HAMILTON lived in Dublin at various addresses: Parliament St.; 1 Dame St., College Green; and (shortly before his death) at Cork Hill. It is in the archives held at The National Gallery of Ireland. Unfortunately, on the day that I had hoped to view the miniature, the archivist was sick that day, so I was out of luck.
UPDATE: April 12, 2025: In 2018, a helpful staff member at the National Gallery of Ireland showed Daphne McCANN a copy of: Treasures to Hold: Irish and English Miniatures 1650-1850 by Paul Caffrey. A photo of this image was on the first page which Daphne had then emailed to me. Unfortunately, I had misplaced the image attached to her 2018 email,but fortunately after reading this post, she emailed it to me again. Brilliant! From the text: [3.4 X 2.8, watercolour with gouache on ivory. Set in an oval metal pendant frame.] It was fashionable in the eighteenth century to wear, and be painted in, what was considered to be Elizabethan or old English dress, confused in the popular imagination with Shakespearian costume, and, in fact an amalgam of earlier periods with Van Dyke of the 1630s …

The assumption made by Henry Thomas CROFTON, author of Crofton Memoirs (p.67), was that this miniature could not have been made of Abigail CROFTON because at age 80 in 1763, she was much older than the woman in the image. Even so, it is possible that the miniature could have been commissioned after her death and was based on an earlier image of her. I can find no other Lady Crofton who fits neatly into this time frame.

More recently, as part of trying to learn more about the back story of Abigail CROFTON née JACKSON, I uploaded a post on my website of Townland Clusters – a tool for unearthing women’s history. It followed clusters of townlands which included ones that Abigail had held title to in the counties of Dublin, Cavan, Meath and Monaghan. All these properties were mentioned in her January 5, 1737 marriage settlement (concerning her marriage to CROFTON), and had included the same names of townlands which had been listed in the 1705 will of her uncle Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706). These properties had landed in her hands as a result of all of her brothers predeceasing her. She also held title to some English properties, but their origin is less clear to me. Were they handed down to her from her parents, her Uncle Samuel, or had they become hers because of her earlier marriage to William BUCKLEY?

Curiously, the researcher and likely co-author of Crofton Memoirs, Rev. William Ball WRIGHT, had also been hired in the early 1900s by Amelia Oliver JACKSON when she was researching the family history of her father Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915). Even though Abigail may (or may not) be related to Sir Thomas, it is worthwhile to focus first on Abigail.

[Abigail] was possessed of much property in Ireland, and also in the Counties of Lancaster, York, and Westmorland, in England. SOURCE: Crofton Memoirs, An account of JOHN CROFTON, Of Ballymurry, Co. Roscommon Queen Elizabeth's Escheator-General of Ireland and of His Ancestors and Descendants, and others Bearing the Name. Compiled by Henry Thomas Crofton, Ex-president Lancashire and Cheshire Antiqn. Society, Assisted by The Rev. William Ball Wright, M.A. Author of " The Usher Memoirs," " Ball Family Records", etc., and Helen Augusta Crofton, Author of "The Slacke Family in Ireland." Published: 1911.

Clearly, Abigail was a woman with significant inherited wealth so she would have enjoyed as much independence as any woman of her era. She is however also worthy of our attention for other reasons. At the time of her marriage to Oliver CROFTON (1710-1780), she was 54 years old and he was 27. What is the story here? Was there a quid pro quo, either in money or social benefit to either one of them? Or was this a marriage based on passion? Does this shed light on the experiences of other privileged women or was it a one-off?

I will explore her CROFTON marriage in a later post. For now, the purpose of this post is to lay out some of the context for it, the prequel as it were.

What the data in Townland Clusters reveals, when seen in aggregate, is that her death at age 80 was a pivot year for the history of her holdings. Lands which historically had been owned for several generations by members of the JACKSONs of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland and Coleraine, Londonderry, were thereafter inherited and passed onto several future generations of the NORTH family of Kirkby Lonsdale. What was most unusual in this pivot was that the rights to these lands had not gone to her husband.

As with most women of her time, place and class, the breadcrumbs of clues are few and far between. She was born in 1683, probably at Burley, near Leeds, Co. Lancashire. When she was growing up, Burley had been where her parents Nathaniel JACKSON (1640-1698) and Elizabeth WOODS lived. Although many members of her extended family had already put down roots in Ireland in the mid-1600s, her childhood would have been protected from much of the upheaval of the Irish economic and political turmoil of the time. Even so, she was probably not oblivious to its impact. Her uncles were well-heeled merchants in England and Ireland, and/or minsters in the Established Church and the instability would have profoundly shaped their lives. While she likely visited her Irish relations, it seems that she did not settle permanently in Ireland until after 1733. She was the executor of her brother Rev. Robert JACKSON’s (1690-1733) will, a task which granted her some power. That seemed to be the last year that she lived in Tatham Parish.

Viewing Abigail’s life through the context of her times, it is worth noting that she was born in 1683, the same year as the future King George II of England. 1763, the year that she died, was the year that the Seven Years’ War ended. Because she was literate and belonged to a family known for the extent of their libraries and their free-thinking, she likely would have been aware of Rousseau, whose ideas were all the rage as were Voltaire’s. Voltaire had just published his Treatise on Tolerance. With respect to women’s rights, although it may have been the dawning of a totally new era, it would still take another three decades for Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to be published. Given all this, how would Abigail have seen herself in the context of her rights? Would her concept of rights have had anything to do with the reason why Oliver CROFTON did not end up with her family’s properties after she pre-deceased him (he would have been the expected beneficiary)? Or, in spite of the records of subsequent land transfers, had he at least temporarily inherited some lands from her?

The following info in Cumbrian Lives was unsourced and needs to be verified.

Crofton, Sir Oliver, 5^th Bt of the Mote (17xx-1780), only son of Oliver Crofton (d.1709), of Lissanarre, co Limerick (yr son of Sir Edward Crofton, 2^nd Bt) and Katherine Armstrong (d.1750), residing at Galbally and Lissanarre in co Limerick, marr (6 December 1737) Abigail Jackson Buckley (died in December 1763), heiress of estates in Cumberland, Yorks, Lancs, and Dublin, and owner of the Bull, Market Square, Kirkby Lonsdale, which he rebuilt as a private house, known as Jackson Hall (which then descended after her death to Richard North, of Newton, to his son Myles North, and to his son Richard Toulmin North, of Thurland Castle), died s.p.leg. 9 November 1780

To understand her 2^nd marriage, it helps to start with her 1^st marriage in Jan 20, 1718 to the wealthy widower, William BUCKLEY Esq.. In his position as the Tatham Parish landlord, he was also the advowsen (aka landlord with power to appoint clergy) of the Parish where they were married. At the time of their marriage, we do not know how old he was, but she was thirty-five years old, which was pretty old given the marriage practices of the day. NOTE: Her uncle Rev. Leonard JACKSON’s (1650-1726), the rector who performed the service, had earlier been appointed to the post of rector by BUCKLEY.

William Buckley, Esq., widower of Wennington Hall and Mrs. Abigail Jackson mar by bans 20 Jan 1718/19 Tatham, Lancashire; by Mr. Leonard Jackson, Rector, by Mr. Andrew Phorbas, vicar of Melling and Mr. Sharp, curate of Tatham SOURCE: Marriages at St. James the Less, Tatum.

There is one word that mystifies me in this marriage cert.: Why was Abigail referred to as Mrs. Abigail Jackson? Back then, women had the option of two prefixes: Miss or Mrs.. Was the recording of Mrs. a clerical error or had she been already widowed? If so, then a previous husband would have been a JACKSON, likely a cousin-level relation. But if so, then who?

The Wennington Hall connection to William BUCKLEY probably came about as the part of the marriage agreement made prior to his previous marriage to Mary BUTLER, the widow of Charles MARSDEN of Wennington Hall.

SOURCE: The History of the Parish of St. Michael’s-on-Wyre. SEE also WIKI: Buckley – Greater Manchester

A mid-1800s etching, and a description prior to the Victorian rebuilding:

24th October 1840 - WENNINGTON HALL ESTATES - TO BE SOLD BY AUCTION
At the house of Mr Pritt, the King's Arms Hotel, in Lancaster, on Thursday, 29th October 1840.
THE WENNINGTON HALL ESTATES, situate about 12 miles north east of Lancaster, in the Vale of Wenning, which communicates with the celebrated Vale of Lune, in the parish of Melling, in the Northern Division of the County of Lancaster, comprising
THE MANOR OF WENNINGTON,
With its MANORIAL Rights and Privilages, and also the
MANSION OF WENNINGTON HALL
With the extensive Out-offices and Buildings, Gardens, DEER PARK, Woods and Plantations, and the several FARMS attached thereto, which contain in the whole upwards of 330 acres, statute measure, of very choice and fertile Arable, Meadow, and Pasture Land, which is divided into several Holdings, and is Let to highly respectable and responsible Tenants, at very moderate Rents, the whole forming a very compact, well wooded, picturesque, and desirable Estate, included in a Ring Fence.
N.B. A considerable Portion of the Purchase Money may, if required, remain secure upon the Estate, at a moderate Rate of Interest.
Printed Particulars, with a Plan of the Property, may be had at the King's Arms Hotel, in Lancaster, and at the principal Hotels in the County of Lancaster; of Mr William Sharp, solicitor, 11 Staple Inn, London; and of Sharpe and Son, solicitors, in Lancaster, who will direct a person to shew the Estates, and from whom further Particulars may be known. October 1st, 1840.
Lancashire City Council Red Rose Collection. SEE: MARIO Map

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol8/pp207-209

Although we know something of the who and the where of William BUCKLEY, it is hard to say what kind of man he was, although perhaps something of his temperament can be inferred from a news account four years after he and Abigail had married:

[1722] Captain BUCKLEY had a lethal dispute with Major Samuel COOKE, the High Sheriff of Lancashire, regarding a right of way in Higher Walton, Lancashire. Buckley and Cooke entered a duel at Rochdale in which Cooke was killed. Buckley was tried at the assizes in Lancaster and found guilty of manslaughter, but received "only a light sentence.” SEE: WIKI: Buckley – Greater Manchester

NOTE: Abigail’s second husband also engaged in a duel which was triggered by a similar provocation. Duels were one of the dubious privileges of men of their time and class. It meant that such quick-tempered men, unlike quick-tempered men of lesser classes, could kill or inflict grave injuries on an opponent and not suffer from any legal sanction. It was part of the historic tradition that was pretty much outdated but was a leftover from a society based on honour-codes. In much the same way, there are still societies practicing such inherited codes even today.

Eight years after this duel, BUCKLEY died in 1730 of unrecorded causes at an unknown age. He and Abigail had no known children. Part of the dearth of information is because at his death, he was the last member of the main branch of the Buckleys of Buckley. SOURCE: Buckley Hall Orphanage Rochdale 1888 — 1947, Pat Gallacher (2003), Preston: Lisieux Hall. NOTE: This meant that he had no descendants to retain memory of him, a frequent contributor to lost history.

It is of consequence that in his will the only mention of his wife Abigail was in a codicil:

CODICIL: Whereas I have made my last will and Testament bearing date nineth day of May last Now I do by this my codicil give and devise unto Abagill my wife all my Tea potts cups and china and China Ware and Six Silver Tea Spoons and my Gold Watch & Chain and the sum of fifteen pounds to be paid to her by my Executors out of my personal Estate and in all other respects hereby ratify and confirm said will In Witness whereof I have sworn to put my hand and seal this fourth day of June one thousand seven hundred and thirty. Wm. Buckley

This small payment of £15, plus a smattering of crockery and such makes me think of William Shakespeare’s will, one which generations of scholars have wrestled with: “Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture”. In both wills, there was no mention of my dear wife, or other such expressions which were commonly included – but not always – in such documents. It is worth asking: Had there been a breakdown in the marriage? As it is with Shakespeare’s wife, perhaps there will be no clear cut provable answers.

Interestingly, there were a few properties which were specifically mentioned in William BUCKLEY’s will, but along with the rest of the chattels, these were put into a trust overseen by James HOLAND and James BUCKLEY sr to be managed on behalf of BUCKLEY’s infant cousin Thomas FFOSTER and Abigail got no benefit from them. NOTE: Buckley Hall passed from Captain William BUCKLEY to his nephew Thomas FOSTER (who assumed the surname of BUCKLEY), and then on to his son, Edward BUCKLEY, who in 1786 sold the hall and estate to Robert ENTWISTLE … The original building was demolished in the early-1990s and HM Prison Buckley Hall was opened in its place. [SOURCE: Buckley, Greater Manchester.]

Brief Excerpts from the will: I give and decise all my Messuages Lands Tenements [?] and Hereditaments situate lying or being within Spunderfield Butterworth and Castleton and elsewhere in the said County of Lancaster and all other my real estate whatsoever in the said County with my Cousin Thomas Ffoster an infant (son of Thomas Ffoster of Preston in the said County Esquire by my aunt Ann his wife) for and during the life of the said Thomas Ffoster … Thomas Ffoster Thomas Holland William Holland … whereas the advowson of the Rectory of Windermere in the County of Westmorland was devised to me and my heirs in trust for Girlington Butler & Barton Clarke now rector hereof … William Holland Thomas Holland and to their sister Ffrance Holland and my said godson John Buckley the sum of five pounds sterling .. AND I give and devise all my household goods silver plate and other goods chattles credits and other Rents issues and profits of my said Messuages Lands Tenements Rent Hereditments and real estate whatsoever to … James Holland and John Buckley the elder till the said Thomas Ffoster the son shall attain his age of twenty one years. … 1 Oct 1730

There is a reason that Why is usually placed last in the chain of the usual questions: Who. What. Where. When. Why. In seeking the Why, focusing on the Where is a useful starting point. Out of the three townlands of Spunderfield Butterworth and Castleton I have only located Castleton.

SOURCE: Rochdale, Lancashire ROCHDALE, a town and a district in Lancashire, and a parish partly also in W. R. Yorkshire - 10½ miles N N E of Manchester.

Since the named townlands of Butterworth and Castletown are in the Parish of Rochdale, it is possible that Spunderfield might have been as well. Perhaps it was known as Spotland.

ROCHDALE, a parish, market town, and parliamentary borough in the honor of Clitheroe , in the Middleton division of the hundred of Salford , and the polling district of Rochdale . The parish is divided into seven townships : Castleton , Butterworth [Butterworth, Greater Manchester], Spotland, [District of Rochville, Greater Manchester] , Wardleworth, Weurdle with Wardle , and Blatchinworth with Calderbrook, in the poor law union of Rochdale ; and Todmorden with Walsden , in the poor law union of Todmorden ; the four latter are in what is called Hundersfield . — Spotland is divided into Spotland Nearer Side , Spotland Further Side, and Whitworth with Brandwood, which are sometimes stated to be townships . The parochial chapelry of Saddleworth, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is in this parish . Number of acres in the parish, exclusive of Saddleworth, about 40,300 , inclusive of Saddleworth 58,500.

The Lancashire library : a bibliographical account of books on topography, biography, history, science, and miscellaneous literature relating to the county palatine, including an account of Lancashire tracts, pamphlets, and sermons printed before the year 1720. With collations, & bibliographical, critical, & biographical notes on the books and authors

Although the geographic proximity of relations can lead to clues, in this instance they actually raise more questions. For example, in the two maps beneath, although Wennington Hall is the expected distance - walking distance - from Tatham, Rochdale is 54 miles south of there:

The supply chain requirement of the clothing industries coupled with the family connections to the clothing trades – linen and wool – are the most likely reasons behind these locations being key for both the JACKSONs and the BUCKLEYs. More research may reveal more.

One last bit. Although there is no mention of Abigail inheriting more than teacups and such from William BUCKLEY, she at least had some kind of marriage jointure. This jointure was mentioned in 1737, in the marriage agreement formalizing the financial aspects of her 2^nd marriage, the one with Oliver CROFTON. Curiously, there had been no mention of such a jointure in BUCKLEY’s will – unless it was related (unlikely) to the single-time payment of £15.

[ROD: 91-158-63780: a sexpartite deed bearing date and perfected the 5^th and 6^th day of January 1737 between Oliver CROFTON of Lissanarrow [possibly Lissanarhoor, Parish Galbally, Barony Coshlea – he also lived at Galbally, Parish Galbally, Barony Coshlea] Co. Limerick Esq. of the 1^st pt; Abigail BUCKLEY als JACKSON of the City of Dublin and relict of William BUCKLEY late of Buckley in Co Lancaster England Esq deceased of the 2^nd pt; ]

… whereas the said Abigail BUCKLEY was seized in fee of and in certain Lands Tenements and Hereditaments in said indenture mentioned situate in the Kingdom of England and that the said Abigail was also seized and Intitled to a Jointure for her life out of the estate of William BUCKLEY.

Family connections are likely the reason that Abigail moved to Dublin after the death of her brother Rev. Robert JACKSON. With her sister Jane JACKSON, she co-owned the Irish townlands that had once been the property of their uncle Samuel JACKSON. The lands that she held in England at the time of her second marriage may have originated in bequests from her parents, from her uncles or else may have been connected to her first husband. Nailing all this down can help us to better understand the reasons why clusters of her lands ended up belonging to several generations of her “cousins” after her death.

In my next post, I will track what can be learned about Oliver CROFTON and Abigail’s life during their marriage. At least there will more available facts during this stage of her life.

POSTSCRIPT:

The last record I have that would indicate that William BUCKLEY was still alive is the mention of him in the 1726 will of Rev. Leonard JACKSON. So far, I do not have a verifiable birth or death date for him.

1726 Nov 5th Will of Leonard JACKSON NAMES: Rev. Leonard JACKSON of Tatham, Lancashire; Richard JACKSON, son; BRIGGS – likely Rev. John BRIGGS & Mary BRIGGS née JACKSON; Vigessima BOUCH[E] née JACKSON; Elizabeth DAWSON née BOUCHE; Josias DAWSON; HUTTON; William HUTTON; Jane wife of Roland WALLIS; Widow SLATER of Whittington; Widow LAURENCE; Bryan DOWNIE aka DOWNEY; Elizabeth JACKSON née WOODS; [cousin WADE, wife & daughter & son Benjamin WADE; nephew FOXCROFT; Richard JACKSON, Dublin & daughter (Susannah JACKSON?); cousin [Bolder?] JONES of Westhouse; James JACKSON; William BUCKLEY; Cousin ASH and her daughter BRIGGS; wife of cousin [WITHER?] of Evertown; Mr. SHARP (probably a minister); godson Leonard JACKSON; Robert MAYER Schoolmaster of Wray; Robert JACKSON nephew of Rev. Laurence JACKSON; Thomas CHARNLEY; Isaac ATKINSON.

Abigail’s younger brother Rev. Robert JACKSON (1690-1733) succeeded their uncle Rev. Leonard JACKSON as rector of Tatum in 1726. Since Robert GIBSON was now the patron of Tatham Parish, it seems likely that this was the year that William BULKLEY had died (which would have been shortly after Leonard JACKSON’s death).

1726 – Robert JACKSON, presented in succession by Robert Gibson, the patron for that turn, was instituted December 7, 1726, and held the living until his death, which occurred in 1733, in which year an administration bond was filed at Richmond, from which it may be inferred he died intestate. SOURCE: The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Volume 5. Edward Baines p.555. NOTE: Abigail was the executor of Robert’s will.

REV. RICHARD JACKSON (1602-1681)

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 22:49:00 +0000

Born Kirkby-Lonsdale, Westmorland; vicar of Hatton and Whittington, Lancashire.

Kirkby Lonsdale 1865 Ordnance Survey.

It took a lot of deft maneuvering for Rev. Richard JACKSON (1602-1681) to hold on to his financial assets, many of which had become seriously diminished by the mid-1600s. It was one hot mess of a time to be living in - with the collision of cultural-financial-religious power struggles reaching their peak in both England and Ireland. Even so, at the end of his life, he was able to pass on significant wealth to many of his 23 children, most of whom had lived to adulthood and many of whom had settled in Ireland (his 1^st wife Dorothy OTWAY was mother of the first 15 children and died abt 1645; his 2^nd wife Jane CARTER gave birth to the remaining 8 children). In the lives of his surviving children, the uplift from his financial legacy, as well as the contribution of his mercantile, church and government connections are clear. Many of his descendants went on to exercise considerable political and economic power in Ireland for at least the next couple of hundred years.

We catch an early glimpse of Rev. Richard in 1645 (age 43) when the likely final outcome of the conflict between the Royalists (Established Church) and the Parliamentarians (Puritans etc) was still unpredictable. It is clear that his faith loyalties kept shifting according to his short-term needs. To use a hockey metaphor, he often knew how to skate to where the puck was going to be, not where it had been. Following the hockey metaphor, imagine him digging in with the inside edges of his theological skates, leaning into each turn and using the friction to pivot – sometimes towards loyalty to the Puritans, sometimes to the Royalists, and then precipitously pivoting again and again as needed. Avoiding a painful fall in this kind of game was a mix of luck, timing, and connections.

Jackson Hall, the birthplace of Rev. Richard, now operating as the Royal Hotel. It remained owned by members of the extended family well into the mid-1800s.I stayed there in 2015.

Rev. Richard was a son of William JACKSON, a well-heeled mercer and merchant of Kirkby Lonsdale, and Mary SLATER of Keighley near Bradford, Yorkshire. Based on the assets mentioned in his father’s 1626 April 20 will, one would assume that he was financially secure, but two decades later, in the mid-1640s, he faced financial ruin after lending a significant sum of money to a recusant. Because the anti-Catholic laws had both been enacted and (more pertinently) had finally been effectively enforced, this debtor had no way of repaying him. In 1645, Rev. Richard appealed to Col. Gervaise BENSON (abt 1610-1679), [a Parliamentarian who later became a Quaker], who had close connections to Oliver CROMWELL. As BENSON put it in a letter sent to Whitehall, to the Right Honourable Lord WARTON aka Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton (1613–1696):

Philip WHARTON: Portrait 1632 by Anthony van Dyke

…. I am intreated by two speaciall friends to the cause to write to yor Lorp in ther behalfe. I make bold to do it knoweing yor Lorps readynes & noble disposition to here & help honest men, in any lawfull & faiseable mattr. First one Mr. Jackson ministr of Whittingham neare Kyrby Lonsdall, a vry pious & honest able man haveing heretofore entred bond as surety wth a popish recusant (I psume it was wth hopes to gayne him to or Church) principall for the sume of 100£, this was donne before these troubles, & the popish gentleman proveing a Delinquent all his lands & meanes beinge sequestred, is utterly disabled to satisfy that debt, whereuppon honest Mr. Jackson is like to beare the burden, but I feare it will breake his backe & the creditours (now tyme begineing to be open (?) in Lancashire where Mr. Jackson lives that suites may be tryed) doth labour to pursue Mr. Jackson & recovr his 100£ of him wch indeed is easyly done for the bond is cleere. Yet if lawe pceede agaynst Mr. Jackson & compell him to pay it as it will do, he will "be undone, and not able to subsist haveing wife & many children, 14 children he hath & the 15th (is by this tyme borne for every houre his wife lookes for it) this is this honest ministrs desire & I earnestly desire the same, that yor Lorp be pleased to advise his friend (that will repaire to yor Lorp) what course may be taken that Mr. Jackson may have satisfaction, if any be to be had out of the delinquents estate of lands or woods, or any way whereby himselfe & the publike be not priudiced, we leave it to yor Lorps wisdome, & information of any that shall be imployed to come to yor Lorp. I am sure if yor Lorp can help him you shall not neede repent of it he is so honest a ministr. SOURCE: The Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland and Westmorland. p. 890: 1645 Feb 28: Letter from Right Honrable Col. Benson NOTE: Given the uptick in the state of Rev. Richard’s financial health, BENSON’s intervention seems to have been effective.

It is most likely that the popish recusant, the man who had incurred the debt wth hopes to gayne him to or Church principall, was the Catholic landlord and advowson of the Whittington Parish. Was this loan a dodgy part of Rev. Richard attempting to buy the seat? Possibly. Also, given the timing, it is likely that his first wife, Dorothy OTWAY, died in childbirth shortly after giving birth to Roger JACKSON (1645-1682). He was baptized March 15, 1645.

The conflation of the roles of advowsons (the power to appoint priests) with that of landlords was long standing and had originated from the practice of landlords donating lands for parish churches, and then being granted certain powers as recompence. Of course, this custom became decidedly wobbly when the advowson held to a faith that diverged from the politically permitted faith of the time. In 1635, Thomas CARUS, the patron of Whittington, was one of those who had been convicted of recusancy; in this case he had refused to attend Established Church services.

As a consequence, all his lands & meanes [were] sequestered during the First English Civil War. A few decades later, his patronage of Whittington Parish was transferred to Edward MIDDLETON. This transfer seems to have been a work-around in the legal grey area and was later judged to have been collusive. [SEE: British History: Whittington].

Although the ownership of Established Church parishes by Catholic landlords was not common, neither was it unheard of. Power shapeshifts, as always, according to need. Under-the-table deals for privileges were not unheard of. When Edward MIDDLETON in his role as advowson on Oct. 6, 1640 had appointed Rev. Richard as cleric of Whittington, it seems likely that there had been some quid pro quo involved. As a consequence, eight months later, on June 12, 1641 Rev Richard had to be reappointed, this time by King Charles (1600-1649), by lapse, as a result of the earlier buying or selling (aka simony) of an ecclesiastical privilege, in this case a permanent Church appointment. NOTE: The 2^nd instance of simony mentioned in the table beneath was to Rev. Thomas BOUCHE (1654-1716) aka BOWTH, the husband of Vigesima JACKSON, Rev. Richard’s 20^th living child. Her name was the Latin word for 20^th.

SOURCE: The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Volume 2. edited by William Robert Whatton, John Harland, Brooke Herford

A sundial at the Parish bearing the inscription Ex dn. Ric. Jackson Rector de Whittington An. Dn. 1641 recorded the date of Rev. Richard’s 2^nd appointment to the Parish – the one by King Charles I, not his initial appointment by MIDDLETON. SOURCE: 'The parish of Whittington', A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 8 (1914), pp. 241-252. I do not know if it still exists.

ADDED April 1, 2025: The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Volume 5. Edward Baines

Five years later, on Oct 2, 1646, Rev. Richard was still the rector of Whittington when he subscribed and signed onto the protest of Lancashire ministers against toleration of strange doctrines. By now, he had skated deep into the Presbyterian camp, which may have reflected his personal leanings and/or the leanings of his congregation. Tellingly, he continued as rector.

The non-conformist's plea for uniformity : being the judgement of fourscore and four ministers of the county palatine of Lancaster, of a whole provincial assembly of ministers and elders in and about London, and of several other eminent preachers, English, Scottish and New-English, concerning toleration and uniformity in matters of religion : together with a resolution of this difficult question, whether the penalty of the law ought to be inflicted on those who pretend and plead conscience in opposition to what the law commands?

Two years later, in 1648, he was included as “Richard Jackson, pastor at Whittington” in the list of those who signed: The harmonious consent of the ministers of the province within the county palatine of Lancaster: with their reverend brethren the ministers of the province of London, in their late testimonie to the trueth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant : as also against the errours, heresies, and blasphemies of these times, and the toleration of them.

That this extraordinary document was subscribed by nearly all the presbyterian ministers of Lancashire can be explained only by supposing that they were frightened out of calm thought and wise consideration by the monstrous apparitions, which were rising on all sides and threatening their newly-established Church. The signs of the times were disastrous; the portents were such as neither they nor their fathers had ever seen before. [SOURCE: Lancashire: Its Puritanism and Nonconformity. Robert Halley]. p 263]

ADDED April 1, 2025: Lancashire Church Surveys 1650.

A lot of what was happening can not be reduced to any sharply defined polarities of white and black. The term Puritan often included Presbyterians and other dissenters (such as Quakers) and could apply to any denomination which committed to purify the Church of England of Papist practices. Presbyterians and other dissenters might in good conscience then choose to side with the Puritans but at the same time to maintain some of their Establishment Church alliances. One example of this would be John JACKSON b 1570 of Melsonby Yorkshire who was described as a Puritan but was also a known Royalist. [SOURCE: Alumni Cantabrigienses]. As was Rev. Richard:

JACKSON, RICHARD. Matric. pens, from CHRIST'S, July, 1619; B.A. 1622; M.A. 1626. R. of Halton, Lanes., 1630-41. R. of Whittington, 1641-80. A member of the Presbyterian Classis, but conformed at the Restoration. Will (Archd. Richmond) 1680. Father of Francis (1649), Leonard (1668) and William (1644-5). (yte. Hist, of Lancs., vm. 251; E. Axon.). SOURCE: Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates Cambridge Students list.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Rev. Richard continued on as the Parish minister at Whittington for two more decades. The bequests itemized in his 1679 January 15 will reveal the extent to which his theological skating skills had paid off financially. At the time of his death in 1681 at age 79, he not only owned leases to several parcels of land but also had a library valued at £40, debts owing to him worth £60, plus all kinds of livestock, hay, corn, flax, meal, malt, hemp and yarn, for a total valuation (seemingly not including land) of £326.6.0 (or about £40,000 in todays currency). Not surprisingly, given the future fortunes of his sons, he had profited from a range of enterprises. Specific gold coins were also described and bequeathed, and he may have been a collector. One was engraved: In Hoc Signe Vinces: In this sign you will conquer.

Source of Image: CoinQuest.

Another coin that likely held personal and religious meaning for him was a coin minted in the 1640s which was described in his will as: Angell of gold of King Charles the first this Coyne bearing his Standard on the one side of it with this inscription for the Protestant Religion of privilege of Parliament, and the liberty of the Subject with this model in ring or edges of it Vizt. Exurgat Deus et Dissipentur Inimici . King Charles was the king to whom he had owed his reappointment in 1641, the time frame in which this coin was minted.

These coins were named after the Archangel St Michael who is depicted on the reverse slaying a dragon. They were legal tender but also used as healing amulets. It was believed that kings could cure people suffering from the ‘King’s Evil’ (scrofula), and Charles I performed healing ceremonies in which these coins were given to sufferers to wear around their necks. This coin is pierced so that when looking down the wearer would be able to see St Michael.
SOURCE: Leeds Special Collections.

Although Rev Richard’s twenty-three children as well as dozens of their Irish descendants were generally regarded as Church of Ireland, many of them went on to align as Presbyterian (or both/and) when it suited and Church of Ireland when it didn’t - for example, one had to be Church of Ireland to be able to assume political office. Later, in the 1766 Religious census, a couple of JACKSONs in Co. Armagh – James & Owen - likely descendants of Rev. Richard - were even recorded as Catholic (perhaps as a result of marriage). In later years, the forenames of Catholic JACKSONs shapeshifted and names such as John became Sean and so on.

These shifting allegiances of faith and politics continued over the course of several generations in Ireland, not only amongst the mercantile-class families such as the JACKSONs, but also amongst the organizations to which they belonged, such as the Clothworkers Guild of Derry.

The Livery Companies were often viewed as a source of ready cash by the monarchy and during the political troubles of the seventeenth century they received many demands for money; in 1640 and 1641 alone these requests exceeded £10,000. Unable to meet the King’s precepts, the Company was forced to borrow from individual members. When Civil War erupted in 1642, further demands arrived, now from Parliament and the City.
…
During the Civil War, the Clothworkers sided with Parliament, as did the City – indeed, the Master of the Company in 1652-1653 was Alderman Sir John Ireton whose brother, Henry Ireton, had signed King Charles’ death warrant – however, the Company was quick to shift allegiances when required. At the restoration of Charles II in 1660, they went to great effort to welcome the King into the City with suitable splendour. The Company’s trumpeter was lent to the Guildhall; six handsome, tall and able men were lent to serve the meat; £165 was given towards the cost of the banquet and members lined the streets in their finest attire with cloths, banners, streamers and ornaments resplendent around them.
SOURCE: The Clothworkers Company Timeline.

Following on the heels of Rev. Richard, two of his sons became Church of England ministers: Francis JACKSON (1632-1670) & Leonard JACKSON (1650-1726), as did some of his grandsons and the husbands of two of his daughters (Rev. Thomas BOUCHE husband of Vigesima and Rev. John BRIGGS husband of Mary).

Later, in 1691, in keeping with the family tradition of staying connected to the church, Rev. Richard’s eldest son William JACKSON (1628-1688) – a merchant of Coleraine and MP for Londonderry in the Irish Parliament - contributed land for the church at Ardacleve (aka Articlave Lower Parish Dunboe, Barony Coleraine, Co. Londonderry) This transfer was witnessed by his younger brother Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706) who was mostly based in Dublin.

St Paul’s Church was built to replace the ruin at Downhill. It is generally believed that Articlave village was the first settlement on the Clothworker Company Estate in 1611 and that the site was in all probability selected on account of the nearby river. When the ecclesiastical authorities had to consider the necessity of providing a new church for the parish it was natural that they should select the most advantageous position. A certain Captain Jackson gave a grant of one acre of land, and on this land the church was built. Bishop Hopkins gave the consent for the building of this church and Bishop King consecrated it on June 2nd, 1691. SOURCE: John Campbell on Flickr.

This inclination to be open to bridging the faith divide was also evidenced in the life of this Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706) of Dublin. After he had purchased several townlands in Co. Meath (lands forfeited in 1641 by the Catholic Royalist DRAKE family), he then leased the DRAKE lands back to the family on favourable terms. Not only was he welcome to visit the DRAKEs in their Co. Meath home, Drakerath, and stay for a few days with them, but he was also remembered for offering a 29 year old Peter DRAKE a connection to an East India merchant for a potential job opportunity, and just as importantly a green Purse with twenty Guineas in it. [SEE: Samuel Jackson - Gleanings of a Life.]

The Ireland-based children of Rev. Richard had benefitted from growing up in this Whittington Parish where their father as rector had Presbyterian leanings, the Parish itself was owned by a Catholic advowson and at the same time the church was theoretically branded Church of England. This kind of diversity in business and politics has long been recognized as one of the drivers of success. For Rev. Richard, it was part of what returned him to financial health after the worst of his 1645 crisis. Even though much of his shape-shifting may have been tainted by transactional motives and been bare-nakedly opportunistic, it did mean that he and his descendants had the head-set that enabled them to flourish for many more generations.

OTHER LINKS:
Earlier posts on my blog site explore other aspects of Rev. Richard JACKSON.

For his family tree see on my website:

JACKSONs of Kirkby Lonsdale, Westmorland and Coleraine, Londonderry This branch of JACKSONs starts in Kirkby Lonsdale with William JACKSON (?-1626) and includes the JACKSONs who became successful merchants initially based in Coleraine, who participanted in the Siege of Derry, as who became representatives in the Irish House of Commons. Their behaviour was not always defensible by today's standards, or even by the standards of their own time. Theirs is also the family tree that leads to Richard JACKSON of Forkhill.
Daughters of Rev. Richard JACKSON.

Mrs. Elizabeth JACKSON née BUNTING

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:37:00 +0000

The devil is in the details. True, but many details can be devilishly hard to nail down when key people, actions and perspectives have not been talked about for hundreds of years. For me, this is why the opening sentence in an article in the May 22, 1795 edition of The Times (London, Greater London, England) is significant: The late Parson Jackson, was twice married, and has left a wife to lament his unhappy end.

The mention of women in a lead sentence in an article in that kind of newspaper? Rare. Typically, both wives are not named.

On April 30th, 1795, four days after the Court had found Parson Jackson aka Rev. William JACKSON (1737-1795) guilty of treason and collusion with the French (part of a United Irishmen plot to free Ireland from being under the yoke of English rule), Rev. William died of arsenic poisoning. At the moment when he collapsed and died, he was actually in Court and his lawyer was giving his summation. This was three weeks before this article was published, although none of this was mentioned, the writer, seemingly, had other, earlier, London-based grievances in mind.

It is likely that Rev. William's 2nd wife secured the arsenic, likely at his request. It was reasonable for them to fear that the State would seize their shared assets once he was sentenced. Their only out, had he been sentenced to execution for treason, would have been if he was no longer alive when his sentence was finally pronounced. A nice legal wrinkle. An opportunity which was taken.

This much was known, that Jackson took poison with the idea that the little means he possessed would be preserved to his wife and children, if the sentence of the law was not pronounced on him, and that the party who was privy to this act must have well known the nature of the poison, for the time of its operation was evidently calculated on correctly.

The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times. Richard Robert Madden, The Shamrock edition, Newly Edited With Notes, Bibliography And Index By Vincent Fleming O’Reilly, The Catholic Publication Society 1916. p 186

The marriage documents for either of the two wives had long eluded researchers, but a few days ago, Laura McKenna, an author from Co. Cork (Words to Shape My Name), contacted me. It is thanks to her eagle eyes, that we finally have – indisputably – a record of the 2^nd marriage of Rev. William Francis JACKSON to Elizabeth BUNTING. This removes one layer of her invisibility.

Marriage at Saint George The Martyr: Borough High Street, Southwark, England

Rev. William Jackson, Parish Fulham, Co. Middlesex, Widower and Elizabeth Bunting of this Parish spinster. married in this church by licence this Fifth Day of August in the year One Thousand seven Hundred and Ninety Two by me Thomas Wigrell Curate. This marriage was solemnized between Us: Wm. Francis Jackson; Elizabeth Bunting.

The signature in the marriage cert is a dead ringer for the signature on another document, signed in 1792, at the White Hotel in Paris. There can be no doubt that this is “our” Rev. William.

First page of the ‘Adresse des Anglais, des Ecossais et des Irlandais résidans et domiciliés à Paris’ to the Convention, presented on 25 November 1792. The address was part of a dialogue between the Société des Amis des Droits de l’Homme (SADH) and the French government about the possibility of an insurrection in Britain and/or Ireland in late 1792. Though the early Irish republicans did not get their wish, notably because of the astute policy of Pitt’s cabinet, their political activism between Dublin, Belfast, London and Paris shows that Irish republicanism grew alongside its French counterpart. (Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine).

NOTE: Sylvie Kleinman, a Dublin historian and author, was the first to alert me to this signature in this Paris document. More recently, Ruari Nolan included it in one of his substack pieces: Address of the English, Scotch, and Irish resident and domiciled in Paris (1792). His piece included a link to the source document by Mathieu Ferradou: ‘Un festin patriotique’ at White’s Hotel, 18 November 1792: the ‘secret’ origins of Irish revolutionary republicanism. Published in 18th–19th - Century History, Features, Issue 3 (May/June 2016), Volume 24.

UPDATE March 30, 2025- I have used strike-through to identify my earlier errors. The birth date that I initially had of 1782 for Rev. William's son was the result of a typo. I have recently found compelling evidence that was born in 1792-1793. The implications of this will find its way into a later post.

It had long been assumed that Elizabeth was the mother of both of Rev. William’s children. This had led me (and others) to be looking in the wrong decade for a record of her marriage. This was because when Elizabeth had written to the French Government in 1802, as part of her repeated pleas for assistance, she had included the ages of her children. ~~Given that, her son William would have been born about 1782, a decade before her 1792 marriage, a marriage in 1792 would not have made sense. Until it did.~~

As a result of this marriage cert, I now see her in a new light, starting on day one of her marriage as a stepmother. The content of these two letters reveal that she approached the care and protection of her stepson with as much tenacity and heart as any biological mother might have done.

Another aspect of Elizabeth’s life that this marriage cert reveals is that she and Rev. William Francis JACKSON had only been married for a couple of years when he was arrested. Added to this, there is another seemingly out-of-place wrinkle: a record from a mere three months after his death, that Elizabeth had given birth to a daughter: Louisa Mary, dau of Reverend William & Eliza Jackson of Dublin chr 27 Jul 1795 St Nicholas, Fyfield, Essex. But was she Rev. William’s daughter? After all, he was in jail during the likely time-frame of pregnancy, assuming a nine month gestation and a christening happening (as was the custom) not long after a birth.

There was probably the opportunity for conjugal visits at the Kilmainham jail. After all, security for people like Rev. William – political prisoners of his social standing - was often quite relaxed. William Drennan, in a letter to his sister Martha McTier, described Kilmainham jail as a much more roomy place [than Newgate jail] and where he [Archibald Hamiton Rowan] might in some time come to such good understanding with the goaler as to ride out as Reynolds [Dr. James Reynolds] did when he chose. At one time, although Rev. William ended up with accidental access to the keys to his cell, he chose not to escape. It troubled him that his jailer would have worn the blame, and hence the subsequent consequences.

NOTE:Between 1776 and 1819, William Drennan, a doctor in Newry and Dublin, and his sister Martha McTier in Belfast, exchanged over 1,400 letters, discussing every aspect of their lives. William campaigned for political reform and Roman Catholic emancipation. He was a founder of the United Irishmen, and was tried for sedition in 1794. Martha shared his political convictions and their letters provide a first-hand account of the events which led up to the 1798 Rebellion, and its aftermath. Their letters are an amazing source of information about a number of key players.

It seems that for the first six months of his incarceration, Rev. William had limited freedoms while in jail, but perhaps these restrictions were eased.

Friday, 7th November. 1794.

Mr. Jackson.—My Lords, I have been six months confined in a single room. If I might be permitted occasionally, and that very seldom indeed, with the keeper of the prison, to walk in the yard early in the morning, I would be glad of it.

Lord Clonmel, Chief-Justice.—The court cannot meddle with that. If you complain of oppression, we will interfere.

The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p.199.

Drennan hints at a second angle to the question of the paternity of William jr: Mr. Tighe:

Oct 14, 1794. William Drennan [Dublin] to Martha McTier (Belfast]

Curran went over to Holyhead, not to hire out a service, but merely for his health, and I have not seen him since his return. I dined a second time with him in his library, with a party as curious as the first. Dr. Burke, himself, myself, and Miss Jackson, wife to the Reverend. Jackson now guarded night and day by two sentinels in the very center of Newgate. She is a very comely, clever, tonish woman, said to be kept by Mr. Tigue, but Curran took up almost the whole conversation, with wit, like his meat, not rare but rather overdone. Never did this Marmozet of Genius show so many antic tricks, or so much bad mimicry, while the fair dame, who I believe had studied human nature as much as her entertainer, was forced to cry it out at intervals – Well - Mr. Curran, you are so vastly entertaining, though by the bye, I'm sure she did like him as little as it turned out, after she had gone away, that he liked her. Indeed, I do not think ever two figures of the same kind of beings were ever so astonishingly contrasted in form, face, and manners. If you ever saw this beautiful print of the Nightmare, you might see something like the contrast. The Drennan McTier Letters. Vol 2 1794-1801. ed Jean Agnew, 1999. Irish Manuscripts Commission, p 102

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1790-91 (Since a picture is worth 1,000 words)

It was John Philpott Curran, the lawyer representing Rev. William in his trial for treason who was skewered in William Drennan’s description. No wonder Elizabeth may have felt the need to pander to him, but it seems that she did so with an artful touch: the fair dame, who I believe had studied human nature as much as her entertainer. This letter also offers the only description I have found of how Elizabeth presented in social circles. As: a very comely, clever, tonish woman.

Given that Elizabeth was still fertile in 1795, she would likely have been at least a decade younger than Rev. William. We have no window into the state of their marriage, let alone whether they had any understandings concerning fidelity. All we know is that they got married during the time when he was on a clandestine trip from Paris to London in 1792.

Even though there are other references to Elizabeth having an affair, she continued to remain a key player in Rev. William’s trial and was financially supportive of him. While he passed his days in his jail cell, enjoying his bottles of claret and reflecting on his likely impending death, she was constantly out and about seeking testimony from witnesses and money to fund his trial.

Jackson’s trial comes on sennight, And one who might be supposed to know says he will be found guilty. This is McNally, who tells everything. He says that the poor man is in tolerable spirits after his bottle. In the evening, talks enthusiastically, tells stories of the equanimity with which they meet death. In France - of Charlotte Corday, coming on the scaffold as if she was going to begin an opera dance - of a mother and two daughters from La Vandée being guillotined, when the youngest daughter stepped forward and said that she was first to be introduced (I forget the French term), and of Hébert lifting up his head to tell one of the guards, your turn is coming, and if female and male aristocrats die so, should not I show myself a true man? Jackson. has at least a true woman in one sense, if she be not a faithful wife, for Mac says she has sold the near reversion of £1200 for £300 to fee lawyers and for other expenses

The Drennan McTier Letters. Vol 2 1794-1801. ed Jean Agnew, 1999. Irish Manuscripts Commission, p. 107

Elizabeth’s loss of £900 in the value of what she had to sell amounts to the equivalent loss of about £173,409.19 today. Not an amount to be sniffed at. A second reference to her financial sacrifices may refer to the same loss, or it may be to another property (the described one-tenth of its value would add up to more than a loss of £900):

FRIDAY, 7th November. 1794.

The Court having sat, Mr. JACKSON was put to the bar, and the Sheriff of the city of Dublin was ordered to return his venire, which he did, and the Clerk of the Crown called it over.

Mr. CURRAN.—This trial was appointed for this day. It is more becoming, not to wait to see whether the counsel for the crown will say anything as to putting off the trial, but to state how my client is circumstanced. He has been in goal for many months. He was arraigned last term, when he pleaded, and the court were pleased to appoint this day for his trial. All the interval he has employed in the most deliberate preparations for his defence. Though a native of this country, his life has been spent out of it. He sent his wife to England to attend upon such witnesses as he thought necessary for the trial. She spent part of the summer in England where an agent was employed, and Mr. Jackson himself sent another upon the same business. These circumstances are ready to be proved by affidavit. Mrs. Jackson remained in England some time, and came back to prepare for the necessary attendance. Some property, which was the joint property of both, has been sold for about one-tenth of its value, to defray the expense of bringing over witnesses, who cannot be compelled to attend by any process of this court, and therefore then demands must be complied with

The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p.196.

Three affidavits were then sworn ; one by the prisoner, a second by his wife, a third by his agent, setting forth the endeavours which had been used to procure the attendance of witnesses, as stated by Mr. Curran.

The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p.199.

The record for this joint property, if found, could lead to another major breakthrough in fleshing out this story, especially if it was part of a marriage jointure, or else if other family members were mentioned.

The longer lasting impact of Rev. William’s trial and death on Elizabeth becomes clear in 1802. This is when she is living in Paris, flat broke. She is feeling abandoned and is pleading with the French government for assistance. Her two letters, written in French, but roughly translated by myself, are both on my website. Unsurprisingly, the paternity of both children is attributed to Rev. William.

(Apologies for the rogue double spacing beneath)

Doctor Jackson, my husband is condemned to death for having served the
French Government very well I pray [saisin = input?] and two
young children are the sole heritage that I have been permitted
to receive from him. Alarmed for their existence – I came
to France, to reclaim the benefits that were given to me
by the French Government, and it is to your Citizen Consul who
I address my humble claims. I continue to hope that
the one who dried up so many of my tears and stopped the
heart of the other of misfortune take pity on the deplorable
fate of a woman once so wealthy and now delivered to all
the bitterness of such a terrible situation. I would have suffered
in silence if I had only my misfortune to bear
but seeing my two children without help and support
is a torment that my heart cannot endure.
I implore your justice and I am solicitating a
place for my son, William Jackson age 13 years
in the Prytanée de Paris where he can learn to cherish
his Benefactor and a pension for sustaining my existence
and for my daughter [age 7 years] The reply which was made in your
name addressed to the Minister of Marine and that Minister
referred me to that of External Affairs but my steps
have all been unsuccessful and I have no more
than a single hope. Allow me Citizen Consul to expose
to your eyes a picture of my situation.
Having consumed my [financial?] means after a stay
of six months in Paris, I have come to a moment when it will be
impossible to exist, and to be able to have my children exist.
I have taught them the names of the heroes of France
and my heart tells me that he will come to the rescue of their unhappy mother
and cast a benevolent eye over her and them.

Hotel of Paris
Rue d la Roi
15 Sept 1802

I am Citizen Consul
With the most profound respect your
very humble and obedient servant,

Eliza Jackson

We must end – for now – with the few crumbs of clues that we have have about Elizabeth JACKSON née BUNTING, but a few stray crumbs might yet lead to finding out more about Rev. William’s first wife, the likely mother of William jr. Such crumbs do not amount to the equivalent of a loaf of bread, but still …

In a 1766, JACKSON’s newspaper The Public Ledger, mentions a Luke NAYLOR as the brother-in-law of Rev William. This Luke NAYLOR was likely the solicitor, born in 1750, who lived at Halfmoon Street Piccadilly in London and who died in 1814. His wife was Anne FARRELL. In 1809, he wrote a will, leaving all to wife Anne, his executor. In his will, he mentions shares of a property in Ongar, in Co. Essex, as well as properties in Jamaica, the East Indies and Ireland. They are in his name and also in the names of William Burham, [one illegible person], William Ffarrell, Mary Ffarrall, Mary Shapcott, and Thomas Whitton. Several other friends are also mentioned, but the only mention of family is that of his wife.

The connection of Elizabeth JACKSON to this Luke NAYLOR becomes even stronger when we look at a map. Laura McKenna notes: It seems that Fyfield, where the Jackson's daughter was baptised in 1795, is only a few miles from both High Ongar and Chipping Ongar. So I think you are right about the Nailor/Naylor connection and that Eliza probably had the child baptised there on that account.

There is one more fact to add to the hunch of this connection. Some of the money spent on Rev. William’s defence, intended to cover witness costs, went to a Mr NAILOR, an English agent. It is likely that he was Luke NAYLOR, the brother-in-law.

Mr. Curran.—A considerable sum of money was paid to defray their expenses, and certain matters of record are to be brought upon a security of £500 for their being returned. Mr. Nailor, an English agent, has them in his possession, and he was expected here by this time. He is a material witness, and his arrival with the others was expected:—they are not yet arrived. There appeared a paragraph in the English newspapers, that this trial was put off to the 21st instant. Mr. Jackson states that his witnesses might be led into error by this publication, which was made without any connivance, or privity of his. The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p 197.

Mr. Jackson.—My Lords, the impression I would wish to leave on this court is, that notwithstanding four months might appear sufficient for preparation, yet with the utmost exertion, I have not been prepared. Ten days after my trial was postponed, I put matters in arrangement; every exertion was used to bring over the witnesses and documents ; notices were served upon certain persons in England to produce certain documents, or correspondences relative to my conduct :—These have not been brought over, and the agent in England has been so grossly imposed upon, from the idea that the trial was put off, that he wrote to my wife that he would not come over, until he heard from me. Why this paragraph was put into the papers in England, and copied into the papers in this town, I cannot say. I never felt a greater disappointment in my life than in not being tried this day. The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p 198

The phrase the devil is in the details (attributed to Nietzsche) probably originates from the earlier phrase God is in the details, meaning that whatever one does, do it thoroughly. So, stay tuned. Perhaps this post will spark further discussion and insight. Perhaps the story might even get turned into a novel - another and sometimes higher kind of truth. For now, I am keeping my sights on Mr. Tighe. He and Elizabeth may have been living at Stephens Green. He also appears in one last bit of nearly contemporary history, but once again his forename was not included.

Jackson's funeral was well attended by numbers of the United Irishmen. Barrington says, " he had a splendid funeral, and, to the astonishment of Dublin, it was attended by several members of parliament, and barristers ! A Mr. Tighe, Counsellor Richard Guiness, (Sir Jonah might have added the two Sheareses, also members of the profession), were amongst them." It is unnecessary to remark, that Barrington was too consistent a patriot to be of the number of those who, as was said in the House of Commons,[ Debates of the Irish House of Commons, June, 1795] " paid the honours of treason" to the unfortunate Jackson.

He is buried in the churchyard of St. Michan's, where also are interred the remains of Oliver Bond, and of Henry and John Sheares.

The Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Rev. William Jackson, the Defenders William Orr, Peter Finnerty.. Thomas MacNevin Esq. Dublin. 1846 p 185

NOTE: MacNevin's source for this was Personal sketches of his own time. Joseph Barrington 1827

LATE BREAKING NEWS.

Thanks to a recent email from Laura McKenna, we now know that in 1827 Elizabeth Jackson and her son were both living in Livorno, a port on the western shores of Italy. This reference (Laura thanks the work of Dr. Jennifer Orr for this source) was contained in a letter from Amelia Curran to David Baillie Warden (ex-United Irishman, American consul in Paris and a man with an incredible political and cultural correspondence):. I suppose you hear from the Jacksons sometimes. I went to Livorno to pay a visit two years since to Mrs Jackson. She seemed ill and was afterwards I understand much worse, her son was here but I did not meet him as he was married or almost as bad – alas. Where was her daughter? Was she still living? Living elsewhere? Married? More to learn.

UPDATE from Jan Waugh: March 29, 2025: This is from an earlier generation, but is worth putting a pin in: George Jackson (b 1692) from the London branch of Bristol Jackson's was living at Livorno (called Leghorn by the English). He married an Italian (Mary Giovanna Riminaldi) and was King's consul at Genoa. He is buried, with the Eagle/Hawk arms carved into the stone at the English cemetery.

UPDATE SEE ALSO:

George JACKSON (1692-1763) of Livorno.
Also photos on Flickr from the "Old Protestant" Livorno cemetery.
Autograph letter signed : Livorno, Italy, to E. Jackson, [no year] July 26
Earliest view of the (newly walled) Old English Cemetery of Livorno

In a subsequent email, Laura added a bit more information: Amelia Curran was an artist who painted Percy and Mary Shelley, and [she was] the daughter of John Philpot Curran, one of Jackson's defence lawyers in 1795. This strengthens the likelihood of their connection, but also reveals Elizabeth's continued connection with the diaspora of those connected decades earlier to The United Irishmen.

The fact that Elizabeth and her son were in Italy was referred to in my 2019 blog post, Rev. William Jackson & his Gore ancestry: Rev. William Jackson’s only son. also named William (last sighted in Rome in 1739, age 49).

That reference (which I hadn’t cited) came from The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times. Richard Robert Madden, The Shamrock edition, Newly Edited With Notes, Bibliography And Index By Vincent Fleming O’Reilly, The Catholic Publication Society 1916. p 188. What became of the widow of Jackson I have never been able to learn, but in 1839 Dr. M’Neven informed me that there was a son of his then residing in Rome, NOTE: Richard Robert Madden was born in 1798, and his book was originally published in 1857, so he was not a contemporary witness. It is likely that Elizabeth was no longer alive when he was doing his research. Also, since he was known for a certain laxity in citing sources, and destroyed some of his research documents, it is always reassuring to find additional confirmation of his claims.

As always, with research like this, it takes a village. In this case, it is mostly a village of women.

For my earlier related posts, see:

AI and breaking down brick walls

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 23:34:00 +0000

In early December 2024, Family Search uploaded a test site which included links to images of handwritten manuscripts held at the Registry of Deeds coupled with AI generated transcriptions. Even with all the garbage which is found in work done by non-humans, this is a game-changer.

Deeds research when I started in 2003 meant climbing up ladders.
Photo Credit: Nick Reddan's Facebook page

Because I have heard that many folk have had trouble using this site, I decided to share my approach:

Start with: Ireland, Properties, from 1298 to 1975 and then set some parameters. Start your search wide and then narrow it down. In this case, under “place” I had initially included Armagh – but got no hits. In the end, I ended up with only two parameters, which resulted in 104 hits:

Keywords: Armagh
Name: “John Oliver”
Place: NOTE: I left it blank.
Year range NOTE: I left it blank. It never seems to make a difference.

Many of the 104 hits were for leases which I knew about, so I clicked on a link to one that I hadn’t recognized.: A 1867 entry for Landed Estates Court to Boyle, which included John, Mary and Elizabeth OLIVER of Ballinahonebeg. These were people who I had already encountered in my research, but I still knew little about what had happened to all their land leases.

In the link above, we can see that this entry was recorded in 1867, and when we click and link to the image of the document, we can see that it was # 290. On the sidebar to the right of the document is the AI transcription, which I then cut and paste, and save in a WORD doc. It takes a bit of fiddling to find where to start and where to finish, but it isn’t rocket science.

To take the next steps, we still need the Book #. This is key. The thumbnail icon – outlined in red in the screen grab beneath – can be used to scroll back until you find the book number.

Once done, we can see that the full reference is: ROD: 1867-24-290. For reasons that perplex me, the image numbers on the AI page are not always the same as those in the microfilm versions found online at the main Family Search page. [UPDATE: Now the image numbers are the same in both places, but the underlying link is different.] This is where Nick Reddan’s Registry of Deeds Index Project is a great help. Type in 186724 at the bottom left and you will get to the correct book number. Then you can navigate your way to the exact document. NOTE If the year is 1825 or later and if the volume number is less than 10, say volume #5, then you need to add a zero in your search, for example: “186705”.

Meeting Nick Reddan in Dublin. 2011.

My method is then to create a WORD doc for each ROD and include both the AI version, as well as my edited version. The AI is beneath – no need to read it - it is just there so you can compare it with my edit in case you wish to. There are not too many hiccups in this one, but I have highlighted them to give a sense of what they can end up looking like. NOTE; When there is text in the column to the left of the page, it often gets merged with the main text. Gobbledygook. Also, AI often gets names wrong. For example, “Osburn Ridd” is actually “Osborne KIDD”. Unfortunately, scrambled words or names can skew searches. In another search I did, “Dame Street” was often rendered as “Dane Street” and consequently did not show up until I searched for Dane Street.

Image 621

A Memorial of a deed of conveyance bearing date the thirty first day of July one thousand Eight hundred and sixty seven which is in to Boyle the words and figures following that is to say whereas by Indenture dated the twenty second day of August one thousand eight hundred and twenty Dated August 6th 1867 eight and made between William McWilliams of the one part and Osborne Ridd of the other part and which Indenture was a renewal of an Indenture ┃ minutes past two of of lease of the twenty first day of April one thousand Seven hundred and ninety six made between John Oliver Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Oliver of the one part and John Scott of the other part and a further demise the said William McWilliams demised part of the townland of Ballynahonebeg formerly in possession of Robert Wilson containing ten acres two roods and sixteen perches statute measure with the mansion house out houses office together with the well and all other buildings and improvements thereon garden beach green bleaching utensils and machinery and

and all water and water courses mill dams wer tail race and waste water course and also the small part or piece of ground on the other side of the river opposite the said bleach green between the river and the road to Kennedier containing three rods and twenty seven perches also the field below the bridge known by the name of the Home or Rand lying between the high road and the River containing three acres and seventeen perches with liberty to repair the said wer mill dam and tail race & also that field containing two acres one rood and twenty six perches situate between other lands of said Y William McWilliams and the lot marked No 1 on map therein referred to and also that field containing three acres one rood and twenty four perches and the field containing two acres two roods and thirty two perches also marked on said map situate in the parish barony and County of Armagh excepting ┃ as in the grand lease of said premises held by John Jackson was excepted and reserved unto the said Osborne Ridd for the term of nineteen years computed from the first day of November one thousand eight hundred and twenty seven and for such further terms of years as should be added pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein after contained at the yearly rent of eighty two pounds payable half yearly on the first day of May and first day of November in each year and said Indenture named a covenant on the part of said William McWilliams for the renewal tories quities of said lease on the payment of proportionable part of the fine and expenses of renewal and whereas the last renewal of said leases was made by an Indenture which bears date the eighteenth day of November one thousand eight hundred and sixty five and is made between George McWilliams of the one part and said Osborne Ridd of the other part and is for the term of eleven years from the first day of November one thousand eight hundred and sixty five and whereas by one other Indenture bearing date the twenty first day of April one thousand seven hundred and ninety six and mad a tween John Oliver Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Oliver of the one part and said John Scott of the other part the said John Oliver Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Oliver demised that small Island at foot of the west of Ballynahoney in the river Callan between the lands of Ballymahon beg and the lands of Kennedies and containing one rood as described on the map of Ballynahone beg therein referred to situate in the parish and County of Armaght reserving liberty to the Vicars three of Arnough to raise and and gravel for their use and take it through said lands of Kennedies and are take liberty for said John Oliver Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Oliver their executors administrators and assigns to raise and remove the same unto the said John Scott his Executors administrators and assigns for the term of nineteen years from the first day of November one thousand Seven hundred and ninety five and for such further term of years as should be added pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein after contamed at the yearly rent of one shilling payable hold yearly and said Indenture contained a covenant for renewal toter quotes on payment of one pepper comon each renewal Now I William Cary Dobbs one of the Judges of the Landed Estates Court Ireland under the authority of and passed in the seventy second year of the reign of Queen Victoria intitled " an act to facilitate the sale and transfer of land in Ireland in consideration of the sum of ┃ six hundred and fifty pounds by Hugh Boyle of the city of Armagh in the County of Armagh Esquire paid into the Bank of Ireland to the account of the said court and to the credit of the Estate of Osborne Kidd owner and petitioner do grant unto the said Hugh Boyle the said lands of Ballynahoney in the barony of Armagh and County of Armagh expressed to be demised by the herein recited Indentures do described in the annexed map ( except do in the said leases are excepted ) with the appurtenances To hold the same unto the said Hugh Boyle his executors administrators and assigns as to the premises demised by the first recited lease for the unexpired residue of the term of eleven years created by the said recited Indenture of renewal and for such other terms as may be added thereto pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein contained and as to the premises demised by the second recited Indenture for such other terms as may be added thereto pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein contained subject to the payment of the respective unto respectively reserved by the said respective leases ┃ and to the performance of the covenants and agreements on the leper 's part therein respectively contained and subject to the tenancy from year to year of said premises containing three acres statute measure of Robert McCrea at the yearly rent of thirty two pounds payable half yearly on the first day of May and first day of November in each year and the year of whose tenancy is determinable on the first day of May in each year and subject also to all rights may now exist in respect of the water power of the river ┃ In witness whereof I the said William Cary Dobbs have hereunto set my hand and the seal of the said Court NO Law Cow Regist 20 Court this thirty first day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty seven which said deed and this memorial as to the due execution thereof respectively by the said William Mary Dobbs the same are respectively witnessed by William B Wallace Serk in the Landed Estates Court and Edward Archer of Pleasant View Dublin Gentleman W W Dobbs - seal - Henry Carey Reg Signed sealed and delivered in the presence of William B Wallace Clerk in the Landed Estates Court Edward Archer Pleasant View Dublin Gentleman the above named Edward Archer maketh Oath and Saith that he is a subscribing witness to the deed of which the above writing is a memorial as also to said memorial and saith that he saw said deed and memorial respectively duly executed by William Cary Dobbs the execution party thereto respectively and that the name Edward Archer subscribed as a witness to the execution of said deed and memorial respectively is his this deponents proper name and handwriting and saith that on Tuesday the sixth day of August one thousand eight hundred and sixty seven and at or near the hour of thirty five minutes after two o'clock in the afternoon of said day deponent delivered said deed and memorial to Henry Oliver Barker Esquire Assistant Register at the office for the registry of deeds Henrietta Street Dublin Edward Archer Sworn before me this ┃ 6th day of August 1867 at the Registry of deeds office Henrietta Street Dublin H. Barker B ┃ 291 a true copy twenty foolen Arbly

My approach to editing the AI version is to:

delete unneeded verbiage;
for dates, acreages and money, use numbers (ie 1867; 4a 2r 5p; £32) instead of words (often easier to find in digital searches);
put all surnames in UPPERCASE (easier to spot in a quick scan); and
insert links to townlands using data at townlands.ie.

In this deed, a link in townlands.ie shows the boundaries of: Ballynahone Beg, Parish Lisnadil (Armagh portion), Barony Armagh. When the map is viewed together with the text, it clarifies why the water rights and access etc. mattered. It also helps me to understand why my g-g-g-grandmother Eliza JACKSON née OLIVER (1814-1903) blamed the KIDD family for the loss of the OLIVER lands, which she felt should have come to her and her children. NOTE: The Callan River, mentioned in the deed, is the upper middle river.

For further context, it also helps to refer to other compilations: SEE: Co, Armagh Memorials of Deeds in three parts: Part 1 (BK 1-329 - 1708-1779); Part 2 (Bk330 - 1779-1829); Later Deeds: 1830- NOTE: I will soon be updating such pages with my new AI enabled transcriptions.

Finally, here is what my edited version of the deed looks like (corrections always welcome):

A Memorial of a deed of conveyance 31 Jul 1867 whereas by Indenture 22 Aug 1820 made between William McWILLIAMS of the one part and Osborne KIDD of the other part and which Indenture was a renewal of an Indenture of lease 21 Apr 1796 BTW John OLIVER Mary OLIVER and Elizabeth OLIVER of the one part and John SCOTT of the other part and a further demise the said William McWILLIAMS demised part of the townland of Ballynahonebeg [Ballynahone Beg, Parish Lisnadil (Armagh portion), Barony Armagh] formerly in possession of Robert WILSON containing 10a 3r 16p statute measure with the Mansion house out houses office together with the well and all other buildings and improvements thereon garden beach green bleaching utensils and machinery and and all water and water courses mill dams weir tail race and waste water course and also the small part or piece of ground on the other side of the river opposite the said bleach green between the river and the road to Kennedys [[Kennedies, Parish Lisnadil (Armagh portion), Barony Armagh], containing3r 27p also the field below the bridge known by the name of the Home or Island lying between the high road and the River containing 3a 17p with liberty to repair the said weir mill dam and tail race & also that field containing 2a 1r 26p situate between other lands of said William McWILLIAMS and the lot marked No 1 on map therein referred to and also that field containing 3a 1r 24p and the field containing 2a 2r 32p also marked on said map situate in the Parish Barony and County Armagh excepting as in the grand lease of said premises held by John JACKSON was excepted and reserved unto the said Osborne KIDD for the term of 19 years computed from the 1 Nov 1827 and for such further terms of years as should be added pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein after contained at the yearly rent of £82 … said Indenture named a covenant on the part of said William McWILLIAMS for the renewal tories quities of said lease on the payment of proportionable part of the fine and expenses of renewal and whereas the last renewal of said leases was made by an Indenture 18 Nov 1865 BTW George McWILLIAMS of the one part and said Osborne KIDD of the other part and is for the term of 11 years from the 1 Nov 1865 and whereas by one other Indenture 21 Apr 1796 BTW John OLIVER Mary OLIVER and Elizabeth OLIVER of the one part and said John SCOTT of the other part the said John OLIVER Mary OLIVER and Elizabeth OLIVER demised that small Island at foot of the west of Ballynahonbeg [Ballynahone Beg, Parish Lisnadil (Armagh portion), Barony Armagh] in the river Callan between the lands of Ballymahon beg and the lands of Kennedies and containing one rood as described on the map of Ballynahone beg therein referred to situate in the parish and County of Armagh reserving liberty to the Vicars Choral of Armagh to raise sand and gravel for their use and take it through said lands of Kennedies and also take liberty for said John OLIVER Mary OLIVER and Elizabeth OLIVER their executors administrators and assigns to raise and remove the same unto the said John SCOTT his Executors administrators and assigns for the term of 19 years from the 1 Nov 1795 and for such further term of years as should be added pursuant to the covenant for renewal therein after contained at the yearly rent of 1s payable hold yearly and said Indenture contained a covenant for renewal toties quoties on payment of one pepper corn each renewal. William Cary DOBBS one of the Judges of the Landed Estates Court Ireland … in consideration of £650 fifty by Hugh BOYLE of the city of Armagh in the County of Armagh Esquire paid into the Bank of Ireland to the account of the said court and to the credit of the Estate of Osborne KIDD owner and petitioner do grant unto the said Hugh BOYLE the said lands of Ballynahonbeg in the Barony of Armagh and County Armagh expressed to be demised by the herein recited Indentures so described in the annexed map (except as in the said leases are excepted) with the appurtenances To hold the same unto the said Hugh BOYLE his executors administrators and assigns as to the premises demised by the first recited lease for the unexpired residue of the term of 11 years … and subject to the tenancy from year to year of said premises containing 3a statute measure of Robert McCREA at the yearly rent of £32 payable half yearly and subject also to all rights may now exist in respect of the water power of the river. WITNESS: William B WALLACE Clerk in the Landed Estates Court and Edward ARCHER of Pleasant View Dublin Gentleman W W DOBBS – [SEAL]

NOTE: Elizabeth OLIVER, Mary OLIVER and John OLIVER were all children of Joseph OLIVER (1727-1795) and Jane OATS (bt 1728-1786). Their ancestors were (allegedly, and likely) Huguenots who settled in Ireland shortly before or just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Before AI, my main tools were the grantor and townland indexes. This lease would not have been flagged as being connected to OLIVERs in either of them. An additional benefit to the AI Transcriptions is that it takes way less time than having to type it all up from scratch. As I said at the start – this is a game changer.

Thanks to all those who made it possible.

2024 Visit to Coleraine

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:40:00 +0000

History is a perpetual dialogue between the past and the present,
that is never neutral or objective.
SOURCE, What Is History?, E. H. Carr. 1961

It has been said of me that when I am asked to look at a field in front of my nose and then to report back on how many cows can be seen, that I can be stupidly slow to come up with an answer. I count the cow plops, smell the cows and taste the grass. Why? Dunno, but here I am now in Coleraine, trying to make sense of the herd of JACKSONs who landed in Northern Ireland in the early-mid 1600s. Boots on the ground. Tasting the grass.

This Air BnB listing which is part of the converted Irish Society School on Beresford Place, was exactly where I had to be to pursue this quest. The BERESFORDs, JACKSONs, and The Irish Society are all part of the story that I am tracking.

A COLERAINE landmark will not be demolished despite being put up for sale on the open market, it emerged today. The Honorable the Irish Society, is offering for sale the former red brick school at Beresford Place. But they have stressed that it is a Listed Building and is fully protected. Therefore, it cannot be demolished to provide a prime site. Spokesman Edward Montgomery said he was disappointed the Society could not find suitable tenants for the building and were left with little option but to put it on the market. However, he affirmed: "It's a listed building and is just as safe in the hands of any developer as it is in our possession. SOURCE: Belfast Telegraph Fri 21 Dec 2001 at 10:00

In spite of the speed with which the BERESFORDs and JACKSONs clambered up to the upper rungs of the various social and political ladders of Coleraine (and later of Dublin) by getting knighted and such, a 1905 etching of the initial Coleraine home of Sir Tristram BERESFORD (1574-1649) reveals that the buildings that these early families first lived in during the early-mid 1600s were much more modest.

… there are some of the old houses remaining which were built by the Irish Society at the time of the first settlement, the wooden frame works for which were brought from London. The frames were of oak and the walls were completed by studs being nailed to the frames and plastered with catin clay which is clay mixed with hay and rushes. There is an old house opposite the one occupied by Mr. Alexander Mitchel in New Row which is said to be the residence of Sir Tristram Beresford the first settler of that family.
SOURCE: Ordnance survey memoir for the parish of Coleraine, County Londonderry: a description compiled as part of the field survey for the first edition of the six inch Ordnance Survey maps [1830-1840] p 21

Later, I will try to pin down the actual location of this Beresford house on New Row [These three streets [Bridge street, Church Street New Row] and the Diamond are the largest and most respectable in the town. SOURCE: Ordnance survey memoir [1830-1840] p 5 ]. For now, the floor plan leads me to suspect that it likely housed two separate households, separated only by a hallway.

Sir Tristram Beresfords House 1905 etching. From Ordnance Survey Memoirs 1835-1840

Early records show that these BERESFORDs of Coleraine had first hailed from Co. Kent in England, and after that had intermarried at least once with the JACKSONs of Jackson’s Hall. In spite of this (or possibly because of it) the two families had engaged in several long and complicated legal feuds with each other. They took turns getting elected to various positions in local politics during the years when they had also leased land from and held office in The Honorable the Irish Society. Conflict of interest? No doubt.

These days, if you want to fish in the River Bann, you still need to check in with the Irish Society. They hold extensive fishing rights in Northern Ireland, rights that at least one JACKSON was found guilty of abusing in the 17^th century.

The JACKSON residence and place of business was built by William JACKSON (1628-1688). He also happened to be the husband of Susan BERESFORD (1645-1706). Their home was on the west side of the River Bann, on a hill looking down on the town, a site that would be reasonably defensible if under siege. Like the BERESFORDs first home, the initial building on this site had been no more than a cottage when King James I had first leased the property to the Clothworker’s Company in 1609. First built in 1680, and initially called The Mansion House, the building was later enlarged in 1770.

George JACKSON [aka Sir George JACKSON (1776-1840)], living in Surrey [Beech Hill], England was the final JACKSON holder of the original 1663 lease. By 1801 he had been spending money faster than he had been earning it, owed about £30,000 and had to borrow to pay the interest. He then sold the lease to T.K. HANNYNGTON, who went bankrupt, and what was left was then bought by the ALEXANDERs. During this time, Jackson Hall became dilapidated, and was then taken over by a Mrs. MAXWELL who had a robust enough fortune to be able to repair it. SOURCE: Coleraine in By-gone Centuries.

As the Joni Mitchell song has it, Pave Paradise, put up a parking lot. In this case, there is a literal parking lot on the grounds where Jackson Hall once stood. Given that the house itself would have been sited on the higher part of the land, I choose to believe that it would have been sited slightly above the current parking lot, looking south through this clump of old trees. I will need to consult more maps to verify this.

In the softened light of a calm autumnal sunset the clear reflection of the bridge, its peculiar construction, the shipping at the wharf, the few old fashioned houses in Killowen, and the graceful trees in the grounds of Jacksons Hall, throwing their deep shadows on the tranquil waters, all contribute to make the prospect beautiful. pp 2-3 Ordnance survey memoir

A week ago, when I first got off the train at Coleraine, instead of resorting to Google maps, I chose to use my 1904 Ordnance Survey Map to find my way to my B&B. Much more informative.

The B&B is in the triangle in the middle of the map which is labelled: Schools.

I can unreservedly recommend this as a place to stay. The wing that I am in was built since 1904, and since it includes three bedrooms, it is large enough that I have been able to host friends from elsewhere in Ireland. Convenience-wise, there is a huge Tesco Grocery store just a block away. For specialty groceries, there is McAtamney’s Butcher Shop not far around the corner, while further up the road is The Belfry Deli and a little to the east is The Copper Pig. All are excellent.

As befits a town that began within the confines of a palisade, nothing is more than ten minutes away.

Rev. William JACKSON (1737-1795): Seen through the framing & lens of his Writing

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 23:49:00 +0000

It is easy to frame the lives of people based on a single event. Once they have been interpreted within such a frame, that initial picture – for better or worse - can be devilishly hard to shake.

Watergate: Richard Nixon (1919-1994),
Beheaded: Anne Bolyn (abt 1507-1536),
Arsenic: Rev William Jackson (1737-1795).

In 1982 when my youngest daughter was born, the medical specialist’s framing of her diagnosis of CDLS said that there was a 50/50 chance that she would not live past the age of two, and that if she did, she would likely be autistic and non-verbal. But then there was the wisdom of our GP: You need a different way to see your daughter. The medical lens is too small. Try something different. Maybe have her horoscope done. Crazy as that may sound, we did that, and even crazier - it turned out to be a better predictor of how her adult life would play out than what the initial framing had predicted. For more than two decades, she has lived independently and worked part-time at retail stores.

A Google algorithm churns out 127,000 hits in 42 seconds for the frame of: “Arsenic + Rev William Jackson (1737-1795)”. His death – by arsenic - is the most click-bait-worthy aspect of his life. It may also be the least important, even though there is no debate over the fact that he was in the court room, as he stood awaiting sentence, when he keeled over and died from poisoning, likely self-administered. Doing a search of his name with other identifiers does not reveal much more. Short of doing a horoscope (impossible since we have no definite date of his birth), what other frame might help us to learn more about him?

How did he go from being an Irishman, born into privilege (probably in Dublin), ordained as an Anglican minister (probably in England), and then go on to live most of his adult life in London where he earned his living as a journalist, becoming an United Irishman activist, and then flitting between England, Ireland and Paris in the 1790s, only to end up being betrayed by a friend and ultimately convicted as an agent of the French government? A traitor?

There is no record of his ordination in Ireland. There are a couple of William Jacksons who were ordained in England in the right time frame. They do not appear to be him.
In the newspapers of the day, he was called “Pastor Jackson”. This is how ministers were referred to when they had not been given a benefice or otherwise granted a parish.
The early accounts claim that he attended Oxford, but there is no record of him attending there.
Was his ordination simply opportunistic (didn’t know what else to do?), or was it the result of sincerely held beliefs?
Was he as dangerous and unlovable – personally, politically and faith-wise - as historians such as Lucyle Werkmeister (Notes for a Revised Life of William Jackson ) allege?

Churchill’s quip about Russia comes to mind: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. If so, what would be the key?

One key has been to use the records in the Memorials of Deeds. Leases get handed down from generation to generation; old deeds get recited in newer ones. When an uncle (or aunt) is a mentor or guardian or if a spinster aunt (or bachelor uncle) leaves a bequest, there is sometimes a record of this. That kind of support could make all the difference to a young man like him, one whose father had died when he was a toddler.

Thanks to such leases, his maternal GORE connections are now well documented. In one of the quirkier bits of Irish history, it turns out that he was a second cousin four times removed of Constance Georgine Booth-Gore (1868-1927), better known as Countess Markievicz, an activist in the 1916 Easter Rising. His politics, like hers, were likely a 180^o turn from the politics of their respective families. The blood line of dissent had continued.

Where next? Two thoughts from my 2019 post: Rev. William Jackson & his Gore ancestry:

Family systems theory asserts that individuals need to be understood from their birth order as well as from the role they played and were seen to be playing in their family. Did they feel valued? Did they feel resilient? Did they feel worthy? It is significant that Rev. William was the youngest of four sons, that he was fatherless at a young age and finally that he was likely raised with his wealthy Gore relations in London. It also seems likely that the prestigious Sale family played a part in his upbringing. Although Dr. Edward Sale had died when Rev. William was abt. six years old, his wife Catherine – aunt to Rev. William - lived till abt. 1770. A year before her death, she had been the executor of his oldest brother Richard Jackson’s will.

Secondly, if the Gore’s legal, political and financial firepower had been called upon to defend Rev. William, they would have been unlikely to have been outgunned. That they were silent in his defence perhaps speaks volumes.

His father was a provost, and like the GOREs, his family must have included many well connected merchants, politicians and legal minds. Significantly, not a single GORE or JACKSON claimed any connection to him when he was on trial. [SEE: Richard JACKSON, father of Rev. William JACKSON]. This silence, at a time when people thrilled to news of crime and treason amongst the elites, is suspicious. Did the influence of his paternal relations sweep his connections to them under the carpet? In an article, published in the Oracle in 1795, the author [possibly Peter Stuart, who knew him personally] warned against raking into the secrets of his Family, which, as it is not implicated in his guilt, ought not to share in his disgrace.

Seeking another kind of framing, I turned to looking at him through the lens of his own words. Several chapter-book-length publications pieces are available online:

Thirty Letters on Various Subjects Vol I. William Jackson. 1783. Printed for T. Cadell, and T. Evans, in the Strand; and B. Thorn and Son, in EXETER Update: Feb 7, 2024.: Other historians had attributed these letters to Rev William, and I had blindly followed. This was William Jackson (1730-1803) of Exeter, a portrait painter.

Political thought: Thoughts on the Causes of the Delay of the Westminster Scrutiny Rev. Mr. Jackson. 1784 [he quotes Milton’s Paradise Lost: First and Last on ME, ME ONLY, as the source and spring, all the blame Lights due.]

Sermons on Practical and Important Subjects by the late W.F. Jackson Tried and convicted for High Treason in Dublin, April 1795. printed for T. Evans, No. 46, in Paternoster-Row, [1795] First published in the 1760s (late 1760s?), the description of his style – plain and practical … vigorous and animating – was also evident in Observations.

Sodom and Onan: a Satire Published in 1772, the chapbook was sold at #23 opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, London

An answer to the declaration of the king of England respecting his motives for carrying on the present war (1793).

Observations in answer to Mr. Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” Jackson completed this pamphlet two months before his unanticipated death (although his death may not have been unanticipated to him as he was writing it). As he refuted Paine’s arguments, he did not have access to his reference library. This may have contributed to its casual tone.

As I read, I heeded the advice that he gave in one of his letters published when he was 46 years old: let go of custom (i.e. confirmation bias), and think afresh:

In justice to myself, let me observe, that truth sometimes does not strike us without the assistance of custom; but so great is the force of custom, that, unassisted by truth, it has worked the greatest miracles. and I am neither ambitious of the honour, or the danger, of enlightening the world, but, if I can soften prejudices which I cannot remove—if I can loosen the fetters of custom [a lens?] where I cannot altogether unbind them, and engage you to think for yourself—my end will be answered, and my trouble fully repaid. [SOURCE: Thirty Letters on Various Subjects Vol I. William Jackson. 1783. Printed for T. Cadell, and T. Evans, in the Strand; and B. Thorn and Son, in EXETER. Update: Feb 7, 2024.: Other historians had attributed these letters to Rev William, and I had blindly followed. This was William Jackson (1730-1803) of Exeter, a portrait painter.

Some time before the initial publication of these letters, a set of his sermons which he had preached at Tavistock Chapel, St. John the Evangelist, Drury Lane, London were first published. NOTE: I need to run this down. Some sources suggest that he preached and/or published them before 1766, the year that he became editor of The Public Ledger; some suggest afterwards. The reviews were favourable. They were then repackaged and republished just after his death, taking full advantage of his infamy to goose up sales.

Art. 38. Sermons on practical and important Subjects. By the late Rev. W. F. Jackson. Tried and convicted for High Treason, in Dublin, April 23, 1795. 8vo. 239 pp. 4s. sewed. Evans. 1795* Anything very remarkable happening to an author renders his works immediately an object of traffic. The melancholy catastrophe of Mr. Jackson's life has called these sheets, long ago printed and designed for publication, from the retirement in which they had begun to change their colour: and, with the addition of only five pages and a title, has brought them forward to the public eye. So strange are the perversions of the human mind, that we shall not attempt to enquire by what extraordinary combination of circumstances a writer, whose discourses express a strong and even a rigorous piety, could have been led to the commission of such crimes as those which stained the latter days of this teacher. His sermons, eleven in number, are rather above than below the common level of composition. Sometimes his expressions are rather harsh, and sometimes there appears an affectation of rhetorical flourish, or pathetic appeal to the feelings; but, on the whole, they are such as lead the reader to regret, yet more strongly than before, the unhappy termination of the author's career. The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review, vol 7-8 p 557.

The fact that he preached at Tavistock Chapel, Drury Lane, connected me to Dr. Campbell’s 1775 Diary of a Visit to England. This Rev. Doctor Thomas Campbell (1733–95), was a Church of Ireland clergyman, born at Glack, Co. Tyrone, eldest son of the Rev. Moses Campbell (1695?–1772) and his wife, Elizabeth (née Johnston) of Tully, Co. Monaghan. A bit in this diary shed light on the experiences of bias against the London-Irish gentry at the time of Rev. William:

I then dined at the Crown and Anchor in Sussex Street where we were charged 3-10 for a pound of cod &c – It is amazing the passion our Countrymen have for appearing great in London – This very learned gentleman Doctor Jackson (45) methought affected a consequence from calling for shrimp sauce &c while the Waiter (I saw) was laughing at him for his brogue and appearance – I verily believe that if a Coleraine man was to come here and he w^d bespeak nothing but Salmon merely because it is the most expensive fish in London; though he has it at home for less than a farthing a pound. p 50

Dined at the Bedford where I met Doctor Jackson – lamenting the state of his wife from the case of Perraus (77) her brothers. p59 Notes on the Diary: I have not been able to find out anything about the Perreaus’ [possibly Perreaux ?] sister who was married to Dr. Jackson p 121.

NOTE: This Dr. Jackson was most likely Richard “Omniscient” JACKSON (1720-1787), born at Ballycastle in Co. Antrim, so the mention of his Coleraine accent fits. On the other hand, the Ballycastle of Co. Down, is likely where Rev. William hailed from. This suggests that the two men were not closely related, even though both had corresponded with Benjamin Franklin.

After the first publication of these Tavistock sermons, Rev. William took a significant moral detour in both tone and content with his 1772 Sodom and Onan: a Satire. This no-holds-barred rant was likely written to curry favour with Elizabeth Chudleigh (the self-styled Duchess of Kingston). On March 25^th, 1776, she paid him £30 to feed her version of events to the papers - to buttress her defence in the court case against her (for bigamy). [SOURCE: The Royal Trial that Shocked Georgian England]. Shortly afterwards, he followed Chudleigh to Paris.

Rev. William was in his mid 30s when he wrote Sodom. His young wife had recently died of cancer (the dates are a bit fuzzy, but this is the likely timeline). By several accounts, he was devoted to her and was commended for his care of her [SOURCE: The Jackson Episode in 1794. Frank Macdermot in An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 27, No. 105]. Regrettably, we know nothing more about her, although I suspect that her birth name was either NAYLOR or FARRELL (SEE: Update Jan 2024 in Blog Post Dec 2023). Is it possible that the intensity of his rage in Sodom was - at least partly – the impact of displaced grief, a way to harness energy in the midst of depression? Hard to say. Is anything revealed in his portrait on the cover?

Since nothing sells like scandal and conspiracy, this meant that when Sodom was sold at #23 opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, London, it sold well. The visual pun of the foot (on the cover page of Sodom in front of Esq^r) was a sly reference to the fact that Samuel Foote, the playwright whom Jackson was smearing and defaming, had lost a leg after a riding accident. Throughout the text, its mean-mindedness was nothing short of breath-taking, especially coming from a Parson. No wonder in the mid-1760s, when he was a journalist, and editor of The Public Ledger, he was nicknamed Viper Jackson. SEE: Richard Norton’s Homosexuality in 18^th Century England, and Matthew J. Kinservik’s The Politics and Poetics of Sodomy in the Age of George III.

Here is a taste in the opening to Sodom, where Rev William goes full bore against Samuel Foote:

Then, in the last year of his life, he wrote: Observations in answer to Mr. Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” The two pieces could not be more different, but there are some aspects that they have in common: humour, accessible language, and compellingly shaped arguments. At the same time, it is inescapable that his homophobic Sodom was full of disgust, loathing, vindictiveness and righteousness, while his disagreements and arguments in Observations are couched in compassion. How to understand how all this could co-exist in one man?

My father might be a similar example. He regularly drank himself into anger, but in a mid-life crisis when faced with a career choice of becoming a salesman for Seagram’s Whiskey, or an Anglican minister, he chose the ministry. We used to joke that this was merely a choice between two kinds of spirits. Not an uncommon one for men of his ilk. As for Rev. William, he was known to down four bottles of claret at a single dinner [SOURCE: Frank Macdermot]. Possibly while he was nattering on about theology in a reasonably coherent manner, as my father was wont to do. In my father’s case, his drinking did not abate, so my mother simply coped with it, concealing the empties before putting them in the garbage so the garbageman wouldn’t find out.

While I am not excusing or recommending this kind of choice, it seems to have been an integral part of Rev. William’s character. These days, we would frame this behaviour as alcoholic. An alternative perspective could be that a few bottles of claret can lubricate the tongue to succeed in the profession of a preacher or journalist: both require standing on soap boxes, and both can make a man feel like he matters.

If we follow his own words, there are glimpses into what may have contributed to Rev. William’s transition away from the broken man that he had so obviously been in his mid-life years:

I believe in the truth of revelation; after having read everything written against it, that I could meet with. Mine is not a professional faith, It arises from having searched into the evidence at an adult., unshackled by any church [p70]

My life has been a concatenation of afflictive circumstances.; A disastrous series of contingent woes. Loss of property and relatives by fire, singular casualty, and agonizing disease. Nearly a third portion of my existence has been consumed in watching the ceaseless depredations death was making on those most dear to me. Heavy calamities! As such, they staggered my nature, for we are only men, but they did not shake my reliance. I mentally gravitated to the center of being, and was sustained by Almighty power in the orbit of life. Observations in answer to Mr. Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason” [pp 70-71]

Later in Paris, siding with the cause of American, French and Irish revolutionaries may have given him a renewed sense of purpose. He was involved with the radical British expatriates in Paris and attended the famous meeting at White's Hotel in November 1792, a gathering that included Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Thomas Paine. Their ideas fired him up but with a calmer sense of purpose. In Observations in answer to Mr. Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason”, when he disagrees with Paine’s Age of Reason, his tone is no longer that of Viper Jackson:

When the present and future generation shall be swept by the hand of time among the mouldering ruins of ancient worlds, the name of Mr. Paine, will live in celebrity. This compliment is most willingly bestowed, it comes warm from the heart. But when a man without powers adequate to the purpose; without any of the diversity of ancient literature necessary for the investigation, without oriental language, or oriental knowledge, attempts to write down an Eastern book of at the least three thousand five hundred years antiquity, and professedly of everlasting importance to our species, we cannot forbear to censure such a man for the rash exposure of his ignorance. p29.

Unlike in Sodom, he is no longer employing the polarizing tactics of mean subversive puns. Rather, he seems intent on simply convincing his audience that God speaks to mankind through revelation not just reason. Seen through this frame, we can understand him not only as a preacher but as a man and also with respect to where he stood on the issue of Deism, as advocated by Paine (and other revolutionaries), an approach to Christianity which sought to dismiss personal revelation and to undermine the authority of religious institutions. Not only did Rev William continue to believe in God’s revelation and miracles, but also in their necessity:

Here is the truth, and disingenuous it is; men light their reason at the torch of revelation, and then disown the source from which from whence they are illuminated. As the powers of man are limited to the objects of the senses, beholding a fine display of things, and all, carried on mechanically in a rotationally circle, what is there to induce him to look further? When told of a God, who gave existence to matter, form to a universe, and habitation to immensity; man can then ascend on contemplations wing, and from the wonders he beholds in the creation, infer the power, wisdom, and goodness of the creator. [p35.]

Key to his belief in the limits of reason:

Reason, so pompously extolled as the chief excellence of the human mind, cannot discover first principles; they must be revealed; And then they furnish groundwork for the reasoning faculty to compare, apply, and deduce consequences. This is the order of our nature. To reverse it is to grope our way in the dark; Or to follow an ignis fatuus [a will-o'-the-wisp; something deceptive or deluding] that leads us bewildered through the mazes of conjecture, into the cavern of ignorance. When therefore, Mr. Paine says that it is only “by the exercise of reason man can discover God, he mistakes, because the discovery came originally from Revelation, and the notices of it to be found among the Heathen nations of antiquity, and those of the present times, are traditions, more or less corrupted, of the fact so originally revealed.

Not that he wasn’t above being bratty. In one instance, there is the way that he censors Paine’s reliance on science - more amusing to those of us who have seen a man land on the moon:

It is not yet been ascertained to any certainty whether the Moon, the nearest to our earth, is inhabited, or habitable. Bishop Wilkins proposed a method of flying to the moon. If this were practicable, Mr. Paine might take. A journey, thither, and bring us a packet of news from the inhabitants. p44.

Furthermore Rev. William places Christian revelation solidly within the context of Jewish faith:

Here again is mystery; here is miracle, here is truth enveloped in mystery; her customary garb. As to prophecy, I have already referred to passages in the ancient Scripture on that subject; I will only, therefore, summarily observe, that the original language of revelation. communicates ideas of future events; rites, ceremonies, signs, and emblems, were instituted to keep these events in remembrance, and shadow out, if so may be phrased, what would happen in future ages. The whole of the Jewish ritual was prophecy and figure. [p45]

This leads to another bone that he picked with Thomas Paine. When Paine claimed that the Bible “is a history of wickedness, which has served to brutalize mankind” [For Paine’s antisemitism and islamophobia SEE: A Concise History of American Antisemitism, Robert Michael, p70], Rev. William countered:

Among the Jews, there have, in all ages, been men of exemplary piety. Their belief has influenced their conduct. The Jewish scriptures, therefore, have not a tendency to corrupt and brutalize mankind. The two hinges on what Judaism turns, are, the love of God and the love of man. [p22]

He then quotes Luke 10:26 where, when Jesus is asked “What is written in the law [referring to Jewish law]? What is your reading of it?” Jesus, speaking as a Jew interpreting the Law, replies:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God [Jehovah Aleim], with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; And thy fellow creature as thyself”. [p22]

He asks Paine to consider the values that they shared, and to consider that the same values - which had shaped the egalitarianism of American and French revolutions - had their roots in the Jewish tradition:

Is this an injunction calculated to corrupt and brutalize mankind? Does it not, on the contrary, breathe that very spirit which Mr. Paine has recommended in many parts of other writings, the spirit of philanthropy? Love of God must exalt, and love of man expand the soul; both combined, sublime our nature into something above mortality. p23

He places the history in the Bible in a more inclusive frame, relating it to their own politics:

By the tablature of the Bible, it appears that Jewish kings, ministers, judges, officers, secretaries, and all the inferior regalia tribe, were three thousand years ago exactly the same description of characters, that they were among us Europeans in the last century: some good, some bad, the generality indifferent, all imperfect, and the best ordinarily the worst accommodated, as to the goods of fortune p23.

As for Paine’s islamophobia, he accuses Paine of using the authority of his public fame to sanction whatever he might think proper to advance. When Paine states that Mahomet and Christ were of obscure parentage, he offers Paine a history lesson:

Mahomet was an Arab of the tribe of the Korashites; which was accounted the noblest of all their tribes, and he was lineally descended from the founder. His grandfather Abdel Motallab, was the head and governor of this tribe, residing at Mecca, the seat of the government. He had thirteen sons, the eldest of whom, Abdalah, was the father of Mahomet. He was therefore, the most illustrious family in Arabia.

Misstating the descent of Mahomet, Mr. Paine, as egregiously falsifies his condition. He calls him a mule driver. Camels and mules are to him the same species of animals. The city of Mecca was badly situated as to soil., but most conveniently placed for merchandise. The principal inhabitants were merchants.

The commodities which they imported from India, Ethiopia, and the southern parts, they sent into Syria, Persia, and Egypt, on camels. Muhammad, being engaged with his uncle in this kind of merchandise, accompanied the cargoes, and superintended the sale. This is Mr. Paine's “mule driver of obscure parentage”. [p46]

Given that Rev. William was most likely descended from a class of Irish JACKSONs who were members of the merchant class as far back as the 1600s, he likely had an understanding of how trade routes facilitated not only trade but also the transmission of ideas. He later references:

Sale’s translation of the Koran, is by far the best version in our language; And the preliminary discourse prefix, contains a very learned account of the real and different tenants held by the most enlightened disciples of MOHAMMED. [p.62]

This translation was published in 1734, three years before Rev. William was born, and as the first translation in English to be based directly on the Arabic text, it remained the definitive text in the decades that followed. It is possible that a JACKSON-SALE family connection might have led to Rev William experiencing a surprisingly early and life-altering reading of the Koran.

The details of George Sale's early life, like Rev. William’s are hard to track. He reportedly attended The Kings School, Cambridge, although there is no record of him being there (absent records same as Rev. William’s). Some say he held heretical views. After studying at the Inner Temple in 1720, he practiced as a Solicitor, though only when he needed to. His real passion seems to have been writing and translating and his work with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Here is some known family history which could point to this possible JACKSON-SALE connection:

A John SALE (d abt 1730), a merchant of Dublin, was a step-father of Anne GORE (daughter of Elizabeth TIFFIN (bef 1664-btw 1735-1736) & Francis GORE) and hence was a step-grandfather to Rev. William JACKSON. We do not know who John SALE’s father was, but his lifespan as well as his occupation as a merchant make him a good fit to be a brother of the translator of the Koran, George SALE (1796-1736) whose father Samuel SALE was also a merchant.

Rev. William’s father, Richard JACKSON died when William was a mere toddler, and sometime after that, the family resided in London. Given the reliance of young widows on extended family, William may have lived with his mother Anne JACKSON née GORE and members of the SALE family in either Kent or London. The footnotes to a 1782 letter that Rev. William wrote to Benjamin Franklin allege that Rev. William was born in Dublin, … moved to London at an early age.

A convergence of profession also contributes to this hunch of this SALE-JACKSON connection. Rev William’s father as well as his oldest brother (also named Richard) were both lawyers, same as George SALE who studied law at the Inner Temple, a professional training institute for barristers.

Information about the grave of George SALE’s son at Find-a Grave as well as research done by Jean Thomas in an Ancestry Tree, reveals that George SALE (1796-1736), was the son of Samuel SALE, a London merchant. He was born in Kent and married twice. Firstly Mary JARRETT, with whom he had a daughter Sarah SALE (1716-1792); Secondly Marianne D’ARGENT [aka Mary Ann]. Their children included: George James SALE (1728–1773), William Mitchel SALE (1730–), Jane SALE (1732–) & Samuel (1734–1755) The latter died in an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal.

A 2^nd JACKSON-SALE familial link occurs a generation later but the echoing of a forename contributes to my hunch that it too could be relevant. A Samuel SALE (b bef 1834), father of Hannah SALE (1854-1929) married William JACKSON of Ballygibbon, Co. Kildare. The Jacksons of Ballygibbon, Co. Kildare trace back to the late 1600s, and the name Richard is used for at least one descendant in this family line, and the name William occurs frequently.

Rev William not only tracked Mohammed’s ancestry, but also included Christ’s:

With respect to Christ he was the tribe of Judah, of the House of David, and lineally descended from Abraham; A pedigree of only forty-two generations. [p.46]

Clearly, tracking lineage mattered to him. In the final paragraph of Observations, he mentions his Irish heritage,

Such, then, as the work is, I, with great deference, submit it to the candor and indulgence of the Irish nation; of which my paternal and maternal ancestors were centuries ago; from which I sprang; and for the real happiness of which offer an ardent prayer to HIM - - - who disposeth the faith of empires. [p72]

We know that his GORE ancestors were living in Ireland in the early 1600s and that his two most likely JACKSON lineages – from Co. Down and/or Coleraine JACKSONs - also trace back to the early 1600s. Earlier, when he refers to Paine’s description of the prophets being itinerant poets and musicians, he adds:

An Highlander playing a Scottish air on the bagpipes is a prophet; an Irish Harper is the same, the instrument and the latter, however, being the most agreeable, the harpist is the better prophet. [p26]

In this passage, is he acknowledging his bifurcated Irish-Scottish heritage, and at the same time – possibly - an allegiance to Irish-Celtic sensibilities? This is a bit of a reach, but …

In 1794, the Northern Star stated that Rev. William was: accidentally an alien to this country … Irish blood only flows through his veins. Richard Robert Madden (1798-1886), may have taken this reporting one step too far in: The United Irishmen – Their Lives and Times when he alleged:

THE subject of this memoir, though not born in Ireland, was descended from a highly respectable family of a northern county, of the Newtownards branch of the Jacksons, from which the celebrated American general of that name sprung. [NOTE: Madden is off the mark here, but the error is understandable. The Newtownards branch of JACKSONs included President Andrew Jackson. Stonewall Jackson was in the Tartaragan branch.

There is more to learn about Rev. William’s Irish ancestry, but by using the framing of his own words, we can at least see that in spite of his many insecurities, his volatility, his sensual embrace of life and his love affair with good claret, his faith in a personal God was sincere. When he died, there was a scrap of paper in his pocket in his own handwriting:

Turn thee unto me and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted! The troubles of my heart are enlarged.O bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive me all my sins. Consider my enemies, for they are many, and they hate me with a cruel violence. Oh! keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in thee. SOURCE: The United Irishmen, their lives and times. Newly ed. (Catholic Publication Society of America, 1916) Richard Robert Madden, [A reissue of the 1857-1860 version]

In a recent New York Times interview, Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Why We Remember has some pertinent insights which can season aspects of our quest for the truth of the life of Rev. William.

We don’t replay the past as it happened; we do it through a lens of interpretation and imagination. … So it creates all these weird biases and infiltrates our decision making. It affects our sense of who we are. … a major purpose of memory, which is to give us an illusion of stability in a world that is always changing. Because if we look for memories, we’ll reshape them into our beliefs of what’s happening right now. We’ll be biased in terms of how we sample the past. We have these illusions of stability, but we are always changing. And depending on what memories we draw upon, those life narratives can change.

Is seeking to understand the life of Rev. William through the lens of his own words, any more valid than the lenses which were chosen by Peter Stuart (1795 in the Oracle), or by Richard Robert Madden (1857 in The United Irishmen, their lives and times) or by Lucyle Werkmeister (1961 in Notes for a Revised Life of William Jackson)? As I continue to revise my own sense of what seems truthful, I cannot ignore that: those life narratives can change. For now, I leave the reader to judge.

Rev William Francis JACKSON

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 16:06:00 +0000

This is not as radical a name change as the one made by the artist formerly known as Prince, but I will henceforth be referring to Rev. William JACKSON (1737-1795) as: Rev. William Francis JACKSON. This may seem like a minor change, but adding a middle name can narrow the scope when it comes to finding key documents.

My first hint, about what William's middle name might have been, came a few years ago in an article about his sermons:

Art. 38. Sermons on practical and important Subjects. By the late Rev. W. F. Jackson. Tried and convicted for High Treason, in Dublin, April 23, 1795. 8vo. 239 pp. 4s. sewed. Evans. 1795* Any thing very remarkable happening to an author renders his works immediately an object of traffic. The melancholy catastrophe of Mr. Jackson's life has called these sheets, long ago printed and designed for publication, from the retirement in which they had begun to change their colour : and, with the addition of only five pages and a title, has brought them forward to the public eye. So strange are the perversions of the human mind, that we shall not attempt to enquire by what extraordinary combination of circumstances a writer, whose discourses express a strong and even a rigorous piety, could have been led to the commission of such crimes as those which stained the latter days of this teacher. His sermons, eleven in number, are rather above than below the common level of composition. Sometimes his expressions are rather harsh, and sometimes there appears an affectation of rhetorical flourish, or pathetic appeal to the feelings; but, on the whole, they are such as lead the reader to regret, yet more strongly than before, the unhappy termination of the author's career. The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review, vol 7-8 p 557.

Further verification came thanks to: Ruairi Nolan who recently emailed me this citation.

A William Francis JACKSON was mentioned in Signatories to the British Club Address of 24th November 1792 to the National Convention, presented on 28th November.. SOURCE: Vectors of Revolution.:The British Radical Community in Early Republican Paris, 1792-1794. Rachel Rogers.

Silly me for taking so long to put this together. Sylvie Kleinman had first mentioned something about William's middle name a few years ago, but I had let it fall off my radar. In hindsight, the name Francis makes total sense. After all, his grandfather was a Francis GORE. Recently, Mathieu Ferradou emailed me a copy of Jackson's signature on this Nov. 1792 convention document (Sylvie had shared it before).

All these little bits help. The history of Rev. William JACKSON still sports more holes than a slab of Swiss Cheese. During my next trip to Ireland and England, I will be checking out the following:

· William supposedly studied at Oxford, but the available records show no evidence of his attendance at this university. Why?

· He was an Anglican clergyman (Church of Ireland and/or Church of England), but we don’t know when or where he was ordained. Although there are several Williams who were ordained in a timeframe that could be a match, he is not one of them. Why? Were his records expunged because of the disgrace of his conviction for treason? Is it possible that he faked his credentials from both the university and the Church? (What we know of the checkered past of Rev. William is such that these possibilities cannot be ruled out.)

· Of course, a third possibility for such missing records is to blame rats (thanks to Sylvie Kleiman for this): In 1836, Henry Cole made a surprising discovery while he was working with damaged and dirty government records – a dead rat with a stomach full of chewed up documents. You can now purchase these cute little rats at the British National Archives gift shop.

Other bits of the story which still niggle at me:

· Who was William's first wife? She died of cancer, but when? He was supposedly devoted in his care of her.

· In a 1766 mention in JACKSON’s newspaper The Public Ledger, a Luke NAYLOR is mentioned as JACKSON’s brother-in-law. He was probably the Luke NAYLOR, born in 1750, a lawyer who lived at Halfmoon Street Piccadilly in London and who died in 1814. His wife was Anne FARRELL. Perhaps William's first wife was a sister of Luke NAYLOR. Another possibility is that JACKSON had a sister who had married a NAYLOR. No sisters are mentioned in William's early bios (just that he had three older brothers), but the non-mention would not be surprising given the general invisibility of women in the records of the day. Update Jan 23, 2024: The Times Feb 3, 1795: Dublin Jan 27, 1895, A Mr. NAYLOR, a London Attorney of Westminster Hall, was Rev. William JACKSON's lawyer representing him at his trial at the Court of King's Bench. The trial was delayed until the next term.

· Rev. William’s 2^nd wife was an Elizabeth, and assuming that they were formally married, there should be a wedding cert and hence lead us to her surname. Where is it?

· From her letters, we know that this Elizabeth was living destitute in Paris in 1802, as a widow with two children. In these letters, she was seeking a pension as well as support for schooling for her son as her due for work done by her deceased husband on behalf of the French Government. SEE: Elizabeth JACKSON letters from Paris

· During Rev. William’s trial, Elizabeth supposedly lived at Stephen’s Green. Several JACKSONs had long owned property at Stephens Green. Were they part of Rev. William’s extended family? Who did she stay with? SEE: Stephens Green. Leases relating to JACKSONs.

· Stephen’s Green was quite a posh area in the late 1700s. Was it because of her elevated social class that the press of the day were silent when it came to details about Elizabeth? Was there payment or other pressure to be silent? From JACKSONs? From GOREs?

· Finally, where was William born? Some sources say near Newtownards. Others suggest Ballycastle, but don't say whether the reference is to the Ballycastle in Co. Down, or to the Ballycastle in Co. Antrim. Arguments pro and con can be made for both counties, and no solid proof exists for either. So far.

With luck, I will soon be able to answer some of these questions. I plan to visit Ireland in mid February 2024. Being such an aging duck, I do need the health of myself and my husband to continue to hold. So far, so good. I have already booked my flight. Stay posted.

Update: Thanks to input from Sylvie Kleinman, it seems that a handwriting sample that I had ordered of a Rev. William in Church of England records may or may not be "our" Rev. William. It is not decisive.

Earlier blog pieces relating to Rev. William Francis JACKSON (some need updating):

· Richard Jackson father of Rev. William JACKSON (1737-1795) 2021

· The wives of Rev. William Jackson (1737-1795) 2021

· Documents relating to the ancestry of Rev. William JACKSON. 2019

· Rev. William Jackson & his Gore ancestry 2019

· Hyde’s Coffee Shop 2019

· Dr. Richard JACKSON (abt 1720-abt1768) and the SALEs. 2019

· Rev. William JACKSON - Dead Ends Blog #1 2019

Reflections After a Writers’ Fest

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 20:49:00 +0000

There was an oil drum in the back yard at Margaret Laurence’s house in Lakefield, the one in which she burned the only draft of her last novel. When Andreas and I spent a weekend with her in ’76, we noticed the oil drum. As for the novel, it was apparently about a small-town teacher’s battle with fundamentalist Christians.

Carrie Mac, author of Last Winter, spoke last week at the 2023 Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, and the image of that oil drum came to mind when Carrie mentioned the effects of trigger warnings on her writing and and on her readership. As she was signing my copy of her latest book, I mentioned Margaret Laurence, and Margaret's pre-digital experiences of trigger warnings and censorship.

FOR SHARON. WAIT! MARGARET LAURENCE?!?

Margaret had always considered herself to be a spiritual writer, so it had wounded her deeply when she was accused of writing pornography. Then, it got worse. A local pastor mounted a campaign to have The Diviners banned as a text for teen-aged readers – readers in Grades 10-12 no less. Readers who were surely mature enough to read The Diviners.

One of the stories that Margaret told us, about her experiences during this time, was that she had gone door to door in a nearby neighbourhood with a clipboard and done a survey. The first question was (as I recall): Should this book be banned? The overwhelming answer was yes. The second question: Have you read the book? The overwhelming answer was no.

At the School Board hearing where the decision to ban her books was to be made, Margaret read out the definition of pornography. A key element was that the passage or scene had to be sexually arousing. The pastor responded that yes, his understanding of pornography did fit that definition. Margaret then challenged him about one of the scenes that he had selected as being pornographic. It described a young girl in a changing room in a dress shop who had noticed two flies on the wall, one fly mounting the other. When this pastor affirmed that this scene was in his opinion definitely pornographic, Margaret had replied: I pity your poor wife.

We will never know how good or how bad Margaret’s final novel was. Maybe she’d been right to burn it. Maybe not. She often struggled with self-worth, once telling us after recently reading a Patrick White novel, that she’d needed to remind herself, again and again: This was his final draft.

In the aftermath of the censorship of Margaret’s books – which still continues to happen from time to time - some things have changed for the better. In Canada, we now celebrate Freedom to Read week. On the other hand, the internet has upped the lethality of anti-novel and anti-novelist bullying. Sadly, protecting writers and writing against all this and more continues to be a work in progress.

In Carrie Mac's talk at the 2023 Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, she mentioned the impact of trigger warnings and mentioned that a Goodreads review of her latest adult book had included a content warning. I checked it out:

Content warning: suicidal thoughts and attempts, mental illness, parental neglect, death of children, child abuse, sexualization of children.

Even her publisher had felt the need to add a warning for Last Winter:

Content Note: this is an important book and a powerful depiction of extreme Bipolar disorder. It deals with sensitive subject matter, and we encourage readers to take care of themselves and their mental health while reading.

BTW - My trigger warning would be:

This is an excellent novel. You might not be able to put it down for hours at a time, and as a result may suffer from extreme pleasure.

How much are writers being silenced these days - either by trigger warnings or by the threat of trigger warnings? One author mentioned that they were still considering whether to delete an incidental character in their draft manuscript, a character who was a pedophile - even though this character didn’t actually act on his pedophilic impulses. Surely, over-sanitizing our fiction (and non-fiction, poetry, etc) can be as dangerous to us as over-sanitizing our homes can be. Our immune systems simply don’t get tweaked often enough to defend us.

Margaret Laurence died on January 5, 1987, at age 60.

I heard the news of her death as I was heading into a Mission City council meeting. One of my fellow aldermen had heard about it on the radio. Earlier in the day, I had mailed Margaret a “book” that Sabrina - our daughter (and Margaret’s god-daughter) - had written for her, a series of drawings and quatrains pasted onto sheets of red construction paper. We had known that Margaret was seriously ill, but we’d thought we had more time. When we had spoken with her on the phone the night before, she had sounded robust. We did not know that she would soon take an overdose of pills. She chose to die before her terminal cancer got even worse.

Margaret, her god-daughter Sabrina, and Sharon

Here is some irony. When I was reflecting on all this, I accessed a 39 year old CBC interview with Margaret on censorship only to find that it was preceded by an ad from Amazon touting their best prices for back-to-school stuff. The additional irony is that it is Amazon which now owns Goodreads and is also why it has become all too easy for amateur readers with personal agendas to silence a writer.

In a recent Globe and Mail article, Phoebe Maltz Bovy described an example of such silencing, the kind of silencing which led even Elizabeth Gilbert – a writer with a fair bit of clout – to feel compelled to pull her novel The Snow Forest from publication. Within days of it being announced, it had received 532 one-star reviews. Probably without even being read. The fact that it was set in Russia was too much for many readers. No matter that it had been written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bovy writes:

I have not read The Snow Forest. Nor, it would appear, have the Goodreads reviewers – over 170 of them, with commenting now turned off – so mad at its existence that they have given the book a one-star (lowest-possible) rating.

If incidents in which a book is panned out of existence before it even exists are not more common, it’s because, at every level of publishing, efforts are in place to prevent the creation of offensive content. Published authors emerge not from garrets, but from creative writing graduate programs, where they’re inculcated in the sensitivities of the day. Prepublication, they may seek out sensitivity readers, low-rung quasi-editors who vet the manuscript to see if it could plausibly offend members of an identity group to which the author does not belong.

Margaret deserves the final word: I do feel hurt. I do feel angry. But on the other hand, it can’t influence the way that I write, I have to write as much of the kind of truth as I see it. As I can. A writer has to remain true to her characters. Margaret Laurence speaks out against censorship. CBC Archives from 1984.

Grave-markers and the Loss of a Sense of Place

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:50:00 +0000

DISAPPEARANCES

On June 19th, 2023, I stopped by the graveyard at St. Hilda’s Church in Sechelt, BC to reflect for a moment on the lives of my parents. It is not far from where I have lived for the past couple of decades, but I don’t drop by that often. Maybe I should. On this day, I walked the whole graveyard, looking for them, but they had totally disappeared.

This was not their first disappearance. Years ago, when the graveyard was being renovated, my mother's marker had also disapeared fromwhere we had expected to find it. It was eventualy found leaning up against the back of the church. Somehow it had been set aside and forgotten during the renovation. It had been removed because it had initially been installed outside the legal boundary of the graveyard.

When it was reinstalled, it was no longer beside the church as it once had been, but instead was relocated down beside the main path. St. Hilda's had been chosen as the resting place of my parents, likely because my father had been the rector at the nearby St. Barts, in Gibsons, a church which had no graveyard. At the time of my mother's burial, I was not living the Coast (as I do now), and although I was at her funeral service at Pitt Meadows, I didn't travel to the Coast when her grave marker was installed. Was there an urn with our mother's ashes buried there, or were her ashes just spread nearby? I can’t be sure. This was close to four decades ago.

When I visited the graveyard on this recent June afternoon, a machine was busily cutting a wider swath over the existing path, the path beside where my parents’ graves had last been seen. I suspected that this renovation was likely the cause of their recent disappearance. It turned out that the markers had been inadvertently covered in dirt. This has since been removed. Once the path work is complete, I've been assured, our parents' markers will get cleaned up to look as good as new.

The two small rectangles near the path are my parents' two grave markers.

Accidents like this can easily happen. We are all human. I will be meeting with the church folk in a month, after the work is complete, and am hoping that our family’s two markers can have one more final move - that they can be placed closer together, as they once were. I will add a photo when this final work is complete.

This cemetery may be small, but it is well tended, and is a treat to spend some contemplative time in. It includes not only the parishioners of Sechelt, but also others like my parents from other parishes, and a Buddhist section which pays tribute to the local Japanese residents who were unjustly displaced after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Blame for their losses of homes, land and livelihoods can only be laid at the feet of the cultural biases of the time.

2. Updated June 18, 2025 Added image of Mattie Skuce notes & error in her transcription.

Disappearances are also a fact of life (or death) in the Creggan Parish graveyard in South Armagh, near Crossmaglen, but they have happened for other reasons and have had different consequences. Like St. Hilda’s, the Creggan graveyard is an inclusive graveyard. It has long included the graves of a wide range of Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, and Catholic people. For its time and place, this has represented a remarkable level of diversity and inclusion. The only barrier, one that should always be kept in mind, was you had to able to pay for a plot, and then to employ a stone mason. When it comes to most graveyards - if not all graveyards - diversity only goes so far.

Fortunately, some of Creggan's lost graves have been transcribed and recorded in journals.

Known missing graves from Creggan Guide to Creggan Church & Graveyard. Kevin McMahon & Jem Murphy. p32.

The photos which I took in 2010 show a lot of empty space in our family's JACKSON enclosure. This led me to wonder why there were only two visible grave markers: a large rectangular piece of slate in one corner, and a few steps away a child’s marker. Was something missing?

Christine WRIGHT (1941-2022) in background.

The JACKSON section is within the railed enclosure.
The JOHNSTON's part of the enclosure is behind it, inside a rock wall.

The 1785 parish records record the dimensions of this enclosure.

JOHNSTON-JACKSON. 26' x 16' of ground granted to John Johnston Esq. of Woodvale in southwest corner with liberty to enclose same and 16 feet square to Mr. David Jackson and family adjoining Mr. Johnson's.

SOURCE: Armagh County Museum, TGF Paterson manuscript No. 112 vol.1, Parish of Creggan, Notes from the Church Registers Vestry books etc.

The child’s grave-marker seen to the left was installed in memory of Edith Bradford JACKSON.

Sacred to the memory of Edith Bradford infant daughter of Thomas and Amelia Lydia Jackson born 27^th May 1874 died 7^th September 1874: For such is the Kingdom of Heaven”.

A lot of family history can be gleaned from grave markers, specially when dovetailed with other records. From Edith’s death certificate, we learn that she had died after a week of hydrocephalus, at Cavananore This was the home of Edith’s great-aunt Mary Jane OLIVER (1821-1875). Edith's uncle, Andrew JACKSON (1846-1929) who was at Cavananore at the time, was the official witness. He had likely been managing the farm for his spinster aunt. At three months of age, Edith had been visiting at Cavananore with her parents and siblings. At the time, they all lived in Hong Kong, where her father, Thomas Jackson, (1815-1903), brother of Andrew, was manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. It later became known as HSBC. He later became known as Sir Thomas, only the 2nd man from Creggan ever to be knighted (the 1st was Sir Henry O'NEILL in the 1600s).

Decades later, it was Edith’s twin sister Amy Oliver JACKSON (1874-1962) who documented with great accuracy much of the history of the JACKSONs of Urker (aka Urcher). She did this work in collaboration with several of her cousins. They all benefited from the memories passed on from their grandmother Elizabeth JACKSON née OLIVER (1815-1903).

As a result of the efforts of these cousins, a transcription of this 2^nd grave marker can be found on a scrap of paper which I had photographed while staying with Christine WRIGHT (1941-2022) at Gilford Castle. Based on the style of handwriting found on other such scraps of paper, this transcription was most likely done by “Mattie” Maud Martha Elizabeth SKUSE née REED (1878-1958). She was a daughter of Robert Hamilton REED & Margaret JACKSON (1853-1944), and also a close friend of her cousin Mary WRIGHT née MENARY (1872-1946) of Gilford Castle, daughter of Mary JACKSON (1844-1921). This 2^nd transcription must have been saved at Gilford sometime before Mary WRIGHT’s death in 1946.

Mattie Skuse's notes of now missing grave marker.

Both the transcription of Edith’s grave-marker as well as the transcription of this 2^nd JACKSON grave-marker were recorded in 1988 in the Creggan Guide to Creggan Church & Graveyard, Journal of Creggan Historical Society, p31. Its transcription matches Mattie's word for word. The dates of death were for Thomas JACKSON’s father (David), his great-grandfather (John) and grandmother (Elizabeth), as well as for Thomas' great-great-grandmother (Margaret).

Here lieth the remains of John Jackson late of Urker who departed this life the 20^th June 1817 aged 37 years; also those of his mother Margaret Jackson who died Jan 1820 aged 81 years; also those of his widow Elizabeth Jackson who departed this life 12^th March 1880 aged 92 years; also of his only son David Jackson who died Nov 11^th 1889 aged 75 years.
SOURCE: Guide to Creggan Church & Graveyard, 1988. Creggan Historical Society Journal.

Mattie Skuce also recorded another grave marker from Creggan Church graveyard, but this is for a grave that is not recorded anywhere else. It was likely installed decades before the one that remains and hence would have been even harder to read. Given that, I have taken the liberty of adding a few editing suggestions in red.

2nd stone on right facing church
To the memory of George Jackson
late of Creggan who departed this / life Sept 3^rd 1782 aged 64 years
also to the memory of Margaret Jackson / wife of the above named.
George Jackson who departed this
life the 7^th day of Dec 1797
in the 75^th year of his age
and also
To the memory of their son David
Jackson late of Liscalgat. - he died / suddenly on the 13^th day of Febry 1706
In the 8^th year of his age / Also the body of Mary (Culaner +[possibly “?”]
daughter of the above George who / departed this life 28^th September 1790 aged 70.

NOTE: Based on other family records.

Updated Jun 18, 2025 in the 75^th year of his age - should be in the 75^th year of her age.
The death of David JACKSON recorded as 1706 at age 8 was probably 1756. George and Margaret JACKSON had a son, a 2^nd David JACKSON (aft 1744-1796), so he had to have been born after this first David had died.
· Culaner was most likely Gilmer. Family records at Gilford Castle recorded the marriage of a Mary JACKSON to a J. GILMORE (1764-1823) some time before 1788.
· Mary JACKSON’s age at death, based on the years she was still young enough to give birth, means that she was more likely to be 40, instead of 70.

During my 2010 visit to Creggan Parish, a local historian suggested that this missing grave-marker might have ended up being used as a fireplace hearth in one of the nearby homes. After all, there were no JACKSONs still living in the parish, and this use might have felt downright practical. In many parishes, this was not unusual. The missing slab of slate would likely have been installed such that the lettering was not visible. Had the inscription of this lost grave marker not been found on a wee scrap of paper, an important clue to the some of the history of Creggan parish would also have disappeared.

UPDATE: June 8, 2023. North Bay Cemetery News (California): "We don't often get stones back, in this area when I was a boy, people would take the stones home, use them for landscaping or bookends," cemetery volunteer and historian, Jonathan Quandt said.

The following article from the Bowen Island Undercurrent is pasted into one of my old diaries: May 1991 It describes some disappearances of grave markers which is quite unlike the two previous ones. In this case, it is likely that cultural bias was a factor. (My transcription - including my own emphasis - is beneath).

In 1966 or 1967, I and some friends visited Stanley Park one Sunday afternoon. We came upon hundreds of gravestones piled up, most of which were Chinese.
We asked the park attendant what was happening with all the grave-stones and we were told that they were being used to build the seawall.
I was young and did not think too much about this at the time, But now, years later, I wonder exactly where these gravestones came from and how the families of the deceased felt about their relatives’ gravestones being used to build the sea wall.
I have photos of these stones, so I know in fact this did occur. Do you have any explanation? - Edythe Hanen, Bowen Island.

Searching for an answer, we consulted Richard Steele's book The Stanley Park Explorer, where at page 109, we find the following paragraph:
“An interesting footnote to the Ceperly area is the origin of some of the stones in the wall on the southern side of the playground. In 1968, base slabs and name stones from Mountain View Cemetery were trucked to this location and incorporated into the wall. All came from so-called “junked pieces”, discarded, damaged or replaced. The majority were taken from the 1919 section of the graveyard. If you study the shape of the stones used throughout. it is possible to identify which ones came from the cemetery even though the names or other identification have been turned inwards.
A call to Margaret LaSaga at the city's Mountain View Cemetery brought further amplification.
The stones, for the most part, were base slabs, which are used to hold the gravestones erect. The city, faced with constant vandalism and desecration of its only publicly owned cemetery, passed a bylaw in 1964 that all grave markers, in future, be placed flush with the ground.
Where permission could be obtained, upright markers were replaced with ground level ones, and the old markers, along with the no longer needed base slabs and the vandalized tombstones, were taken to Stanley Park to find a final resting place.
LaSaga says extreme care was taken not to leave any lettering showing on the face of the seawall.
Completion of the perimeter sea wall came in 1980, 63 years [after the] first section [of the seawall was built].

It is worth focusing on what was left unsaid about how these Chinese grave-markers from Mountainview Cemetery came to be used in the sea-wall at Ceperly Park. After reading this article, I had contacted Edythe Hanen who had then mailed me her photos for a short-term loan. Since 1991 was long before digital sharing was possible, I did a rudimentary sketch before returning the photos.

Recently, I did a digital search - hoping to learn more about what had happened. The 1919 Section of the graveyard can be seen in the upper left-hand corner in the Mountainview Cemetery map:

This leads me to ask why - in the notes on the 1919 section- was there no mention of the Chinese? Instead, there was just this:

1919 section. Across 41^st Avenue is a small pocket of graves which include Janet Smith – the house maid murdered in Shaughnessy, Joe Fortes – Vancouver’s favourite Lifeguard, and the third Firefighter’s Memorial.

Also, why were these ‘junked pieces’ discarded and damaged in the first place? The Stanley Park Explorer describes it as nothing more than an interesting footnote. It leads me to question the statement that: extreme care was taken not to leave any lettering showing on the face of the sea-wall. Could there be a taint of cultural bias here? Who is being protected?

A current Wikipedia article does mention that stone sets from the recently dismantled BC Electric Railway streetcar system had also been incorporated into the seawall, but like the earlier article, it too mentions nothing at all about the grave-markers taken from Chinese graves.

These days, Canada is facing a long-overdue reckoning over the lack of respect shown by the dominant culture to the long-lost graves of indigenous children. Ireland faces a similar reckoning as the stories of the children’s mass grave in Tuam have begun to surface. Stories such as these remind us of how - all too often - most cultures tend to treat the powerless, and how this results in their place in our remembered histories getting lost. When the stories behind the disappearances of these graves come to light, we may find that we have been given at least some of the tools to right (and to rewrite) wrongs.

THE FUTURE

I can’t see myself wanting to have a grave marker to mark my passing after I die. Like so many people these days, I belong everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps my ashes will be scattered to the earth, to the sea or to the wind, whichever feels best to my survivors. After all, there is not enough room for all of us living today to continue to take up more space. Still, it does make me wonder about that sense of place and connection that families once enjoyed when they visited graveyards. It also leads me to wonder whether there might be another approach that could help to sustain our sense of connection to those who have gone before. Of course, any approach that we choose can only be as durable as most things are. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.