The following extract is not connected to our family at all but it does report some interesting conditions relating to farming communities in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These are described by James McMenamin of New Zealand, with some first hand memories in a letter to his cousin, Joseph P McMenamin in America, who writes the Introduction.
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Joseph P. McMenamin
Son of John, Son of Patrick, Son of James
December
8, 1983
Alas, it was wishful thinking. Uncle James worked hard for many years on cattle and sheep runs, where owners counted their holdings by the square mile. Like most of the family he could neither read nor write; getting on in years he returned to Ireland with 800 gold sovereigns in his belt and bought into a sizeable farm in Co. Fernanagh where he started farming on his own. But it didn’t last long. After so long in the Australian sunshine, the damp, wet climate of Ireland was too much and he came down with rheumatic fever and ever after suffered much with rheumatism.
As a result of Uncle James’ illness my father, whose name was Henry, had to leave Edenreagh, the ancestral home of the MacMenamins, and go to Fernanagh taking with him my mother and us 4 children. Then my mother took ill and died in 1913, leaving us with Uncle James and my father. I was 5 then - Mick 4, Annie 3, and Lena 1. My uncle said he would have no women in the house and would look after us himself, and so he did. He had learned all about washing, cooking, etc. while in Australia. He was a wonder, but in 1918 he died, aged 68, with a hernia. They did not know what to do with a hernia in those days. He often told us that he regretted leaving Australia.
A year later my father sold the farm in Fermanagh and we came back to Edenreagh, where still lived my Uncle Ned and my Aunt Kate who soon passed away, age 80. Next to go was my dad, age 63, with pneumonia. He had been tough as whalebone as a young man - short but solidly built. Uncle Ned was left in charge of us. I would like to say a few words as it was he who taught me all I know about the history of the Mac Menamins. Ned was born with crippled feet and was of no use at manual work. So he was sent to school where he became a brilliant scholar. Having gone as far as the teacher, who was a well learned man, could take him, he then studied two trades, one a surveyor and the other a valuator of land. Luck was with him for it was the time that Gladstone had decided to buy out the great landed gentry, the Irish landlords who had been the curse of Ireland for centuries. My uncle found plenty of employment in surveying and valuing; he always worked for the tenant farmers on the Irish Land Commission but would never work for a landlord as he hated them like vermin. He was a great reader, and as to the history of Ireland, since the dawn of time he could repeat it like he was saying his prayers.
The MacMenamins originally came from a place called Slavin Glen, a beautiful glen a few miles from Drumquin, a small country town in County Tyrone, about 10 miles from Armagh which was the largest town in Tyrone. They had lived there since time immemorial. One of them went to Edenreagh with the Earl, Lord, or Marquis of "so and so" who had bought the townland of Edenreagh from the previous landlord. The first thing the new owner did was to turn out all the tenants of the land. He put them on the roadside with the help of Military Land Police who were always at his disposal. He left them to perish. But some relief society with dollars it had got from America chartered a coffin ship as they were then called, and took them to Queensland in Australia where they settled, took up land as it was free for the taking, and did well. Today their descendants are well to do, still with a love of Ireland and deep hatred of everything English. The landlord stocked Edenreagh with cattle and employed my ancestor as a herd or stock man as we would call them here. He seems to have gotten on fairly well with this landlord for after a few years he talked him into renting or leasing 100 acres of land to him.
So the MacMenamins were established in Edenreagh; things flowed quietly until my great great grandfather came on the scene. As a young man he went to America where he managed to get himself a bit of education -- something then impossible in Ireland for a Catholic to get. After some years he returned and took over the farm. He built the first two storied house in the district, settled down and married -- had one boy and one girl. The boy’s name was Michael.
Edenreagh was sold again, this time to Lord Tennant; a good and kind man, but an absentee who only came to Ireland for the shooting season. He liked my great great granddad, and always stayed with him while in Ireland, but he made one fatal mistake as far as we were concerned. He appointed a man named John or Jack Johnstone as his agent and he was a devil. He had a good farm himself or another estate. But he had two on-coming sons and was looking for farms for them; he was a bitter Orange man and hated Catholics like poison. He disliked my ancestor because he knew he was Fenian, and a Molly Maguire, another society that put terror in landlords and agents. A family named Connally had managed to rent a farm on the estate at a rent they could not pay. So Johnstone jumped them and threw them out on the road side. One farm for one of his sons and now for the next.
Then my great great granddad walked straight into the net. He saw the Connally’s starving on the roadside on a bleak, cold March evening so he said to them, "Come with me, I will give you food and shelter." The news soon reached Johnstone for there is always in Ireland the informer! On hearing this he dryly remarked, "MacMenamin will soon be looking for shelter himself." True to his word, some days later he approached the house accompanied by six members of the Royal Irish Constabulary with carbines on their shoulders and revolvers in their belts. Johnstone nailed a notice on the door giving the occupier 7 days to be clear of the property. He had another farm for his son!
My ancestor fled to a bleak mountainside where he built a temporary shelter for himself and his family; it was made of sod and hatched with rushes. Then he called on the Fenians and the Molly Maguires to help him. They frightened Johnstone but not enough. He would only return 16 acres of the 100 he had confiscated. Eventually seeing he could do no better, my ancestor accepted it and passed peacefully away leaving his son James and daughter Ann on 16 acres.
James married and raised 8 sons and one daughter. Ann married a man called William Monteith who was a non-Catholic but he became one, or at least pretended to do so. They had three daughters, the last two twins. On getting married Ann demanded half the land and my grandfather gave it to her, leaving himself 8 acres, too small to live on and too big to live off as I found when I tried it in later years. Ann died shortly after the birth of the twins and William Monteith, not knowing what to do, was delighted when Mrs Johnstone, daughter-in-law to the man who robbed us of the land, offered to take the three and brings them up as Protestants. Monteith had no objections. Mrs. Johnstone’s husband died without making a will. His brother came and claimed half of everything which amounted to 800 pounds. Mrs. Johnstone, not having any money, had to raise a mortgage on the farm.
When she died she left everything to the Monteith girls along with the mortgage! It looked for a long time as if the land would return to us again as the Monteith girls were much older than us and we were their nearest relations. But it was not to be; that mortgage spoiled everything. If I could have paid it off in 1932 when I returned from New Zealand I would have got the property, but I had no hope of raising 800 pounds in the middle of a world wide depression -- especially in Ireland! However, a neighbor of theirs who was well off with a farm of 400 acres lent them the money they wanted on the condition their property went to him when they passed away. They did not even return the eight acres their father had taken from my grandfather. They sold it to another farmer.
So ends the story of the MacMenamins in Edenreagh. There are none of them there now. Now, Joe, I have written a lot so will have to come to close. Before doing so, I will ask you a question: which of my uncles are you descended from? It is not clear in your letter. You referred to a man or girl named Grace. I remember Uncle Ned getting letters from a girl of that name. She sent him an American paper, the Chicago Tribune, for many years. Margaret Bleakly, your contact in Ireland and our distant relative, would know her maiden name. My brother John, in Fermanagh, has been ill for a long time with a heart complaint called angina.. It killed Mick and Lena, my brother and sister, and now I suffer from it myself. I am ill now and since Maggie died last September, life is very lonely. I have relatives here but they live long distances away, except for Mary, one of Mick’s girls, who lives in Auckland. But at the other end of it, she comes to visit me quite often. Her brother John in Tokoroa is the last chance for the name of McMenamin surviving here.
Well, Joe, this is all now except to ask you to write to me again. I will be very glad to hear more from you.
Yours sincerely,
J. McMenamin
McMenamin Tree
(Compiled from information on this page)
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