(as told by Brigid McMahon)

Atlantic City,

New Jersey,

U.S.A.,

26^th November 1961

At the request of my niece Eileen Mary Quigley McArdle and of her daughter Bridie McArdle Healy I write this little family history

Lets start with my parents Michael and Ellen (Mathews) McMahon, who were married in the spring of 1868 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dundalk. Mother’s parents were Patrick Mathews of Tully (Paddy Seamus Mor) and Catherine McMahon Mathews of Tullyvara, Co. Monaghan, who were married in the late Eighteen Thirties.

Their children were:-

Mary Anne, Catherine, Ellen, Anne, James, Patrick and Judith.

Mary Anne married Owen Byrne and died while her children were young. The children were Brigid, Mary Anne, Katie, Michael, Tom and James. Michael inherited the home place. He had studied for the priesthood but later married a girl who had entered a convent but later came out into the world again. James died of rheumatic fever, in Belfast, where he was working. Mary Anne went to America. Brigid was a nurse and Katie a confectioner who went to Cork and married a man called Lynch there. Your friend, Fr. Byrne is descended from one of them. Probably Michael. Mother’s sister, Catherine was delicate and died after she had grown up. Ellen, my mother, married my father, Michael McMahon of Colga, and they had seven daughters,

Mary, born March 21, 1869.

Alice, born March 10, 1870.

Anne Eliza, called Eliza, born December, 1871.

Eily, born March 10, 1873.

Julietta, called Letta, born October, 1874.

Elizabeth, born July 15, 1880.

Brigid, (myself) born April 1, 1883

There were two miscarriages between Letta and Elizabeth.

Mother died on March 21, 1885 aged 42 years.

Mary, the eldest, married Peter Quigley of Roche, later of Drumbilla, August 2, 1898, and their first baby, Patrick Gerard, was born on July 2, 1899. Just before his birth typhoid fever broke out in Colga and Mary Anne McHugh, who was working in our house, died with us on August 5, 1899. She was the daughter of our miller, Owen McHugh. Eily died on August 8, and Elizabeth on August 25. Letta, who did not catch the infection until after the other deaths, died on October12, 1899.

May they all rest in peace.

Our two hired boys , who had also taken ill, were sent to hospital and recovered. I also recovered, and my sister Alice and I went to Blackrock for a month while I recuperated. It was there that I learned of the deaths, being too ill to be told at the time. I did know of Letta’s death as I was pretty well recovered by then. The whole bottom had fallen out of my world.

From Blackrock I went to Roche, where I stayed until Peter, Mary and the children moved to Drumbilla in August, 1904, one week before Evin was born. I moved with them to Drumbilla and stayed to November when I went home to Colga to take Eliza’s place when she married John O’Brien of Drumpeak, Kingscourt, Co. Cavan.

On April 7, 1908, Alice and I went to Loughry, the Ulster Dairy School, to qualify at something to make a living. Mary, who was expecting Brendan, took ill in June and Alice had to go home, but she came back for the second term and finished it. Miss Long, who was the superintendent of the school, offered Alice a job as seamstress with her sister and family in England, but Alice had to turn it down as brendan’s birth was imminent and Peyer’s health was poor and so Alice remained on in Drumbilla. Before the exams in Loughry I was offered a job as companion help to Mr. And Mrs. McNulty, Brackaville House, Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, but found when the examinations were over that I was the only girl in Loughry who had passed and had qualified for entrance to the Munster Institute in Cork, where instructresses were trained under the Department of agriculture. Money was scarce, almost non-existent, so I took the job with the McNulty’s and have not regretted it. They were a wonderful couple and on the whole, I have had a very pleasant life and was able to retire at fifty-nine.

My father died on March 1, 1914 and Peter Quigley died on January 1, 1916. In August 1916 I went on a trip to the United States with Mr. And Mrs. McNulty who had business interests there, and made a trip every year. Instead of the four months visit which they had planned, we had to remain four years on account of the 1^st World War, coming back to Ireland in 1920, just a few weeks before Michael O’Brien’s death. His mother died in October 1919.

When we returned to Ireland the "Black and Tans" were raiding and burning, and were stationed in Coalisland with their machine guns on the sidewalks, forcing pedestrians to walk on the streets. This was too much for Mr. McNulty who said "To h… with it" and sold out and we returned to the States in April, 1921, two months before Eileen Quigley married Peter McArdle.

In 1923 the McNultys and I took a trip to europe and had a Audience with Pope Pius XI. On our way back to the U.S.A. Alice, whose health had broken, joined us and we four arrived in New York on October 6, 1923. Alice’s health remained poor and on July 13, 1927 she died in Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, the day after she was operated on for a tumour beneath her spine. Mr. McNulty died in his eighty-seventh year, on February 17, 1929, Mrs Mac died nearly thirteen years later on November 7, 1942 in her ninety-first year. R.I.P.

I visited Ireland in 1946, going by plane, and found a new generation growing up. My sister Mary’s children were married, except Nicholas who had joined the Dominican order and had been given the name of Malachy, and Tom married while I was there. Eileen, as I mentioned before married Peter McArdle in June 1921. Patrick married Brigid McCabe in January 1940. Evin married Kathleen Deery in September 1945. Alice married John McCourt in June 1932. Brendan married Kitty O’Dowd, July 1940. Brigid married Willie Whately in March 1946 and Tom married Teresa Cooney in August 1946. They were all lucky in their choice of life partners.

Now we go back to mother’s family.

Her sister Anne married John Gartland of Kill-a-brick, in, I think, 1873. Their children were Anne Jane, Peter, Patrick, Mary Kate, Eily Maggie, who died in childhood, and the twins, Maggie and Julia. Anne jane married Michael Daly of Carrickmacross in 1898. Mary Kate married Thomas Mathews of Knocknaloube. Peter died single. Patrick married Molly Corry and lived in Drumgoolan. Eily went to America and lives in Los Angeles. Maggie and Julia are living in Ireland. Patrick Mathews, mother’s brother, married a girl McEntaggert and died eighteen months later. James Mathews, his brother, married Annie Byrne. Judith Mathews married Thomas Larney of Killen when she was nineteen and left twelve children when she died aged thirty-eight. I don’t know which of the boys inherited Killen.

A few highlights on my mother’s family

Her father was a nice man who in his later leisure years would hunt for birds nests with his grand-children. He had a relative called Parra Mor and a cousin called Parra Bawn, a niece Anne Martin and another niece who married the Bawn Conlon. My mother’s mother was a ‘lady of quality’ who had a high opinion of he own and her family’s importance. She was the daughter of Michael and Mary McMahon of Tullyvara, Co. Monaghan. She had a sister called ‘Miss Anne’ who was noted for her clean house, her shining tin lids and her polished black-leaded pot lids. She also had a sister Mrs. O’Hanlon, a sister Mrs. Bellew of Tully and a brother Michael, who was accidently drowned. She had an uncle, Fr Thomas McMahon who was a Dominican Father, and two uncles, Michael and I don’t know the other uncles name, who owned a coal yard at Dundalk, later owned by Browns and still later by Connicks. One of these uncles left a daughter, Mary Kate, who married a man named Kieran and had one son. Another uncle, Captain McMahon, had been in the French army, and, when he retired, brought home to Ireland a French born wife.

My great-grand-parents, Michael and Mary McMahon, are buried there. Their son, Father Thomas the Dominican, is buried there and my grandmother Mathews and four of her children. My mother and her sister, Mrs. Bellew, Uncle James and Uncle Patrick Mathews, Mrs. Bellew’s son James and my grandmother’s brother Michael, who was drowned, are also buried there. After the death of grandmother’s brother his place in Tullyvara was sold to Andy Eakins who built a new dwelling house and converted the old one into a stable. Brendan Quigley and I visited the place in 1946. It was owned then by people named Connolly. After her brother’s death, grandmother kept a souvenir, it was a brand belonging to her grandfather. Made of iron, it had the letters McM. and when mother married my father, who had the same initials, my grandmother presented him with this brand and also a sack brand. They were in Colga when I left there.

When we were children my father used to point out a stone embedded in a wall in what was then McNello’s of Inniskeen, and say "That stone was erected by your mother’s people." It had formerly stood at the three roads junction nearby, but on the night of the Big Wind, the night of January 6, 1839 it was blown down and broken. I don’t remember the inscription (I should have jotted it down) but Brendan Quigley knows where the stone is. It has the family coat-of-arms on it, a crane with an eel in it’s mouth. Tullyvara, as the name implies, is low lying. There is another coat-of-arms of the McMahon clans. On top, it has the breast shield of a crusader’s horse and an arm bent with the sword in the hand and three suspicious-looking lions with their heads turned looking over their shoulders. The lions are one over the other, so, = and the motto in Latin is – Our Faith and Ourselves we Defend.

Now, I start on Father’s side of the house. He said he was slightly related to mother.

My father was born on October 12, 1837. He was the son of Peter McMahon of Carrick-a-voley (Carrickawooley) and Alice Kirk McMahon of Figevilla. Peter McMahon was a cattle-dealer and was born in 1789. Peter McMahon’s father, Patrick McMahon, was married twice. His first wife was Brigid Daly of the parish of Killanny. My father descended from that union. The Daly’s were very bright and Brigid Daly’s descendants inherited this quality, having extra-ordinary good memories – especially for dates etc. My grandfather Kirk was also married twice. The first family getting the road, as is usually the case, and the daughter of the second marriage my grandmother, Alice Kirk, getting the property. Her half-brother married in Co. Cavan and was either the grandfather or great-grandfather of JohnO’Brien who married my sister Eliza. Peter McMahon and Alice Kirk McMahon had nine children.

Pat married a girl named McGovern and they were the parents of Maria, Alice, Agnes, Peter and Tom.

Agnes went to England and married there. Alice and Mary died of Typhus fever in the famine year of 1847. Their father also died that year on October 1, 1847, my father’s birthday. Brigid married Owen Jones of Tivadinna and they had, I think, fourteen children. Brigid married when she was eighteen, and her oldest son, Peter, was fifteen years younger than my father, his uncle. Philip, who had studied for the priesthood before the famine, did not go back to his studies after his father’s death but married Ellen McKenna and they had three daughters, two of whom died in childhood, and seven sons. The remaining daughter, Rose, married a man named McCabe – and her daughter married a man called Rooney. They live in Mary Jane’s place, Tivadinna. Thomas went to America and worked as a newspaper reporter when he first went out to San Francisco, where he died in May, 1913. Uncle Philip’s son, Pat, married in New York and his four children live there. Nancy died single. She bought and sold cattle of her own and took conacre. Catherine, whose husband was drowned, (his name was Goodman) had a daughter Mary, who died of T.B. when she was sixteen. She also had two sons, Patrick and Francis. Patrick bought Colga when my sister Eliza sold it after my father's death. Francis married a girl from Essexford.

Now, some of the high-lights of my father’s family.

His mother was a very religious energetic little person who got first prize at a show for her ferkins of butter and her hand-woven web of heavy cloth. It is recorded of her that she yawned so wide that her jaws locked and she could not close her mouth and had to be taken to a doctor in Carrickmacross before getting relief. Her husband, Peter McMahon, belonged to the Cormoy branch of the family. Carrickawooley was on the Cormoy Estate and the Cormoy family burial place was in the Protestant Church Cemetery in Inniskeen. It consisted of a Chapel with Gothic windows about twelve by fourteen feet square. It is roofless, but the stone embedded in a wall on the outside is in fine condition and dates back to the 15^th century. Fr. McMahon, who translated the Bible from the Irish into the English language (at the time the English laws compelled the Irish people to change from their own to the English language) is buried there. I have seen his picture, a very handsome man, in Denis Carolan ‘Rush’s book, "The History of Co. Monaghan for the last 200 years." I lent this book to my cousin, Eily Gartlan of Los Angeles, and she unfortunately mislaid it. The Bible is known as the Troy Bible because Archbishop Troy of Dublin was the Imprimatur. I have heard my father say that the last man buried there was Tommy Bawn McMahon of Cormoy.

Now I must mention my god-mother and cousin, Mary Jones. She was born in 1861 and was a very pius lady indeed, reading the Following of Christ every day. Her mother, Brigid McMahon-Jones, was also very religious. At that time there was only one Sunday mass in Drumcation Chapel and her husband, Owen Jones, insisted that in the summer when the gooseberries were ripening, a member of the family should stay at home from mass to prevent small boys from making a raid on the berries. Auntie did not approve, so while her husband was at a fair she had the gooseberries cut down. Her daughter went to Edinburgh, Scotland, to keep house for two of her brothers who were stonecutters there (monumental works). She married a man named Mellon and her oldest son Willie was ordained a priest in Rome. Her twin sons, Edward and Peter, also studied in Rome and Edward was ordained a priest but Peter did not go through with his studies and became a school-teacher. Fr. Willie later became Bishop of Gallaway. Bridie McArdle Healy has his picture in a newspaper clipping.

You may, perhaps, notice that there was a birth and two deaths on October 12. My father’s birth in 1827 and my sister Letta’s death in 1899. Since then Eileen Mary Healy was born on October 12, 1955, one hundred and twenty-eight years after her great-great-grandfather, Michael McMahon.

Tradition says that the mills at Colga were built by two sisters. There was a blanket-thickening and an oat-grinding mill. The blanket mill closed before I was born and the grinding mill’s last season was 1898. Owen McHugh, the miller, died in June 1900. R.I.P.

A Protestant Minister, Rev. James Steel, was owner of Colga in 1798 though the nearest Protestant Churches of Inniskeen and Donaghmoyne were three and five miles distant and there was not a single Protestant within miles. When the G.N. railway was built, later, it went straight through the dwelling house. The owner then was Ned Woods from whom father bought the place for £500. Norman Steel, the notorious rebel hunter of 1798, was a brother of the Rev. James Steel. Norman Steel who bought Ballymackey, was High Sheriff for Co. Monaghan at that time. His crimes were many and he died at Blackrock raving mad, trying to bite his own shoulders. He left illegitimates around Dundalk and his own neighbourhood. The new house was built by Ned Woods, who received £800 compensation for the old house from the Great Northern Railway Company. He was £300 in debt when the house was finished. Tradition also says that the old coach road from Dublin to Derry passed close to the back of the mill.

I might mention that father had a very high tenor voice and had good taste in his selection of songs. Among them were The Harp that Once, The Meeting of the Waters, Annie Laurie, Gentle Annie, and a host of songs whose airs I have never heard from anyone else, with every other in Irish and English. He loved to sing in Company. He was also quick to make up a verse or two and was a wonderful judge of horses and cattle and was a first-class farmer. He did much draining in Colga. In his early days he was a horse dealer and exported horses to France during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and continued to export horses to England until his mother’s death in 1885.

I don’t know much about the Quigley family except that Peter Quigley’s parents were James Quigley and Nannie Boyle Quigley. James Quigley’s sister married a man named Lawless, a school teacher, and they were the parents of Fr. Nicholas Lawless, who, by the way, was co-sponsor with me when he baptised Eileen Mary Quigley (later McArdle) in December 1901. This year sixty years later, I stood sponsor for her grandson Thomas Anthony Healy. My own sponsors were Rev. Fr. Lamb and Mary Jones.

James Quigley had an uncle, Fr. James Quigley, who was martyred in England in 1798. In his last will he left his watch to his nephew James Quigley, who in father’s own words "had reached the ripe old age of four years".

Nannie Boyle had Two sisters, Kitty who married a man named McEngeggert from Philipstown, and Peggie, I don’t remember her married name.

Now, one of you young people can write the family history from here. I wonder who it will be. Anyway, good luck and say a prayer for me.