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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2004-05 > 1085454265


From: "Pat Banks" <>
Subject: Scotch-Irish Ancestor
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 11:04:25 +0800


Greetings all

I don't have much to say I'm afraid but have a very soft spot for my ancestors who came from Islandmagee, co-Antrim.

My favourite ancestor would have to be Agnes Magill (nee Mawhinney and known as 'Nancy') who married John MAGILL of Belfast in First Presbyterian Church, Islandmagee on 7th January 1864. This is probably because, in 1989, I met an elderly lady who had known her as a child and remembered her as Granny Magill. Mrs Arthurs' parents, the Alexanders, lived in the adjoining cottage to the Magills in Millbay and were still there when we visited in 1947. The cottages have recently been pulled down and replaced with a modern house.

Not surprisingly, Agnes came from a seafaring family, the MAWHINNEYs, and her siblings also 'married the sea' including her brothers Capt John Mawhinney and
William, who married Maggie Yeates, daughter of Capt Yeates. All buried in Ballypriormore cemetery.

John Magill's background is still obscure but he also went to sea and was lost with the foundering of the vessel 'Colorado' en route from Ayr to Demarara in December 1887. The following April Agnes' eldest son, also John Magill, fell from the mast of the ship 'Volant' in Galway Bay, during a storm, and was drowned. Owner of that vessel was John Mawhinney and the Master was Robert Ross, possibly John's brother-in-law. I believe this story epitomises the hard life of the seamen on Islandmagee. Agnes' daughter, Elizabeth, married a seaman, William Dick, and all her sons, John, William (my grandfather) Arthur and Robert, went to sea. By the time she was 65 Agnes had lost her husband and two sons and the remaining sons were living in England yet, in the only photograph I have, she is sitting upright and firm, looking the camera straight in the eye with a slightly mischievous smile on her face which always reminds me of my grandfather with his ever twinkling blue eyes - as !
if he knew something you didn't!! Agnes died in 1917.

Her children all went to Kilcoan National School, next to the church, and the school records are available from the LDS. They make very interesting reading as to the lives of the children of Islandmagee seamen. How young they were when they went to sea, the subjects they learned and the evening classes they attended when they were on shore.

Cheers

Pat Banks (nee Magill - daughter of another John Magill!)
Perth, Western Australia
Researching Magill and Mawhinney in Co.Antrim.


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