McCullagh Of Ardboe
Ardboe
The parish of Ardboe is not readily found on the road map of Ireland - nor indeed is it easily accessed by road! You must take the road through Coalisland along the canal, turn left at the bridge and if you take the next right you'll be on your way. It's still more than eight miles further along twisting country roads which skirt Lough Neagh to your east side. The village of Ardboe is not your destination. A mile or so beyond it you must turn right and head down the gentle slope towards the lough itself. At the next T-junction turn right onto Annaghmore Road. Half a mile along this road, at the supermarket, turn left. Soon you will come upon the quaint but pretty thatched Coyle's Cottage. Facing that is Anneeter Lane. At number three, in a beautiful white detached bungalow with a neatly trimmed garden and grounds lives Teddy Hagan, his mother Sarah (90) and some of his brothers and sisters, namely Seamus, Margaret and Lena. Behind the house in a field is what looks like a one-roomed outhouse but is the remains of the home in which Sarah and Pat Hagan raised their large family. There was no running water. Sarah had to do her washing in the nearby Lough Neagh.
Sarah Hagan
Teddy Hagan led me to the surviving members of the old McCullagh line of
Ardboe. Indeed the Hagans themselves are among our closest relatives of
the McCullagh line. The site of my grandfather's home is just two hundred
yards away. I am most grateful to all at Anneter Lane for their unfailing
and unstinted hospitality and for their friendship - as well as for their
invaluable assistance. Teddy's friend and neighbour did sterling work on
my behalf. He is Pat Grimes and he too is part of our line. These
prominent members of the Ardboe community have featured on several radio
and TV programmes about the area. With my sisters Patricia, Mary and
Bernadette (and latterly Kathleen and Lucia) and my wife Flo I have
visited the Hagans on several occasions. We all fell in love with Sarah,
Teddy's mum. As well as those already named we have been well received by
Albert (who sadly passed away on 11 July 1995) and his brother Seamus and
his sisters Margaret, Lena and Liz and Sue. They are among the friendliest
and nicest people I have ever met. To meet Sarah alone made all my work
worthwhile: she is easily the most remarkable and endearing lady I have
ever met!
Ardboe itself is a widespread picturesque plain on the western shore of Lough Neagh. Most of its people live by farming, often supplemented by fishing for eel, pollen and trout. Others have jobs in nearby towns. Although many are out of work the area appears fairly prosperous. Teddy himself, though supposedly retired, organises the transport of Lough Neagh eels that are carried live in open tanks on lorries to be later flown to Europe, there to be consumed as delicacies in hotels and homes. This is a dynamic community intent upon self-help as was well illustrated in Ann Gregg's TV programme Places Apart. I have a video recording of this which features Teddy himself explaining the benefits of the huge new Kinturk Cultural Centre he helped have built (almost on his doorstep) to encourage community cohesion and to develop the tourist trade. We have seen it in construction, been shown around it on completion and attended the official opening. It is very impressive indeed!
Teddy at Kinturk Centre
Ardboe came to prominence in the 1950's with the appearance of the Blessed Virgin there to some local people [e.g. Pat Grimes's mother]. The whole area however is steeped in history and ancient folklore. This was the site of the early Christian monastery of Saint Coleman (c. seventh century A.D.) and there remain at the old cemetery the external walls of an early Norman church (c. twelfth century).
Most famous of all is the beautiful Ardboe Celtic cross, one of the finest
examples of this genre to be found in all Ireland. Another magnificent
cross is located just twelve miles away at Donaghmore. At the base of the
Ardboe Cross is the stone with the embedded hoof print of the big cow,
after which the parish is named. Within the cemetery too is the famous
Ardboe wishing tree, into the trunk of which people have for generations
been driving pennies to transfer their illnesses from themselves and their
loved ones to the tree. It still stands though life has long left it.
Perhaps its spell worked but now works no more!
Seamus Heaney of Bellaghy came to this area to find his bride Marie Devlin. The winner of the Nobel Prize for literature wrote the following famous poem about this tree.
The Wishing Tree
I thought of her as the wishing tree that died And saw it lifted, root and branch, to heaven, Trailing a shower of all that had been driven Need by need by needs into its hale Sap-wood and bark: coin and pin and nail Came streaming from it like a comet-tail New-minted and dissolved. I had a vision Of an airy branch-head rising through damp cloud, Of turned-up faces where the tree had stood.
The people are vital, interested and interesting, lovers of Irish culture and literature. Local lady Polly Devlin wrote eloquently of life and traditions in the area in her famous novel “The Far Side of the Lough”. Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney who himself grew up not far from here, came to Ardboe to find his wife Marie. Pat Grimes' home is next to her old family house. The area abounds with poets and scholars. We were very impressed with the quality of life and the homes are beautiful - almost all detached bungalows with well-kept gardens, dotted all over the plain.
There are similarities of lifestyle with South Armagh - the birthplace of almost all of my other ancestors.
A century ago my grandfather Patrick McCullagh left his father's home in
Annaghmore, Ardboe to make his own way in the world. He may have sailed
the Lough to the mouth of the Upper Bann (see Pat Grimes' stories included
in Source Files) and travelled along the Newry Canal from Portadown to
Newry. The Battery Harbour at Ardboe is a very short walk from his home.
This was surely the most familiar, cheapest and easiest route he could
have taken. It is likely he knew well those men who plied the route and
may have got free passage. Those missing years of his whereabouts already
referred to could be explained if he had not made the whole journey in one
go. Perhaps he settled and worked for a while in Portadown. Certainly this
is where Bridget Daly (and I believe my aunt Dolly) erroneously thought he
originated. I know for sure he was not at home with his elderly parents on
31 March 1901 (see census returns in my source file) and there is no
record of him in Newry for some years thereafter, and I presume he lived
for a few years in Portadown.
What do I know of his forebears? And what was the state of Ireland at this time? Before I answer these questions it is important to say a word about my sources and my methods. This will help to explain any inaccuracies and may allow the reader to accept the limitations forced upon the researcher.
It is possible to interrogate the entire (but far from complete!) records for births, marriages and deaths for the whole of Ireland for (approximately) the century between 1850-1950. (I have a spreadsheet for those of Ardboe spanning almost three centuries. Again, see reference in Source Files). More recent records are kept from prying eyes to protect the privacy of those still living. Prior to the former date, complete records were not kept. Some Church records survive from before the earlier date, but these were made and kept at parish level and were transcribed by English speaking priests in the Latin tongue in which they were educated and trained for (sometimes) an Irish speaking congregation. Mistakes were frequent. There is no Latin translation for many English or Irish names. The priest simply attempted a spelling that looked like it was Latin. From baptismal records the baby's sex can be determined only from the Christian name. If this is in Latin it is often impossible to determine whether a child is male or female, a Joseph or a Josephine, for example. For reasons that remain a mystery some births were left unrecorded. Some appear in parish but not in state records. Occasionally illegitimate births went unrecorded.
Fortunately the surname McCullagh is fairly uncommon in Ireland making it easier to trace individuals of that name. Word of mouth in our family had it that my grandfather had migrated from Tyrone. I had something to begin with. I examined the copy of the state records of births for Ireland in search of the birth of Patrick McCullagh anytime in the 1870's-1880's. There was no matching record. From his entry at 43 Monaghan Street in the 1911 census I knew he should be recorded born circa 1877 in Tyrone. He wasn't. The Tyrone records are being computerised by Irish World at their centre at Donaghmore, Co Tyrone. I had them search and eventually we came up with the baptismal record of Patrick, son of Francis and Alice (Small) in 1877.
His parents were recorded as living alone in Annaghmore, Ardboe at the time of the 1901 census. I then made personal contact in that area with some surviving members of the clan (as already stated) and they carried out further extensive research (of the parish records, - as well as oral tradition) on my behalf. When we studied the Ardboe parish records we learned that they were well preserved if incomplete.
Where no further entries (after the birth/baptismal one) appear - of marriage or death for example - after several names, it is reasonable to speculate that some or all of these people emigrated before marriage (or as we will find in several cases, shortly after marriage). So it happened in the Tyrone McCullaghs. Whilst finding Irish roots is usually considered a source of great pride for exiles in America and Australia, it is often forgotten that emigration was considered a curse when it was forced (by circumstances) upon previous generations. Even growing up in Northern Ireland in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century I experienced the loss of many friends and boyhood playmates to the emigrant ships to England. I often marvelled that we - of such a large and poor family - were completely spared! From my family history I discovered that previous generations of McCullaghs were not so fortunate.
In search of emigrants, my interest centred at first on John McCullagh,
son of John and Ann McCullagh because as oldest son and heir he would be
expected to inherit the land. He didn't - nor did he marry or die in the
parish. Shortly I will show why I believe he went to Philadelphia. I was
determined to research his surviving descendents there. To make initial
contacts in the city of Philadelphia, I placed an advertisement in the
Irish community monthly Irish Edition. Mrs Betsy Morris replied offering
to research McCullaghs in that great city (of Brotherly Love!) on my
behalf. Betsy works part time in a family research centre there. She did
look and had others search on her behalf too but there are several
thousand McCullaghs living there now and scant records of immigration from
the 1860s. Betsy provided me with area maps of Philadelphia and lists of
dozens of surviving McCullaghs there today. (See Source Files. I hope to
meet Betsy soon as she is shortly coming to Ireland). Then recently out of
the blue Betsy rang to inform me that through the Internet she had
received Des Dineen's name and address in Australia: from initial details
she felt certain he belonged to the same McCullagh line as me. And so it
proved to be. Des rang and wrote. Some of what I learned from him is
contained here.
I now await from Des addresses of McCullaghs of our line of Pennsylvannia, Idaho and Canada whom I might contact in the future. This line remains to be explored. To further indicate the incomplete nature of the records, I note that Des' great grandfather Henry (eldest son of John and Ann) has no record in Ardboe. Yet today I have his photo! Des didn't know whether Henry's brother John was a “John or a Jane”! He thought Joseph next door was a Josephine. We are often forced to speculate from prevailing circumstances what certain family relationships might be. I will try to keep the reader informed when I resort to speculation.
With Des's information I had a benchmark against which to measure the accuracy of my own research. I will keep in touch with Des. I'm hoping against hope he comes to Ireland soon as there's no prospect of my visiting Australia. Our research results are largely pooled in what follows. This passage is included to illustrate that our sources and our methods were similar and the results produced complement one another.
