The elusive Daniel McNeill...

...my 2nd great grandfather, and Maggie's father, has been tough to trace. There are simply too many Daniel McNeills in Antrim. But we can pull on one thread a little, starting from his death-certificate.

It gives his residence as Blackcave, Larne, where in the Griffith's valuation revision books at PRONI, we find his landholding, a plot of 7.9375 acres, in the townland of Blackcave South, now entirely within the boundaries of Larne. Even in 1880, it wasn't far from town. This is from the 1878-1883 Valuation revision book.

He apparently occupied the plot in 1880 or 1881, according to the annotation on the right. And it was given up with his death. It's the tract numbered 8 on this map. Larne is at the bottom. Interestingly, his brother Henry seems to have a larger holding, nearly adjacent.

What can we infer? Daniel certainly lived in Larne or thereabouts from 1880 onwards. There are no houses on the plot, but it's a short walk from town. So now we have to find his house.

Alexander and the Demesne

There are a couple of new articles up about Henry (next post). There's this useful quote though

Henry McNeill was born on February 14, 1836, in his father's house in Deerpark, Glenarm. For several generations the McNeill family had resided on this part of the Earl of Antrim's estate and were reputed to be honest, kind and thrifty folk.

It probably wasn't the Deerpark, but actually Glenarm Demesne, where he was one of three residents, including the Earl of Antrim himself in Glenarm Castle. Alexander is listed in the Griffith's valuation for 1861, the PRONI valuation book for 1862-4, and as the first tenant in 1864-1880. The tanancy was assumed by a (as yet untraceable) Thomas McNeill, presumably after Alexander's death in 1874, and then by the Earl himself. It lists 1 acre of land and 12 of water. The water must be the Glenarm River; possibly Alexander had leased the fishing rights. I can't locate the land or residence, but Alexander may have been employed by the Earl, and lodged in one of his buildings. Further information will probably require a visit to the records office in Belfast, which houses the Earl of Antrim's papers. But this probably puts the family in Glenarm back into the first half of the 18th century.

Daniel and Ann and Margaret and Henry

Maggie's father's name was Daniel. That we know from the marriage registration.

We can also infer he was alive in 1876, simply because her husband's father, Arthur Magill, was labeled 'deceased'.

We could usually find out more information from the baptismal register, but the registers for Tickmacrevan (Glenarm) are missing entries from March 1854 to July 1857. So I did it the hard way. If Daniel McNeill was alive in 1876, he likely had an actual death certificate. Problem is, there are 19 death certificates from men named Daniel mcNeill in the Larne district who could possible be our man. So I started going through them, one by one, and cross-referencing them against census and other data. And I found this.

So what? Annie Legge, Daniel McNeill's sister, was godmother to Maggie McNeill's first child Margaret Ann, born 1877. Can't be a coincidence; unlike Daniel McNeill, Anne Legge is an unusual name. Also note that Daniel was a manager for Henry McNeill Ltd. Armed with this, it wasn't hard to find this honking great gravestone, in McGarel Cemetery in Larne.

Look at the link: it claims Henry McNeill is regarded as the founder of the modern tourist industry in Ireland. Folks, we are in the presence of greatness!

With the stone, of course, we have Daniel, his parents, and two siblings. We know he was born in 1826, his sister Ann in 1834, and his brother Henry in 1836. We can now also find his will, which alas is brief, but says he was a 'farm steward', and his wife's name was Mary. He was worth £96, not much even back then. In contrast, Henry, who died in 1904, was worth £5,224 18s. 6d. Henry's executors were Anne Legge and Margaret O Boyle 'widow'. In fact, Henry neverr married, and Margaret O Boyle née McNeill was his sister. I'll write more about his three siblings anon. But it seems reasonable to speculate that her uncle Henry's death in 1904 probably explains how Maggie bought a nice house in Belfast in 1907.

Finally, I think this is the record of Daniel McNeill's marriage to Mary Anne McKay on October 26, 1854, in Glenarm.

This pushes the mitochondrial ancestor back one generation. The only perfect mitochondrial matches I have that are associated with any sort of genealogy are to a Margaret Morrisson, b. 1810 in Alnwick, Scotland; and to a Nancy McClurg (name varies), who was in the Carolinas in 1750, but was apparently from Northern Ireland. She was most definitely Protestant, so we have yet another religious conversion mystery.

Maggie McNeill: her family

Margaret Magill, née McNeill, died on April 6, 1943, at 36 Atlantic Avenue, Belfast, of myocarditis resulting from bronchopneumonia. the 1943 Belfast Street Directory lists 36 Atlantic Avenue as the residence of her son, Arthur H. Magill. The death certificate gives her age, impossibly, as 73. She had lived at 37 Hamilton St., Belfast, from 1908 through 1939, but in 1943 the home was listed as 'vacant'. One presumes that, an aged lady, she moved in with one of her children.

Our first direct record of Maggie is her marriage in 1876, at St MacNissi's in Larne, Co. Antrim. Here's the civil certificate:

Note that while her husband's father, Arthur Magill, is listed as 'deceased', her father Daniel is not. Maggie and Daniel lived in a tenement in Trow Lane, Larne. They proceeded to have 10 children in the next 19 years.

Her streak was interrupted when her husband died of a cerebral hemorhage in 1895, at the listed age of 50. He was a carter, which meant he likely operated a hand-cart; I expect aneurisms were an occupational hazard.

Left with 10 kids and no visible means of support, Maggie went to work. In the 1901 census, her family was split in two. She was living as a housekeeper for a single sailor, Patrick Blair, at 61 Pound Street in Larne, with five of her kids, including the youngest. The other five were at 100 Lindsey Street in Belfast; the Belfast street directory lists the owner as 'A Magill, clerk', almost certainly 20 year old Arthur. They were gone by 1907; but by the next year Maggie had acquired a house at 37 Hamilton Street in Central Belfast.

The reunited family (nearly; Nora was working as a domestic elsewhere) had some fun with the 1911 Census by answering it entirely in Irish (which made it very difficult to find.) One can see the distracted annotations of the census taker, trying to translate this into English.

Most of the kids married, three of them to three siblings of the Anglin family, which meant my mother had several double-first-cousins. I'm pretty sure Arthur also married, but I haven't found the documentation. I don't know what happened to Margaret Anne.