Nothing But Bad Times: Chapter One, Part Two
The journey to County Armagh was a long one. They walked and walked everyday through the tracks and conditions seen before only in the Middle Ages. Eliza cradled Peter in her arms and Bernard stumbled in front with a stick in one hand attached to a bread filled bag that hung over his shoulder, and holding Catherine’s hand with his other. Catherine in turn held Mary Ann’s hand as they made their ways out of County Tyrone, never to return.
The family stopped in Armagh briefly, for about five or six months. I don’t know this for sure but again a family member tells me that the family had a farm in Armagh, which a descendant of Mary Ann visited in the 1950’s, the farm still being in existence. For an unknown reason, the family left Armagh too. Armagh was the Roman Catholic capital of Ireland, so I am taking an educated guess that they were safe there, in other words it seems that persecution had not yet reached them there. It is likely they moved again due to the need for more money and a more secure job for Bernard. Therefore, the family headed for County Down.
Travelling through night and day in the winter months almost killed the Owens family, but they survived. I don’t know how they did it, but they survived. However, fate was to deal a cruel blow to Bernard and Eliza. One evening in 1868, Peter, now nearly four years old, was starting to fall ill due to the worsening conditions and the cold nights spent on the dirt ways. Bernard carried Peter and searched for help, the first he could find out on the roads, but it was too late. Peter was not breathing. We don’t even know if he found anybody. Even if he had, it was hopeless. Peter died aged three in County Armagh, somewhere along the roadside. He is buried somewhere in the county, unlikely the family could afford a proper burial for him. We’ll probably never know where Peter is buried.
At the ages of eight and six, Catherine and Mary Ann probably had no understanding of what was happening. They knew no different than the awful conditions beset on them. The knowledge that their brother had died probably didn’t really register until they saw Eliza’s arms were empty, and wondered where he had gone. The fact too that they must’ve seen their parents bury their brother, is something I personally struggle with.
The seemingly ghoulish concept of naming a future child after a previously deceased one is never seen nowadays. However, back in these times it was quite common, if the father or mother wished for the name to be passed down. By the time the Owens family had reached County Down sometime in mid 1869, they had to stop there for a while, for Eliza had become pregnant again. After Peter’s death just months before, it was perhaps a blessing that Bernard and Eliza’s fourth child was a boy. Of course, in memory of their dead son, they named the new born Peter. Tragically however, Peter later died at just a few weeks old, and is buried in Downpatrick. He died sometime in 1869. It seems the name Peter was cursed.
The Owens stayed in Downpatrick for more than a decade, and as Bernard began to find work, it seems that the family had left the worst behind them. Bernard and Eliza now settled down with their three surviving children, and there were more on the way. In 1870 Eliza gave birth to John, followed by Bernard in 1871, Elizabeth in 1874, Ellen in 1876, and Joseph, who was born two days after the Christmas of 1879.
By this time (1879), Catherine and Mary Ann had also found work as Domestic Servants, working in a manor house on the outskirts of Downpatrick. It was here that the people who owned the house taught Mary Ann how to write, and they grew particularly fond of her, as they did with Catherine, so much that they paid the two sisters very well, or so Mary Ann later told her children. It was around this same time that Catherine met a ferryman called Charles McMillan. He was born illegitimate in 1858 in Campbeltown, Scotland, and took passengers in and out of Ireland. He was based at the River Clyde. He was the master of a boat on the Clyde called a Clutha’s, one of 12 built in total. On March 10 1880 at Belfast, Catherine married Charles, and immediately, she decided that there was a better life for them over in a bustling Scotland. Catherine and Charles left Ireland for Charles’ hometown Campbeltown, and arrived there in early 1881, early enough to be recorded there with no children, on the 1881 census. Bernard, Eliza and there remaining six children remained in Downpatrick.
However, this was not the last Catherine would see of her family. One day, Catherine arrived with Charles, back in Downpatrick from across the sea, and offered her parents and siblings the chance to come over to Scotland, and break free from Ireland altogether. After all, there was nothing left for them on the Emerald Isle, and like so many others, they had had enough. They agreed. It seemed that this really was the turning of their fortunes. The Owens family packed what little they had with them, and left their farm in Downpatrick, and headed for the boats leaving for Scotland. It seems at last, they had some hope to cling onto…
Copyright © Matthew Reay, 2008
