1.
Who's Related To Who?
My last post brought to life all of the tough graft Bill and others have put into the detection of familial links between the different branches of the Halpin family. The sons and grandsons of William and James Halpin had been linked before - through weddings and (in the case of a daughter) through burials. As Bill says, the clip from the Wicklow Newsletter (dated Sept. 27 1884) further confirms pre-established connections between these families. But I wonder how many noticed the implications of Reply #33 Fri. 31 May 2013.
Right from the beginning of this investigation, one of the claims my family has consistently made has been that the Halpins of Wicklow, Portarlington and Dublin were connected by blood. My family has made other claims too, which have been shown to be mistaken (thanks to my own findings and the findings of other contributors to this thread). But their most consistent contention - that the Halpins I've just mentioned were blood relatives - was one of the reasons why so many Halpin descendants chose to visit this site: they wanted to find out if there was any credence to what appeared to most to be a fantastic claim.
To the best of my knowledge, no one had ever suggested that George Halpin, light house engineer, was related to Robert Charles Halpin, Captain of the Great Eastern. Contributors to this site have since proved that claim to be true. I'd like to go one step further now and suggest that we have enough evidence to make a very strong circumstantial case for the existence of a link between the Wicklow Halpins and the Portarlington Halpins. The Portarlington Halpin's family tree has been thoroughly scrutinized by us already, and the marriage I'd like to focus on is that of Wm. Henry Halpin and Marianne Crosthwaite (1787). Their union was a successful one and the couple had many children, the eldest of whom was Nicholas John Halpin (1790 - 1850). Nicholas grew up to become a clergyman, and married Ann Greham in 1817, moving to Oldcastle a year later.
The Reverend had a reputation for Shakespearean scholarship and anti-Catholic polemic. In 1837 he resigned as Rector of Oldcastle and moved his family to Dublin to take up the editorship of
The Evening Mail. The
Mail was an archly Protestant newspaper at that time, fiercely opposed to Daniel O'Connell's campaign to repeal the Union. The Reverend's home address in Dublin was Seville Place (Nos 12 or 14 - he seemed to switch between the two), which joins the North Strand Road at the Five Lamps junction. According to the city's Valuation Books, which I examined last week, George Halpin was the lessor of those properties.
If you examine Reply #33 Fri. 31 May 2013, I draw your attention to a number of deeds, copies of which I have in my possession, which name George Halpin, the Reverend Robert Crawford Halpin, the Rev. William Gilbert Ormsby (formerly of Clontarf, later of Arklow), as witnesses and signatories to leasehold deeds that list the Northstrand interests of Leland Crosthwaite, Thomas Crosthwaite, and their sons. Joseph Hone and John Hone were also named in those deeds. The Hones, which were a family of Bankers and artists, were also Solicitors and can be linked to the legal dispute raging around the ownership of the Bridge Inn Tavern in Wicklow and the sale of George Halpin's properties in Seville Place, which took place in 1920 (Irish Times, Sat. June 12 1920).
