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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Chester (England)


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Death of Jane Mitchel, Irish Nationalist Wife of John Mitchel

Jane “Jenny” Mitchel, an Irish nationalist and wife of John Mitchel, dies at her home in Bedford Park, New York, on December 31, 1899.

Mitchel is born Jane Verner around 1820 near Newry, County Down. At the time she, her brother and her mother, Mary Ward, are living with Captain James Verner (1777–1847), who is from a prominent Armagh family, and is involved in the Orange Order, going on to become Orange deputy grandmaster of Ireland in 1824. Although James Verner raises Mitchel, she is not believed to be his child. She attends Miss Bryden’s School for Young Ladies in Newry. 

Mitchel meets her husband, John Mitchel, when she is fifteen. The couple elopes in November 1836, but do not marry as James Verner pursues them to Chester and brings her home to Ireland. They elope again in 1837, and are married at Drumcree Church, County Armagh, on February 3. At this point, Mitchel is disowned by James Verner, and goes to live with her in-laws at Dromalane, County Down. They then move to Banbridge in 1839 where her husband practises law. The couple goes on to have six children, three daughters and three sons.

The couple moves to Dublin in October 1845 when John Mitchel becomes the assistant editor of The Nation. They live at 8 Ontario Terrace, Rathmines, where they meet Young Irelanders. She is a full supporter of her husband’s nationalism. She aids in his work with The Nation, reading other newspapers, keeping and filing reference clippings, going on to become an editor and anonymous contributor to the United Irishman from February 1848. John Mitchel is convicted of treason for inciting insurrection in May 1848, and is sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. Mitchel urges his fellow Young Irelanders to fight his removal, and denounces them when they fail to come out in support of him.

Due to her standing in the nationalist community, £1,450 is raised to support her and her family. For three years, Mitchel lives in Newry and Dublin, before she joins her husband in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in June 1851, where they settle in the village of Bothwell. Their youngest child, Isabel, is born there in 1853.

The Mitchels travel around the island with her husband, visiting fellow Irish exiles, becoming fond of William Smith O’Brien in particular. 

When John Mitchel escapes in July 1853, Mitchel travels with her children to join him in Sydney, from where they sail to the United States. They live for a time in Brooklyn, New York, from 1853 to 1855, rekindling friendships with old friends who are fellow Young Ireland exiles. 

In May 1855, the family moves to a remote farm at Tucaleechee Cove in Tennessee. She fears that the isolation and life in a primitive log cabin will be detrimental to their children’s education, and at her behest the family moves to Knoxville, Tennessee, in September 1856. From here, John Mitchel runs a pro-slavery newspaper, the Southern Citizen. 

The family moves again in December 1858 to Washington, D.C. Mitchel supports her husband in the Southern cause, albeit with some reservation. Nothing, she says, will induce her “to become the mistress of a slave household.” Her objection to slavery is “the injury it does to the white masters.”

Mitchel accompanies her husband to Paris in September 1860, and in opposition to some of the family, she supports her daughter Henrietta’s conversion to Catholicism and entrance into a convent. She remains in Paris and Ireland with her daughters, while her husband and sons assist the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Without letting her husband know, she resolves to return to America when she hears of her youngest son, William’s, death at Gettysburg in July 1863. She sails with her daughters, Mary and Isabel, as Henrietta had died earlier the same year. While their ship runs a blockade by the Union, the ship is shelled, runs aground, and catches fire near the coast of North Carolina. She and her daughters are unhurt, but lose all of their possessions. By December 1863, she has joined her husband in Richmond, Virginia, remaining their for the rest of the Civil War. Their eldest son, John, is killed in action in July 1864.

The family returns to New York after the war, and John Mitchel sets up another paper, The Irish Citizen (1867–72). Due to lack of funding for the Irish American press and her husband’s ill health results in the family falling into poverty. This is alleviated by a testimonial raised by William and John Dillon in 1873. Mitchel is widowed in March 1875, going on to receive $30,000 from nationalist sympathisers. She invests this money in a photolithographic firm she and her son, James, run. She dies at home in Bedford Park, New York, on December 31, 1899. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York, with her plot marked with a large Celtic cross. She is survived by two of her children, James (1840–1908) and Mary (1846–1910).


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The Shipwrecks of the Trevor and Nonpareil

Two hundred passengers are lost in the shipwrecks of the brigs Trevor and Nonpareil on October 20, 1775. Among the casualties are The Hononorable Major Francis Caulfield, Member of Parliament (MP) for Charlemont, his wife, and daughters. Also lost is John French, Member for Roscommon County.

On Thursday, October 19, 1775, the brig Trevor, with Captain William Totty at the helm, and the brig Nonpareil, with Capatin Samuel Davies, sail from Parkgate for Dublin. That evening, as the vessels are near Holyhead, the wind shifts about from the south southwest to the west, and so violent a hurricane arises that they cannot carry any sail, but are obliged to lie to, and drive before the wind. In this situation, the Trevor drives upon the banks near the Lancashire shore and is totally lost.

Everyone on board perishes, except Samuel Fairclough, a mariner, who miraculously saves his life by leaping aboard another vessel named the Charming Molly, under Captain Joseph Holloway, which is transporting coal from Chester to Newry. The Charming Molly accidentally runs afoul of the Trevor and carries away the Trevor‘s foretopmast and, at the instant the two vessels come together, Fairclough makes his leap. He was the only survivor of the 30 to 40 passengers and crew aboard the Trevor.

Captain Holloway states that his vessel and the Trevor came together at some distance from the coast. They parted at the time Fairclough jumped across, and the Trevor subsequently went to pieces. A great many chests, boxes, some of which are broken, and quantities of East India goods are strewn along the shore, all wet with salt water. These items are in the custody of Mrs. Hesketh, Lady of the Manor of this coast, secured by Mr. Standen of Rossall Hall. The East India goods had arrived by land from London. The cargo and coins aboard the Trevor are estimated to be worth £15,000.

The Charming Mary runs ashore at Blackpool with most of her sails carried away, but otherwise with little damage.

The Nonpareil is lost in the storm between Parkgate and Dublin, driven on shore near Hoyle-sands and lost. There are no survivors. The wife of Captain Davies states that her husband sailed from Parkgate with very low spirits as he did not like the appearance of the weather. He is pressured to put to sea, which he does, and is turned back twice, but gets off on the third attempt, and is never seen again.

Between them, the Trevor and the Nonpareil reportedly carry nearly 200 passengers, the majority being on the Nonpareil. They carry cargo valued at £15,000.

On Tuesday evening, October 24, the Collector of the port of Chester receives the melancholy account of the loss of the Trevor by a letter from the Collector of Poulton, in Lancashire. This is immediately communicated to the Merchants, who are concerned in shipping the cargo, and they set out as soon as possible to give assistance and to secure each part of the cargo as might come ashore.

The merchants from Chester reach Poulton late on Wednesday night, October 25. The following morning, they set out along the shore from Blackpool, where the Charming Mary is stranded. The greatest part of the hull of the Trevor lay scattered along the shore at a great distance. On their arrival at Rossall Hall, about six miles from Blackpool, they have the satisfaction to find that Mr. Standen, who is Steward of the Manor of Bold Fleetwood Hesketh, now a minor and son to the deceased Fleetwood Hesketh, on whose estate the wreck is taken up, has taken all possible care of everything that can be saved from plunderers.


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Birth of Charlie Lawson, Northern Irish Actor

charles-lawson

Quintin Charles Devenish “Charlie” Lawson, actor from Northern Ireland best known for playing Jim McDonald in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, is born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh on September 17, 1959.

Lawson is raised in a Protestant family and is educated at Campbell College, a grammar school in Belfast. He then trains as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where a classmate and good friend of his is fellow Enniskillen native Adrian Dunbar, whom Lawson says is the first Catholic he has ever met.

Lawson appears in at least three films and in at least twenty television productions. He is probably best known for appearing as Jim McDonald in the ITV television soap opera Coronation Street. He first appears as Jim in 1989 and remains a regular character for eleven years, since which time his appearances have been few and far between.

Lawson’s other television work includes appearing as Seamus Duffryn in the 1982 Yorkshire Television thriller miniseries Harry’s Game (also known as Belfast Assassin), and as one of the main characters, Billy, in Mike Leigh‘s television film Four Days in July, both based on The Troubles in Northern Ireland. He plays Trigg in the 1989 television film The Firm and has also appeared in various other television series including Doctors, Bread, The Bill and Rosemary & Thyme.

In 2000, Lawson makes a programme for ITV Granada, Passion for Peace, which follows him back to Northern Ireland and reports on the creation of the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Centre in Warrington. In 2005 he appears in the TV documentary Titanic: Birth of a Legend. In 2009 he appears alongside an eight-foot Frankfurter sausage in a German television commercial, advertising hot dogs. His overdubbed catchphrase in the commercial is Betrachten Sie die Größe meiner Wurst! (English: “Look at the size of my sausage!”).

In 2010, Lawson reveals that he is returning to Coronation Street for its fiftieth anniversary celebrations. He speculates that bosses may be planning to kill his character off, however, this never happens. He stays until April 2011. He then returns for a three-month stint on the soap between August and November 2014.

In 2015, Lawson makes a guest appearance in an episode of the Comedy Central sitcom Brotherhood as the father of the three main characters. He also appears as Doctor Black in the 2016 BBC Northern Ireland drama My Mother and Other Strangers.

Lawson returns to Coronation Street in September 2018 with his supposed long-lost daughter from his relationship with Liz. On October 8, 2018, while portraying Inspector John Rebus in the play Long Shadows in Edinburgh, he suffers a minor stroke on stage but recovers shortly afterwards.

Lawson lives in Belfast with his partner, Debbie Stanley, having previously lived with her in Chester, Cheshire, for a number of years.


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Birth of Alice Stopford Green, Historian & Nationalist

NPG x74642,Alice Stopford Green (nÈe Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford),by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (later The Cameron Studio)

Alice Stopford Green, Irish historian and nationalist, is born in Kells, County Meath on May 30, 1847. She is noted for proving the Irish had a rich culture before English rule. A strong supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, she is nominated to the first Seanad Éireann in December 1922.

Stopford Green is born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford. Her father, Edward Adderley Stopford, is Rector of Kells and Archdeacon of Meath. Her paternal grandfather is Edward Stopford, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath, and she is a cousin of Stopford Brooke and Mother Mary Clare. From 1874 to 1877 she lives in London where she meets the historian John Richard Green. They are married in Chester on June 14, 1877; however, he dies in 1883. John Morley publishes her first historical work, Henry II, in 1888.

In the 1890s Stopford Green becomes interested in Irish history and the nationalist movement as a result of her friendship with John Francis Taylor. She is vocal in her opposition to English colonial policy in South Africa during the Boer Wars and supports Roger Casement‘s Congo Reform movement. Her 1908 book The Making of Ireland and its Undoing argues for the sophistication and richness of the native Irish civilisation. She is active in efforts to make the prospect of Home Rule more palatable to Ulster Unionists. She is closely involved in the Howth gunrunning.

Stopford Green moves to Dublin in 1918 where her house at 90 St. Stephen’s Green becomes an intellectual centre. She supports the pro-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War and is among the first nominees to the newly formed Seanad Éireann in 1922, where she serves as an independent member until her death in Dublin on May 28, 1929, two days shy of her 82nd birthday. She is one of four women elected or appointed to the first Seanad in 1922.


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Birth of Sir Thomas Molyneux, 1st Baronet FRS

Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Molyneux, 1st Baronet FRS, scientist, archaeologist, physician and Member of Parliament (MP), is born in Dublin on April 14, 1661. Molyneux is the first to assert that the Giant’s Causeway, now a National Nature Reserve of Northern Ireland and a major tourist attraction, is a natural phenomenon. Legend has it that it is the remains of a crossing between two areas of land over an inlet of the sea that has been built by a giant.

Molyneux is the youngest son of Samuel Molyneux of Castle Dillon, County Armagh, Master Gunner of Ireland, and grandson of Daniel Molyneux, Ulster King of Arms. His great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Molyneux, who is originally from Calais, comes to Ireland about 1576, and becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland.

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Molyneux becomes a doctor with an MA and MB in 1683, at the age of 22. He goes to Europe and continues his medical studies, resulting in gaining the MD degree in 1687. He is admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society on November 3, 1686.

Molyneux practises medicine in Chester sometime before 1690. He returns to Ireland after the Battle of the Boyne. He is elected a Fellow of the Irish College of Physicians 1692 under Cardinal Brandr Beekman-Ellner and becomes the first State Physician in Ireland and also Physician General to the Army in Ireland, with the rank of lieutenant general. Between 1695 and 1699, Molyneux represents Ratoath in the Irish House of Commons. He is Regius Professor of Physic at Trinity College 1717–1733 and becomes a baronet in 1730. Both he and his brother William Molyneux are philosophically minded and are friends of John Locke.

Molyneux marries twice, first to Margaret, sister of the first Earl of Wicklow, with issue of a son and daughter. It is believed that the son dies in childhood. In 1694 he marries Catherine Howard, daughter of Ralph Howard, at that time Regius Professor of Physic at Trinity College. They have four sons and eight daughters; of whom Daniel and Capel both succeed to the baronetcy.

Thomas Molyneux dies on October 19, 1733, at the age of 72. He is believed to be buried in St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin, however there is a fine monument to him in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh by the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, with an elaborate description of his honours and genealogy. His portrait is in Armagh County Museum.