Women of 'Ninety-Eight

by Mrs. Thomas Concannon

The little maid, whose long life of ninety-six years was to witness such strange happenings, was born in High Street, Belfast, on July the 8th, 1770. Her father, John McCracken, was captain and part owner of a vessel trading between Belfast and the West Indies. He was of Scottish descent, his family having settled in Ireland when the Covenanters were fleeing from Claverhouse. They settled at Hill Hall near Lisburn, and here John McCracken was born. At an early age he formed a strong attachment to a charming young girl of Huguenot descent called Anne Joy, only daughter of Francis Joy, a conveyancer, and notary public, who, a pioneer in many things, is perhaps best remembered as the founder of the Belfast Newsletter in 1737. Captain McCracken is described by Madden as “a man of polished manners, whose sincerity of disposition and integrity of principles caused him to be generally respected and esteemed.” It was noted of him by his daughter, as a proof of his integrity, that in the days when smuggling was regarded as a very venial offence, Captain McCracken would not smuggle nor allow his sailors to do so, “as he considered a custom-house oath as binding on conscience as any other.” A still more striking instance of his integrity and his children’s reliance on it, was furnished on the occasion of Harry’s trial when he was offered his son’s life on condition that he induced the latter to disclose the name of the leader, whose place the prisoner had taken in the Rising. He told the tempter, Pollock, that “he would rather his son died than that he should do a dishonourable action.”

That steadfast character of John McCracken’s, which he transmitted to his children, was, it may be, a heritage from his mother—a stern old Covenanting lady, very strict in her religious beliefs, and most uncompromising in her principles. Her grandchildren, who had a keen sense of humour, used to relate with much zest, the damper put on their youthful enjoyment of Christmas by seeing their venerable grandmother seated ostentatiously at her spinning-wheel, her whole being one vehement protest against the Christmas observances and festivities. They were all in considerable awe of her, and when she uttered maledictions they felt certain they would come to pass. On one occasion, in 1763, Captain McCracken, having occasion to spend some time in Liverpool, to superintend the construction of a new vessel, brought his young wife with him, leaving their two children, Francis and Margaret, in the care of Grandmother McCracken. The venerable lady, who did not approve of “gadding about,” fervently prayed that her flighty daughter-in-law “might get a scare before coming back.” “And in truth I did, my dears,” the latter would say, as she told the story to her children afterwards, “my husband not wishing me to return on the new and untried vessel, sent me home before him. The ship was wrecked on the South Rock near Ballywalter, and we were only saved by getting into the boat; and I had to wade a long distance in shallow water, with a weight of two hundred guineas in my pocket.”

If the grandmother was stern and forbidding, and inspired more fear than love in the children of the household, their sweet mother was quite the reverse. She was “remarkable for a uniform cheerfulness of temper, and benevolence of mind that endeared her to young people as well as to the aged.” With this sweetness of disposition she passed on to her children as a further portion of their heritage from the Joys, an alert and enterprising habit of mind, keen to see, and seize new opportunities; and that steadfastness of the Joys, which, for all its Gallic urbanity, was at least the equal of the McCracken’s. Anne Joy’s father, in addition to his pioneer work in the newspaper world, was also a pioneer in the linen manufacture. In 1749 he established at Randalstown “a complete new mill for dressing flax ... which will dress 14℔. of flax in an hour, fit for the heckle.” He was keenly interested in politics, and, when an old man, confined to his couch by a disease in his leg, had himself conveyed to Antrim, on the occasion of an election, to vote for Rowley and O’Neill, the popular candidates. His son, Robert, meeting him there, said: “What brought you here, Sir?” “The good of my country,” was the reply. The side for which he voted was triumphant, but the day that the members were chaired he died.

His two sons, Robert and Henry, were remarkable men. It was they, who, with Captain John McCracken and Thomas MacCabe (“the Irish Slave”) introduced the cotton industry into Belfast—and with it laid the foundations of the present prosperity of that city. Young Henry Joy McCracken, who had an extraordinary gift for mechanics and was as clever with his hands as any prestidigitator, was sent to England and Scotland to ferret out the carefully guarded mechanical secrets of the British cotton manufacturers—and accomplished his mission in a manner which will furnish an exciting chapter in Irish industrial history—when it comes to be written. Belfast of to-day has little thought to spare for the “United Men”—but it should not forget what it owes to Henry Joy McCracken—to him who died for the cause which so many in Belfast to-day are sworn to destroy: “a brotherhood of affection, an identity of interests, a communion of rights, and a union of power among Irishmen of all religious persuasions.”

To Henry and Robert Joy, Belfast owed likewise the “Old Poorhouse,” the first shelter devised for Belfast’s poor. The little Joys and McCrackens were early interested in the poor old men and women, and especially in the children; and, as they grew up, they were active workers in their behalf—getting up dances, and concerts and collections for the institution. It was partly in the design of procuring funds for the Poor House (as well as to give employment to the linen weavers during periods of depression in their own trade) that the Joys first turned their attention to the cotton trade. The managers of the Poor House rejected the offer made by Robert Joy to instal the new machinery (which Harry McCracken’s cleverness had made it possible to erect in Ireland), and to carry on the manufacture of cotton as a regular part of their routine, and a means of making the institution self-supporting. They allowed, however, the children to go to work in the mill which the firm of Joy, MacCabe and McCracken presently established.

Come of such strains as has been indicated, both on the paternal and maternal side, is it any wonder that the children of John and Anne McCracken should have been endowed with uncommon gifts both of body and mind and soul? They were a numerous tribe—but, as was so usual with these large eighteenth-century families, only a certain proportion of them survived the ordeals of childhood. Of these, four were boys: Francis, William, Henry Joy, and John; and two were girls: Margaret and Mary Anne. The latter was the youngest but one, of the family, and was ten years the junior of her sister.

Mary Anne was considered delicate in her youth, and it was feared she was in consumption. On this account she was kept on a low diet—an astonishing treatment, to our modern notions. But the treatment seems to have been successful; for in her hale and hearty old age she could remark in her humorous way: “I have been a long time consuming away.” She was an active child, and she used to tell her grandnieces with much pride how she accomplished the feat of hopping on one leg right across High Street three times without stopping.

The school routine of a little Belfast maiden in the latter decades of the eighteenth century was not unlike that with which the entertaining journal of Anna Greene Winslow, a small Boston schoolgirl contemporary, makes us familiar. There was a separate school for English, another for writing; in addition girls had to attend a sewing and knitting school. In all these branches Mary became very proficient. Her needlework was exquisite. She was fond of reading, and read only the best authors. Her letters, some of which will be quoted in due course, are admirable. One wishes, as one reads them and those of Elizabeth and Jane Emmet and Matilda Tone, that the delightful art were revived by the teachers of the girls of to-day.

Captain John McCracken, being a travelled man and an admirer of the French nation, wished to have his children taught French. Belfast of that day supplied, it would appear, no better teacher than an old French weaver who had picked up his knowledge of English on the banks of the Lagan, and thought it the correct thing to translate his native tongue into the idiom of that classic region. Mary Anne used to relate afterwards, with great enjoyment that his translation of il faut always took the form, “it be to be.”

When Mary was in her teens the family left the house in High Street and went to a larger one in Rosemary Street. Two of the boys, William and John, married, but the family circle was not thus broken up for they brought their brides to live under the paternal roof in the patriarchal fashion of the period. So numerous were the inmates of the McCracken home, after a time, that their friends referred to it as “Noah’s Ark,” the appropriateness of the name being emphasised by the number of dogs, and cats, and other pet animals, who shared with the humans, the domicile.