A Correction & Victim of Two Accidents

Four days ago I included an Australian newspaper cutting from Sydney about 'Robert McIllhagga' being injured when a smoke stack collapsed. I made the assumption that this happened to Samuel Robert McIlhagger who had been working for Sydney Council for the previous two years. I'm afraid I was wrong! I've just heard from an Australian correspondent that the story of the accident had been passed down from father to son and that the Robert concerned was Robert James McIlhagga who went to sea as a boy from Ireland and eventually emigrated to Sydney. In the time of the Great Depression (it was 1928) maritime work was scarce and the 'chimney stack' demolition was a temporary job. Apparently Robert avoided being killed because he was working nearer the chimney than his fellow worker who was killed, and the bricks fell out at an angle and not straight down.

This gives me the opportunity of showing another cutting, this time from The Queenslander (Brisbane, Queensland) published on Saturday 20th June 1925.

This begins by referring to 'The body of Mrs. M'Illhagger'. I can (I think accurately this time) identify her as Isabella, formerly Humphreys, who was buried on 11th June, 1925. She lost her life in a rail smash the day before, this date I take from 'june 10' on the cutting. She was the second wife of John McIlhagger who survived her by two years. After his first wife, Mary Jane Hull, died in 1886, he sent 'back home' to Ireland for Isabella who had also been widowed. She came to Australia with the eight children she had had by her first husband and it must have been two of her grandchildren from that line who are also referred to in the cutting, Isabella and Mavis Gold. The whole cutting reads as follows:

VICTIM OF TWO ACCIDENTS, BUNDABERG, June 10. The body of Mrs. M'Illhagger, the aged lady [she was 80] who lost her life in the disaster, was brought to Bundaberg this evening for interment to-morrow. Her two granddaughters, Misses Isabella and Mavis Gold, from South Australia, whom the deceased lady went to Brisbane to meet, and who sustained serious injuries, arrived by the same train and were admitted to the Bundaberg Hospital. Miss Isabella Gold, who sustained a broken leg and other injuries, survived a railway accident at North Bundaberg 24 years ago. At the time she was an infant. 16 months old, and crawled out on to the line. She was run over by a passing train, having two fingers of the right hand and half of her right foot, cut off.

Urban Dictionary

I am fascinated by the internet site called 'urbandictionary' . It is advertised as 'the dictionary you wrote'. Apparently it has been building up since 1999 to its present 7 million definitions. If you look up 'McIlhagga' you will find the following, which is I think an accurate definition, and which I may add has clearly been taken from this blog:

Mcilhagga: It is generally accepted that McIlhagga is a Scottish name though its Gaelic form is found in both Scotland and Ireland: Mac Ghille Sagairt, 'the Son of the Devotee of the Priest'. It is possible that the priest was Mochuda, otherwise St. Carthage, Abbott and Bishop of Lismore in AD 555.

People can add comments and one droll fellow has added 'Mcilhagga: it's damn boring to be the son of the devotee, I think I'll take a gap year'. The definition claims to have been submitted by someone who calls themselves 'acoldcupoftea', on Jul 24, 2011.

Two comments and an Accident

I have recently added two comments to earlier blog entries, first to that on 14th July last entitled Shoemakers. Also I've added to 26th April 2009 a comment  about an 1851 advertisement from an Australian newspaper about the ship Stata which I referred to in the blog.

Today I have published a cutting from another Australian paper, The Barrier Miner, from Sydney, on Friday 9th March 1928. It is digitised in the excellent Australian site called 'Trove'. It reads as follows:

SMOKE STACK COLLAPSES. ONE WORKMAN KILLED AND ANOTHER INJURED.
John Paull (42) of Paddington, was killed and Robert M'Illhagga, of Ranwick, was hurt when portions of a smoke stack at the Prince of Wales Hospital, at Ranwick, collapsed yesterday. The men were on a platform painting the chimney and when the stack collapsed they were hurled to the roof of a shed 20ft. below. Paull died a few minutes later.

We can note that Robert's surname was misspelled. He was in fact Samuel Robert McIlhagger, son of George McIlhagger and Mary Jane Boyd. From 1926 he had been working for the Sydney County Council. He had married Elizabeth Lewis in 1919 in Belfast before they emigrated. He died many years later, aged 87. He and Elizabeth were the parents of Florence and Norah who both served in the Women's Royal Air Force in the Second World War.

Larne siblings

St. Cedna's Churchyard, Larne

Some time ago I downloaded on to my computer's free 'kindle' a book by George Rutherford called Old Families of Larne & District. It contains mostly records of the inscriptions on gravestones, and 'lo and behold' there is indeed one clan stone, which gives us new information. It is in the Larne and Inver Old Graveyard at St. Cedna's Church in the townland of Town Parks and parish of Larne. Those with good memories will recall that this townland is where in 1861 a George McIlhaigh was landlord to Daniel McConnell in Newton Street, a site which I suspect he had taken over from his father, James McIlhaggo who had a lease on a property there when he was first a Mill Bleacher and later a Publican.

The stone is one of those pictured above in the grounds of St. Cedna's which is at the end of Church Street just south of the Inver river and the modern bypass to Larne Harbour. The stone has been moved from its original place and set against the east boundary wall. This is the only medieval burying ground in the combined parishes of Larne and Inver to continue in use to modern times. The oldest stone dates from 1677 and all the inscriptions in the graveyard and on memorials in the church building have been copied.

Our stone reads 'Here lieth the body of Agnes McElh[e]go who died July 27th 1819 aged 17 years. Also two of her brothers viz. George and James'. Although very short this inscription tells us a number of things. First that Agnes existed and must have been born about 1802. Also that George and James were siblings and that she had at least one other brother who is buried elsewhere. My researches into Larne and into nearby Islandmagee tell me that there were indeed two other brothers, Samuel and William. Samuel is buried at Ballypriormore and possibly that is where William is also buried.

I think Agnes and possibly George (see below) were the youngest siblings and a somewhat late addition to the family. The oldest brothers were James (born about 1778), Samuel (1780) and William (1782). At present I cannot be sure when George was born and sadly the stone does not give us burial dates for either James or George. There are no extant church burial records for 1819 when Agnes died, but they do exist from 1826 so might include George or James. Another trip to PRONI is required! 

I must now add one more apparently unrelated fact that I have just discovered by dint of putting M'Elhago into Google. There was a brief notice in a digitised newspaper, the Otago Times for 10 June 1868, headed 'Missing Friends', which says 'George McElhago, a letter from home for you, at Mr. Macassey's Office, Dunedin'. Now Dunedin is the town in New Zealand to which the McElhago family from Dunbar and Edinburgh (and originally from Irvine) emigrated. However by 1868 they had changed their surname to the maternal 'White' and in any case there was no George amongst them, at least to the best of our knowledge. So, was the 'Missing Friend' George in fact George McElhago from Larne who was visiting cousins in New Zealand? This is quite possible for we do have a George McIlhaggo's death in Larne in 1880 aged 76 who could be both the 'missing friend' and the brother of Agnes. He would have been born about 1804, a couple of years after Agnes. If this is the case then, most interesting of all, we have a potential family link between Scotland and Ireland.

National Archives of Australia

If one does a Record Search on the Australian Government's National Archives site, one comes up with eleven items related to our clan name, any of which can be ordered (for a price). They are as follows:

1. McIlhagger, Henry [Box 28], Sydney 1948;

2. McIlhagga, John, Jean [nee Anderson Hay]; Application by British migrants for assisted passage, Perth 1952;

3. McIlhagga, Robert, Dorothy, Basil; Application by British migrants for assisted passage, Perth 1947;

4. McIlhagger, Norah Georgina. Service Number - 109564. Date of Birth: 21 Mar 1923. Place of Birth, Belfast, Ireland. Place of Enlistment - Sydney. Next of kin, McIlhagger, Samuel. Canberra 1939-1948;

5. McIlhagger, Florence Jane. Service Number - 108337. Date of Birth: 14 Mar 1920. Place of Birth, Belfast, Ireland. Place of Enlistment - Sydney. Next of kin, McIlhagger, Samuel. Canberra 1939-1948;

6. McIlhagga, William John. Service Number - NX35826. Date of Birth 05 Oct 1900. Place of Birth, Bathgate, Scotland. Place of Enlistment - Wagga, NSW. Next of kin, McIlhagga, Anne. Canberra 1939-1948;

7. Craig, Benjamin Wilson. Service number - NX28837. Date of Birth, 22 Dec 1900. Place of Birth, Belfast, Ireland. Place of Enlistment - Paddington, NSW. Next of kin, McIlhagga, Sarah. Canberra 1939-1948.

8. McIlhagga, Jean Anderson [Naturalisation File] Perth, 1966;

9. Application for registration of a design by George R. McIlhagga for Safety razor blades - Class 2. Canberra, 1933;

10. McIlhagge, E - DOB 6/4/1924 [Australian Women's Land Army history card]. Sydney 1942-1945;

11. McIlhagga, John. Perth, 1959-1966.

Irvine M.I.

Recently the website of a professional genealogist in Scotland mentioned a lady in Edinburgh who had taken photographs of memorial stones including those in Irvine Old Churchyard in Ayrshire. I emailed Muriel Adam who kindly sent me the above photograph with permission to reproduce it. Way back on 26 April 2009 I recorded the wording on this stone, and now we can see it as it exists in Irvine, thanks to Muriel Adam. Isn't it interesting how, except for the first three lines, the carving is not centred on the stone, though some of the other lines are indented. The wording is as follows:

ERECTED

BY ELIZABETH BOYD

IN MEMORY OF HER HUSBAND

ROBERT MCELHAGO WHO DIED AT TAGANROG

22ND MAY, 1870, AGED 48 YEARS.

ALSO ROBERT BOYD HER FATHER WHO DIED

6TH JULY, 1832, AGED 42 YEARS,

AND JANET SHIELDS, HER MOTHER WHO DIED

21ST MAY, 1863, AGED 74 YEARS.

ALSO JAMES BOYD, HER BROTHER WHO WAS LOST

AT SEA ON A VOYAGE FROM CALCUTTA TO DEMERARA

IN 1865, AGED 37 YEARS.

ALSO JANE BOYD, WHO DIED 24TH JANUARY,

1880, AGED 54 YEARS.

ALSO AGNES BOYD, WHO DIED 11TH APRIL, 1895,

AGED 75 YEARS.

That Ross name again!

I have written before about the possible, though remote link between our clan family name and the family name of the Earls of Ross, which is McIntagairt (and its variants). For the time being I have kept in my Clan Probate Index the 1667 Will of Farquhar McIntagairt in Inverness, Scotland, though have often thought that I should delete it. However, perhaps not just yet, for I have in my own family tree computer programme the ability to bring on to the screen a very useful 'reminder' list of relationships which includes, on today's date, 1st February, the death 762 years ago of Sir Farquhar MacIntsacairt, Earl of Ross.

Sir Farquhar died in Tain in 1251/2. Now I have to say immediately that he was not a blood relationship of mine, though his wife was. We do not know her name, though we do know that she was the eldest daughter of William de Bruce, 3rd Lord of Annandale. She and I have as common ancestors her parents, William de Bruce and Christina Stewart, daughter of Walter, High Steward of Scotland. They were among my many 23rd Great grandparents, which makes their daughter a distant great aunt. This in turn makes me a blood relative of the offspring of her and her husband, Farquhar MacIntsacairt.

It is of course possible that he was an ancestor of the Farquhar McIntagairt whose name I have for the time being kept on our Probate Index, though I admit that I have not proved this to be the case. So perhaps I will not dismiss the Ross family just yet. They and their name go in intriguing me!