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Publications | Down Survey | 1998 Issue Contents From
Ballyquintin to Buffalo, Boston, and beyond This is an emigration account of the Crangle and Monan families of Ballyquintin, county Down, written by one of their descendants who still lives in the ancestral parish. As well its own direct interest it is intended as an example of a kind of story which other families could document and elaborate upon, and to show the value of caring for the family archive. The rugged coastline at the southern tip of the Ards Peninsula ends at Ballyquintin Point with its magnificent views across the Irish Sea and the roar of waves crashing over the rocks at the mouth of Strangford Lough. The exposed townland of Ballyquintin, just three miles south of Portaferry, has been, until recently, the home of the Crangle and Monan families and their descendants for over two hundred years. A John Crangle is listed among the tenants in Ballyquintin on a rent-roll of the Savage, later Nugent, estate in 1755 while a Pat Monan first appears in the rentals for Ballyquintin in 1774. Almost a century later William Crangle and Patrick Monan are listed there as the tenants of neighbouring holdings in the Griffith Valuation of 1863.1 The corresponding map shows how their farms (Nos 5 and 6) were interlinked.2 Pre-Famine census figures for Ballyquintin
record 56 persons living there in 9 houses. By 1851 the number had
increased to 81 only to decline thereafter: Two sons of William Crangle and a son and a
daughter of Patrick Monan were to emigrate from their beloved townland
and country to America and New Zealand, via Australia. Little did
their parents know that one would become a successful barrister
and Congressional candidate; that a great grandson would become
President of the I first became aware of my own family links with these emigration stories from my grandmother, herself the granddaughter of William Crangle mentioned above. As children we were often told stories of distant relatives who had left home for faraway places, and on special occasions the photograph and postcard albums and carefully treasured letters were brought out to illustrate what Granny had been saying. We looked in wonder at postcards of the Niagara Falls and buildings in Buffalo, or tried to decipher the postmarks made over a century before. We carefully leafed through the flimsy pages of a letter written to a loved one back home, or listened attentively as a fading photograph was passed round while details of that person's successes were proudly recounted. However it was a recent article by Jim Blaney in the Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society which made me more aware of the scale of emigration from the Upper Ards, particularly to America but also to New Zealand and Australia. In this excellent article Jim begins by listing people from the Upper Ards who were attending the first annual dinner of the County Down Society of Buffalo on the 9th of February, 1907. Ballyquintin was represented by Orlando Crangle who organism the Society and his brother James, together with Richard Monan.3 Roland ( 1862-1945) and James Crangle (b 1853) were two sons of William Crangle (1822-1871), and Mary McNamara (d 1917) who came from the neighbouring townland of Tullycarnan. They were members of a large family which also included William (1854-1935), John (1856-1931) my grandmother's father, Mary Ann (18581882), Jane (1860-1925), Sarah (1865-1881) and Rose (1868-1946). Although the family inherited some 30 acres in nearby Tullycarnan , their holding was not large enough to support all of them. Roland left school at 14 and after four years he decided to emigrate, possibly following his brother James and other Upper Ards people to Buffalo, where he arnved in 1880 `as a penniless farm boy'. While working in the docks and then as a clerk in a railway freight office, Roland continued his education at night classes. On the advice of Supreme Court Justice Herbert P Bissell, who had heard him make a political speech on behalf of Governor Cleveland, Roland decided to begin law studies. In January 1889 he entered the law offices of a local firm and in June I 892 he was admitted to the Bar and soon won a reputation as a brilliant lawyer. In a letter home to his sister Jane, dated 4th October 1892, Roland tells her that `my prospects were never brighter than they are now'. Indeed by January 1894 he had his own thriving law practice. For more than 40 years Roland Crangle had his office in the old Marine Bank Building in Buffalo. He was area attorney for the Fidelity & Deposit Company of Maryland for 36 years; the Prudential Insurance Company of America for 22 years; the Marine National Bank for 15 years and the Irish-American Savings & Loans Association 1912-1916. As Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Harbour Commission and attorney for property-owners along the upper stretches of the Buffalo River, Roland Crangle succeeded in compelling four trunk-line railroads to remove bridge abutments that were interfering with the navigation of the upper river. Many considered that making the upper river navigable was one the city's great developments. In 1929 he was appointed to the special committee of the National Economic League to consider the administration of justice in New York State. Roland Crangle was also a prominent political figure in Buffalo for half a century. As an ardent Democrat he made many public speeches in favour of the party in the Presidential campaign of 1888. In his letter to his sister Rose, mentioned earlier, he tells her, `Politics are now at fever heat and I am going to address a meeting next Wednesday night. I am building my hopes on Cleveland being elected.' His active involvement in Buffalo's politics led to his nomination as the Democratic party's candidate for congressional representative in the heavily Republican 40th District in 1930. Although defeated by Walter G Andrews, the 30,000 votes which Roland polled was one of the largest votes any Democratic congressional candidate had received up to that time. Roland was a long time friend and admirer of Governor, later President, Franklin D Roosevelt for whom he made many campaign speeches at meetings and on the radio. A note, signed by Roosevelt, is a memento proudly treasured by his relatives in Portaferry. Greatly interested in literature, Roland Crangle was responsible for bringing the poet William Butler Yeats to Buffalo in 1914. At various times in the following years he entertained in his home such literary figures as Padraic Colum, George W Russell (A.E.) and John Drinkwater. Roland made two visits back home to Ballyquintin, the first in 1905 and again in July 1912. On this second trip he was accompanied by his wife, formerly Mrs William Elkins nee Emily L Seidenberg of New York, whom he had married in 1911. Many photographs of this 1912 visit, taken by Roland himself, were given to my grandmother by her father John, a brother of Roland, and are now carefully preserved by her daughters in Killydressy. One of the most poignant photographs is of his aged mother Mary Crangle. Mary Crangle photographed at her fireside in Ballyquintin by her son, Roland, in 1912. Unfortunately little is known about his brother James. Although he was present at the 1907 County Down Society dinner in Buffalo, he had moved away to Batavia, where he had married. It is not known when James died, but when Roland died on 20th June 1945, the Buffalo Evening News ran a lengthy obituary entitled `Roland Crangle dies at 82; was lawyer, political leader.' He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island.When he was home in 1912, Roland visited his friends and neighbours the Monans. They would have been anxious to hear news of their brother Richard and sister Susanna who had also emigrated to America. Richard (1840-1912) and Susanna (b1845) were two of the children of Patrick Monan (1812-1892) and Sarah Quinn (18121891). There were also twin daughters Rose (1835-1897) and Mary Ann (1835-1925), Sarah (1841-1920), Margaret (1844-1892) who emigrated to Australia and New Zealand, Isabella(1847-1933), Jane (1851-1945) and Patrick (18491924). Richard Monan had married Elizabeth Crangle
of Killydressy shortly before they emigrated in late 1870. Elizabeth
was the daughter of Charles Crangle (d 1891) of Killydressy and
Elizabeth Crangle (d 1898) of Banaghan, My dear parents are both dead Mother died in Jan 1911 and my father the next January and a year and nine months after my eldest sister,Lizzie, died and left nine children. She took fever when her last baby was born and died four weeks after. Her eldest boy was not fourteen when she died...There were nine of us, four boys and five girls, but now there is only Anna and myself at home .The other boys are marned with one exception and he is on the farm that father owned for years and one sister Susie is in the Convent. She is a Sister of Mercy. In November 1923 Sara again wrote to Selina in New Zealand telling her of her sister Anna's recent visit to Ireland. Again many family details are included: Uncle Pat, your mother's [ie Margaret Monan] brother and one sister aunt Isabella live at the Point yes in the house where your mother was born. Uncle Pat is not very well. they are both over seventy years. Their oldest sister Aunt Mary Ann is over 88 years. Then Aunt Jane the youngest of your mother's family and her family are very well. Sara, who had visited Ballyquintin with her father in 1907, reported that: Ireland is much changed since my visit there sixteen years ago. They have curfew law in the north of Ireland and have a parliament of its own in the north and another in the south so I can't imagine how they will ever have peace under these conditions. It is too bad for the people that the country is so upset. Sara also informed Selina that three of her own mother's sisters, Sarah, Margaret and Mary Ann, had died recently and that her mother's only surviving sister, Catherine, was marned to Hugh Charles McNamara of Tieveshilly who was Selina's cousin . Sara told Selina that she knew very little about her father's sister , Aunt Susanna, who was then living in Minnesota with her husband Patrick Dorrian and their three children. Sara's brother Edward married Mary Ward and had three children- James Donald, Gertrude and Edward. At the age of seventeen J Donald entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained to the priesthood in 1955. After his ordination he went to Europe, earning a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Louvain in 1959. While in Europe Fr Monan was able to visit relatives in Portaferry; an event which was recorded in many photographs. On his return to America he began teaching at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. In ten years at that college he rose from teacher to academic dean and imally acting president. In 1972 Fr Monan was offered the challenging post of President of Boston College. Over the next twenty-four years Fr Monan's stewardship established Boston College as a strong , independent, financially healthy, progressive university. During the 1996 graduation ceremony at Boston College Fr Monan received an honorary degree from his college with the following citation : For 24 years you have been the center of this institution's transformation, devoting nearly half your life as a member of the Society of Jesus to her ascendance as a renowned national University. From a priceless legacy of liberal learning wedded to Ignatian spirituality, now tested and tempered in the crucible of the Information Age, you have forged for this institution and her noble enterprise a Golden Era. With gratitude beyond the capabilities of expression and in the name of all who love this University, Boston College signifies affection and admiration and proudly establishes kinship of degree by proclaiming her beloved and esteemed twenty-fourth president Doctor of Laws. In addition to this honour the College trustees announced the establishment of three endowed faculty chairs in the name of J Donald Monan, and that the planned new humanities building and its adjacent quadrangle would also bear Fr Monan's name. Although Fr Monan announced his intention to retire two years ago, the trustees have ensured that he will continue to guide them by appointing him as Boston College's first chancellor. It was through Fr Monan that Leone Shaw of Hamilton, New Zealand, was able to re-establish contact with relations in America and Ireland. Leone is one of the great grandchildren of Margaret Monan of Ballyquintin who had emigrated to Australia and then to New Zealand. Using information from letters sent to her great grandmother from Buffalo and Ballyquintin, and to her grandmother, Selina Shaw nee Muir, Leone contacted Fr Monan in the hope that he was a relation . In fact his grandfather Richard Monan was Margaret's brother. Fr Monan in turn put Leone in touch with his and her Monan/Crangle relations in Portaferry. Early in the summer of 1998 Leone was able to visit Ireland and meet her Irish cousins and see the Monan family home. This family reunion was made possible as a result of the careful preservation in New Zealand of those letters from home in Ireland and from relations, especially Sara Monan, in America. It is still not known why Margaret emigrated to Australia when her brother Richard and sister Susanna had both gone to America. Indeed very little was known about Margaret until Leone came to Ireland with details of her family tree. Leone explained that Margaret had, at the age of eighteen, married John Muir, also from Ireland, in 1864 in Queensland, Australia. Shortly after the birth of Leone's grandmother, Selina in 1869, John, who was a miner, took his family to the gold mines in the Thames district of Auckland, New Zealand . Unfortunately he died leaving Margaret to care for Selina and her brothers Richard, John and George. Margaret then marned George Dodd who is said to have died in the goldfields of South Africa trying to earn enough to send for Margaret and the children. A letter from Margaret's parents, Patrick and Sarah Monan, dated May 30, 1889, in which they sympathise with their daughter on the death of her second husband, is one of many treasured pieces of correspondence between the Monans in Leone's possession. In this letter they tell Margaret that ....we are both getting frail and have not
very good health but we are always able to go around thank God.
Pat is not marned yet. Rose and Mary Ann and their families are
very well [Rose marned Edward Lennon of Corrog and Mary Ann married
Johnny McNamara of Tieveshilly]. Rose's two eldest boys are in America.....and
Mary Ann's two eldest boys are also in America. Sarah [Mrs William
McNamara] is well she has no family. We brought Isabella home after
her husband's death and she remains here still. She has no family
[Isabella was just a year and seven months married when her husband
John Murray of Killydressy, was drowned when he fell from the mast
of his ship , the "Fair Head", sailing into Dublin on
November 12,1888]. We get letters from Richard and Susanna often.
Richard has nine of a family and Susanna has three girls. She had
them all at one birth. We had a letter from Jane yesterday. She
is in Galway. She has four boys and three girls [Jane marned John
O'Donnell, a light-house keeper]. Aunt Mary is dead. She died in
America [not known]. Dear Margaret I Margaret died in 1892. A year earlier her daughter Selina Muir had marned Edward J Shaw, a miner from Thames, Auckland. Ned and Lena, as they were known, sadly lost three of their five children when their dinghy capsized in the Ohinemuri River , not far from their home. Thankfully their other two sons James Harold and Leon Edward were not in the boat. Selina was photographed with her surviving sons' children shortly before she died on 19 December 1938. Margaret and Terrence are the children of James Harold and his wife Dulcie Fitness while Leone is the only child of Leon Edward and his wife Eileen Winifred Treanor. During her trip to Ireland Leone also called in Galway to see her cousin Terrence's daughter Trudi and her family. Trudi, a great great grand daughter of Margaret Monan of Ballyquintin, Portaferry, is married to Ireland's present rugby coach, New Zealander Warren Gatland. There will certainly be added interest around Portaferry the next time the Irish rugby team plays, on account of its Ballyquintin connections. Gerard F Lennon: Teacher; former Community Education Officer at Down County Museum; Vice-chairman of the Friends of Down County Museum and Chairman of the Upper Ards Historical Society. Acknowledgements References
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