Halpin family of Wicklow - Part 1

[tompion]

Dear Bill,

Thank you very much for the descendents of the Nicholas John Halpins.

The daughters of Nicholas John Halpin (1818-1891), including my great grandmother, Mary Anne Isabella Halpin, are shown in Ray's post on 13 May 2009 (reply 46). 

Mary A.I. (Halpin) Bradley was born 18 Novermber 1857 and died on 4 June 1997. Her husband, William David Bradley was born 2 November 1847 and died 16 April 1897.

I give the children of Mary A.I. Halpin and Willian David Bradley in my post of 27 December 2009.

_____________________________________________________________
Miscellaneous additions for William H. Halpin and his children:
 
William Henry Halpin - Late of Ford Lodge Cavan, Co. Cavan, Solicitor d. 17 April 1937. Granted to Caroline I E Halpin, Widow, and John R. Halpin, Solicitor, £5856.

His son John (Jack) married Eleanor May Hamilton (Eaton) in 1957 at 1st Holywood Presbyterian Church. I assume this is a second marriage.

November 1970: Death of Jack Halpin (Ford Lodge - son of William Henry Halpin, solicitor) in Belfast Excelled at tennis and grouse shooting.Solicitor and prominent member of Kilmore Diocesan Synod. Survived by his wife  Eleanor and brother Richard.
_______________________________________________________

Hilary Alicia Keighley-Bell - I found her death registration as below:

HALPIN, HILARY ALICIA  born 13 November 1916 CAMDEN  2000 May

This must surely be her.

Best wishes, Brian

[kenneth cooke]

I have just found the following obituary, from the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1848:
“May 8 at Dublin, aged 53, William Henry Halpin esq. 2nd son of late Wm Henry Halpin esq. of that city. Mr Halpin was for upwards of 30 years connected with the metropolitan and provincial press of England.”
He must be the brother of Rev Nich. John from Portarlington. His dates of 1795-1846 fit exactly.
Actually I was looking for the two antecedents of Nicholas (fl.1809) mentioned by Ray recently: William and Wm Henry, both Royal Navy. I thought that (if genuine) one of them must be the father of our Mark Halpen of Maryborough (born about 1690-1710).
Unfortunately, all this is still unverified.
Ken

[BillW]

May I advise that I have updated one of the attachments that I put with message 185 a couple of days ago.

After receiving further input off-list from Brian, I have updated the file "N J Halpin" and attach it here.

Thanks and regards

Bill

[Shanachai]

     Yes, Ken, you're right about the death notice being that of WH Halpin, brother of the Rev. NJ Halpin.  There are a few of those notices around in different newspapers of the time and all mention William Henry's association with the provincial press in the UK.  He was also writing and editing a prominent radical magazine in Paris for a while - very much the political opposite of his brother.  He became heavily involved in the Railway Mania of the mid 1840's (an event that resembles the mania which dumped the world into the crisis it's enduring now).  The equivalent of millions were staked in shares in commercial railway lines that hadn't even been built - lines that would make their owners a fortune in transport charges and fees once they were operational.  Halpin was a board member of a number of lines that had been massively oversold - when the bubble burst he and almost everyone else were bankrupted.  There is quite a lot about him, so I'll post it when I can.  When his brother the Reverend NJ Halpin died, some surprise was expressed at how little he had to leave to his family.  I've wondered sometimes if the Reverend's penury was as a result of his attempt to rescue his brother William from his railway debts, or was the Reverend also heavily invested in the mania, anxious to acquire a personal fortune that would allow him to live a life as 'comfortable' as the one he had become used to at a 'salon' like the one he regularly attended at the home of the Savages of Macklenburg street?  We may never know for sure, but I'm tracking down the memoirs and/or biographies of some of the salon's other attendees - they may contain some material of relevance to our investigations. 
     
     Incidentally, and I know I've mentioned this before, but the Reverend's favourite son - Charles Greham Halpine - was nabbed in England in the late 1840s stealing everything he could of the family silver from the homes of people just like the Savages.  In my view, it was almost certainly why he fled to the US and altered the spelling of his name.  His adoption of the penname Miles O'Rielly, a lowly soldier in the Union army in the American Civil War writing letters to newspapers about his relationships with men of exceptionally high rank, struck me as very similar to the journalistic trick practiced by his uncle, WH Halpin.  It was the similarity of their approach to humour that made me believe they had to be related - that was before I discovered other material proving the link. 

     Just a little more on WH Halpin - in the 1820s WH spent a year in prison for libelling the editor of a Cheltenham newspaper - he had a vicious pen, particularly when his target was misusing someone else's money. He was known for penning funny squibs to the press, claiming to be a lowly provincial nobody with important advice for the country's administrators.  WH wrote under the pen name "Peter Quince", and when the British Houses of Parliament burnt down it was Mr Quince, a humble carpenter from the provinces, who wrote to some public committee overseeing the reconstruction with his own advice on what the new building needed to 'do'...
     Peter Quince is the name of a character in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream (I think).  The Reverend NJ Halpin wrote an important essay about the play, and this overlapping enthusiasm for the 'Dream' suggests to me that the play must have been something of a favourite in the brother's childhood home in Portarlington - part of Old Nic's curriculum at the town's school?  This linking up of associated and overlapping references is an example of the reinforcing coincidental loops I mentioned earlier - they help me to construct a picture that brings the dead to life, so to speak, and prevents the Halpin ancestors from being little more than ciphers in a fusty old archive.

     For a view of Miles O'Reilly visit http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/pfaffs/people/psearch/id-125_name-125_images-1/

     Best photo gallery of CG Halpine:  http://www.picturehistory.com/category/cat_id/3/subcat_id/120/page/7

     Try also: http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/15992

     By the way, the founders of the Democratic organisation of New York, which was fiercely opposed to Tammany Hall, were Charles G. Halpine, Nelson J. Waterbury and John Y. Savage.  I'd really like to know if John Y Savage was related to Marmion Savage - Dublin Castle administrator, satirical writer and personal friend of the Rev. NJ Halpin.

For those of you interested - I have a copy of William Henry Halpin's Cheltenham Mail Bag, which I'd be glad to email.  You can also check it out on:

 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EZoVAAAAYAAJ&dq=Halpin+Cheltenham+Mail+Bag&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=ekwPooo_Lf&sig=DHrWruo4QXlwDDtDWX8Y_nm_0F4&hl=en&ei=fxFTS9GCNY360wS8xbSzDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

From The Times, Monday May 15, 1848:     

Death:  On the 8th instant, at Newcomen-terrace, Dublin, in the 54th year of his age, William Henry Halpin, Esq., second son of late W. H. Halpin Esq., of that city.  Mr. Halpin was for upwards of 30 years connected with the metropolitan and provincial press of England.





 

[BillW]

May I raise the name EATON again with regard to the Wicklow Halpin family and how it just may (again?) provide a link between the Wicklow family and the N J Halpin family?   I admit that this particular link is highly speculative but, however, still to be entertained

I wish to stress again the possible importance of the naming of children, particularly eldest children.

James Halpin set up in Wicklow Town (ex Dublin, Ray will attest) around 1800 and in 1814 married Ann Halbert (whose family is as yet unknown to me).  Their first daughter was  Eliza, 1816.  Then they had 3 sons.  Their first son was named EATON COTTER HALPIN, 1818, and the second was GEORGE HALBERT HALPIN, 1821, a twin with Thomas J.  This second son obviously had his mother’s name preceded possibly by the King’s name or was it possibly for George Halpin in Dublin?  Perhaps George was a Halbert tradition.

But EATON COTTER HALPIN?  How important are these names?  Although I can find no tangible trace of them in Wicklow, the EATON family was responsible for the copper cupola, an important and prominent feature of the Wicklow Town Church of Ireland.  When repairs for this edifice were necessary, it is recorded that these were done with the financial assistance of the Halpin family of Wicklow.  COTTER? – I just don’t know.

I don’t know what became of the Wicklow Eaton family, only that it provided the Halpin family there with a very important name.  Around the mid 1800s, there is an Eaton family in Cavan, from whom Jack Halpin's bride may have descended.  Could the Wicklow Eatons have relocated to Cavan and elsewhere?  There was great mobility in those days of wide horizons and endless opportunity within the British empire then approaching its zenith.

In 1957, at the age of about 58, John Ralph (Jack) Halpin born 1899, solicitor of Ford Lodge, Cavan (but seemingly living at Holywood in Northern Ireland – not presently sure where that is) married a widow, Eleanor May Hamilton, whose maiden name is said to have been Eaton.

If she were about Jack’s age, she was born around, say, 1900 – 1910.  Note however that an Eleanor May Eaton was baptised in June 1902 at St John, Macclesfield, Cheshire to Charles Eaton and Eleanor.

Could Jack Halpin have found late marriage with the daughter of a family with whom his own family had had long association?

Also, Eaton Cotter Halpin became a solicitor.  He was alive in 1852 when he married in the Rathdrum district of Wicklow (I have not sought his wife’s name).  He had a son, James Eaton Halpin, who married in Dublin or Wicklow in 1891.  I have no further knowledge of this family but I wonder if James became a solicitor too.  Being solicitors with real or possible family connections, it is within the bounds of reason that the Eaton Halpin family was known to Brian’s William Bradley family of solicitors in Dublin and the Halpin solicitors in Cavan.

As a postscript I merely note that in a 1943 (April 7) Government Gazette for the State of Victoria in Australia, George Eaton Halpin together with James William Andrew Crozier are appointed to be Commissioners for taking Oaths in the Geelong area.  Jack Halpin’s brother’s name was William Richard Crozier Halpin.  This George Eaton Halpin appears to have been a grocer.
I have also seen a request for information on the children born in Tasmania around 1840 to Margaret Eaton and Andrew Martin Halpin.

I publish the above merely so that we may not forget the possible important connection of the name Eaton to one or more branches of our Halpin family.

Best regards
Bill

[Shanachai]

     Bill, you were speaking about a 'flag' being raised over the town of Cavan - you wondered what were the connections between the Halpins and that location, aside from the obvious one of Charles Halpin MD.

     Well, I was flicking through my notes last night when I came across some material I've had for nearly a year, only I hadn't made the link between it and a few other references I'd come across.  Oh for a proper filing system.

     Anyway, as in the Bradley case the connections we required were staring us in the face.  Like I mentioned to you privately, to get out of some of the dead ends I'd wandered into in pursuit of the Halpins I decided to work sideways - to look into the lives of known Halpin associates and friends, to see if their lives had anything to tell us about the Halpins.  Well, I looked into the background of Esther Druitt, wife of Charles Halpin, Cavan MD.  The two were married 28th Sept. 1836. 

     The Reverend Joseph Druitt, Esther's father, was Vicar of Denn, County Cavan.  In 1822 he and the Rev. NJ Halpin were among an audience attending "a sermon preached before Richard, Marquess Wellesley...", which was later edited by Richard Elrington.

See: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7w0HAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#V=onepage&f=false

It seems further investigation of the Druitts is required.

     Also, on the issue of Eaton - I found this death notice:  Eaton C. Halpin Wicklow Town Ireland - Irish American New York City New York 1857 - 8 - 15.

     Unfortunately, for some bloody reason I forgot to note down the reference.

     The tradition of putting the mother's surname ahead of the father's when naming a child acknowledged the higher status of the mother's family over the father's - as in Charles Greham Halpin - Greham being the maiden name of Charles' mother Ann, whose immediate family had strong connections to Portora, a famous school in Ulster, where the Grehams were headmasters (with at least one Greham sister assisting).  More on the Grehams later - I posted the reference just as a matter of interest regarding the formal reasons for naming children in the Victorian era.  Class and status certainly mattered to the Halpins - to some of them at any rate - which explains the tremendously hostile reaction to my greatgrandfather's decision to marry out and 'down' - to marry Marianne, a Catholic and a 'cobbler's daughter'.  If we're to locate the Cotters we perhaps need to concentrate our efforts on the maternal line running through Eaton's branch of the family.

[Shanachai]

     Brian, I'm compiling something solid on the Halpins and Macklenburg street (I think I misspell that street every time I refer to it).  It's lengthy, so it will not be ready until the end of next week.  Cheers.

From The Times, Friday November 20, 1846 (p.6):

Court of Bankruptcy, Bassinghall-street, November 19.     An insolvent of the name of Halpin, described as of Grafton-street, Fitzroy-square, and who has been extensively connected with railways, including the Tring, Reading and Bassingstoke; the Cambridge and Colchester; the Barnet and North Metropolitan Junction; Great London and Leeds Direct; the Midlands Counties Coal-fields and Carriers; the Gloucester, Aberystwith, Sheffield, and Macclesfield Direct; the Merthyr Tydvil, and other projects, applied for his final order.  His debts and liabilities were for a large amount, but chiefly arising out of railway affairs.  He is stated in his schedule to be an author, and has, it appears, been connected with the provincial press.  Mr. Commissioner Holroyd refused for the present to name a day for the final order.

[kenneth cooke]

Somebody has posted this already, but I can't find it now.
From 'Prerogative Wills of Ireland- Index only' (?Bentham's extracts):
Mary Halpen, a widow of London, dead by 1770.
This seems to indicate:
The will went up for probate in 1770,
She lived in London, but her estate was in Ireland,

Who was she ? Are there any candidates that anyone knows of ?
I have managed to get one of these wills before. It just shows the names of the beneficiaries,  but no other details. You can usually get an idea of family relationships though.
Bentham had the brilliant idea of making abstracts, and then all the originals were lost, I think in the Post Office fire of the 1920s.
Ken
p.s. Ray, yes you do keep misspelling

[kenneth cooke]

I was rudely interrupted !
Ray, it's Mecklenburg St, 'MECK' not 'MACK'
Cheers,
Ken