Halpin family of Wicklow - Part 1

[tompion]

Dear All,

I found the following about the botanical contributions of Rev Nicholas John Halpin to the flora of Cavan. Brian

THE FLORA OF COUNTY CAVAN
P.A. Reilly
Occasional Papers No. 13
Published by the
National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin
2001
ISSN 0792-0422

Rev Nicholas J. Halpin (1790-1850)
By the year 1818, a total of twenty-five wild plants had been recorded in Co. Cavan. The next series, a major contribution, was again in the form of
annotations on a working flora. At this time [ca. 1825], James T. Mackay
was collecting records for Flora Hibernica (1836). It is likely that he sent
copies of his Catalogue of the indigenous plants found in Ireland (1825) to active amateur botanists throughout Ireland, seeking their help by annotating the copies with new records and returning them to him to incorporate the results in his new flora.

One of the recipients was Rev Nicholas J. Halpin, of Oldcastle, Co Meath (Reilly, 1995). Fortunately his annotated copy, the only one known to exist, was found in the library of the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin (Nelson pers. comm.). It contains one hundred and ninety one records from thirteen Irish counties, including fifty-eight from Cavan. Nine were first county records, including Neottia nidus-avis, found by Joseph Archibald, Lord Farnham’s gardener. Some were published in Flora Hibernica (1836).

Halpin was born in Portarlington in 1790. After a successful academic
career at Trinity College, Dublin, he took Holy Orders and was given the
curacy of Oldcastle, Co. Meath, near the county border with Cavan. He
explored the rich enclosed grounds of Farnham and other demesnes north
of Cavan town, visited friends at Mount Nugent and his brother Charles, a
medical doctor and botanist, who lived in Cavan town. Dr Charles Halpin
worked in Cork before he came to live in Cavan and corresponded with his
brother Nicholas. His letters contained botanical records collected by him
in Cork, which Nicholas included in his annotations. One, Coronopus
didymus, is credited to Charles Halpin in Flora Hibernica (1836).

Halpin’s botanical predecessors searched the wild untended areas of Cavan for unrecorded plants. An analysis of Halpin’s records show that the
majority were found within demesnes or the grounds of private residences. Of his fifty-eight Cavan records: twenty-six were found in Farnham
Demesne, seven at Arley Cottage (a substantial dwelling at Lough Sheelan
owned by the Farnham family), two at the Deer Park, Virginia (the
residence of the Earl of Bective), two at the See House, Kilmore (the
residence of the Bishop of Kilmore) and four at or near Churches. Halpin’s
Cavan records include: Lathraea squamaria, Listera ovata, Ophioglossum vulgatum, Platanthera bifolia, Potamogeton lucens, and Sagittaria sagittifolia.

[Shanachai]

     Part 1.

     Tremendous find, Brian.  We knew the Rev. had an interest in botany, but we did not realise he was so heavily involved in the classification of Irish wildflowers.  I think the Reverend's links to the Royal Dublin Society (later the Royal Irish Society) might account for his relationship with Mr. Mackay.  I'll explain that in a future post - what might interest us here is the fact that the society had its gardens initially in Mecklenburgh street.  I'll have a great deal to say about the Reverend and Lord Farnham in subsequent posts (both were central players in the Second Reformation movement.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reformation), and I wonder who the friends were at Mount Nugent? 
     Another interest is news of Charles's early work in Cork - I for one had no knowledge of that.  I will add only this - that I have in my possession a letter written by Charles to the Royal Irish Academy.  In it he says that he and the Reverend were out riding in the district of Cavan when his brother chanced upon an ancient Irish stone carving.  I believe the antiquity is now in the vaults of the National Museum here in Dublin, but at the time of the discovery the brothers were probably doing a little fieldwork work for Mr. Mackay.  The antiquity in question was (and remains) very rare - a pagan carving of a Sheela na Gig (the Australian slang for an attractive woman - Sheela - is derived from it.  You'll see why.).  So, we can conclude from what you have discovered, along with memberships of the Royal Academy and their discovery of an antiquity, that the brothers were heavily committed to an Enlightenment enterprise that was well underway in Dublin at the time, the principles of which (the pursuit of knowledge through reason and scientific method) were enshrined in the Royal Academy's charter.  The Reverend was a member of the Academy.  I thought he was only involved in the explication of works of literature, which was also a feature of academy life.  But we now know he had a part to play in the academy's scientific interests as well.  Which brings me to something that has needled me for over a year now - how did the Reverend reconcile his commitment to an Enlightenment enterprise with his missionary zeal for the religion of Protestantism?  Isn't there a contradiction here between the interests of science and those of religion?  Well, apparently not.  Many Protestant clergymen had an interest in the sciences, because they considered Nature to be an expression of God's creative work, and science merely to be the most effective tool man had to study nature.  In this sense, science could shed light on the marvelous complexity of God's creation.  In contrast, the Catholic church prioritised knowledge acquired through faith, valuing it more highly than scientific discovery.  This puts us in touch with another of the Reverend's well documented interests - he was, for a while at least, hell bent on liberating Catholics from 'superstition'. 
     And so we sort of come full circle, rounding back on the Reverend's association with the movement for a Second Reformation (1820s).  Lord Farnham played a central role in this poorly addressed chapter of Irish history - I have a ton of material on what occurred, which I'll post in about a month.  I'm straying into areas I want to deal with separately at a later date, so I'll end this post by drawing your attention to what may have been a painful falling out between the Reverend N J Halpin and his brother Charles.

For a little more on the Second Reformation in Ireland, See: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3903.htm 
                                                                                               http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O245-SecondReformation.html

[Shanachai]

     Part 2.


     When the Famine broke out in the mid 1840s Charles Halpin MD was frantic in his efforts to do something meaningful for the starving - he appears to have made a personal commitment to fight the blight with science.  He came up with something called 'the Halpin method', which appeared to produce astounding results, so much so that some landlords wrote letters to the editors of contemporary newspapers endorsing the method.  Halpin attended town meetings, where he called on the authorities to adopt his method and criticised their poor response to the Famine.  His vocal approach to the issue, while understandable under the circumstances, might have prompted the authorities to try to discredit him.  I have eye witness accounts of those meetings - at times Charles's speeches were treated to rapturous applause.  Even the Crown Prince announced his satisfaction with the method.  Then, out of the blue, the method was dismissed by the man sent by London to look into the blight in Ireland (off the top of my head I can't recall his name.  But he was from the Royal Botanical Society, I think).  That man's dismissal was published in the Castle newspaper, the Dublin Evening Mail, which was edited by the Reverend Nicholas John Halpin.  It remains unknown to me how Charles reacted to the rebuttal of his method by the Evening Mail.  Can we call it a betrayal?  Can we say that Nicholas let his brother down?  After all, who was the Reverend obliged to be most loyal to - his brother or the Castle (where Crown rule in Ireland was concentrated)?  Dublin Castle was also where Marmion Savage - the Reverend's personal friend - worked closely with the Lord Lieutenant.  For me, it's a fascinating nut to crack, this.  Divided loyalties, brother against brother, the possibility that a method for treating the blight had been discovered by Charles but was dismissed by the Crown's scientific adviser.  I will be presenting what I have uncovered about the method to a Trinity College lecturer, and I'll report back on his opinion.  But it may be worth remembering that a successful treatment for potato blight wasn't discovered until the 1890s, I think.  If Charles was on to something effective with his own method, the dimensions of the tragedy of what happened in the Irish Famine suddenly become a very personal one for us.
     Incidentally, during the early days of the second reformation there were a significant number of Catholics - some of whom were struggling to cope with hunger - willing to convert to Protestantism, and proponents of the movement were convinced something great was underway.  The Catholic Church reacted by dismissing the converts as starving, imbecilic and prostitutional.  The Reverend N J Halpin wrote a response to that charge, and an eloquent one it is too.  But I wonder if the appearance of so many starving Irish countrymen in the 1840s caused him to reflect on his earlier missionary work, and on the role of Britain in  Ireland as a whole.  I do know that there were tensions between himself and his son Charles over the issue.  And I also know that the power of the media to influence public opinion was something Charles Greham Halpin(e) came to appreciate at close quarters - he saw his father shape the Protestant community's response to the famine.  Later, he himself would use the media to profoundly influence public opinion in the American Civil War, and planned to do the same in response to the failed Fenian Rising in the mid 1860s - before an overdose robbed him of his life, and the chance to rewrite Irish history.
     Enough for now.  Again, well done Brian.  Your discovery has helped me to put much of what I know into solid perspective. Cheers, R.           

http://images.google.co.uk/images?sourceid=navclient&oq=Sheel&rlz=1T4GGLL_enIE316IE316&q=sheela+na+gig&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=-kaCS6jMOaj60wTl4JCpBA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCQQsAQwAw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_Gig

Below are a few links that will shed light on the characters named in Brian's post above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_of_Headfort

The only mention of James T Mackay I could locate was here, where you will also find mention of Swanlinbar, which is where the Halpins eventually established an 'estate': http://www.botanicgardens.ie/herb/floras/cavan/cavan01.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Kilmore (George de la Poer Beresford was Bishop of Kilmore at the time of NJ Halpin's botanical fieldwork - he was married to Frances Bushe, who was a sister (I think) of Rev. Bushe - one of the Second Reformation's most fanatic exponents - and Henry Grattan's niece).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Farnham

[Bigbird68]

Hi,
I am new to this forum. Thanks for the useful information on the Rev. Robert Crawford Halpin, of whose family I have a fair outline [lived in Hampstead, London, married to Eleanor Wallace from Co Down]. I am interested in one of his sons, George William Halpin, a civil engineer: in your post #89 of 6 June 2009 you note his death in Buenos Aires on 5th July 1922. Do you have any more information about this (e.g. where did this notice originate?) or on him or his family? My interest is from his wife Kate, nee Wemyss and any children / descendants. George Halpin married Kate Wemyss in Edinburgh on 6th December 1876 in St Paul's Chapel, York Place; after the 1881 census there is no trace of him or his family in the UK. I am researching the Wemyss family. Many thanks.

[BillW]

Good to have you aboard. 
To date we have no known connection of Robert Crawford Halpin to the Halpins being discussed here but there are intriguing possibilities.  I for one, being a descendant of George Halpin, civil engineer, who had sons and grandsons William and George, find the existence of George William Halpin, civil engineer, enticing.  But it is possibly no more than coincidence (George and William being quite mainstream names).
Robert Crawford and his father both had rank in the army.  Have you delved into the extensive army records and what did you find?  If not, this is a course I highly recommend.  Could you let us know all that you have discovered about these men and their origins?
Good hunting
Bill

Hi,
I am new to this forum. Thanks for the useful information on the Rev. Robert Crawford Halpin, of whose family I have a fair outline [lived in Hampstead, London, married to Eleanor Wallace from Co Down]. I am interested in one of his sons, George William Halpin, a civil engineer: in your post #89 of 6 June 2009 you note his death in Buenos Aires on 5th July 1922. Do you have any more information about this (e.g. where did this notice originate?) or on him or his family? My interest is from his wife Kate, nee Wemyss and any children / descendants. George Halpin married Kate Wemyss in Edinburgh on 6th December 1876 in St Paul's Chapel, York Place; after the 1881 census there is no trace of him or his family in the UK. I am researching the Wemyss family. Many thanks.

[Shanachai]

     For an excerpt from the letter written to the Royal Irish Academy by Dr. Charles Halpin about his fieldtrip with his brother in Cavan in 1844, a year before the famine, see:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3b7R0HZlPXAC&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=P+Halpin+Sculpt&source=bl&ots=pbTsrnEbyh&sig=O1v3xutyhkdH15v_hKRvQSYaPaI&hl=en&ei=_PaGS6uoNtOQjAfns63JDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCMQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Halpin&f=false

[BillW]

Re:  Robert Crawford Halpin and family.

I want to postulate some possibilities (that may get knocked on the head pretty quickly – that’s ok).

We have all those Trinity College Dublin Halpin records (Reply #274) with quite a few born to a William Halpin (captain, officer) in Wicklow between about 1799 and 1803.  Then comes the entry for Robert Crawford Halpin shown going up to TCD in July 1833 aged 17, therefore born about 1816, born in Antwerp to William Halpin, soldier.

In my own Webster family, my antecedent who was a regimental surgeon serving under Wellington throughout the Peninsula campaigns (and at Waterloo) had a large gap in the births of his children while he was away.  Something like 7 years.  I suppose it is a slight possibility that should be entertained that these Williams sending sons to TCD in the 1820s and 1833 are one and the same.  Of course there could have been other children (including daughters) born in the interim between 1803 and 1816 also.   It seems that Spain and Portugal may have been considered too dangerous for families to accompany their soldiers whereas it is well known, from Vanity Fair that the Dutch/Belgian/French campaign was heavily burdened by wives and other female 'company'.
 
(Always remembering that William was far from an uncommon name, particularly among the protestants - King William of Orange and all that.)
 
AND/OR, could William have been an unconfirmed brother of George Halpin senior, uncle of George junior and Oswald, helping explain why there was a succession of William Oswald Halpins thereafter?  Robert Crawford Halpin was born between the years of his possible cousins, George jun. and Oswald, making him of the same generation.  Could George senior’s own father have been a William Halpin?

The name Crawford?  William’s wife’s maiden name or William’s mother’s maiden name?  The majority of the early Crawford Irish entries I have been able to find are in Belfast, Down and the north generally, but not all.  This would make sense as Crawford is preponderantly a Scottish surname (as was Robert Crawford’s wife’s name, Eleanor Wallace, although they married in Swords, Dublin).
B.

[Shanachai]

.

[Shanachai]

     I've no objections to your approach, Bill.  All new lines of enquiry necessarily begin with more speculation and conjecture than many of us are comfortable with.  Given how little documentary evidence there is, a certain degree of guesswork is unavoidable - yours is educated guesswork, which is the best way to kick these things off.  Over time, as you exhaust each new source of information opened up by your research, you can only hope the effort hasn't been a fruitless one.  Most of mine haven't, and I suspect yours won't be either.  A lot of accidental discoveries are made that wouldn't have been made had you not taken a punt and ventured out into speculative waters.  So, while the going might seem pointless sometimes, persevere, because accidental discoveries can produce the definitive links that  more conventional approaches sometimes miss.

     You're right to mention naming conventions - William and George were common Protestant names, after William of Orange and the Kings George.  We're lucky, though - "Halpin" is not that common, so the chances of a Halpin in the archives being related to a Rootschat Halpin are pretty good.  That certainly wouldn't be the case if we were Murphys or Burns - the commonality of those names makes certainty of lineage almost impossible.  If you add an unusual first name to an uncommon surname, then the signature becomes even more unique to the lineage you're trying to verify.  First names like Stopford, and Paget, and Oswald are a godsend.  And when the names of known associates are also unusual - say like the Crosthwaites and the Savages - well then tracking relatives back through the newspapers and history books becomes even easier still. 
     You say that Crawford is a name common across Ulster and in Scotland.  Well, many Scots moved to Ulster to work in the Textile industry, so a link between Scotland and Ulster would not be out of the question.  In fact, to put things into perspective here, the Wicklow Halpins may well have had connections to Scotland, since that is where Doctors George and Stopford Halpin did their medical studies (I only hope I'm not confusing them with the Portarlington Halpins - I don't think so though).  Edinburgh, Scotland, to be precise.
     You also wonder if William Halpin brought his wife to war with him, hence accounting for the birth of Robert Crawford Halpin in Antwerp.  That doesn't sound implausible to me.  Remember, my great great grandfather - Wicklow town clerk, clerk to the Harbour Board, merchant, wool agent, postmaster and first cousin to Doctors George and Stopford Halpin - was named Robert WELLINGTON Halpin and was born around 1814.  All of my family vaguely maintain that his father - another Robert Halpin - was employed in Dublin as a tidewaiter (I'm still not sure what that means).  But it's possible he was a military man who saw action that was in some way connected to Wellington's campaign against Napoleon.  I suppose I'm trying to say that none of your suggestions should be dismissed carelessly - they are certainly worth looking into further.
     One final thing - I worked with a few Russians in the contruction industry here (in the days when we had one).  They said that their fathers and grandfathers fought so tenaciously in World War 2 not because they loved Stalin or believed in the Soviet.  They fought for the idea of a better Russia, for the ideals of their own personal freedom and national identity, things that were not being well served either by Stalin or the Communists.  In many respects this sounds like a similar attitude to the one that must have been common among Irish men who chose to fight for the British against the French (let's ignore the simply pragmatic reasons for the moment) - they were not fighting for England per say, but for an opportunity to prove themselves equals and, therefore, as representatives of a country deserving of the same political independence as England.  This digression just clarifies a point I made a few weeks ago, about William's possibly divided loyalties not necessarily being a bar to service in the British Armed Forces.
     So it is not at all out of the question that William is the Rev. R C Halpin's father.  As to the thought that William might also be brother to George senior - that too is not impossible by the standards of any information I have in my possession, but - unfortunately - I don't have anything to prove it either.  Such are the mixed blessings of unverifiability, hey? 
     Of course, the lore maintains that the Halpins we take an interest in here at rootschat WERE blood relations, but that's not something anyone else can depend on.  Cheers for now, Ray.