Sweny of Dublin

[kenneth cooke]

Re Posts 34-35, Petition online to save Sweny's chemist shop:

It now seems that the shop has been acquired by Brendan Kilty, a Dublin barrister and Joyce enthusiast, and is now a 'museum' which sells books and boiled sweets, and of course lemon soap.
'Bloomsday' was celebrated in June this year, as usual, and at the shop you can listen to readings from Joyce's Ulysses.
Ken

[kenneth cooke]

Re Post 54-
This is the answer to my email to Sweny's shop:
Hi Ken,
My name is Wendy C. and I act as co-ordinator for Swenys, thank you so much for your lovely e-mail. Swenys is run entirely by volunteers now who are all unemployed and just want to preserve it.  It has no connection at all to any Joyce group or Joycean, including Mr. Kilty.
One of our volunteers is Norma F. nee Sweny (granddaughter of the chemist) from Wicklow and she is kindly watching over us and keeping us on our toes with regard to what is fact and what is pure fiction about the history of Swenys and now we have you which is great.
Please do keep in touch and I will pass on this info to all the other volunteers so that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.
Kind regards from Swenys in the rain and please do check out the website.
Wendy

Websites:
http://sweny.ie/
http://sweny.wordpress.com/

[kenneth cooke]

Re Posts 47 to 49:
I have now found the third grandchild of Dr. Mark Sweny and Sarah Ann, with the middle name Yeates.
George Yeates Cockburn, born  28.3.1887, bapt. 25.5.1887, Rathmines Par. Church to Henry Howard Cockburn, and Ada, dau. of Dr. Mark Sweny and Sarah Ann (? Yeates).
There will be a Sweny family ‘reunion’ in Dublin roughly from the last week-end in October to the 5th. November, hopefully meeting at Sweny’s Pharmacy (as it is now called) one evening.
I will be in Dublin from 12 Oct. to 4 Nov. and it will give me a chance to look up some BDM records etc. I hope to find the marriage of Mark Sweny and Sarah Ann Yeates about 1845.

[kenneth cooke]

Back again from Dublin. The Sweny family reunion at the chemist's shop on
1st. Nov. was a great success. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Gerry Breen, looked in and had a cup of tea and a piece of cake. We took many pictures of him in his gold chain.
Unfortunately I could find no trace of the marriage of Dr. Mark Sweny and Sarah Ann.
Ken

[kenneth cooke]

Re Posts 21 to 24, Death from Burns:
The accident happened in a tenement house, not at the chemist shop.
The elder brother of  Frederick Sweny, the chemist, was Mark Sweny junior. His occupation was also ‘chemist’ when he married Kate Davis in 1878. The baptisms of two of Mark’s sons were recorded in 1888 and 1895 in a Catholic church. But it seems two other children were born before the marriage.
There was a death registered in 1891 of a Mark Sweeny, 16 years old, a chemist’s son, who had died of burns from a fire. Freeman’s Journal of 30.4.91:
"Dr. Whyte, the coroner, held an inquest on the body of Mark Sweeny, aged 16 years, Longford St., who, while sitting at the fire in his mother’s residence accidentally fell into the fire and received very severe burns from which he died in Mercer’s Hospital yesterday. A verdict of death from accidental burning was returned."
The houses in Longford St. were mainly tenements, and individual residents are not recorded in the Dublin Directory.
The victim was apparently the son of Mark Halpin Sweny, who was then a chemist at 37 George’s Quay, Dublin. Whether Kate Davis was the mother or not, I can not say, as yet. UPDATE- SEE POST 73

[kenneth cooke]

Re: Post 58 above- Death from Burns

Apart from the newspaper article above, I also have a copy of the Death Registration.
Date of Death- 28 April 1891, at Mercer's Hospital, MARK SWEENY, Male, 16 years, Chemist's Son, Cause of Death- Burning by Clothes taking fire, Accidental, Certified, Inquest.
Information received from A. C. Whyte, Esq. Coroner for City of Dublin.
Regd. 1 May 1891, C. Shortt, Asst. Registrar

[kenneth cooke]

What happened to the last MacSweeny Chief of Doe ?
Maolmhuire (Mulmurry) was Chief of Doe (Tuatha) from 1596 to 1630. How did he become Sir Myles ?  It seems it was an attempt to bribe him, but he kept his options open.
"State documents record that in 1598 Maolmhuire went over to the English and in July 1599 he was knighted by the ill-fated Earl of Essex.  In May 1600, Maolmhuire (now Sir Myles Mac Sweeney Doe) arrived in Lough Foyle with an English invasion fleet commanded by Sir Henry Dowcra.  Two months later, Red Hugh O Donnell and Maolmhuire swooped and captured 160 English cavalry horses from Dowcra.  Maolmhuire was arrested and placed aboard an English ship to be taken to Dublin for trial, but he escaped by jumping overboard 'in tempestuous weather' and swimming to freedom on the east side of the Foyle.
State papers confirm that Maolmhuire was the only Mac Sweeney Chief from Tyrconnell to accompany Red Hugh O Donnell to the battle of Kinsale in 1601.
In April 1603, Maolmhuire, Chief of Doe, surrendered to the English and
received a pardon in October 1603. Two thousand acres of land at Dunfanaghy were returned to him for his lifetime only at the Plantation of Ulster c. 1610. It was not until 1630 that Maolmhuire's land at Dunfanaghy was granted to him 'and his heirs and assigns for ever'.  He died soon afterwards and his land was confiscated.  Maolmhuire was the last Mac Sweeney Chief to occupy Doe Castle." From ‘sweeneydoeclan.com’

Another version:
"After the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the subsequent flight of the northern lords, ONeill, Maguire and Rory ODonnell, Earl of Tirconnell, to the European continent, all of Tir Connell (Donegal) lay forfeit to the crown of England. In the subsequent plantations of Ulster, where most of the forfeited land in that province was granted to English and Scottish settlers, the heads of the three branches of Mac Sweeney each received 2,000 acres, a fraction of the territories they once possessed. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, they seemed to have lost possession of even these lands. One of them, Maolmhuire, the last inaugurated lord of the Tuatha (Doe), is reputed to have died in poverty sometime after 1630."
From Sweeney of Co. Mayo Genealogy (eircom.net)

[kenneth cooke]

Since we began this thread, we have discovered what happened to most of J. P. Sweny's 14 children, (see Post 1).
Paget Halpin died young, and most likely Mark Halpin as well .
Most of the others have been accounted for, except Abraham (Post 33) and Jemima. Now I have found that she also stayed in the USA as well as Abraham and William.
She married Ebenezer John Beggs in New York on 26.5.1872. He was also born in Dublin, and they may have met on the ship to New York.
They had six children: Edward J. 1877, Arthur E. 1878, Jeanette 1881, Ralph T. 1885, John C. 1888, and Marguerite A. 1891. They were listed in New York in the 1900  Census. Beggs was a chemist.
All we know about Abraham is that he was listed in the 1880 Census, in Yonkers, N.Y. as Abram Sweeney, 29 years old, born Ireland, (both parents Irish) and wife Mary. He was a bookkeeper.

[kenneth cooke]

In the US Census of 1870, in Yonkers, New York, we find John Sweny, undertaker, his wife Matilda, and some of their family, Lydia, Abraham, William, Emily, Jemima, Ralph, and John. William was a lawyer’s clerk, John was ‘at the school’ and the other children worked in shops. All were born in Ireland.
When William applied for a U.S. passport in 1891, he stated that he had arrived on the Helvetia from Liverpool on 15.3.1865, age 15. There were two arrivals of the Helvetia in 1865, but not on 15 March. There seem to be no passenger lists for either one.
I believe that William, 26 years later, got the dates wrong. The maiden voyage of the Helvetia to New York left Liverpool on 28 March 1865. I believe that John and his family came on the second voyage, which left Liverpool on
12 October 1865, picked up the Irish passengers at Queenstown (Cobh) near Cork, and arrived in New York on 30th. October. John Paget was a witness at the marriage of his daughter Georgina and William Henry Talbot in Dublin on 23.8.1865, so he could not have been in New York then, and William was too young to travel alone. John, Matilda, Ralph, Lydia, Emily and John jnr. all came back to Dublin. Abraham, William and Jemima stayed in the USA.