Yup, but we have had great difficulty finding where our William McCausland born c1775 fits in. The family tradition is that our McCauslands were from Strieve/Streeve, and therefore presumably we are descended from Frederick McCausland and Rachel Hillhouse.
I have recently ordered a DNA kit for a McCausland cousin of mine in the hope that it will one day help solve the problem.
My great x3 grandfather Samuel Osborne McCausland was born on Christmas Day 1800. Probably as a teenager he went to Londonderry where is served an apprenticeship in “commercial pursuits.” In 1825 he moved to Belfast where he set up his own business in North Street. In the same year he married Jane Killen of Glenwherry. The business is still going strong, still being run by his descendants.
My grandfather wrote a history of the firm in 1975 to mark its 150th anniversary, and this is part of what he said of Samuel McCausland:
Who was this young man, so confident of his ability and merit? We know that he came from Limavady. We know that his father’s name was William McCausland, that his mother’s name was a Miss Osborne, that his maternal grandfather had an estate of some eight hundred acres between Limavady and Dungiven. We know also that there was an old-established county family of M’Causlands or McCauslands in Limavady. Their descendants are still considerable landowners in the district. It seems therefore almost certain that Samuel McCausland was born and brought up a gentleman, with all that that implied in those days, when class distinction was very much more rigid than it is today. It is also clear that by ‘entering into trade’, as the phrase went, he had committed social suicide. This is supported by something told me by his grandson, who had it from his father. He said that when the McCauslands of Limavady wanted to make use of them in any way they were prepared to acknowledge the McCauslands of Belfast as cousins, but that at all other times they ignored them. This is in no way a reflection on the McCauslands of Limavady. As any reader of Jane Austen will know, the gentry of that period regarded ‘being in trade’ as demeaning. If one had relations in trade, or had been in trade oneself, one did one’s best to hush it up. It was a skeletion in the family cupboard. By setting himself up as a grocer young Samuel McCausland had brought no honour to the family name. Probably the family thanked God that the dreadful deed had been done in distant Belfast, not in more familiar Londonderry or even Limavady itself.
Samuel McCausland was mayor of Belfast in 1868. He lived in Cherryvale, the demesne of which is now the Cherryvale playing fields (the house no longer exists). He died on 22nd April 1895.
This is the first time in a while that I’ve properly read the above extract, and the first time I’ve taken in about the maternal grandfather with 800 acres. I suppose there’s probably a way for me to find out who this person might have been – there can’t have been many Osbornes with 800 acres between Limavady and Dungiven in the late 18th century. I shall have to look into that...
