12. Catherine McDonald’s Story

Catherine McDonald’s Story

It must have been hell for Catherine that evening, finding herself alone in that way. Once the train left the only sound would have been the wind and the rain and the sea. It was after six o’clock on November the 15th so it was dark. While she was only half a mile from Greenore and perhaps a mile from Carlingford there would have been very little light pollution adding to the scene in 1882. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, perhaps I should go back and follow Catherine’s journey from the beginning, to the shores of Carlingford Lough on that tragic night.

Catherine Mc Donald, my great grandmother, was born in the late 1830s in County Louth, less than a decade before the Great Famine. No records of her birth or her baptism have been found and we also know nothing about whether or not she attended school. In 1901, when Catherine filled in the census form, she said she was 65 years old, that she was born in County Louth and that she could read but not write. She signed the form by placing her mark, as she was unable to sign her name. It is likely, therefore, that Catherine got little

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if any formal education. We have to remember that there was no national system of primary education at that time so Catherine’s lack of education would have been something she shared with many of her contemporaries.

When Catherine was a young girl, Ireland was being ravaged by the great famine (1845 to 1849). She was living in Rockmarshall in the north of County Louth when she got married in 1867 so presumably she also grew up in that part of the county. While the famine affected the west and south of the country to a greater extent than the east, Catherine grew up during a turbulent and tragic period. The population of County Louth dropped by nearly a third during the first 20 years of her life. She must have seen the death and departure of many friends and family in that period.

According to her wedding record, Catherine’s father Edward was a farmer, so Catherine grew up on a farm and would, no doubt, have had to contribute by helping with the many tasks around the house and around the farm. Her life would not have been easy and she would have grown up with hard work and with making do with what was available.

The earliest available records of Catherine’s life are the church and state records of her marriage. Catherine married John Mc Keown, a farmer from Castletowncooley, on Saturday the 9th of February 1867, in the Catholic Chapel of Ravensdale, County Louth. While her marriage record does not give an age, simply stating that both parties are “of age,” Catherine was approximately thirty and John, who was born in June of 1833, was thirty three. Her address is given

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as Rockmarshal and her father is recorded as being Edward Mc Donald, a farmer. The witnesses to the marriage were Patrick Ferguson and Catherine Hanlon, but we do not know if they were relatives or friends of the bride and the groom.

Over the next twelve years Catherine gave birth to five children that we know about: Rose, Michael, Patrick, Mary (known as Minnie) and Thomas. Thomas was my grandfather and was born in 1879. Unfortunately, Michael died of pneumonia aged just two and a half years on Wednesday the 7th of February 1872 and less than two weeks later, on Tuesday the 20th, his brother Patrick was born. On Saturday the 24th of February 1872 Catherine’s sister-in-law, Mary Mc Keown, registered both the death of her nephew Michael and the birth of her nephew, Patrick. She had been present at the death of Michael and the birth of Patrick. It is hard to imagine what a time of mixed emotions this must have been for the family and for Catherine.

By 1872 Catherine’s husband, John, was working for the Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway company and the family were living in the vicinity of Greenore. By 1879 they were living in a house in Mulatee, which I believe was owned by the railway company, John’s employers. The house is still occupied and my father used to point it out as we passed on our way to and from Carlingford.

John had a steady job with a reasonable wage coming in every week. The photograph of Catherine from 1913 shows, at her feet, a fine head of cabbage growing in her tiny garden in Greenore. The house at Mulatee would have had a much bigger space available and I have no doubt that Catherine would have used that to help supplement her

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husband’s income by growing vegetables. With four young children I’m sure money was still tight but I would think that Catherine had perhaps a less meagre existence than she had known in her earlier days.

On Wednesday the 15th November 1882 Catherine and her husband John travelled to Dundalk. John was not in work that day. As an employee of the railway company both John and his wife would have travelled for free on the train. They came home on the 4:55 train from Dundalk to Greenore. They remained in the station for a few minutes before heading home along the line, as usual. Their house was about a mile from the station.

The time was around 6 o’clock. Peter Oakes, the signalman at Greenore, told John and Catherine to wait as the 6:10 Newry train had not yet departed. John replied, “It will be alright,” and headed towards the Dundalk line. Peter thought that they were awaiting the departure of the train. However they had continued on their short journey home, down along the railway line.

The weather was very bad with heavy rain and a wind which blew into their faces. John was carrying a bag on his back with about three stone of goods in it. When they were about halfway home the train overtook them, striking John and killing him instantly. The train driver, John Callan, was unaware that anything had happened and continued on his journey. Catherine was left alone in the wind and the rain with her dead husband. She was about half a mile from the house where their four children were waiting. The youngest, my grandfather Thomas, would be three years old two weeks later.

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Catherine called out for help. Perhaps she had to make her way along the track as there were no houses close to the spot where John lay dead. A man called Edward Boyle heard Catherine’s calls and made his way to the railway and found where John was lying. He then went to Greenore station and raised the alarm. The following day, the coroner John M. Callan MD held an inquiry into the accident. Catherine gave evidence as a witness. The jury found that “the said John Mc Keown was accidentally killed on the Greenore and Newry Railway by the train leaving Greenore at 6:10 p.m. at the townland of Mulatee.” On Friday the 17th John’s funeral was held in the Catholic Church in Carlingford, though his final resting place is unknown – perhaps in the nearby Kilwirra Cemetery or perhaps in Newtown Cemetery, where other members of his family were buried.

In their findings the inquest jury stated their wish was “to bring under the notice of the directors of the company the miserable condition of his widow and children, left so destitute by his awfully sudden death.” Catherine had lost her husband as well as the only income to the family, and was also facing the possibility of losing her home as it belonged to the railway company. We do not know what happened to Catherine in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy. It is not until the census return of 1901 that we hear of Catherine and her family again.

On census day, Sunday the 31st of March 1901, Catherine was marked down as “Head of Family” in a house in Anglesey Terrace in Greenore. Living with her were her sons Patrick and Thomas and her daughter Mary. There is no mention of Catherine and John’s eldest daughter Rose and no record of her has been found. In fact, the last

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mention of four children in this family is in the newspaper report of John’s accident. No death record has been found so we cannot be certain, but it seems likely that Catherine suffered a further loss and that Rose died sometime between 1882 and 1901.

Catherine’s son Patrick married Margaret Mc Shane in November 1896. Their daughter Kathleen, Catherine’s first grandchild, was born the following year. However by the time of the 1901 census Margaret is dead and Patrick is returned as a widower. The circumstances of her death are unknown; no death record has been located. Catherine and her family had to deal with another early death.

On the census form Patrick was listed as 29 years old, a widower, and a railway engine stoker, so it is very likely that he worked for the Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway company. The houses in Anglesey Terrace were owned by the railway company and had been built to house their employees. The fact that Catherine was listed as “Head of Family” might mean that it was her house. Perhaps she was allocated the house following the accident or perhaps it was allocated to Patrick when he became an employee of the company. It would be nice to think that the company had looked after Catherine and her family in their hour of dire need.

In 1909 Catherine’s son Thomas married Catherine McGinn and by 1918 Catherine had five more grandchildren including my father Tom. Unfortunately, misfortune again visited Catherine when her granddaughter Margaret, known as Madge, died in 1918 in a tragic accident in her home in Castletowncooley. She was just two years of age. My father was Thomas’s second son and was born in 1912. He

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remembered Catherine, his grandmother. He and his brother Sean stayed with her on occasion during school holidays. His memory of Catherine’s family was of the three children listed in the 1901 census: his uncle Patrick, his aunt Minnie (Mary) and his father Thomas. He had no memory or knowledge of the other two children, Michael and Rose.

By the time my father, who was born in 1912, knew his grandmother, Catherine would have been in her mid to late 70s, but he recalled her having a field rented about a mile from her home in Greenore. She used this field to grow vegetables and walked back and forward each day to tend to them. In the photograph a head of cabbage is clearly visible along with other plants. This would have been in the tiny back garden in Anglesey Terrace.

My father remembered Catherine as a warm and very kind person. When he and his brother Sean stayed on holiday with her, she tucked them into bed with this prayer:

Here I lay myself down to sleep I give my soul to God to keep If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take There are four corners on my bed There are four angels over spread St Mathew, St Mark, St Luke, St John God bless the bed that I lay on.

Catherine died on Sunday the 1st of February 1925 with her daughter

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Mary beside her. She was about 85 years of age at that time and had lived a tough life with many hardships. However she had retained a kindness and warmth that my father remembered well, until his final days in 2010. Catherine was born less than twenty years after the death of Napoleon, around the time Queen Victoria acceded to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Texas was declaring its independence from Mexico, but she is still alive in my memory today nearly two hundred years later. This is no doubt due to the newspaper reports and my father’s memory of her but perhaps more so because the single photograph that we have of her makes her more human, more alive, more real.

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Dundalk Democrat report on the Coroner’s hearing into the death of John Mc Keown

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