COMMENTS ON THE CHURCH’S IN DONAGHMORE
This is taken from Alvin Ruddock’s (in Ireland) email of 9/28/99
The church in Tullymurry is the C of I parish church of Donaghmore. There isn't actually any place called Donaghmore, its just the name of the church and the parish which is comprised of the townlands around
the hamlet of Tullymurry. That's the place where James and Margaret Ruddick are buried, where the gravestone has since been destroyed. The old Donaghmore parish schoolhouse which was attended by John Kidd Ruddock in 1860 is just opposite the church. The Ruddicks in Ringclare must have been a mixed bunch of C of I and Presbyterian. Maybe marriage to Dinah/ Hannah McConnell started a Presbyterian phase. I don't know if its the same in the USA but in N Ireland there has always been a good bit of interchange between C of I and Presbyterian - mostly C of I becoming Presbyterian rather than the other way round. In those days of course everyone got buried in the C of I graveyard - Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.
The Public Records Office in Belfast has a lot of the church records and they are available to the public. Some are still held by the local clergy but most of the older ones up to early this century are in the PRO.
There are two problems unfortunately - generally Presbyterians and Catholics did not start keeping records up to around 1800 although there are exceptions.C of I records, where they exist, tend to go back a bit farther, sometimes to the 1600's, but a lot of them were lost in the civil war when the Public Records Office in Dublin came under fire during the Irish Army's assault on the republicans. If you get a chance you should see the recent film "Michael Collins" (Liam Neeson in the lead role). For people like us there's an awful moment in it when the artillery opens fire on the Four Courts which housed (and still does of course) the public records office for Ireland. This was shortly after the government had decided that all church records should be submitted to the PRO for safe keeping. Luckily some churches copied their records first and some others simply ignored the instruction.
Teacher's hat on for a minute:
The parishes are the C of I parishes which were the administrative units. The Presbyterians here do not have parishes as such although you often get their records grouped together or listed by the C of I parish that the churchs would be located in. The Presbyterian churches are known by the name of the place they are located in like Loughbrickland or Dromara and when there was more than one in the same place they would generally be for example 1st Dromara and 2nd Dromara or Dromara Non Subscribing. The village of Loughbrickland is located in the parish of Aghaderg. I have a couple of extracts from the civil records that refer to the "Loughbrickland Presbyterian Church, Parish of Aghaderg" but there's always a possibility that it may come under some other name as well.
In answer to your question about mass burials etc. I have to say that I don't really know the answer. There were certainly mass graves of famine vivtims throughout the country, including mass graves which can be seen in the Belfast cemeteries, holding some thousands of people. County Down was one of the least affected counties due to its lower dependence on the potato crop and a certain tradition for greater land security. I would say the Ruddock farm at Ringclare would have provided an affluent standard of life for the times and more than sufficient to protect the families from any danger of starvation. Fever (typhus and relapsing fever) however was another matter and affected every part of the country in the wake of the
famine, and here affluence was no protection. In fact it is estimated that among the more affluent part of the population the proportion of deaths was substantially higher amongst those who caught the infection. There was no system for registration of deaths and church records rarely include burials so it is difficult to know what the impact was. By all accounts from the time, fever was so dreaded that victims were often abandoned and burials took place in all kinds of places with people unwilling to touch the bodies and families anxious to conceal the prescence of the disease. So burial on private ground would be a strong possibility. With no official system for registration of births or deaths, its anyones guess how many children especially, died during the forties.____________________________________________________
(The following list of early Presbyterian congregations and ministers in
Ireland is made up chiefly from Dr. W.D. Killen's History of Congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and embraces the greater part of the
early churches.)
List of Pastors
DONOUGHMORE (DONAGHMORE), county Down: (Presbyterian)
Organized 1705.
James Johnson 1707 to 1765
James Richey 1763 - 1771
Unknown 1771 - 1773
Joseph Hay 1773 - 1803
Moses Finley 1804-1837
DONOGHMORE (DONAGHMORE), a parish, in the barony of Upper Iveagh, county of
Down, and province of Ulster, 5-1/4 miles N. by E. from Newry; containing 4463
inhabitants.
Many of the inhabitants are employed in the weaving of linen for the merchants
of Banbridge.
Fairs are held at Sheepbridge which consists of only two houses, on the Newry
road.
Drummantine, the seat of the late Arthur Innis, Esq.;
Beech Hill of E. Burteis, Esq.
and the Glebe House of the Rev. M.J. Mee are the principal residences in the
parish.
(CHURCH OF IRELAND -)
The living is a vicarage, in the diocese of Dromore, and in the patronage of the
Lord-Primate, to whom the rectory is appropriate, the tithes are payable to the
Lord-Primate who pays the incumbent.
The glebe-house, which is large and handsome, was erected in 1786, on a good
glebe of 36 Irish acres, comprehending the townland of Tullagh, or Tullynacross.
The church was built at the sole expense of Primate Boulter, in 1741; it is a
small handsome edifice in good repair, with a lofty tower ornamented with
buttresses, pinnacles, and finials, which was erected, in 1828, by voluntary
contributions.
(R.C.-)
The R.C. parish is co-extensive with that of the Established Church ;a handsome
chapel is now being built at Barr (c.1836), and there is a small one at
Ballyblaw.
(PRESBYTERIAN (c.1836)-
A meetinghouse for Presbyterians, in connection with the Synod of Ulster, stands
on the borders of this parish and that of Newry; and at the Rock is a large
meetinghouse for Seceders.
There is a parochial school on the glebe, built in 1818, and principally
supported by the vicar, who gives the master one acre of land rentfree; also a
school at Derrycraw, built and supported by Trevor Corry, Esq;
and there are five private schools.
In the churchyard is a remarkable old cross beneath it is the entrance to an
artificial cave.
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I have found out a bit more about the history of this area. A lot of place names have one of a number of different Irish words for church included in them, of which the word Domhnach (Anglicized as Donagh) is one, but it appears that almost all the places incorporating Domhnach are from the Patrician era of church founding in the 5th and 6th centuries. So it looks as though there has been a church at this place for the last 1500 years. If you look at the photograph taken from the south side of the church you will see an Irish stone cross from the 11th 12th century standing in the graveyard.
If you look carefully at the photograph of the front of the Presbyterian Church, on the plaque you will see that it dates originally from 1704 which is an interesting marker for the existence of a substantial Presbyterian community in the area.
James Anthony Froude 1818 -1894 (whoever he was) said "Order is an exotic in Ireland. It has been imported from England but it will not grow. It suits neither soil nor climate" Well said, that man!
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