Page 65 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

Co Fermanagh until 1901, when their clergyman father retired to
Belmont in Bray, Margaret Montgomery, of 1 Sidmonton Square,
Bray, was the widow of Rev Robert Montgomery, minister of
Great Victoria Street Presbyterian church in Belfast, and had
been associated with him for many years in his educational work
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in the city , while Bessie McSeveney, wife of a post-office clerk
stationed in Bray, had been born in Co Antrim and returned home
to Larne to sign. Helen Clement, born in Glenageary, whose
family subsequently emigrated to Australia, signed in Liverpool,
giving a Bray address, but her mother, who also signed, had
been born in Dungannon, and the parents of Dublin-born Helen
Scott of Fairholme, Greystones, were both born in Co
Londonderry.

In a small number of cases – I’m thinking particularly of five
or possibly six women from Greystones – no connection
whatsoever with Ulster comes to light, which is not to say, of
course, that one didn’t exist, especially given that this was a town
with a majority Protestant population, and one which also
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boasted a flourishing Orange Lodge. In the case of Lucy Loftus
Mates, the sole signatory from Redcross and Wicklow born and
bred, the link with Ulster must be similarly uncertain. In 1911
Lucy was in her mid-thirties and one of three unmarried sisters,
living with her brother, William, a farmer and sub-agent for the
Salkeld estate, at Oakwood, Redcross. In the following year she
signed the Declaration at Lisburn, where she may have been
working – she had otherwise no discernible connection with

30 Mrs Montgomery had probably moved to Bray to be close to her daughter
and son-in-law, Mr and Mrs Albert Dobbs, who lived at Galtrim Road.
31 See account in Belfast Weekly News, 3 July 1913 of the planned visit by
Greystones LOL to the Twelfth celebrations in Belfast. ‘That these brethren
are ready to go so far, and to incur so much expense, is proof sufficient that
another Ulster is developing South of the Boyne, no less true, no less
sturdy, and no less determined to resist Popish domination in any shape or
form.’
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