Page 66 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

IT IS THE HOME RULE BILL THAT HAS DONE THAT

Ulster. 32 Two years later, in 1914, she sailed for America,
settling in Baltimore, but at some point she returned to the family
33
home in Redcross, where she died in 1944.
Signatories included single women (who were in the
majority), wives and widows , and ranged in age from
34
seventeen-year old Gwendoline Lindsay, living in Tinahely with
her school-teacher sister and still a scholar, to eighty-one year
35
old Anna Maclean, of Belmont, Bray. In terms of social
background, too, this was a varied group: they included ladies of
the landowning elite and professional classes, who accounted
for about half of the total, but also shop assistants, shopkeepers’
wives, a boarding-house keeper, farmers’ daughters, a cook, a
parlour maid and a lady’s maid, and (representing a new type of
educated, professional woman) two teachers.

The first of these, Florence Lindsay, aged 27 in 1912, was
36
the daughter of a Co Armagh schoolmaster. Sent south to Co

32 Of the twenty-nine individuals with the surname Mates living in Co
Wicklow listed in the 1911 census, all but one had been born in the county.
The exception was Lucy’s sister-in-law, Rosa Maria, who was born in
Guernsey.
33 http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=521032.9
34 Twenty-seven were single, eleven married and eight widows.
35 The youngest signatory may have been Annie Dunne, aged 15, working
as a shop-assistant at The Arcade, Greystones, but this identification is
uncertain. Four signatories were aged 20 or under, fifteen 21-40, eighteen
41-60 and nine were aged 61-80.
36 The Lindsay family was a large and talented one. The thirteen children
(nine sons and four daughters) included ‘two medical men, two solicitors,
two engineers, one a principal of Sherbourne College, Dorset, while another
is a captain in the Indian army. The youngest daughter, Miss Cecilia P
Lindsay, recently graduated with honours at Trinity College, Dublin.’ Capt H
N Lindsay later became asst solicitor, Ministry of Finance, NI, James
Lindsay became Chief Probate Registrar for NI; Dr E M Lindsay became
Director of Armagh Observatory; Frederick Richard Lindsay taught, and later
62