Page 67 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

GREYSTONES ARCHAEOLOGICAL & HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 9

Kildare for her education, she went on to teach in Tinahely, and
while there took a degree course at TCD, where she won a
number of prizes. In 1918 she married the local curate, moved
north with him, and thereafter her outstanding talents were
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devoted to family and parish work.
The second teacher, Maud Steuart Jackson, also the
daughter of a schoolmaster, took a BA at the Royal University
before going home to assist her father in his school at Macosquin
near Coleraine. A few years later she and her father established
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Ballycastle High School, still in existence today. Maud actually
signed the Declaration twice, first in Ballycastle and secondly in
Greystones, where she was probably on holiday – thereby,
incidentally, giving the lie to the subsequent claim that ‘it is
certain that the numbers as eventually published included no
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duplicate signatures’ in either the Declaration or the Covenant!
An examination of the list of signatories reveals the existence
of networks, based on family, on friendship and on association –
for instance, in the workplace or at church. Of the eighteen
women who signed in Greystones, for example, three – Annie

became headmaster of Sherborne Preparatory School. Ballymena
Observer, 29 June 1928 and Fitzpatrick, Descendancy, note 47, p. 70.
37 Florence Conner (nee Lindsay) died 12 March 1932: according to her
obituary, ‘by the death of Mrs Conner the Church of Ireland in the Diocese of
Derry has lost a gifted daughter, who devoted her powers of intellect,
scholarship, and leadership to its interests. To say that Mrs Conner was a
Senior Moderator and gold medallist of Trinity College, Dublin is but to
mention one of her many attainments. Not only did she easily absorb
knowledge, but she reproduced it, and wielded it with grace and skill. Her
services were largely sought for and freely given far beyond the bounds of
the parish in which she lived and worked.’ Northern Whig, 18 March 1934.
38 On Maud Steuart (or Stewart) Jackson see Dublin Daily Express, 30 Oct
1883 and 16 October 1885; Irish Times, 23 October 1884, Northern Whig, 6
February 1935.
39 Ronald McNeill, Ulster’s stand for Union (1922), p. 123.
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