The Family Meeting

The latest steam engines imported from England to provide power for many of the mills… no longer did the manufacturers have to rely upon water to drive their wheels. These engines required coal and allied services that in themselves created new business ventures…, which prospered, initiating further capital expenditure. Heavy industries like mining, iron and steel producers, pottery manufactures, tanning, glass ware and coach building all needed raw materials… delivered by road, canal, river and ports… These large building projects needed capital investment. Investors saw the opportunity to make a profit – they could see the outcome of an abundance of cheap labour and the profitability created by those first cotton mills.  

This was the time rural populations in village and town showed a remarkable turn inwards – towards uniting - engaging in shared interests. These rural folk were in the main Catholics and spoke Gaelic, keenly aware that the city workers were ‘a set apart’ from their life in the village. Sporting events, fairs, markets, wakes, funerals, cockfights, hunting and field events abounded. These gatherings united people and stimulated political thought. Gradually the unrest grew until eventually nightly political meetings arranged. In Tipperary, Neath and Limerick under the pretext of hurling and playing football, crowds gathered, bands played, shouts were heard and fights broke out…these events confirmed Catholic strength and highlighted resident disaffection. Protestants feared the worst barricaded their houses on fair days and remained indoors. United Irishmen and Orangemen took to using these outings to start airing grievances, which always led to fights.

Thomas, son of Christopher Carey, and brother of William, Mathew and James…owned a newspaper in Dublin. He was sympathetic to the cause of united free Ireland printing stories about absentee property owners and the terrible conditions rural folk were living in. These articles produced attacks from The Establishment who accused him of printing seditious stories. Thomas, tried at the Kings Bench, acquitted. The ruling body continued to hound him and force his printing business to close down. The whole family were involved in the printing trade as either reporters or tradesmen. Mathew Carey 1785-1824, internationally known as a publisher. Born in Dublin 1760 indentured, to serve his apprenticeship as a letterpress printer, having to make up the sticks of type to be clamped into the forme. Later, befriended by Benjamin Franklin, immigrated to America where he married Miss Flavahan, devoting all his energies to the publication of the Douay Version of the Bible, founding the first American Sunday School Society and becoming one of America’s greatest publishers.

Dublin, by the turn of the century was the second biggest city in the British Isles. The most industrious and wealthy areas of Ireland were those closest to the English mainland; and in the middle of that coastline was Dublin, the seat of power - the legal centre and administrative capital. Its population contained the greatest number of professionals, guildsmen, artisans, journeymen and apprentices. This power gives a reason why Dublin was the centre of such unrest and revolution. The final straw was the drought of 1781. To provide freight and individual transportation a marvellous engineering scheme put into place - the construction of a great canal and series of locks to join Dublin to the River Shannon. This feat opened up the interior and controlled water distribution to the central plains eliminating the fear of future droughts. Ireland was now an independent country but sharing a common monarch… in reality, many ties were there to check true self-government, which was never workable.

In 1790, the Act of Union saw London replace Dublin as the centre of political power for the Irish. Thomas Kearey was born in 1791. That same year United Irishmen formed and Dublin barrister Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763-1798 published ‘Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland – which bought about the emancipation for Ireland’s Catholics. The Story of Ireland by Neil Hegarty.

By 1797, The United Irishmen were a powerful force in Leinster and plans made to have a general uprising. Oaths taken and promises made to ensure a committed gathering, which included trades people, shopkeepers, and many of the middle class. The Orange Order objected and mass atrocities perpetuated. Kilkeary Parish, was reported, by Ireland’s Ordnance Survey, as lying to the north of Co Tipperary between Nenagh, Cloghjordan, and Templemore… bounded to the east by Clonlisk in Kings. St. Ciardha’s Church (Cill Cheire – Church of Keary) lay near the centre of the Barony of Upper Ormond, situated one and a half miles southeast of Toomevara. Kilkeary was one of the fourteen parishes in
the barony.

In 1818, although there were a number of the family who used the Keary spelling this was the first time that ‘ey’ was used in Ireland, it is to Patrick and Mary [nee Lonergan] we find recording this fact. Unfortunately, it did not last long; they removed the ‘e’ five years later. With the passing of a few more years Carey [with or without the ‘e’], Carew and Keary, seem to be an almost interchangeable choice by family members recorded in the Powerstown RC register. By the 1850s, Griffith’s Primary Valuation gives 68 Kear[e]y households in all of Ireland… Powerstown lies in the civil parish of Kilgrant in the barony of Iffa and Offa East, between Clonmel, and the village of Kilsheelan. It is difficult, from this distance, to comprehend the importance the spelling makes to the use of one’s name. However, records prove that it does… prompted no doubt by strong reasons at the time. Even today, some family members feel free to use the Gaelic form whilst others use the anglicized version.

The amount of farmland in Ireland was now unable to feed the expanding population. This fact occurred in almost all regions not just in the rich more industrial sectors with the greatest labour force. The problems stemmed from the way land controlled, by rents and tithes. Tenure was restricted so that farmers budgeted and planned for short-term gain. This did not bode well for economic rotation of crops; the construction of land drainage ditches; the removal of stone from the fields or the latest views on animal husbandry; the use of better soil management to increase fertility was much talked about. The landowners, property owners, and the absentee property agents employed agents to collect the rents transferred to England… making its way to English boroughs and the aristocracy. It was a case of negligence, ignorance, and lack of care - on the part of local and national governments, in both England and Ireland. The potatoes blight finished off what the poor economy had started.

Many Irishmen and women in the middle of the nineteenth century people lived close to where they were born - and never left their village. Records disprove that view. Even without those facts, reality dictates that that would be impossible. This was the age of large families. A large percentage of young people not long out of school would have to travel far to find, and be trained, for work. Local recourses could not sustain such large numbers and houses were in short supply.

By 1851, over fifty per-cent of the population was living more than a couple of miles from their birthplace. The advent of the bicycle made travelling to work easier and the coming of the railways added to the distance travelled. It was the growth of towns and cities, which drew the migrant workforce. It was not just the need to earn money or to find housing, it was also exciting for the young, and the job options more varied.

The O’Ciardha family had lost much in the confiscations over the generations, keeping the less productive high lands as insurance – somewhere they could retreat to when times were hard. Irish politicians blamed the depressed state of the economy on England’s restrictions of Irish Trade. The poverty of the rural economy they blamed on those who maintained the pasturage instead of promoting the growing of seed crops and potatoes. Gladstone’s Liberal Party with Irish support 1886 brought Home Rule bill before the Commons. Parnell died of heart failure at Brighton on 6tth October 1891. 
 

‘O’Hart’s Irish Pedigrees of 1887, pp499, gives the ‘Keary’ family as (MacCeachraigh) of Galway as distinct from Carey. (Mac, Mc and M means the same as O – son of) Keating’s history gives the family as being numerous in Mayo and Sligo and recites: ‘there are other anglicized forms of the Gaelic name: the extinct Mac Fhiachra or Mac Fhearadhaigh, formally both of Tyrone and Galway, the synonym of Kerin (O’Ceirin or O’Ciarain) in Mayo and Cork. The English form of Mac Giolla Céire (Giolla means boy) further corrupted in Carr – (O’Carra and Mac Giolla Chathair) in Galway and Donegal’ and Mac Chathair in Co. Donegal. Keary and Carey are more likely to be found in Cork, Kerry and Tipperary’.

When he marched down the gangplank, excited by the challenges that lay ahead, he sought passage to London by coach; relying on his skills as a worker in metal to find work – perhaps start a business… for Dublin’s silversmiths and goldsmiths were recognised as highly skilled artisans. These skills, working with precious metals, carried over to working with tin and lead – metals more closely allied to the home – servicing water-tanks, pipes, buckets, cauldrons washing and cooking pots and all other metal containers. Not only was he skilful shaping metal but also had knowledge of joinery and the manufacture of carts.

Thomas married Ester Pepler (born Collins) in 1819, her father Edward Pepler, born 1767 in Great Stanmore, Middlesex, died in 1843. Thomas and Ester started a family one year later, in 1820, giving birth to a son named Thomas. His siblings William, Mary, Hester, Charlotte, Elizabeth and Emma made up the rest of the family.

My great, great grandfather Thomas 1821-1867 – St. Giles, Middlesex described himself as a whitesmith, which today maybe better described as a tinsmith… and as a smelter - an extractor of metal from an ore. The O’Ciardha clan originally occupied the hills and lowlands on the east side of Lough Derg. The ore washed down from those hills would have been a combination of any number of metals. It would not be surprising to find local people adept at smelting that ore and either coating hammered out sheets of metal with tin, or combining tin and copper to make bronze or smelting lead and tin to make pewter. The smelter of one ore would be knowledgeable enough to work with any number of base or precious metals. Tin wares, were produced in London in the early 1600s, producers became incorporated by 1670.

The skills of a whitesmith were more concerned with cutting, shaping and hammering-out sheet metal, making joints and seams… using a mixture of lead and tin to make solder - to give a watertight joint. He may have worked in silver making jewellery. However, when working in London it was highly unlikely that Thomas would have been working with this expensive metal. He would have been devoting all his energies working with lead and tin in a household environment, making and repairing pipes and cooking pans, pots and utensils for a working population. He married Hannah Raybould in 1841 who was born in 1822, in Fulham, her father a whitesmith. Thomas and Hannah had nine children, the first son was also given the name of Thomas.

My great grandfather Thomas Henry Kearey 1842-1900 was a highly trained blacksmith mainly engaged in manufacturing carriage wheel-rims married Mary Ann Chuter.

His brother Alfred, my grandfather, 1854-1917’ a house painter’ and decorator’ married Martha Sutton in 1878’ having eleven children - first son named Thomas Henry 1861-1882, his brother Albert, 1889-1971, my father, Albert Edward Kearey. https://www.albertkearey.co.uk/book/