Tuesday, 11 November 2008

Chapter 1: The Bickerstaff family 1843 – Present

Joseph Bickerstaff, a crofter, and his wife, Alice (nee Frazer), lived and died in the townland of Upper Ballinderry, County Antrim.

The family tree that follows is the work of Alice Leslie, the last-remaining granddaughter of the couple, and Gordon Duffield, a great grandson whose father, Andrew, a cousin of Alice, bonded with her in a sibling-like relationship because of the circumstances of the family at the time.

It is hoped that other descendants of the pair will add their comments on, or extension to, the story of a family which continues to grow.



The Bickerstaffs as crofters had a small holding on the edge of Lough Neagh rearing a few cattle, pigs and goats as well as ducks and hens, in addition to growing vegetables: ‘they were more market-gardeners than farmers’, in the view of Alice Leslie. The Lough, the largest in Ireland, is rich in eels and Joseph in the company of brother and friends would also fish for these either to add a valuable food to the family table or to sell in the local market.

Joseph’s sister Frances (?) married into the local Farr family who lived in the Jockey House and eventually inherited the croft and expanded its output as market gardeners.

The original Bickerstaff home, a long low cottage was divided into two, the smaller part being occupied by Joseph’s brother Andrew, and his family (Elizabeth and William). The home is still in existence. Alice remembers Joseph as a tall, elegant man, with long white hair, who wore a Beagle hat and dressed well in a frock coat ‘like a minister for which he was often mistaken.’ He was an energetic man who played ice hockey when the Lough was frozen over and loved dancing often in the family home where the large kitchen was used for the entertainment of friends and relatives.

Joseph’s wife, Alice, who was the daughter of George & Sara Fraser, also of Ballinderry, was generous to those in need. Alice Leslie remembers meeting a stranger on the bus who recognised her as a Bickerstaff and told her of her grandmother’s generosity. ‘Many’s a time I would have gone to school hungry had it not been for calling into her home where I shared breakfast before going on to my classes,’ he said.

Every month the grandmother would to be taken by horse-driven cart to Glenavy to do her shopping in a local store which stocked everything ‘from foodstuffs and bales of cloth to coffins ‘.
‘In spring and autumn grandmother would have bought webs of cloth for the dresses of the daughters and suits for the sons, with the help of a local dressmaker, Ms Patterson of Lodge Corner.

‘I can remember my mother, many years later, unrolling a web of the satinised cotton material to make curtains for our home, then in Glenavy,’ said Alice. The shop in Glenavy which Alice remembers, and where as much as a ton of coal might be bought for winter warmth, still stands in Glenavy’s main street. This monthly shop would have been supplemented by weekly calls of traders with top-up suppliers of items such as flour and paraffin.

The Bickerstaff family consisted of two sons and six daughters who were, in order of birth: - Andrew, Mary, Sarah, Anne, Lavinia, Harriet, Ellen and Joseph.

  • Andrew (1851 - ?) was a favourite of a local gentleman Church of Ireland cleric, the Reverend Smith, and his mother encouraged him to train as a butler and follow him to Dublin when he was appointed to a new parish in that City. Alice Leslie suggests that his decision not to go may have been prompted by the jealousy of the clergyman’s housekeeper anxious to protect her own position. In 1870 the age of 18 Andrew immigrated to Montana, USA, where he died in his eighties never returning to his homeland.
  • Mary Elizabeth (1868 – 1918) married John Frazer who had a connection from with the Isle of Mull in Scotland and they had a family of four – Sarah (Sadie) Scott, Tom and John.
  • Sarah (1871 - ?) married Scott McNeilly from Glenavy, a schoolteacher with financial acumen who became a stockbroker and ‘bought a whole street’ in Belfast. They had a family of three, Alice, Gordon and May (who died as a child when the parents were on the way home from American- her body was embalmed at sea and brought home for burial.) Alice went on to marry a German with the surname Meithmaeser, who designed and manufactured artificial limbs. The couple took up residence in Boston. (A daughter, Doris, lives in New Jersey).
  • Ann Rebecca (1873 - ?) married William Lavery from Glenavy, a tram driver with a great love of gardening. They had a family of three, Violet, John and William. John and wife May lived in Millar Street, Belfast, and had a son Raymond and daughter, Gwen. William joined the shipyard firm of Harland and Wolff and served in it until he travelled to New Zealand before returning to marry Florence (Flossie) who died in 1949.
  • Lavinia (1875 - ?) married Thomas Henry Duffield, a soldier serving with the Army and stationed at Holywood, County Down. Colour Sergeant Duffield, of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers came from Queen’s County (now Leix) in the South of Ireland. He had a sister in Roland Place, Holywood and served the regiment for 12 years until 1894. A first marriage to Isabella Scott in 1887 saw the birth of a daughter, Violet, the following year. His second marriage to Lavinia was of short duration due to Thomas’ problem with drink although there was a son, Andrew Henry Duffield, who was brought up by Lavinia and her sister Harriet, who set up a guest house at 19 Castlereagh Place, Belfast. After her divorce from Thomas Henry Duffield, Lavinia met and married a Scot, John Shaw, and lived for most of the remainder of her life in Scotland before returning to (now) Northern Ireland to live with her sister at the topmost end of Castlereagh Road with a niece, Alice Leslie (see later). John was a cousin of Joe Abernethy, brother of photographer David of Lawrence Street, Belfast, whose photographers of various members of the Bickerstaff connection adorn the family album.
  • Harriet (1877) married Henry Ross McCluggage – they had no family.
  • Eleanor (Ellen) Ann (1879 – 1960) married William Leslie and had one daughter, Alice, who moved from Pigeonstown to Belfast and worked as an assistant in a shoe shop owned by a Mr Flemming and based at the bottom end of Castlereagh Road. Alice remembers the big occasion of her childhood being a train trip from Glenavy to Belfast especially prior to Christmas and the excitement of seeing the Donegall Square stores and others, such as Riddell’s, lit up for the season. ‘It was like fairyland to me,’ she said. In the summer time she and her mother would accompany her father to his favourite resort, Warrenpoint. ‘There were no restaurants in the town in those days but there were a few houses where one could buy a meal and we came to know one.' Alice was later to live with Aunt Harriet at her home at Castlereagh before retiring to Crumlin, where she continues to live, following the death of Harriet. (Alice is the true chronicler of the Bickerstaff family, a descendant whose considerable memory and knowledge of events is vital to the compilation of this essay.)
  • John Joseph (1881 – 1949), the youngest member of the Bickerstaff family emigrated to Boston where he joined the Church of Christian Science and later married Deborah, a Roman Catholic.

Religion

The original Bickerstaff family belonged to the St Aidan’s parish, Church of Ireland, Glenavy. Ellen, William and Alice worshipped in the Tunney church, attached to St Aidan’s, and some thirty years ago Scott Frazer, a grandson of Joseph and Alice, donated a communion table to the church in memory of the Bickerstaffs and Frazer families.

Later, Alice Leslie attended the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Crumlin while continuing to be a member of St Aidan’s parish. Alice believes the Evangelical Presbyterians like those who belong to the Church of Ireland are more tolerant and more cross-community minded
than Presbyterians generally.

George Bickerstaff of Salt Lake City became an editor of a Mormon journal and invited Alice to join him following active correspondence between the two of them. Alice declined the offer in order to look after her mother and later, aunts, in Ireland.