So began centuries of Seavers domination in Slieve Gullion. Today besides the road of that name, the only memory of the Seavers is on the tombstones of the Church of Ireland cemetery in Meigh.

Nicholas Seaver died in 1687 and he was succeeded by a son Charles who married his cousin Mary Powell. It was 1722 before he was succeeded by his son Jonathan who became hereditary Sheriff of Armagh in 1748. Two years later he expired and was succeeded by Thomas Seaver who built the residence that became known as Heath Hall.

When Thomas died in 1788 he was succeeded by the infamous Jonathan, known as ‘Seaver of the Bog’. It was he who founded the never-to-be-forgotten Killeavey Yeomanry, recruited from Eshwarry and Divernagh, and who, with the even-more-infamous ‘Ancient Britons’ ravaged and pillaged Irish and Catholic homesteads the length and breadth of South Armagh – and even into South Down, as elsewhere here reported. Seaver of the Bog was born in 1760 and died in 1841. He is buried at Meigh.

His first-born son Thomas came to acquire a peculiar pedigree. In 1824, at the age of thirty seven, and already a rabid Orangeman, Captain of his father’s Yeomanry and indeed also Captain of the Monaghan Yeomanry, he married a local girl Jane McNeill of Faughart. They emigrated and settled in Post-Revolutionary France and indeed lived there for the following seventeen years. When he returned to Ireland in 1841 his father was seriously ill and indeed died soon after.

Thomas’s politics had altered radically during his exile in France. He was now a staunch Repealer and an ardent follower of Daniel O’Connell. His sympathies now lay as much with the tenants as with the class of landowners to which he belonged.

Thomas however, within a few short years became a victim of that disease consequent upon the Great Hunger that was soon to afflict so many of the people of Ireland. On 24 September 1847 he died of typhus. He was buried at Dundalk.

His son Thomas found on succession that Heath Hall and its estate was mortgaged to the then incredible sum of £37000. This was probably as much to do with his father’s attempts to relieve the burden of his tenants as with their inability to pay rents. In any case this Thomas decided to break the entail and dispose of the property. It was purchased by a Doctor Kelly. The following year, 1853 Thomas and his wife and family emigrated to Australia. There he tried to make his fortune prospecting. He was unsuccessful but not so was his son Jonathan. He was eventually able to send his father back to Killeavey and in 1897 Thomas bought the property back from Doctor Kelly.

He was only three years in an entirely reconstructed and redecorated Heath Hall when his son Jonathan’s fortunes reversed and his finances collapsed. While old Thomas lay dying the bailiffs were at the door. He died on 11 September 1900 and is buried at Meigh.

Immediately after the funeral Jonathan and his family left for Canada and later went to Mexico. Doctor Kelly repurchased the property and his descendants retained it through the twentieth century.

During the Great War Jonathan returned to volunteer for service.  He was appointed RAF officer in charge of all British personnel proceeding through Paris to and from leave. After the war he returned to Mexico where he died in 1928. His son Thomas died while oil prospecting in Persia (Iran) and was succeeded by a son Thomas who was born in 1923. He married a daughter of Thomas Glenn of Derry City. Their daughter was born in 1946. No Seaver returned therafter to Killeavey.