Morgan family memories

‘My mother was from Kildare and her father was a soldier in the British Army. In fact he was Sergeant-Major Moran in the Black Watch and he fought both in the Boar War and in the Great War. He became great pals with a Colonel in the same regiment who was connected to the famous Millen-Barbour Linen Mills of Lisburn. Through him he was offered a position as Transport Manager for that firm and that is how my grand-mother came to settle in Lambeg. They were, I think, the only Catholics living there. 

They moved to Lisburn but unfortunately they were burned out of there in the pogroms of the 1920s. I have photos of the effects of that pogrom that I’ll show you some time! There are other Newry families who arrived here too because of those Troubles.  The McGreaveys were burned out of Dromore and the Crimmins’ from outside Banbridge.  I think the Mussens of Hilltown, for example, were burned out of neighbouring Dromore about this time. 

My grandmother Sarah Judge, a schoolteacher from Black Church in Co Kildare, became Moran on her marriage. She spent the last decade of her life in Newry and she died in 1935 and is buried in Dromintee.  Her daughter Annie met Joe Morgan in Newry and married him.  The sisters met their husbands while in the Hibernian Club dancing. Ann’s sister Sarah fell in love with Eddie McAteer of Newry’s Chapel Street. This man was accused of complicity in the famous murder of Wolfe Flanagan outside Newry’s Cathedral of that time and he had to go on the run. She followed him and they were married in New York.

 …. to be continued …..