Latest Happenings & More Comments

Update
Tuesday 25th May, 2021

After new information supplied by Barry Mulholland, Tommy Collins, and Betty, I have updated the Tony Crockett page. Thanks Tommy, Barry and Betty.

Update
Sunday 23rd May, 2021

Many thanks to John for the new information on the Reverend Edwin Davey and the Polish letter article (namely, the Reverend’s obituary, plus additional information on the stamp).  I have updated the article.

Update
Friday 21st May, 2021

We moved to a new host yesterday, Thursday.  A fair bit of effort involved.  There are still a few things getting updated, tweaked and reset.  This will take a few days. 

The one main issue, is that my email has been down for about 36 hours.  This will resolve, when the new DNS server email records get updated.  Everything has been updated on my end, just waiting for the new records to propagate. 

Anyways, please be aware that if you sent me an email during these past couple of days, and for the weekend ahead, I will not have received them. 

Latest News
Quarter 1, 2021

This page has been created to enable subscribers to be kept informed of the latest happenings.

The updates posted on this little corner of the website will save the sending of duplicate emails to various parties. It also enables many more of the latest comments to be shown (see down below) than normal; plus a display of the most popular posts. Lest anyone should wonder what the current weather is like in Eden, that issue gets covered too.

As of late February 2021, as you can see from the screenshot on the right, there are 139 published articles on the site, with another 214 draft articles in various stages of completion.

I have been, in recent months, researching and assembling articles on each of the Given brothers, from Cullybackey. An old Thomas Given photo has been enlarged, cleaned up and colourised. That reminds me. Does anyone have a copy of the 1900 book ‘Poems from College and Country by Three Brothers’, written by Thomas Given of Cullybackey. I’d especially love to read more of Patrick Given’s poetry in this book, and see the book’s photos/sketches of Patrick and his brothers. What a talent Patrick Given was! If anyone has the book, it would be wonderful to get a few scans of relevant pages.

Other ongoing research/articles, to name but a few, include: William Allingham’s poetry; new information on Esther Mulholland (my great-great grandfather Thompson Mulholland’s sister); been cleaning up several wonderful old William Bartlett sketches of Ulster from the 1840’s; an article in production on Tommy Mulholland’s uncle abducting the local Judge’s daughter (not his smartest ever move); the ‘ghost ship’ spotted off Ulster’s coast in the late 1930s; Innisrush’s new sheriff’s war on the Eden potine industry (mid 1920s), cleaned up what’s probably the earliest photograph of Portglenone i.e. an old 1870s photo of Knox’s Commercial Hotel in the village (still researching the topic); an almost completed article on James Haddock’s ghost; and ongoing work on Reverend Townsend of the Craigs (recently cleaned up and colourised his photo, transcribed old media articles); an article from the 1940s on the US Army platoon stationed in Portglenone Forest (and Tommy Mulholland’s subsequent purchase of one of the military huts).

The transcribing of the Old Ahoghill graveyard headstones (plus another one in Cullybackey and the one in Gracehill) is ongoing (and has been since mid 2020) – an hour here, and an hour there. These may well be my last gravestones. But hey who knows, maybe the motivation will return in the future. The Holy Grail, from a personal perspective, would be the headstones at Tamlaght O’Crilly Upper. Indeed a couple of kind subscribers have, in the past, offered to transcribe my photos of that graveyard. Sadly, the old gravestones in that graveyard have pretty much disintegrated and are unreadable. It must have been the material they were made from. I have not encountered such widespread disintegration elsewhere.

Finally, many thanks to those who follow and contribute to this website. Pageviews have quadrupled in three years. Readership has more than doubled, up 119%, in the past twelve months alone. There were over eight thousand new users in the past year. There are new subscribers every week – it looks like we will have nearly 200 soon – from all corners of the globe.

Thanks for all your contributions, kindness and help.

All my best. Stay safe.

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