Previously: My Grandmother, Part I—Belfast https://www.constancegemmett.com/grandmother-part-belfast/
Belfast is a beautiful city. High and unpopulated hills cup the city on the western side. The land tumbles down to the city on the shores of a large and deep lough (lake). The North Channel, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Irish Sea, is just beyond the lough. To the northwest are the shores of Scotland, to the south, the Mourne Mountains. Beautiful views abound from high above the city at Cave Hill, or the Belfast Castle below it, or from the shores of the Lagan River bisecting the city. While walking on the city streets, the hills draw the traveler’s gaze.
A Beautiful City
Belfast is more beautiful now than it was when my grandmother was born in 1899 (the air is clean), but in her youth she had free access to many beautiful sights within walking distance of her house. These included the massive examples of Victorian architecture housing the City Hall, banks, the grand stores of the day, Queen’s University, and the ornate Botanic Gardens. But my grandmother’s life in Belfast was far from grand. It’s certain there was constant scrubbing in her household to stay ahead of the general grime, spewed from the chimneys of the many industries of the early 20th century.
Defining Moments
Until age ten, my grandmother may have been the cosseted youngest child of eight—certainly her mother, older sisters, and brothers seemed loving in the stories she told. At age ten, two defining events changed her life, turning some promise of a happy childhood into a Dickensian existence.
First, her mother died in 1910. My grandmother remembered leaving her bed at night to visit her mother’s coffin in their parlor, taking her mother’s hand in hers, and sobbing over it. She told me how cold her mother’s hand was—cold, so cold.
Soon after her mother’s death, she was sent to live with an aunt and uncle who mistreated her. The reason she was sent there—she had three older sisters, four older brothers and her father in the house—is lost. What went on exactly is unknown too, never revealed to me—not to her daughter either—but her face became very grave when mentioning the aunt and uncle.
School Days
My grandmother hadn’t much schooling. Her spoken and written English were not always correct, but her handwriting was almost like copperplate and her spelling was good. She counted on her fingers, but held them hidden behind her back because she’d been hit for counting on her fingers. As a young girl, she worked in a tea factory, so her years of education may have ended with that job.
She sang hymns as part of her everyday life—while cleaning, cooking, or sewing—so she must have gone to Sunday school and church, listed on the family records variously as Presbyterian or Church of Ireland (Anglican). Her grandparents, farming in places to the north like Ballyreagh and Bracknamuckley, were listed as Presbyterians on both sides.
Mastering the domestic arts, Agnes was a fine knitter, seamstress, and baker, one with a light touch. Only one of her crocheted garments remains, and the stitching is absolutely perfect.
Youth
Due to the Irish War of Independence there was no census in 1921 Ireland, so it has not been possible to chase down exactly who lived in the house when my grandmother turned 22. She and her unmarried sisters—at least three of the four sisters— most likely lived with their father and possibly, their brothers. Off the Sandy Row, down the street from the Orange Hall (which is still there), the neighborhood a Protestant, Royal Loyalist/British Unionist stronghold—one in which no Catholic would have ventured willingly during the 1920s Troubles.
Agnes and Edward
Agnes married my grandfather Eddie in July 1924. Before that though, she’d had to meet him—a Catholic man—and how did the two of them accomplish that? However they met, they decided to marry. After instruction in the Catholic faith and her baptism, they married in St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in Belfast. Eddie’s mother, Mary Jane Wright, a very religious Catholic woman, and a powerful one, gave them her blessing.
How did Agnes manage all of that and what steps in these momentous events did she hide from her family? Which of them did she tell first, and when? My mother told me that her father Eddie knew all of her mother’s family, and they all knew him—but was that a rapprochement that occurred after the marriage? Did any of them attend her wedding in a Catholic Church? The witnesses on the marriage certificate are not close family members.
Or was Agnes’s family highly unusual—for the time and certainly the place— in their lack of sectarian prejudice? It seems doubtful, unfortunately, however much they ultimately accepted my grandfather.
The violence of the time must have affected her, but at the same time, it did not affect her. Some of it down to luck, she survived; she learned how to do many things well, and got on with her life. Somehow she met this man, a relatively wealthy man, and reached across the sectarian divide. She converted to his religion, thereby potentially alienating her family, and married him. Throwing her lot in with people against whom there was so much discrimination and violence. However much of that she hid along the path she took, she was brave enough to chance it. She took her chance with him.
Happy Families
Eddie and Agnes settled into his house—a much nicer house than she’d ever known. The house was off the Stranmillis Road, a fairly non-sectarian neighborhood near Queen’s University and the Botanic Gardens. His business was successful and their life was comfortable. It seemed as though Agnes’s bravery was successful, too…until the end of the 1920s.
Dear Readers, this series has been extended—next: My Grandmother, Part III—Belfast to Brooklyn