Finding Orr
To unravel your family history is to unravel yourself. Well, that’s what I keep telling myself. The BBC’s ‘Who do you think you are?’ has a lot to answer for. Watching it as a teenager, it inspired an interest in my family tree. Who knew you could simply look up records and discover your great, great grandparents? If Barbara Windsor and John Hurt had blockbuster worthy family histories, maybe I did as well.
A quick inspection of Ireland’s 1901/1911 census revealed that not to be true. As a child, I was a bit disappointed that my family were ordinary people. Now I find that truth to be fascinating. My paternal Grandfather was born in Chicago and his wife’s family were fishermen from Ballyhalbert. All hard working men who spent years sailing around the Ard’s Peninsula. My Mum’s family hail from Derry. Go back three generations and some of them are Scottish. It’s on my mum’s side of the family that I have three deaths from World War One, two of them at the Somme.
I didn’t expect, then, to find a possible link to a ‘rebel’ in my Granny’s family. William Orr was born in Farranshane in 1766. His Presbyterian family owned land in Antrim town. He was six feet tall, well-educated, and known for dressing well. Orr’s most famous item of clothing was a green necktie. At some point in the 1790s, Orr joined the United Irishmen. In October 1797, he was found guilty of administering the United Irish oath to a solider named Hugh Wheatly. The trial took place at Carrickfergus Castle. As punishment for his crime, Orr was sentenced to death.
About twenty years ago, some distant relatives of my Granny’s got in touch. They were researching their family history and contacted her through close family. It was via them that we learned that we were likely related to Orr. The link comes from my Great Grandmother, Margaret Agnes Orr. Her Grandfather, Joseph Orr, appears to be the son of one of William Orr’s brothers. I say ‘appears’ because I like cold hard facts. I have a lot of work to do to confirm the link although so far the connection stands up.
Formed in the wake of the French revolution by Henry Joy McCracken, Samuel Neilson and William Drennan, the United Irishmen were radicals who wanted reform of Ireland’s Parliament. Most of them came from Belfast’s Presbyterian churches. You’ve probably heard of Wolf Tone, the group’s most famous member. The United Irishmen wanted an Irish Parliament for all, ‘Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.’ They were opposed to the Penal Laws, rules that upheld Anglican supremacy and discriminated against Catholics and Presbyterians and others. Their ideology stood in opposition to the Dublin Castle administration, so much so that the group was eventually banned.
After being convicted by a jury, William Orr was hanged in Carrickfergus. In a speech before his death, he declared:
“My comfortable lot, and industrious course of life, best refute the charge of being an adventurer for plunder; but if to have loved my country—to have known its wrongs —to have felt the injuries of the persecuted and to have united with them and all other religious persuasions in the most orderly and least sanguinary means of procuring redress – if those be felonies, I am a felon...”
Orr was two years younger than me when he was hanged. It’s likely that the charges against him were false. After his death, ‘Remember Orr’ was found written on walls. It became a rallying cry for the United Irishmen when they launched their failed rebellion in 1798.
I’m pro-union/unionist or whatever label you want to put on it. It’s said that when Gladstone pushed for Home Rule, he told the unionists who opposed him to, ‘retain and maintain the tradition of their sires.’
If we all kept to the beliefs of our ancestors, I wouldn’t have qualified as a solicitor or attended University. The thought that a member of my family could be a United Irishman is a source of pride, not one of shame or embarrassment. Everyone in Northern Ireland has nuances and complexities to their identity. Unhelpful narratives have denied Ulster Protestants a lot of their history. The United Irishmen are a part of our shared story on this island. Its one we share with nationalists and republicans.
Whatever your politics, there’s something we can learn from the men and women of 1798. The Oath William Orr was wrongly found guilty of administering said:
“In the presence of God, I do voluntarily declare that I will persevere in endeavouring to form a brotherhood of affection amongst Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and that I will also persevere in my endeavours to obtain an equal, full, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland.”
In 2021, let’s do more of that.