A fully indexed compilation of Birth, Marriage, and Death notices, with reports of other Auspicious and Adverse Events, from The Northern Standard newspaper, 1839–1847.
On January 12, 1839, Arthur Wellington Holmes (c.1811–1851) launched The Northern Standard from his office at 26, Mill-street, Monaghan. Mr. Holmes aimed to publish not only the first newspaper in the county of Monaghan, but also one of a High Tory character in a staunchly liberal region.
This book presents transcriptions of articles selected from historic editions of The Northern Standard published between January, 1839 and December, 1847. During this nine-year period, the Standard carried a fascinating array of local and national events such as: the Presbyterian “marriage question;” the notorious bigamy trials of Copeland v Browne, and the Queen v Mary Downes; the abduction of Jane M’Kee by John Feehan; marriage festivities, and funerary customs; the concurrent illnesses, and deaths just one day apart, of the Earl of Besborough, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in Dublin, and of Mr. Daniel O’Connell, M.P., at Genoa in Italy; and, the ravages of starvation and disease during the early years of the Great Famine.
The first chapter of this book includes 2,346 birth, marriage, and death notices. The second chapter consists of 1,556 reports of other auspicious and adverse events—that is, news accounts on such wide-ranging subjects as accidents, bigamy, breach of promise, disease and epidemics, divorce and separation, elopement, estates, famine, funerals, hospitals and dispensaries, longevity, disasters at sea, marriages in high life, monuments and testimonials, obituaries, starvation, sudden deaths, and suicide. Both chapters are indexed by surname, subject, and institution and publication. In all, this work comprises 431 pages, or nearly 390,000 words, of transcribed text and extracts, and 57 pages of index terms.
Place names in the province of Ulster are cited in about 70% of the articles in this volume; the county of Monaghan features in about 20%. Other counties are represented, including Dublin (651 articles), Cork (126), Louth (110), and so on. England (423), Scotland (93), the East Indies (57), France (39), and the USA (35), are also mentioned.
Whether employed in the pursuit of family or local history research, or perused at leisure, may this book also serve as a tribute to the memory of the people who were born in the county Monaghan, in neighbouring counties, and in Ireland generally—and perhaps, especially—to the memory of the many Irish whose names were not immortalized in The Northern Standard or other contemporary newspapers.
Alison Kilpatrick is an amateur genealogist with a keen interest in historic newspapers. Alison is well known in the online community, as much for her family history research interests in Ireland and England, as for the volume and reliability of her transcriptions from 18th and 19th century Irish newspapers, covering several counties in the province of Ulster.
