Nora’s Memories: Patrick Reilly of Stragella and his war horses
In the first of a three-part series, Jonathan Smyth looks at the Reillys of Stragella in his Times Past column for this week...
Cavan has produced many successful personalities as well as some infamous ones. I recently heard a fascinating account about a family from Stragella on the outskirts of Cavan Town. It was written by a lady called Nora Reilly Hill who wanted to preserve the story of her relations, some of whom went to America where they were responsible for building an actual town.
It is a lovely story about the goodness of an Irish family and how they kept in their hearts the people they left behind and used their wealth to better both the lives of Cavan relatives and the locality in which they spent their childhood.
Thankfully, the history of this Reilly family survived because of the foresight of Nora Reilly Hill who took the time to write it up and therefore most of the information, which follows must be credited to her. I would also like to acknowledge Concepta McGovern at Cavan Genealogy Centre. This is the first part in a series of three columns.
The Crimea
Nora began with her heroic great grandfather Patrick Reilly from Fairtown, Cavan. He was born in 1820 and married a Miss Cahill from Reaske and she must have felt terrible sadness and fear when Patrick Reilly enlisted to fight in the Crimean War when Britain and France entered the war with the intention of stopping Russia’s attempt at a land grab.
The trouble began in 1853 when Tsar Nicholas I, of Russia, and Abdulmejid I, of the Ottoman Emperor, had a row over which of them should govern the Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman territories. Like most other young lads in search of fortune and adventure, Patrick was off on his travels as a paid soldier.
Dutifully, Patrick sent home his wages to his wife who was a shrewd woman. She saved the money to buy the Reillys’ first farm consisting of eight acres in the townland of Stragella. Sadly, the land around much of the area had been systematically ‘denuded of tenants and labourers… owing to famine, disease and emigration’, noted a saddened Nora.
The size of Reilly’s holding increased further over time as more land became available to purchase. There were undoubtedly great celebrations when Patrick finally came home from the Crimean conflict unharmed. According to Nora, he was cheerfully referred to by the locals as the ‘pensioner’ and by some he was called ‘auld Sebastopol’ but he disliked that nickname because the family were strongly nationalistic in outlook and Nora said that was the reason why it upset him.
War Horses
In the war, men were torn asunder by musket fire and cannonballs, and you might wonder how any soldiers came through it unharmed. Nora pondered on the awfulness of it all and recalled and elaborated: ‘I was told by his grandson that the reason why he survived the holocaust was that he was in charge of horses and didn’t actually ride in the famous charge.’
What she was referring to was of course the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade, a battle with disastrous consequences for the British who got slaughtered by the well-defended Russian army in the Battle of Balaklava in October 1854. In a ridiculous move, the Earl of Cardigan had ordered his cavalry to attack heavy Russian artillery, and in the fighting that followed, the English saw 40% of their brigade eliminated. Dying men and wounded horses lay scattered and misshapen across the landscape following the battle. Reilly had cared for many of those horses before the fight - feeding, watering, and grooming them - and no doubt he was disturbed by the sickening slaughter that day.
When he was finally handed his discharge papers, a relieved Reilly went home to his new farm, bringing with him his love of horses. Nora said that ‘the fact remains when he came to Stragella he bred and trained horses’ although ‘on a small scale’, and ‘he supplied priests mostly with riding horses’.
Patrick did his best to buy land when it became available and eventually his farm came to 24 acres. Nora proudly remembered another item owned by ‘the Pensioner’ that brought him pride. It was a ‘Pope’s Blessing’, but as can happen it was lost by a later generation.
The Reillys had a large family and they were said to have been blessed with good looks, auburn coloured hair, and charm. Their eldest was Patrick Jnr and it was himself who was Nora’s grandfather and, probably because of his temperament, he was given the nickname ‘auld sweet’.
Patrick Jnr married Honora Murray and they owned the farm where Nora later lived. It was said that his father gave him eight acres and a house in the road known as ‘Jack’s lane’.
Patrick and Honora had a huge family and Nora wrote that ‘Uncle Pat was their eldest son’ and her father (Joseph) was the youngest. However, Nora felt pity for Pat who ‘had asthma’ which ‘prevented him from working hard’. He found solace in keeping bees and was to be seen keeping busy in the yard.
Emigration is still a familiar experience for Irish families, as it was for Patrick and Honora’s children, many of whom emigrated to America; while some of them worked for a well-known relative, the enterprising builder T.F. Reilly.
One of the Pensioner’s daughters was known as Red Nannie (presumably because of her hair) and she went to America, and only came home a couple of times before deciding to enter a convent where she lived until a great age.
A sister of Red Nannie’s called Rose was married to an O’Callaghan man whose family were very notable around Belfast. Rose O’Callaghan’s family included Dermott, a teacher; Maurice, an actor; and a Chief Superintendent, Brendan O’Callaghan. The O’Callaghan girls, all worked in Post Office jobs, which were the ‘only competitive jobs for Catholics’ at that time, in Nora’s view.
A daughter of Patrick Jnr, named Anne, wed a Patrick Brady of Pullamore, but they left County Cavan. They had two sons who joined the Christian Brothers. Another descendant of the same family was Conor Brady who became the first Catholic editor of The Irish Times.
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