Marriage settlement of Wm. Stevenson & Eliz. Fleming (1716)

William Hogarth. Marriage A-la-Mode: 1, The Marriage Settlement; about 1743. Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 90.8 cm Bought, 1824 NG113. Digital image online at The National Art Gallery.Creative Commons Licence: Attribution/Non-Commerical/No-Derivatives CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Just over three hundred years ago, Capt. James Stevenson of Stewartstown and William Fleming of Portadown executed a marriage settlement on…

Christmas Day at the Poor-house in Armagh, 25th Dec. 1844

Halfpenny dinners for poor children in East London. Image credit. Published in the 31st December 1844 edition of The Armagh Guardian: Christmas Day in Armagh.   On Wednesday last the annual dinner was given to the inmates of the Armagh Poor-house, by his grace the Lord Primate; the dinner consisted of roast beef and plum pudding,…

Inaugural edition of The Armagh Guardian, 3rd September 1844

English-street at College-street; the Guardian building visible in the mid-ground. Image credit. On 3rd December 1844, John Thompson published the inaugural edition of his new weekly journal, The Armagh Guardian. At this juncture in his publishing career, he kept a general print shop at 63, English-street in Armagh. No matter how much and how loudly…

… “for the considerations therein mentioned” …

or, What a Memorial of an Indented Deed is, and what it isn't. "A Local Court." (London, 1832) — Image credit. During the past few months, while transcribing and indexing memorials of Irish deeds, I've noticed certain legal terms and turns of phrase. Historic newspapers are the same way: after a time, you begin to…

Duties of the Irish tenant farmer :: one fatt Unshorne Mutton

one fatt Unshorne Mutton One Bole of Barley Twelve Fatt Henns Six days work of Man & horse The 21st century reader would be forgiven for thinking that these might have been lines from an ancient verse or folk song. As it happens, these words defined the duties of the Irish tenant farmer to his landlord, over and…