Dear Brother John: A Letter from Kitty Armstrong Dated January 9th, 1887
March 22, 2015
Looking south from from Knocknarea mountain in County Sligo. Photo courtesy of Nogwater under a CC license at Flickr.com
February 2016 update: I recently came across the baptismal record, dated September 24th, 1860, for Catherine Armstrong, the daughter of Francis and Ann Armstrong of Kilcummin, in the parish records for Cloonacool Parish, Diocese of Achonry, in County Sligo, Ireland. When I originally published this post almost a year ago, I thought that Kitty’s given name was Kathleen, that she had been born in 1865, and that she was the youngest of Francis and Anne’s nine children.
According to the parish records, I was wrong on all three counts. Not only was Kitty’s given name Catherine and her birth year 1860, if not before, but she was her parents’ eighth, not ninth, child. As it turns out, Francis and Ann Armstrong of Kilcummin baptized their daughter Anne at Cloonacool Parish on July 12th, 1863. So, Kitty was older than Anne, which makes Anne the youngest of the nine Armstrong children.
On a lesser note, the parish records note the name of Francis’ wife as Ann, without an “e”, and the name of his daughter Anne with an “e”. In the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses, the names of both mother and daughter are spelled with an “e”.
Please note that corrections have been made to the post below in accordance with the baptismal entries in the parish records. Currently, the baptismal records available for Cloonacool Parish online at the National Library of Ireland’s website only cover the dates from October 27th, 1859 to January 4th, 1881. As far as I know, there are no extant baptismal records for the parish prior to 1859.
Kitty and Her Brother John
Catherine “Kitty” Armstrong was born in 1860 in County Sligo, Ireland to Francis and Anne Leonard Armstrong, Catholic tenant farmers who leased land in the townlands of Kilcummin and Derreens near Cloonacool.
Like her eight brothers and sisters, Kitty did not receive any formal education but was schooled at home.
In the late summer of 1865, Kitty’s older brother, John Francis (1845-1893) left for America. He eventually settled in Augusta, Georgia, where his uncle, Thomas Armstrong, had moved during the Great Famine of 1845-1851.
In Augusta, JF became a successful merchant and married Sarah Theresa McAndrew. During the 1880s, he got involved in the Irish home rule movement and visited Ireland on a regular basis.
A Letter from Kitty
On January 9th, 1887, Kitty wrote to JF that she had received his letter and the photographs he had sent of his family.
Letter to JF Armstrong from his sister, Kitty, in County Sligo, Ireland, 1887. All nine of the Armstrong children were educated at home
Tubbercurry, Jan 9th 1887
Dear Brother John
Your letter and the pictures to(o) (arrived) here in due time and I am very grateful. Your own is the most natural picture I ever seen. I could fancy I was looking at you. I think Joe resembles Frank a good deal. But I never fancied May was so much the young lady. She is really a stylish looking girl about the head. I don’t know if she is like any of us. I think she has a plumper face than any of our family. I’ll be expecting the others soon. I hope Mrs. A. is quite well now. I think this is a very severe winter. We are having lots of frost and snow here. There is a young daughter in Banada. Tom and myself were the sponsors. Katie Josephine we called her. I had an eye to business and called her after myself. All the family and friends are well and wishes to be kindly remembered to all friends there. A great deal of people dying here this winter. Old Martin Gilmore of Kilcummin and Mrs. Barthy (spelling?) Ginty died about Xmas. I am sure you read about the Woodford prisoners in the paper. The greatest indignation is felt at the severe sentences they got and that from a Catholic judge too. Hoping you are well and with fondest love to you all I am your loving sister
Kitty
In her letter, Kitty commented on the photos of JF and his children, the harsh winter, and local outrage at the sentencing of the Woodford prisoners.
John F. Armstrong with his sisters, Ann & Kitty in Augusta, 1887
Her remark about Joe looking like Frank was probably meant to console JF. Joe (1880-1936) was his youngest child and Frank (1872-1884) his second oldest. Frank had gone to Sligo with JF several years earlier, but became ill on the ship back to the US and never recovered. He died in Georgia on August 16th, 1884, his twelfth birthday.
JF had evidently written to Sligo that his wife, Sarah, was seriously ill. While Kitty expressed hope that Sarah had regained her health, she died on January 20th, 1887 before Kitty’s letter would have arrived in Augusta.
The reference to “a young daughter in Banada”, which is near Tubbercurry, may have been about the daughter of Ellen Armstrong Mullarkey, Kitty’s older sister. It sounds like Kitty and her brother, Tom, may have served as the child’s godparents.
By the time JF received Kitty’s letter, he had most likely already read about the sentencing of the Woodford prisoners. As tenants on Lord Clanricarde’s estate in Galway, they had used armed force to resist eviction the previous August. Internationally reported, the incident was part of Ireland’s land wars in the late 1880s.
JF received more letters from Kitty in 1887, which turned out to be a difficult year. After the death of his wife in January, Daly and Armstrong, his successful dry-goods store on Broad Street, was heavily damaged in a fire.
Then in April, he received letters from his brothers Luke and James that Kitty, along with their sister Ann, had sailed to New York despite their parents’ protests. JF was asked to locate them at a cousin’s apartment in Brooklyn and convince them to return to Ireland.
In letters sent to JF from New York, the sisters agreed to go back to Ireland after they had visited him in Augusta.
The photo of JF, Ann, and Kitty was taken in Augusta before the sisters returned to Sligo in May of 1887.
Images
The handwritten letter from Kitty Armstrong, dated January 9th, 1887 and shown above, is a digital image of a photocopy of the original letter. The original is part of a larger collection of letters from 1887 that is with JF’s descendents in Augusta, Georgia.
References
“British State Interests: The Tory Cabinet Still Incomplete.” The New York Times, 7 January 1887. Accessed at Query.nytimes.com on 29th March 2015.
“Cloonacool: Catholic Parish Registers.” From Registers.nli.ie. The National Library of Ireland: Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI. Entries for the baptisms of Catherine “Kitty” Armstrong on September 24, 1860 (page 10) and Anne Armstrong on July 12, 1863 (page 26). Accessed at http://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0127 in February 2016.
(Note: Currently, the online baptismal records for Cloonacool Parish only extend from October 27, 1859 to January 4, 1881. As far as I know, there are no extant records for the parish before 1859.)