Sibling Saturday ~ Dublin to Newcastle upon Tyne

Various members of our Carroll family left Dublin city for Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in a obvious case of sibling-led chain-migration. It is not clear exactly what initially attracted them to Newcastle, but by the turn of the twentieth century, the Carrolls had begun to make it their home. 

These were the children of my great-great-grandfather, Maurice Carroll, who was born in County Tipperary, about 1837. Maurice married twice and fathered at least fifteen children, although not all of them survived childhood. He first married Mary Anne Frazer in Dublin city in 1859 and, the year after her death in 1868, he then married my great-great-grandmother, Anne Ratcliffe. Maurice worked as a domestic servant and coachman at Balheary House in Swords for nearly twenty-five years and in the mid-1880s, he moved his family to Dublin city, where the younger Carroll siblings, including my great-grandmother Teresa, were born.

Annie Carroll, the second eldest daughter of Maurice and Anne Ratcliffe, married a Lancashire man, William Smith Singleton, in Dublin in 1894. Their location at the time of the 1901 census has not been identified. However, by 1911, Annie was the head of household at Ethel Street, Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne. She was a grocer, living with her servant Katie Rooney.  Annie’s elder half-brother, James Carroll, married Anne Molyneux in Dublin in 1886. By 1901, he was living in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, with his wife and youngest son, although their status as lodgers suggests their recent arrival in the town. By 1911, James was established as a household head, still living in Elswick with his wife and both sons. He was employed as a ‘fire brigade man’. 

The younger Carroll siblings then took their turn and emigrated from Dublin city to make their home in Newcastle upon Tyne.  John Carroll, aged twenty-two, was still living in the family home at 20 Gloucester Place North in 1901 and worked as a solicitor’s general clerk. Within a few years, he had migrated to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he married Selina Asher in St Mary’s Cathedral, in February 1914. His sister, my great-grandmother Teresa (Carroll) Wynne, was a bridesmaid at their wedding. Records show that, between 1914 and 1917, John and Selina had three children in Newcastle upon Tyne, confirming their settlement in the town. The youngest sibling, Maggie, was aged only seventeen in 1911, but it is believed that she too later emigrated to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. 

St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Newcastle (Wikimedia Commons)

Patrick Wynne married Teresa Carroll in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, in August 1905. In 1911, Teresa was staying at her mother’s home in Gloucester Place, with her three infant sons, while her husband, a brush-maker by occupation, was lodging in Cork, near the head-quarters of his employer, the Varian Brushes Company. Family lore suggests that the Wynne family went to Newcastle about 1913, a time of great industrial unrest and the ‘Dublin lock-outs’. The Wynnes settled in Newcastle upon Tyne and their five youngest children were born there. Bizarrely, by today’s customs, they left their third child, Kevin, my grandfather, behind in Dublin to be raised by his maternal aunt, Mary Carroll – thus, our Dublin origins.

It seems the Carroll siblings were quite happy in Newcastle upon Tyne, as, despite the short distance between Dublin and Newcastle, there is no record of any them, nor their descendants, returning to Ireland on any permanent basis.

Sources: Census of Ireland 1901 and 1911; Census of England and Wales, 1901 and 1911; Church records at RootsIreland.ie and IrishGenealogy.ie; Free BMD; General Register Office, Dublin, birth, marriage and death copy registers.

Annie (Carroll) Singleton was the subject of a previous post, here – Aunt Annie’s Will. 

……………….

© 2014 Black Raven Genealogy