Person:John Reid (61)

  Featured Page: Week of February 13, 2012

Childhood

John Reid was baptised at Dundalk in County Louth on 29th June 1849, son of a mason and bricklayer named John Reid and his wife Julia Hanlon. The couple moved about extensively, and did not stay long in Dundalk - their previous child had been baptised eighteen months earlier in County Monaghan and their next child would be baptised in 1851 in County Armagh. Family tradition has it that John Reid senior worked on building the railways, which fits with the locations where the family lived - in 1849 the Dundalk to Castleblayney railway opened. By the early 1850s the family had settled in Dublin, which is where this John Reid said he was born in the 1901 and 1911 censuses.

Adulthood

By 1884 John had left Dublin and moved to Monasterevin in County Kildare. He was married there on 10th February 1884, aged 34, to Mary Cleary, who was 37. The couple had three sons at Monasterevin, although the first died as a baby. John worked as a mason and bricklayer. He lived at Coole, a hamlet which straddles the townlands of Coolnafearagh and Skirteen, to the west of Monasterevin town, separated from it by the River Barrow.

John became an active trade unionist, being recorded in 1891 as attending the United Labourers of Ireland's meeting in Dublin, where he spoke in favour of making the allotment acts more generous, saying "an immediate amendment of the Labourers Allotment Act is absolutely essential, the half acre allowed by the present act being totally inadequate. That the allotment in the amended act should amount to at least one acre, exclusive of the house and yard, and that tradesman and all other classes of toilers in country towns and districts should be eligible to take advantage of the provisions of acts passed for the improvement of the condition of the workingman, and that copies of these resolutions be forwarded by the secretary to Mr Timothy Harrington, M P, the only one of the Dublin representatives who remained faithful to his pledge and to the Irish Leader."^[5] John is also recorded (with his brother William) as having made donations to the Evicted Tenants Fund in 1893.^[6]

In the 1901 census, John and Mary and their two surviving sons were living at Coolnafearagh in a two-roomed house with a piggery. By 1911 they were still at Coolnafearagh, but with three rooms and both piggery and fowl house. Perhaps they had extended the house.

John's grave at Passlands Cemetery in Monasterevin

John's wife Mary died in September 1927, aged 80. John outlived her by less than a year, dying the following September, aged 79. He was buried at Passlands Cemetery in Monasterevin alongside his wife and sister-in-law Eliza Cleary, who had died a couple of days before him.

1. ↑ Dundalk, Louth, Ireland. Catholic Parish Registers.

   June 1849 / 29 John of John Reed and Julie Hanlon
   SS Patrick Reed and Mary McCrave / Park St

2. ↑ Census Office. Ireland Census 1901. (National Archives of Ireland)
   Kildare / Monasterevan / Coolnafearagh / Schedule 31, 31 Mar 1901.

   Address: Coolnafearagh, Monasterevan, County Kildare
   Form A (about the family):
   John Reid, head of family, Roman Catholic, Read & write, 46 [1854/5], male, Mason, married, b. Dublin City
   Mary Reid, wife, Roman Catholic, Read & write, 48 [1852/3], female, married, b. Co. Kildare
   Michael Reid, son, Roman Catholic, Read & write, 14 [1886/7], male, Scholar, not married, b. Co. Kildare, speaks Irish & English
   Joseph Reid, son, Roman Catholic, Read & write, 12 [1888/9], male, Scholar, not married, b. Co. Kildare, speaks Irish & English
   Form B (about the house):
   Private dwelling
   Out-offices: 1 (piggery)
   Walls: Mud, wood or other perishable material
   Roof: Thatch, wood or other perishable material
   Windows in front of house: 2
   Class of house: 3rd class
   Number of families in house: 1 (head John Reid)
   Rooms occupied: 2
   Landholder: John Reid

3. ↑ Census Office. Ireland Census 1911. (Dublin: National Archives of Ireland)
   Kildare / Monasterevin / Coolnafearagh / Schedule 26, 2 Apr 1911.

   Address: Coolnafearagh, Monasterevin, County Kildare
   Form A (about the family):
   John Reid, head of family, Church of Rome, Read & Write, male, 60 [1850/1], Bricklayer unemployed, married, b. Dublin City, speaks English
   Mary Reid, wife, Church of Rome, Read & Write, female, 65 [1845/6], married 27 years, 3 children born, 2 children still living, b. Kildare, speaks English
   Joseph Reid, son, Church of Rome, Read & Write, male, 22 [1888/9], Bricklayer unemployed, single, b. Kildare, speaks Irish & English
   Form B (about the house):
   Private dwelling
   Out-offices: 2 (piggery & fowl house)
   Walls: Mud, wood or other perisable material
   Roof: Thatch, wood or other perishable material
   Windows in front of house: 3
   Class of house: 3rd class
   Number of families in house: 1 (head John Reid)
   Rooms occupied: 3
   Landholder: John Reid

4. ↑ Death certificate, in General Register Office of Ireland. Civil Registration.

   1928 DEATHS Registered in the District of Monasterevan in the Union of Athy in the County of Kildare
   No. 452
   Date and place of death: 1928 September Second, Coole
   Name: John Reid
   Sex: M
   Condition: Widower
   Age: 70 years [1857/8]
   Occupation: Brick Layer
   Cause: Cardiac Disease, 6 months, Certified
   Informant: Mary Reid, Present at Death, Coole
   Registered: September Eight 1928

   
5. ↑ Freeman's Journal (Dublin), Monday 5 Jan 1891
6. ↑ Freeman's Journal (Dublin), Saturday 23 Dec 1893: both John and William are recorded as having given 2s 6d.