John Scriminger and Matilda Canning

I can see a marriage registered between John Scrimager and Matilda Canning, registered in Ballymena on 22.2.1860.

Statutory Birth registration didn’t start in Ireland till 1.1.1864 so for any children born between 1860 and 1864 you will need to rely on baptism records. (The family appear to have been Church of Ireland). For children born to this couple after 1.1.1864, I found the following:

Margaret 27.11.1864

Thomas 28.11.1866

Archibald 12.11.1868

George 5.4.1871

Robert 8.11.1872

Matilda 30.7.1875

Elizabeth 29.6.1877

Ellen 7.10.1880 (Nellie is a diminutive for Ellen or Helen).

All births registered in Ballymena. Scrimager sometimes has two ms, and the spelling of Canning varies to Cannon sometimes. Normal for the time.

If you get copies of the certificates you should be able to trace where the family were living. The marriage cert should also give you the couples fathers' names.

Death of Matilda Scrimagoner (sic) 14.8.1898, aged 51, regd in Ballymena. (Age is just the informant’s best guess, and may be out by up to 10 years. You’ll see it doesn’t match the age on the gravestone).

You can view the original certificates on-line on the GRONI website, using the “search registrations” option:

https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk

You will need to open an account and buy some credits. It costs £2 (sterling) to a view a certificate.

I noted John and a son James in the 1901 census:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Ahoghill/Ahoghill_Village/924218/

I noted this Lizzie Scrimager in Ahoghill in 1901. Not sure if there is any connection with your family:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Ahoghill/Ahoghill_Village/924224/

There’s a grave in St Colmanell’s Church of Ireland:

Erected by John Scrimiger, Ahoghill, in memory of his wife Matilda who died 15th Aug 1898 aged 48 years John Scrimiger died 3rd December 1905 aged 75 years And their son James who died 10th July 1907 aged 42 years

In the early 1900s, John Scrimager is listed in the revaluation records in Church St, Ahoghill where he had a house (plot 25qi) entrance at the rear.

Thank you so much.  This is great information that no descendents here in Canada knew.  Is there any way someone there would take a picture of the building on Chjrch Street, Ahoghill plot 25qi? 

I am not aware of any sufficiently detailed maps of Ahoghill that would show me where the property was. (Houses weren’t numbered in 1901). The best I can offer is some general views of Church St today, which should include the property where your family lived. Let me know if you want me to do that.

Thank you so much for the information.  John Scriminger died in 1905 so I'm wondering if this address of 25 Church Street would have been valid then?  Church Street is on streetview so I can see it and have seen the building at 25 Church Street.  It would be so cool if this could ever be confirmed as the home of my great great grandfather.  Thank you so much for your help.

There were no house numbers in the early 1900s. The postman and anyone else who mattered knew where everyone lived.

Plot 25qi was simply the Griffiths clerks own numbering system and doesn’t relate to any house numbers used today (which were allocated in the 1950s). The Griffiths records seem to indicate your family property was in a back close ie entered by a lane to the rear of Church St. Not sure what’s there today. But it will be tricky locating the precise property today. (And it mightn’t be standing anymore anyway).

Thank you again for this information.  I am terribly disappointed as I was so hoping this was the location of my ancestor's home.  I am wondering if there is any way to get a picture of the Scriminger's gravestone.  I would love to see it for myself someday, however, a picture would be the next best thing.  If I am asking too much, please just let me know.  I appreciate your help with my research.

Sandra

Sandra,

I have attached a picture of the grave, together with a couple more taken in the churchyard (complete with a burial party en route to a graveside). If you ever visit, you will find that the grave is towards the far end of the graveyard, near a group of yew trees. It was not difficult to find.

St. Colmanell’s is on Church St (not too surprisingly) and your family lived on that street too, a few hundred yards in towards the centre of town. The 1901 census tells us that the building they lived in (enumerators number 65) had between 2 to 4 rooms and 3 windows at the front. It was in a row of broadly similar houses, and near the 3rd Presbyterian church (property no 74). The 3rd Presbyterian church, graveyard and lecture hall are on the east side of the street. The west side is older houses, some of which are now commercial premises. That has to be where John lived. The revaluation records show John as living in a “house in rere” which to me indicates his entrance was at the rear of the particular property. Many of the properties had that comment against them so it looks as though there was some sort of arrangement whereby either houses were subdivided, or they were built with two entrances, one at the rear of the main house.

One of the houses today is a pub and so I went into the car park at the rear and took a photo of the rear of some of the adjacent properties. Your ancestor might have lived in one of those. If not that one, it was one very like it.

More photos

Hi Elwyn,

Thank you so very much for this information and the wonderful pictures.  This gives me a good idea of where my Scriminger ancestors lived.  I am so glad to get to see pictures of the actual street and buildings where they possibly lived. 

I appreciate your willingness to look into this for me.  These are people I know very little about so these pictures are a huge bonus for me.  Thank you again.

Hi Elwyn,

My daughter and I have decided to travel to Ireland this spring and are thinking early April.  I am so excited to think I will be able to walk the streets my ancestors walked.  We are wondering if you could tell us if this would be a good time to visit weather-wise and if attractions would be open that early in the season.  Also, we would like to know if there is accommodations for travellers in Ahoghill. 

Thank you so much for all your help.

Sandra

Sandra,

April is fine for a visit. It rains all the year round in Ireland so you won’t miss out on that. The evenings are nice and light by April so you should get the benefit of that too. I am not aware of any hotels in Ahoghill itself. (It’s not very big). Nearest would be in Ballymena, which is about 3 or 4 miles away. The Adair Arms is one. Tullyglass House is another. Here’s a link to the tourist board site. You can look at B & Bs, guest houses and hotels there.

http://www.ireland.com/en-gb/accommodation/

Most tourist attractions eg stately homes open at Easter, which is in March this year, so you will be fine visiting in April. Many of the sights such as the Giants Causeway and the main museums are open all the year round.  We get visitors in the middle of winter, so there’s a call for it.

Hi Elwyn,

I have been trying to determine a birth year for Matilda Canning Scriminger.  According to her tombstone she died August 15, 1898 aged 48 years making her birth year 1850.  However, she married John Scriminger in 1860 according to their marriage certificate so there is something wrong with one of these dates.

As well, an older relative is sure our Margaret Scriminger's parents were John Scrimager and Matilda Buchanan not Matilda Canning.  I haven't been able to find anything on a Matilda Buchanan except on a document my grandmother had written stating her grandmother was Matilda Buchanan Scriminger.  But, for me, finding the name Buchanan in two places is making me uneasy that perhaps I have been looking at the wrong family.  If you could look into this a bit for me I would really appreciate it.

Also, my daughter and I are arriving in Dublin on Sunday, April 10 and are to be in Belfast April 10 and 11, and then Ballymena April 12 and 13 and then back to Dublin for April 14 and 15.  I understand Ballymena is only a few miles from Ahoghill so hope to see the cemetery you sent me pictures of as well as walk on Church Street where the Scrimingers lived.  I am wondering if Ireland Reaching Out has anyone who might help us in Ahoghill to make sure we see everything that would be connected to our Scriminger ancestors.

If you have any suggestions for anything I should look for or see in Ireland relating to my research I would appreciate it. 

Thank you again for all your help.

Sandra

Sandra,

I wouldn’t worry too much about the discrepancies in the ages on the death certificate and gravestone. Obviously at least one of them has to be wrong, and in this case they are probably both wrong. The information on death certificates was just the informant’s best guess. No documentation was required when registering a death and in the 1800s people generally didn’t celebrate birthdays and had little clear idea of how old they actually were. Gravestones were even worse. They were usually erected some years after the burial and again the age was often just a stab in the dark. (I notice in your case the date of death is also wrong by a day). By way of example, I have attached a letter from someone in 1908 who was writing to his Minister, for proof of age. All he knew was that he was between “70 and 78 years of age.” It shows that the writer had only the vaguest idea of his age. Couldn’t narrow it down to within 9 years. (The reason for the letter was that the old age pension was being introduced in 1909 for people aged 70 and over. Documentary proof of age was required. Thus, probably for the first time in his life, his age became relevant to him).

You will already have noticed how people didn’t bother how their name was spelled and so there are umpteen variations of Scriminger in your family. Indifference or ignorance of an exact age really just mirrors this. It wasn’t something the average person concerned themselves much about.

Most women married around 21 so my guess is that if the 1860 marriage is correct, Matilda was born around 1838/1840. You could search the church records for that baptism but I do know that not all the churches in Ahoghill have records that go back that far. The Church of Ireland does, and you can certainly search them in PRONI in Belfast, but Matilda may not necessarily have been of that denomination when she was born. (The most common denomination in Ahoghill was and still is Presbyterian). Ahoghill 1st Presbyterian church’s baptisms start in 1841, the 2nd’s in 1835 and the 3rds do not start till 1859. (Earlier records were lost or never kept). Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church, so you might want to check the 1860 marriage cert. If they married in St Colmanell’s then she probably was COI and that would be where I would look first for her baptism.

Non RC Marriages were entered into the statutory records from 1845 onwards. I have checked the records for the Ballymena area from 1845 to 1875 and the only marriage for a Matilda Canning to a Scrimager was the one I found in 1860. (There was a Matilda Canning who married a Holmes in Antrim town in 1865. That was the nearest). Likewise I found no marriage between Matilda Buchanan and a Scrimager (or variant). Matilda Buchanan is a comparatively rare name and there were only about 4 in Ireland around that time.

Ahoghill is not a big place. (Pop today is about 3400). According to the Ordnance Survey memoirs, in 1837, around the time Matilda was probably born, there were just 109 houses in the village. With that in mind, the Scrimager-Canning family we have located contains 7 of the 8 children you named in your first message. (Only Matthew has yet to be located). You appear to have firm proof your family came from Ahoghill. How likely is it, in a village of 109 houses, that there would be another family with children with identical names (and who had also conveniently left Ahoghill by 1901)? It seems to me pretty likely that this is your family. Matilda may well have had a middle name Buchanan but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was her mother’s maiden name. Middle names can come from other sources (my own certainly does).

You are correct that Ballymena is close to Ahoghill. Just a couple of miles at most. You should have no difficulty in finding the street where the Scrimager family lived. As I mentioned previously, the family appear to have lived at the back of the row of houses that faces Church St. You might want to go into the pub car park, as I did, to get an idea of where it was. If you look at the house and building return on the 1901 census, you’ll see that your family’s home had 2 to 4 rooms, a roof made of slates or tiles and had 3 windows at the front (which means rear here). Landlord was John Hamill, who leased the whole block of cottages. They would have worked from home and sold their linen at Ballymena market.

The church and churchyard is just up the street about a 2 minute walk. Go in the entrance gate and bear left. There is a path that takes you around the church and down the graveyard. Go down there towards the yew trees at the bottom. The grave is facing away from you, as you go down, so you will need to go to the trees and search there. I found it in a minute. You can use the photo I sent to help locate it.

As you know, according to the 1901 census, your family were linen weavers. (If you want to see what their house would have looked like inside, there is a weavers cottage c 1900 in the Folk & Transport museum in Cultra, just outside Belfast). See:

http://nmni.com/Home/Online-Collections.aspx?Cat=-1&SubCat=-1&SubSubCat=-1&CatalogId=&Term=weavers%20cottage&AdvSearch=TRUE

I have also attached a photograph of some hand loom weavers in Ahoghill. Taken from the Irish Textile Journal of 15th September 1888. Perhaps your ancestors are in the photo? Who knows? If you are interested in learning more about Ahoghill, go to the local studies section in Ballymena library. (Local studies is upstairs). There are racks of local books, and the librarian has files and cuttings on specialist subjects such as local weaving etc.

Mechanised mills eventually killed off hand loom weaving. They were much more efficient and generally made better quality cloth. It survives today in one or two specialist sources eg Harris Tweed in the Outer Hebrides which has to be made on a hand loom machine to be allowed to call itself Harris Tweed. But otherwise the skill and business has disappeared. The spinning mills also employed only women and children (cheaper and nimbler fingers) so the men lost their jobs whilst new ones were created for women giving them considerable empowerment for the first time in history. They were no longer dependent on their father or husband for every penny.

As things stand at present I won’t be around to meet you in Ahoghill. I will be away in Edinburgh for a few days.  I fly over there on the 8th April and return to Co. Antrim on the afternoon of the 14th. So unless you can juggle your dates slightly, I don’t think our paths will cross. Unfortunately I am the only volunteer in this part of Ireland and so don’t have a colleague I can ask to step in.

The above is really interesting to me as my great-grandfather was Andrew SCRIMINGER of Ahoghill.  He married Mary Ellen DUNLOP in 1907 and they immigrated here to New Zealand in 1911.  Andrew's parents were Thomas SCRIMMAGER & Ellen Jane McNEILL.  Andrew's siblings were William John (1872), George (1985), Elizabeth Ann (1978), Margaret Agnes (1887) and Thomas George (1895 - possibly a grandson of Thomas & Ellen).  Andrew lived in Craignageeragh and several of John SCRIMMAGER & Matilda CANNING's children were born there.  There are several SCRIMMAGER (and all its derivatives) families in the Ahoghill area and though I can't find the direct relationship, they have to be related as the surname is not a common one and the first names appear to be used a lot.

I had a look at the records for Andrew S and Mary Dunlop. They married on 17.5.1906 at Broughshane 2nd Presbyterian church. (Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church). Andrew’s townland (address) was Carnlough and Mary’s Brocklamont.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1906/10122/5682773.pdf

This seems to be them in Larne in the 1911 census:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Antrim/Larne/Glynn_Road/195435/

Andrew with his parents in 1901:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Ballyconnelly/Glenhugh/924478/

Thomas Scrimagour married Ellen McNeile on 31.7.1868. That marriage cert is not on-line free but you can pay to view it. You can view the original certificate on-line on the GRONI website, using the “search registrations” option:

https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk

You will need to open an account and buy some credits. It costs £2.50 (sterling) to a view a certificate.

Likewise we know that John Scrimager married Matilda Canning on 22.2.1860. You can see that certificate on the same site. What are their respective father’s names and occupations from the certificates? Have you looked at that?

Hi Elwyn

Just realised I typed the wrong birth years for George (1875) & Elizabeth Ann (1878) SCRIMMAGER, children of Thomas SCRIMMAGER (spelt SCRIMAGOUR on marriage cert.) & Ellen Jane McNEILL.

According to Thomas SCRIMAGER & Ellen McNEILL's marriage certificate, Thomas's father was named John SCRIMAGOUR (a weaver) and Ellen's was named William McNEILL (a school master).

Lynda

John Scrimager who married Matilda Canning in 1860 had a father named John too, so I’d guess that John (jnr) and Thomas who married Ellen Jane McNeil were brothers. You could look at the Ahoghill Church of Ireland baptism records to see if you can find their respective baptisms. The Ahoghill records start in 1811. There’s a copy in PRONI in Belfast. Not on-line there though, so a personal visit is required to view them.

Yes, I too reached the conclusion John & Thomas SCRIMMAGER may have been brothers.

Would love to look at the Ahoghill records but New Zealand's a long way from Ireland lol.

Lynda

You could employ a researcher.