Hugh Hasson, Ester Armor, Elizabeth Hasson Morrow

Ruth,

I think you will probably struggle to find many records for this family. You don?t say where Elizabeth married but if it was in Ahoghill then you might just find the marriage details as Ahoghill RC records start in 1833. However RC marriages from that time generally only contain the couples names and their 2 witnesses. There?s rarely any other information. So even if you find it, it may not increase your knowledge much.

I can?t see a death for Hugh or Ester Hasson in the statutory records for the area so that would suggest both had died before 1864.

Hasson is not a common name in the area. There?s only 1 Hasson in Co Antrim in Griffiths Valuation for the 1860s and only 5 in the county in the 1901 census (none of which lived anywhere near Ahoghill).

There?s only 1 Hasson gravestone in the general area, and that?s in Portglenone RC church for someone who died in the 1930s. (Few people could afford gravestones in the early 1800s).

PRONI in Belfast has a copy of the RC records for Ahoghill. That apart I can?t suggest anything else that might help you trace the family. In the 1700s and early 1800s it was fairly easy to live out a complete life in Ireland and leave no paper record at all.

Elwyn

Thank you, Elwyn, for looking.

The information I have is from Canadian and US censuses and an "Early Settlers" write up. The surnames Armor and Hasson were more common around the Cos. Donegal and Tyrone border so they might not have been originally from the area. There was no mention of Hugh and Ester in Canada or US so I was hoping to find a new thread to pull. 

We will be in the area this September and plan to stop by Ahoghill and Glenarm. At least we will see some of the countryside they might have walked.

Again, I appreciate your help. 

I have recently found additional information about Elizabeth (Hasson) Morrow’s brothers. I will share it for anyone else who might search for this Hasson family.

Patrick and his wife Elizabeth Morrow placed two separate "Missing Friends/In Search Of" ads in The Boston Pilot in 1855. Her ad read:

“Of JAMES, William, and Hugh HASSON, natives of the parish of Ahoghill, county Antrim. James left Ireland about thirty years ago, in the ship Margaret Johnston; Hugh left Dorchester, Canada West in 1851, for Buffalo, New York, and has not been heard from since. Any information from any of them will be thankfully received by their sister, Betty Morrow, who is very anxious to hear of their whereabouts. Direct to Betty Morrow, Little Sioux, Harrison county, Iowa.”

I have not had any luck with my initial searching for these brothers using the new information.  I would be interested if anyone finds more clues. 

P.S. We drove through Ahoghill last September and spent a few minutes walking around the RC church grounds. Beautiful country. 

Ms. Ruth Mason:  I am a direct descendant of Patrick A. Morrow and Elizabeth Hasson.  My great grandmother was Rosanna (Annie) Morrow one of their children, the last to be born in Antrim.  I am not sure what genealogical information I have that might be of assistance to you.  I would certainly like to know more about their lives in the North of Ireland, why they immigrated to Canda, and most importantly about their lives during those dozen years in Canada.  If we could be of assistance to one another, that would be grand!   My email address is:  jfccr2016@gmail.com     Best wishes, John Cooper

Since the original post about this family some records are now on-line. I can see the marriage for Patrick Morrow & Betty Hasson on 24.4.1834 in the Ahoghill RC parish records. The couple’s townland (address) was Kilcurry.

Kilcurry is between Randalstown and Portglenone, and  about 3 miles from Ahoghill. The intersection of the modern Largy & Loughbeg Roads is in the middle of it. It is 784 acres of agricultural land. The tithe applotment records show a David Morrow farming there in 1825, so he was possibly related to Patrick.

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/antrim/tithe-applotments/portglenone-parish.php

There were no Morrows farming in Kilcurry by the time of Griffiths Valuation in 1864. By the 1901 census of Kilcurry, there were 65 houses with a total population of 320.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Portglanone/Kil…

I noticed a Man. Hessin in the 1766 religious census of Ahoghill. He might be a relation of Hugh Hasson who married Ester Armor. Man. is probably short for Manus.

http://www.ulsterancestry.com/free/ShowFreePage-48.html

John - You ask why your ancestors might have left Ireland. I am sure they left for the same reasons that 2 million others did. To find work. Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.

Perhaps rather rashly, many labourers and small farmers were very much one crop dependant, because you could grow more potatoes to the acre than any other crop, and they needed the minimum of maintenance, but as a consequence they had nothing else to fall back on when the blight attacked them, and because it was largely a barter economy they mostly had no spare cash to buy food. When the crop failed 3 years in a row, people ended up eating their seed potatoes, leaving them nothing to plant the next spring. It is estimated that during the years 1845 to 1850, around 800,000 people died of starvation or of a famine-related disease such as typhus, dysentery, scurvy or pellagra. A further two million people emigrated. Unlike earlier famines, in which the population recovers quickly from the catastrophe and continues to grow, the after- effects of the Great Irish Famine were such that the population of Ireland, standing at 8.2 million people in 1841, declined to 6.6 million in 1851. Fifty years later, Ireland's population was still showing a decline (down to 4.5 million), even though every other European country was showing a population increase. Ireland’s population did not return to its pre-famine heights until 1964. Approximately 8 million people left Ireland between 1801 and 1900 - the equivalent of the entire pre-Famine population. The population today is only around 6 million.

Other factors led to the continued emigration too, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything. The famine wreaked havoc in most of Ireland but in Co Antrim, a comparatively wealthy county, it wasn’t too severe (and most bigger farmers had not been one crop dependant) so I would say it was less of a reason for your particular ancestors leaving than it was for others elsewhere in Ireland.