Millmount

3rd March 1903

My Dear Sallie[1],

Yours to Alicia this morning has given us all fresh thought for you & your darling little pets. We all hope & pray that the change will agree with you all. I am sure you will be very busy so tell Sissy Reid I will expect her to write to me to tell when news of you comes from afar. Africa[2] does not seem as far as California partly because there are so many from Keady there & they are always going & coming. I wrote to Mary Menary[3] since Christmas to ask how her mother[4] was keeping & I find from her our relation which Mary wrote & when I heard I knew it perfectly. Your fathers mother was a Miss Bartley[5]. Mrs. Jackson[6] said sister to my grand father but I think from looking at the Bartley papers & dates[7] she must have been his aunt. That can be settled when I find her name. I am sure you will be amused at me writing this. Mrs. Jackson said yr mother was not related but I always heard there was an intermarriage in an older generation that she was a far out one. This is all I know now & shortly there will be more. I remember the Bartley name in the country.

I hope you will get on better during this voyage & you ought to consult a Doctor before you start as there is such wonderful medicines these days for the heart & I have heard of several persons who was affected like you & they got relief when they got a Drs. advice. Of course once through the bay of Biscay you will likely have a good passage.

With love & warmest wishes for your welfare including Clare[8] & Mary[9]

Ever yours affectionately

Anne McKean[10]

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[1] Sarah (McCullagh) Whiteside

[2] Africa trip is mentioned in other letters

[3] Mary “Mollie” Menary, later to marry James Wright

[4] Mary (Jackson) (Menary) Griffin

[5] I have her father’s mother to be Jane REED (or REID)

[6] Mrs JACKSON – which one? There is a Robert McKEAN (1789-1837) husband of Anne JACKSON (1799-1829) who in turn is the daughter of a James JACKSON and a Mary KYDD. This Robert McKEAN would be the grandfather of the letter writer, Anne McKEAN. Pursuing this link could become interesting.

[7] I am unsure how all this fits in: Mary Jane “Jeannie” Gilmore (daughter of Eliezer Gilmore & Sarah Jackson) married Thomas Bartley. Then there is John Robert Bartley in Jeannie’s Birthday Book., as well as Bartley’s Grove near Ballybay.

[8] Thomas Clair WHITESIDE, son of Sarah WHITESIDE

[9] Mary Ione WHITESIDE, daughter of Sarah WHITESIDE

[10] Anne McKEAN, daughter William McKEAN and Mary Anne Jane BARTLEY