M M Rutherford & Co.,

General Merchants

Ballibay

22 August 1894

Dear Sir

In reply to yours in which you acknowledge the £25 I sent you. I really couldn’t send you the £15 for quarter I have not the cash I am now in [????] and I sometimes get it hard to meet my a/c The land Gray[1] holds in [Tossy] he has not paid one penny of rent since 1888 and the same [he] has done with Mills[2] [???] and Mr Hubbard[3]. Mr McWilliam[4] has entered a [call] against them for you and Mills [???] and I expect they will pay with costs the tenants that E W Gray[5] put in the land went into the Courts and got it reduced near the half so he [wrote] us to pay our share of the costs and take the reduced rent I believe we will have to take the reduced rent but we will not pay Mr Wright[6] costs when the matter is settled I will write you at once In fact I have sent you more cash than I received off the tenants for the past three years I neednt speak to your brother James[7] on the matter he is [getting] the [world] tight enough himself I dont like the way he is doing. Hoping you and family are well.

Yours sincerely

M M Rutherford[8]

To Mr T McCullagh[9]

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[1] Possibly E.W. GRAY

[2] MILLS (?)

[3] HUBBARD (?)

[4] possibly Russell MCWILLIAMS

[5] See Murnane, “At the Ford of the Birches” page 479. Of interest, amongst the tenants in the property accounts as well as Gray there are the Duffy brothers. I wonder if they are connected to the Felix Duffy on page 474?

[6] The Wright family figures in various intermarriages, but I am in the dark here This one may simply be coincidental

[7] James McCullagh, brother to Sarah (McCullagh) Whiteside

[8] M.M. RUTHERFORD – land agent and merchant.

[9] All of Rutherford's letters were to Thomas McCullagh (1854-1920), brother to Sarah (McCullagh) Whiteside. By the time his son, Alexander James MCCULLAGH inherited the property, William MARTIN was handling the property management