1941 Oct 11 Portadown News
Replying to Mr. R. Symington’s letter of the 15th inst., asking where Stonewall’s father was born, I can assure him that he was born in Mercer Stevensons’s[1] old house beside old Cooshe house lately owned by Moses Jackson Birches. Stonewall’s father was Thomas Jackson[2]. Many people now living at the Birches remember the old house[3]. If he will call with Mr. John Jackson Coosh House Birches, he will gladly show him where the old house stood.
If anyone can furnish authentic stories about it, I shall be glad if they will send them to my sister, Mrs. Eddie Uprichard[4], Clonmacate, or to me.
Moses Jackson[5]
Colin View, Maze, Hillsboro
[1] Mercer Stevenson (1837-1887) He died June 30, 1887, age 50 and a widower, at the Armagh Infirmary, and was of Tartaraghan.
[2] Thomas JACKSON (?-?) NOTE: Other genealogies, more likely to be accurate, have Stonewall’s father as Jonathon JACKSON (b. 25 Sep 1790, Randolph Co. WV.
[3] The old House. [Quoting from History of Milltown Parish by Coffey.] Stonewall Jackson, one of America’s most illustrious soldiers, and John Jackson, King William the Third’s personal bodyguard at the battle of the Boyne, 1690…. The old home of Stonewall Jackson’s people was a house which used to stand between Jimmy Waugh’s and Miller Turkington’s. The position indicated was at the top of the small hill above Jackson’s corner at the Birches in the townland of Ballinary [Ballynarry, Parish Tartaraghan, Barony Oneilland West, Co Armagh]. This house was in possession of the Jacksons until the last century, when it was sold to William Stevenson. Mercer Stevenson occupied it in the memory of the older folk. The Ulster Jacksons: From Cumbria and the Whitehouse, Shenandoah and Australia. D.J. McCartney. Published by Carrickfergus Borough Council. 1997. p 32
[4] Mary Alice Uprichard née JACKSON b Feb 19, 1890 dau of Moses JACKSON (1846-1925) and Anne JACKSON (1850-1925). NOTE: I have yet to find a marriage cert.
[5] Moses JACKSON (1876-1956)