In the 1980s, my parents were directed by locals to the O’Mullan homestead. They didn’t realize it at the time but they photographed a cottage that was occupied by my great-grandfather’s siblings – Pat, Elizabeth and Mary Anne. My direct ancestors never lived there.

My great-grandfather, Daniel William Mullan, was living on his own in Armoy in 1896, when he was 25 years old and still single. He probably moved into Armoy when he started working with the post office – and that could have been well before the age of 25, I just don’t know. I do know he lived there from at least 1896 until 1909, when he moved briefly to Belfast, before spending the rest of his life in Ballymoney.

My great-grandfather’s siblings, on the other hand, continued to live with their father in Moyaver Upper until his death in 1903. According to the 1901 census, their father’s cottage at Limepark had 2 rooms, stone walls and a slate roof. Patrick – the eldest – spent the early part of his life working at the Limepark dairy.

The siblings left Limepark sometime before 1911. That census shows Patrick working as an auxiliary postman and living with his 2 sisters in a stone house in Moyaver Lower with a slate roof, 4 rooms and 5 front windows. There was a cow shed and a piggery attached. This is the cottage my parents photographed in the 1980s.

It’s hard to know if Pat owned the cottage. Possibly he did, and possibly he didn’t. There were land reforms after partition – essentially requiring that land be made available for sale to resident tenants – but I don’t know if Pat or his sisters ever had the money to exercise that right.

My parents were told that the cottage was absorbed into the property of the neighboring Clark family, although the Clark’s may have owned it all along. The paper trail would be held onsite at the Public Records Office in Belfast. Nothing is currently available online.

I know a bit about their life after moving there. I know they entered garden competitions almost every year in the 1920’s and won district prizes at least 9 times. I know 2 British soldiers stole Pat’s bicycle in 1927 – it was parked outside his house – and they spent 16 days in jail for it. I also know that Pat was really well liked by everyone because when he died in 1933 his old landlord at Limepark paid for a glowing obituary to be printed about him in the regional press.

The sisters lived on at the cottage until their deaths in 1954 and 1966. None of them ever married or had children and the cottage seems to be long gone now.