On 2 March 1836 Thomas Handley, agent, reported to Lord Downshire concerning a proposed reservoir at Lough Island Reavey, in the parish of Kilcoo, County Down:

Mr Fairbairn’s calculations all go to prove the superiority of water over steam for the purposes of mill owners.

Fairbairn, a leading engineer, estimated the lough was then 92 statute acres and when the reservoir was formed to the height he proposed, of 35 feet above the existing level, the whole reservoir would cover 253 acres and every foot in height would contain more that eleven millions of cubic feet.  His estimate of the expense of constructing the reservoir was £12,652, which included the purchase rights of 104 Irish acres at ten guineas per acre, and the making of two miles of road.  Fairbairn reckoned that Lough Island Reavey would play a key role to supply 930 horse power, twelve hours a day, for eight months of the year for an annual outlay of £1860.  This, he reckoned, would save the mill proprietors of the Bann of £8260 per annum. 

How did this industrialisation policy, by landlords, affect the Kilcoo community, which included many McCartan families?  

Lough Island Reavy skirts the main Castlewellan/Rathfriland road.  The ordnance survey map of 1835 illustrates a crannog  and the surrounding fields are dotted with raths.  These antiquities symbolize a place of importance in the early Christian Period and before.  Why this concentration of ancient sites around Kilcoo?  The answer may be twofold.  Firstly the gap through the mountains at Kilcoo was strategically important and secondly it was a well-sheltered location.  The latter was proved when the big wind struck Ireland, on the 6^th January 1839.  Just six miles away in the Forde Desmesne, thousands of trees were flattened and churches in Drumaroad and Ballynahinch suffered major structural damage.  Surprisingly to many, Kilcoo escaped this devastation.  In nearby Burrenwood Estate, just four trees gave way, whilst the roof thatch on the house remained intact.  Surrounded by Mountains, Kilcoo is sheltered from northerly and westerly winds.  This and a plentiful supply of wildlife lured habitation from the earliest times.  Then, in the early 17^th century, the McCartans arrived there in abundance.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

On a map of County Down take an imaginary line between Slieve Donard and Slieve Croob.  Between these two peaks are the townlands of Burrenban, Burrenreagh, Slievenalargy, Ballymagreehan, Ballymaginaghy, Magheramayo, Leitrim, Backaderry, Slievanisky, Clonvaraghan and Drumnacoyle.  Although all of these townlands are in Iveagh (McGuinness country), they all had huge clusters of McCartan families during the 18^th and 19^th century.  How did this come to be?  This can be explained through  occurrences in Ireland’s history.

Prior to the Nine Years War 1594-1603, the McCartans ruled in their own patrimony in nearby Kinelarty.  This territory stretched from Lough Henney in the North to Dundrum Bay in the South and from Kilmore in the East to Slieve Croob in the West.  During the 17^th century, English and Scottish colonists dispossessed the McCartan.  Thus ensued a time of major change for the native Irish. 

The transformation commenced with the Ulster colonisation of 1605, then the wars of 1642; followed by Cromwells transplantation to Connaught in 1653 and the Williamite Wars of 1690.  During these encounters the McCartan territory was frittered away and eventually they were driven from the fertile soil of Kinelarty to seek refuge elsewhere.  At that time their near neighbours, the Maginesses, had some influence with the colonisers through marriage and arranged accommodation for many McCartan families in Iveagh.  Many settled in the Parish of Kilcoo, where they became subservient to English landlords.  In 1810, seven McCartan families lived on the Northern shore of Lough Island Reavey, each with just three acres of land.  Across the Lough in Burrenreagh there was a similar number, each with an average holding of around ten acres.

At this time five English landlords had estates converging on Kilcoo.  They were the Clanwilliam Estate (Meade), Downshire Estate (Hill),  Annesley Estate, Ward Estate, and Rodden Estate.  During the early colonisation of 1607 it was unlawful for landlords to have native Irish as tenants.  It was only when English workers found Ireland an unattractive proposition the Irish were reluctantly considered.  Scarcity of labour encouraged landlords to flaunt the law by employing and giving leases to the Native Irish.

Moses Hill, the founder of the Downshire Estates, arrived in Carrickfergus in 1603 with just his personal belongings and became an officer in Chichester’s army.  At this time English Officers were paid by grants of land.  Hills first grant was of a monastic settlement at Drumalys, near Larne, and then another at Stranmillis near Belfast.  On both sites he expelled the monks and used their monasteries for business purposes.  Hill rented the buildings as retail outlets, which gave him a healthy cash flow and the means to purchase more land cheaply from his fellow officers.  This and speculative marriages enabled the Hill family to build a huge land bank throughout Ireland.  A huge monument to Arthur Hill,  third Marquess of Downshire (1809-1945), was built in 1847.  His outline dominates the skyline near their mansion in Hillsborough.    Amongst his tenants, in County Down, were numerous McCartan families. 

The 18th Century

The Irish Registry of Deeds was founded in 1708 for the:

 ‘Public Registering of all deeds, conveyances and wills that shall be made of any manors, lands tenements or Heridaments …for securing purchases, preventing forgeries and fraudulent gifts and conveyances of lands tenements and heridaments, which have frequently practices in the Kingdom, especially by Papists, to the great prejudices of the Protestant interest thereof’.

The first grantor for the townlands of Ballymoney, Slievenalargy, Ardaghy, and Drumlee was Moses Hill.  Hill appointed as immediate lessor an O’Neill whose ancestors, the Clanaboy O'Neills, had been dispossessed in Castlereagh.  Throughout the years the O’Neills sublet these lands to accommodate the native Irish.  This goes some way to explain the preservation of an Irish culture in the Kilcoo community and its exiles, which has survived to the present time.

During the 18^th century the population of Ireland doubled.  With plenty of potato plots and a thriving cottage linen industry families could survive on a few acres.  But this did not last.   The American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars were preceded by an economic slump.   Emigration could not be considered due to blockades on shipping.  Scarcity of land became a major problem in Kilcoo.  Attempts were made to cultivate in the uplands and family farms were divided to become smaller and uneconomical.  Added to this was the penal legislation, which deprived natives of ownership and insisted on short leases. 

The 19th Century

The greatest setbacks to the population of  Kilcoo, during this period, can be related to three factors: the reservoir, new technology and famine.   Machines were installed in factories that could do the work of a hundred cottage weavers.   Water, harnessed in Lough Island Reavey helped power machinery along the banks of the River Bann, through Banbridge and as far as Gilford.  Thus the people of Kilcoo were deprived of a vital source of income.  With insufficient good land to go round, only competitive work in quarries and gravel pits was available. Research has shown a time of  hardship and deprivation, commencing around 1830.     

Persistent civil strife added to the difficulties.  Nicholas Crickard, in his Ballad of Dolly’s Brae, has recorded his account of the troubled times.  Famine diseases affected Kilcoo long before 1847 whilst the landlords  found cattle more profitable than people.  With food shortages and eviction notices on the horizon emigration became the best option.  With a sharp increase in trans-Atlantic shipping from 1820, America became an increasingly popular destination.  .

Emigration from Kilcoo first began to gather momentum in the 1830s.  Letters home described a place of opportunity where land was cheap and work aplenty.  Writers also recommended the best route to travel. Thus evolved into a system of chain migration from Kilcoo to Mid-West America.   

Emigrants took packet ships to Liverpool.  From Liverpool most sailed to New York.  Wisely they avoided overcrowded New York, Philadelphia and Boston.  On arrival most travelled by train over the high Appalachian Mountains to Pittsburgh.  With no railway west of Pittsburgh till 1850 they then travelled by riverboat down the Ohio to the Mississippi.  From there, they went up the Mississippi to the city of St Louis to where the Missouri joined the great river.  Beyond St Louis lay the vast plains of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsen and Minnesota, and further west the mountainy regions of Dakota and Montana.  

During the year 1850 the number of persons killed by steamboat disasters in the United States was nearly 700, and about half that number more or less severely wounded. The number of accidents was 117, and the amount of capital destroyed over one and a half millions of dollars.

Hundreds from the parish of Kilcoo embarked on this demanding trek. Families from Burrenbreagh and Slievenalargy called McCartan and McClean ; From Tullyree the O’Preys; From Ardaghy and Drumlee the Savages and Doughertys,  from Ballymoney and Dromena  the Rushs and Morgans; from Moneyscalp and Foffany, the Walshes and Brannigans; from Ballymagreehan, Ballymaginthy and Magheramayo the McCartans, McCrickards and McGradys.   In America today their descendants are spread all along the banks of the Mississippi.  Many are unaware of their Kilcoo ancestry. 

In the hills around Kilcoo, many pre-famine house structures have survived.  More so than in any other district in Ireland.  Down through the years local family traditions have preserved the walls and especially the old hearthstones of these monuments to the past.  

Lough Island Reavey presently supplies water to the households in mid-Down.  But this reservoir was not originally intended for this purpose.  In 1837, a supply from local unpolluted spring wells was sufficient to serve the area.  Lough Island Reavey was a commercial enterprise and played a vital role in the development of the linen industry along the banks of the Bann.   The repercussions of this in Kilcoo were soup kitchens, government work schemes, and hardship leading to emigration.  Where today are the descendants of the McCartan families that endured harshness on the shores of Lough Island Reavey?   Those cities along the banks of the Mississippi could provide the answer.