The Parkinsons of County Down

View of Quoile Castle from Wikipedia

Thanks to the Ros Davies County Down website,  it emerges that the Edward Parkinson who wrote about the West family was born in 1866, the son of John Parkinson and Frances Edgar. He was a mason in the Downpatrick Lodge and died in 1914. He wrote about Downpatrick history and masonry, as well as the West family.

An ancestor, again named Edward Parkinson married Jane West of Quoile Castle on 24 Jun 1718 at Downpatrick Church of Ireland. 

Samuel Parkinson was born in Inch in 1843. He was the son of Clement Parkinson & Margaret Thompson. He married Mary Jane Clockie of Kilwinning, Scotland in 1874. He was the father of John Parkinson who was born in 1874 and  became a Muslim writer and scholar, and who composed the poem that was copied into the previous entry.

Both Edward and John Parkinson by the look of it were descendants of the West family of Quoile Castle and hence also distant cousins of Godfrey West and his descendants.