The Death of Maria West

With the death of Maria West in 1846, the direct Irish ancestry of our family comes to a close. She was the last member of the line to have been born and lived there, and with the final sale of her lands, all family relationships with the island ended for good. 

For sure, those lands had been acquired by dubious means, through colonization, confiscation and thereafter purchase from revenue accrued from a major smuggling enterprise. 

Copied from: http://www.mcmurray.info/genealogy/Ireland/default.htm

It is hard not however when travelling through the beautiful and luxuriant countryside of County Down and gazing over the wide expanse of Strangford Lough not to feel just a slight pang of regret for lost heritage – however ill-gotten that heritage may have been. 

And we should spare a thought for poor Maria, who as she moved through life in London seemed to have no-one around her who could have remotely understood the world she grew up in, much as she might have tried to regale them with tales of the Hadzors in Gibraltar, or the Wests and their castles, and the Potters and their lands, and the Nevins and their Presbyterian theology, and so much more above and beyond. 

Maria would have been buried in Stoke Newington, possibly in the St. Mary Church graveyard, under Church of England rites. The Church of Ireland would, for Maria, have long since been a mere figment of a forgotten past.