The End of the County Down Lands

Time was fast running out for the family lands of County Down. Harriett Wombwell died in 1871, and left the proceeds of those lands to be divided amongst her children – once they had been sold off. 

Gracey tombstone just outside Downpatrick Cathedral.
Thomas Gracey was named in Harriett Wombwell's will
with regard to a not insignificant debt.

In her will, and for nearly the last time, the lands and people of Downpatrick float across the pages, from the legal specialists of Hugh and William Nevin Wallace to the famous Gracey family, a member of whom was in debt to Harriett to the not insignificant sum of 1000 pounds. 

And so, finally, we return to May Street, Belfast on the 1st of July 1881, and the final sale of the lands. It is hard by now to avoid the conclusion that the family members concerned would have been anything but absolutely delighted to get the lands off their backs in return for some hard cash in lieu. 

It was good riddance to Ireland, good riddance to the lands, and good riddance to certain Irish and semi-Irish ancestors who seemed to have done their very best to scandalize polite society with their reckless disregard for convention. 

No wonder in future years that no-one seemed willing or able to discuss the details of the West and Wombwell Irish lands, least of all lay claim to any kind of ancestral Irish identity. Indeed, there is no indication as to whether the later family of Robinsons, Bradleys and Owens had any knowledge of their relationship to the Hadzors, the Wests, the Dills, to Sir Richard Dawson Bates, or the Dr. Robert Foster Kennedy who treated Winston Churchill, or any of the other colourful characters who have drifted in and out of these entries.  

Catherine Haughton Dill and Jane Gordon Dill

The eight and ninth children of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul were: 

i. Catherine Haughton Dill (1861-1948)
ii. Jane Gordon Dill (1863-1947)

These two sisters looked after Robert Archer Kennedy after his mother died in Poland. After the death of their parents, the house at 3 Fisherwick Place, Belfast was sold. Jin and Kate, as they were known, then took the young Robert Archer Kennedy to Bangor, County Down, where they settled, back in the county of their West and Hadzor forebears.

The Bangor Coastline
By MartinRobinson at the English language Wikipedia,
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6800409
Katherine died at the Glenmoor Hotel in Newcastle, County Down.

The two sisters, neither of whom married, were the final two great-grandchildren of Susanna West.

Robert Foster Kennedy Draws Some Extreme Conclusions

Robert Foster Kennedy in later life. From a
Russian Neurology Site

Robert Foster Kennedy was married twice and died in New York in 1952. 

Some of the more controversial views that he held in the latter part of his career are summarised in his Wikipedia entry:

Kennedy supported widespread eugenical sterilization and castration.

At the 1941 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, he called for the extermination of incurably severely retarded children over the age of five. His goal was to relieve "the utterly unfit" and "nature's mistakes" of the "agony of living" and to save their parents and the state the cost of caring for them. He concluded, "So the place for euthanasia, I believe, is for the completely hopeless defective; nature's mistake; something we hustle out of sight, which should not have been seen at all." 

Foster Kennedy, while professor of neurology at Cornell University in New York, argued that all children with proven mental retardation ("feeblemindedness") over the age of five should be put to death.

These views earned him a mention in a much later article devoted mainly to such practices by the Nazis, and with the central topic of psychiatric genocide.

Neither Robert Foster Kennedy nor his first cousin, Sir Richard Dawson Bates would win too many plaudits for political correctness in our own day and age. Nonetheless, they certainly made an impact in their times.

Robert Foster Kennedy Saves The Free World

From his Wikipedia Entry

Robert Foster Kennedy was the youngest of the children of William Archer Kennedy and Hessie Foster Dill. He was a first cousin of Sir Richard Dawson Bates, and a fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen. He became a neurologist, first in London and subsequently in New York.

In an illustrious career, he succeeded in giving his name to the Foster-Kennedy syndrome, the Kaplan-Kennedy test and Kennedy's Syndrome. He was one of the first doctors to define shell shock during the First World War when he was working in France near the front. According to his entry in the Dictionary of Ulster Biography, his direct experience of the war destroyed his religious faith.

He returned to New York after the war, and became Professor of Neurology at Cornell. Amongst his patients were one Winston Churchill who had managed to collide with a taxi on a visit to New York in 1931. Needless to say, Churchill came off worse than the taxi. The great tactician and strategist had overlooked the fact that the Americans drove on the opposite side to the British. It seems that Churchill was quite severely injured and shaken up. He now had a scalp wound, two cracked ribs and pleurisy as well as shock and depression to contend with. Nonetheless, he was out of hospital in a week, and in this era of prohibition had secured himself exactly the prescription he needed to recuperate in the form of a note that stated:

This is to certify that the post-accident concussion of Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.

Churchill himself was aware that he had had a narrow escape and kept in contact with Kennedy right into the Second World War when he sought his opinion as to whether America would enter the war. 

For those fond of such scenarios, Churchill's accident and Kennedy's prompt treatment might just make for one of those great 'what if?' moments in history.

Kennedy also treated the US President, Franklin D Roosevelt. 

Hessie Foster Dill and William Archer Kennedy

Hessie Foster Dill was born in 1850. She was the fifth great-grandchild of Susanna West, and the last of those great-grandchildren to be born in Susanna's lifetime. She died in 1931. 

She married William Archer Kennedy on 7th September, 1871. 

According to The Dictionary of Ulster Biography, William was a factory manager in the linen industry, and the family lived on the Upper Shankhill Road in Belfast. Just after the birth of the youngest of their fifth children, William took the family to Poland to take up a post as manager of a linen factory. Hessie died of scarlet fever just months after they relocated and William sent whichever children were with them back to Ireland, to 3 Fisherwick Place in Belfast, there to live with their grandparents, Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul.

The original Linen Hall Library in 1888, shortly before its demolition
and replacement with Belfast City Hall.
From:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen_Hall_Library

It should be borne in mind that by the time the First World War broke out, Belfast was the biggest producer of linen in the world.

The Linen Hall library where Thomas Russell worked, and later Reginald Blackwood laboriously compiled family trees of the Hadzors, Wests, and so many others, owes its name to the association of Belfast with linen.

The Children of Catherine Haughton Rentoul and Robert Foster Dill

The children of Catherine Haughton Rentoul and Robert Foster Dill were: 

i. Susanna West Dill (1841-1931) married John McCrea
ii. Rev. Samuel Marcus Dill (1843-1924) married Agnes Graham Rowe (1855-1934)
iii. Mary Dill (1845-1931) married Richard Dawson Bates.
iv. Francis Nesbit Dill (1848-1901)
v. Hessy Foster Dill (1850-1931) married William Archer Kennedy
vi. James Chiseldon Gooch Dill (1856-1911)
vii. Robert Foster Dill (1858-1869)
viii. Catherine Haughton Dill (1861-1948)
ix. Jane Gordon Dill (1863-1947)

They are all third cousins once removed of Hetty Jane Owen. 

Presbyterian Meeting House in Fisherwick Place, Belfast, where Catherine Haughton Rentoul died. The family no doubt attended the church. Illustration copied from: An Extract of Reflection.