Florence Mary Wilson

Florence Mary Addy was born in 1874 the daughter of Robert Charles Addy.  Her father was the mill manager of the Island Spinning Company;  a major Linen manufacturer,  established in 1867 by the Quaker Richardson family, it produced linen yarn and  plain cloth on power looms.  Production finally ceased at ‘the island’ in 1983.  The site now houses Lisburn’s Island Arts Centre. The family lived in Island House, close to the factory and the canal, in Lisburn.

Robert Charles Addy held at least one patient relating to linen production and was well-known amongst the merchant society of Belfast and the surrounding area.  He was an active mason and a member of the Orange Order.  His death was covered by the Belfast Newsletter, the major newspaper for the area, on 6th August, 1890.  He is described as ‘the most popular of our townsmen’ and an ‘efficient manager of the Island Spinning Company’s mills.’  It notes that he died in Saintfield after becoming ill on a journey to join his daughters in Newcastle, County Down.  It continues by saying that he was well-known in Belfast where  in his early career he held a position in the Malcolmson Mills on the Falls Road.  Its adds that the family had already been bereaved by the recent death of his wife.  He left three daughters and a son, Albert, who was at that time in the army.

The Addy family had  links to the linen trade during the 19th century. They had associations with the small town of Glenavy, close to Lough Neagh in Country Antrim, and to Loughgall in County Armagh, a small village best known for the founding of the Orange Order in the late eighteenth century. Her grandfather was Edward Lewis Addy, a Primitive Methodist preacher originally from Loughgall.   The Addy family was generally Methodist,  Florence was one of five children, three girls and two boys.  She was a well-educated woman, attending Friends’ School in Lisburn and then a girl’s boarding school in Londonderry.  In January 1898 she married Frederick Wilson in Shore Street Presbyterian Church in Donaghadee.  Her husband was a solicitor with offices in Bangor and Belfast; his father had been a tea merchant in Belfast.   In the 1901 Irish Census they have two daughters and son.  By 1911 there are four daughters and a different son.  On the 1911  census form it is noted she has six living children with two who have not survived.   Her husband died in 1915.

In the years after his death she remained at Groomsport Road in the Ballyholme area of Bangor, a small seaside town at the end of Belfast Lough.  Alice Milligan, the writer, lived nearby and was Florence’s friend and mentor.   After her husband’s death Florence wrote poems, stories and essays for a number of British and Irish magazines, including The Spectator and Westminster Gazette. Her writings deal with a range of topics including local history, folklore and the natural world.  She was adept at writing in the local dialect which she had heard amongst the servants and workers in her County Down childhood. It was a period when Ireland’s growing nationalist identity had attracted many writers including such major figures of W.B.Yeats and George Russell, who both praised her work.  Although from a Protestant background she wrote from a nationalist perspective, not uncommon in Ireland at that time and very much in keeping with her interest in the United Irishmen.   She admired Irish culture and saw artistic value in the folk traditions of the Irish peasantry.

She was an artistically gifted woman, not only a writer but a good amateur artist and musician.  She also had a scholarly interest in local history, antiquaries and archaeology.  She knew Francis Joseph Bigger, the notable Belfast antiquarian and, like her friend Alice Milligan, was  associated with his circle. A number of letters between her and Bigger are located in the Bigger Collection in Belfast Central Library.

In 1918 she published a collection of poems The Coming of the Earls which were highly influenced by the nationalist vision that was a feature of the period.  In this collection her most famous poem appeared, The Man from God Knows Where.  This poignant ballad concerns Thomas Russell, a major figure in the United Irishmen who was hung in Downpatrick in 1803.  One of the ‘heroes of the 98′ he was part of the Protestant tradition that fought for a United Ireland.  This aspect of Ulster history was a theme in the work of many of her associates.    The poem opens with a mysterious visitor arriving on a winter’s night at a snowy townland and being offered hospitality by the local people; it ends two troubled years later when the nameless narrator recognises the stranger as Russell, who is being publicly executed.   The ballad has remained popular and has been set to music.  With its subtle use of dialect and rousing theme it is her finest work and the one by which she is remembered.

Florence Mary Wilson died in 1946.  She is buried in Bangor’s Newtownards Road graveyard.

(Florence Mary Wilson is part of my tree through my husband.  Related names are Addy, Hayes, Lewis and possibly Canning).