Disgraceful Histories

For this post I'm digging back further into history - or even myth - but the story starts just yesterday when I was chatting with a new Facebook friend. I was telling her about my blogging activity and when she learned that I was a Crozier she remarked that my surname, like her own, Hall, came from the Borders (the area around the English Scottish border, that is). They numbered among the Border Reiver families who raided and thieved along the border particularly in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Other prominent names included Forster, Hume, Kerr, Charlton, Scott, Johnstone, Maxwell, Eliot and the mighty Armstrongs.

All this brought to mind the Border ballad, "The Death of Parcy Reed", which involves both Croziers and Halls. The ballad tells the story of how the Croziers were at feud with Parcy Reed, the head of the Reed family. They persuaded another family, the Halls, to invite Parcy Reed out for a day's hunting and lure him into a trap laid by the Croziers. When the hunting party reached a desolate spot high on the border along came a party of Croziers. The Halls fled and poor old Parcy Reed was murdered.
Interestingly, it was the Halls' reputation that suffered most as a result of this occurrence. The local population and the balladeer both seem to have taken at least as dim a view of treachery as of murder and the Halls were branded 'the false Halls'.

Is the ballad based on a real event? It's not certain but in the context of border history at the time the story is at least plausible. There are a number of versions of the ballad - here's a link to one of them.

If this has whetted your appetite for more tales of murder, adventure and derring-do from the Borders you could do no better than read George MacDonald Fraser's The Steel Bonnets, HarperCollins; New Ed edition (9 Mar 1989).

So, are the Moorfield Croziers descended from bandits and murderers? To find out more read the next exciting episode!

Willie Crozier

Arthur and I were in Enniskillen last weekend visiting Jean and Robert McFarland. I came across a copy of Come Listen a While, a book about Trillick written by Michael McCaughey, published in 1992. We all knew the McCaughey family well although Michael served on the Garda (the Irish Police) for many years so we didn't see him as much as his other brothers and sisters.

Anyway, leafing through the book I came across a section about our grandfather, Willie, and our father Jim so I'm transcribing it here with my comments and corrections in brackets.

 When you remember that in 1900 Tyrone had 25,000 horses and 1,500 asses, you can imagine how busy the blacksmiths was and Crozier's forge in the town had a regular visit from every farmer in the locality. Willie Crozier had emigrated to America in the 1900's as did seven other members of his family and returned to Ireland on his honeymoon in 1912. It turned out to be one of the longest honeymoons on record for Willie stayed at home and established Crozier's forge, a popular calling place for many generations of people in this locality. His anvil, still well preserved, (I now have it here in Randalstown) cost £5 from Booth brothers in Dublin and he was the first blacksmith in this area to have a coiling machine for cart wheels. In addition to shoeing horses, often for more than twelve hours a day, he also made spades, shovels, pick-axes, pitch-forks, scythes, bill-hooks, harrows, gates and drill ploughs. As a new machine or implement came on the market, he was able to apply his natural mechanical brain to repairing it or making parts for it and when tractors came into use, he was quickly able to repair these also. At the highly skilled job of shoeing cart wheels, he was the best around and was never too hard to pay, charging as little as two shillings for putting on a set of horse shoes up to the 1914-18 war years. He was something of an all-rounder in that he could dislodge potatoes or turnips from an animal's throat by means of a specially designed rubber tube and he regularly pulled teeth by tying the tooth to the anvil by means of a hemp cord and rushing to the anvil with a red hot iron, forcing the patient to jump backwards - minus the tooth. The water in his iron trough could cure warts, ringworm and sprains and Willie was also a fine musician, having bought a second-hand Stradivarius violin in New York which had been made in 1730. (We had the violin assessed some years ago and were disappointed but not surprised to learn that it was one of many fakes produced around the end of the 19th century - which, I suppose, still makes it an antique. The violin is now in Winnipeg with my Uncle Bill.)

Willie's son Jim displayed his father's mechanical versatility, being the first man to sell and repair bicycles in the town, had the first charger for the wet batteries used in the old radios, repaired old Coleman petrol lamps and Tilly oil lamps and was a keen photographer. He inherited his father's musical talents, playing in Trillick Brass Band, which was for many years one of the best bands in Tyrone or Fermanagh. (I don't think this is right. Daddy played the cornet in Ballyreagh Silver Band for over forty years but I never heard of Trillick Brass Band.) Jim became our first TV dealer and carried on a most successful TV business until his retirement a few years ago. Jim has the proud distinction of being our senior citizen, residing at Crozier's corner for close on eighty years and giving many a helping hand and friendly smile to passing generations through those changing years. You can gather just how much things have changed when you hear Jim recall that in 1915 an 8-stone pack of flour and a 2-cwt bag of Indian Meal (corn meal) cost £1, 2 bottles of Bushmills cost 9 shillings, 2 bottles of claret cost three shillings and four pence and 1 dozen ale cost three shillings and six pence! (I'm amazed to find my father would have remembered the price of claret from when he was 2 years old!)