More on the Ulster Covenant

At the time of the Ulster Covenant most of Joseph and Catherine Crozier's children were in America. One son, Alec was living at home in Moorfield. Another, Joseph, had spent some time in America but by 1912 was back in Ireland, married with a young son, Willie, working as a blacksmith and living in the townland of Meenagowan near Dromore. He also signed the Ulster Covenant and the image of the page bearing his signature is below.

My grandfather, Willie Crozier was still in America but would return to Ireland in November 1912 with his new bride, Margaret Caldwell, supposedly on honeymoon. Instead they remained in Ireland, settling in Trillick where Willie established a blacksmith's forge. Other relations of mine who signed were my maternal grandfather, William Johnston, and my great grandfather, James Caldwell, father of Margaret Caldwell Crozier.

The Ulster Covenant

In 2014 The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) digitised the documents containing all the signatures of those who signed the Ulster Covenant back in 1912. The Covenant was a mass petition from the Unionist community against a Bill to give a limited measure of autonomy, known as 'Home Rule' to Ireland. You can find out more about the issue on the PRONI website.

I had never searched the digital archive until a few days ago and when I did I found several Croziers and indeed other ancestors not in the Crozier line. In 1912 there were two Joseph Croziers living on two farms in Moorfield. One was my great grandfather, the husband of Catherine. The other was his nephew, the son of his brother, Robert. Both of them signed the Covenant. Alexander (Alec) Crozier, my great grandfather's son and grandfather's brother, who would eventually inherit his father's farm, also signed it. They all signed in Kilskeery, just a few miles from Moorfield. The signatures of the two Joseph Croziers appear on different pages so we can't be absolutely sure which one is which but Alexander's signature appears on the same page as one of them and I would assume that he signed on the same day as his father.
You can see their signatures on the image below:

Women were encouraged to sign a Declaration, which differed somewhat from the Covenant itself, in which they undertook "to associate with the men of Ulster in their uncompromising opposition to the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament". Catherine Crozier signed the Declaration. Her address is listed as Kilskeery rather than Moorfield but I am satisfied that this is Joseph's wife as there are no other Catherine Croziers recorded as living in the area in the census of the previous year. The page bearing her signature is shown below.

Even More Children of Moorfield!

I'm so pleased that more Children of Moorfield have joined the group on Facebook and would like to thank David Crozier for posting this photo of his grandfather Charles Crozier. Charles was the son of James John, the eldest of Joseph and Catherine's nine children and the man who wrote the document that appears on this site's A Basic Family History page. He emigrated to the US in 1887 and settled in Central Islip on Long Island. We owe him a lot for all we know about our family's roots.