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.