The Kelly - Healy Farm at Baltiboys

When the transition was taking place on the Kelly farm at Blackditches, another Kelly farm was being targeted to eventually pass into the ownership of the Healy family. Situated on the estate of Elizabeth Stannus, in the district of Boystown, now Baltyboys, it spread over 125 acres and was identified as plot number 19. The earliest tenants recorded of this farm were Hugh Kelly and his wife Mary. Hugh was the son of John and Mary and had come there from his home in Blackditches. The family headstone in Ballymore Eustace Churchyard reads:       (Click once to enlarge lettering.)

Mary is buried here but is not recorded on the headstone and after a hundred years, the grave was opened again for the burial of Sarah Healy of Blessington Post Office, who died on 15th February 1957, also her husband John who died 29th April 1980 and their daughter Mary who died 15th September 2005, aged 74 years.

As Hugh died in 1844, he does not appear on the Griffith Valuation Records. In 1865 his wife Mary is listed as the tenant of the 125 acre farm on which she paid a yearly charge of £79. By 1874 the tenancy had transferred to her late husbands cousin John Kelly. In 1878, John left all this behind him and, on getting married to the widow Anne Egan, returned to the home of his parents a short distance away in Baltyboys. (See Tom Kelly story)

When John left here, the tenancy transferred to James Brady. James was Mary’s son in law, married to her daughter Elizabeth, and when he died in 1893 it changed to His Reps. In 1901 it changed again from His Reps to Elizabeth and in 1912 from Elizabeth to her son James Brady. At this time James was the full owner of the farm and the census of 1911 shows him as aged 28 and living with his brother Hugh, aged 15. In 1918 an entry shows that the farm had become the property of John Healy of Blackditches, who was then 28 years of age, a single man, and he remained so for at least eight years.

So what was the Brady family involvement that, having lasted for forty years, had come to such an abrupt end when the last of them there was still in his mid thirties ? Were they regarded as a family stopgap to prepare the way for the arrival of John Healy, after all his grandmother was Hugh Kelly’s sister ? Had she been alive at this time, what would she have thought of how it had all panned out for her daughters’ two sons Peter and John and whatever had become of the other two, Patrick and Thomas ?

Over the years that followed John Healy had his eye on another plot of ground that was in Hugh Kelly’s name, his grave in Ballymore Eustace Churchyard. As we have seen already, when the time came he had it opened again for the burial of his wife Sarah in 1957, followed by his own mortal remains in 1980 and those of their daughter Mary in 2005. 

This farm was no exception to the march of progress when in 1940 the ESB built the fence across it, taking 64 acres of good land to facilitate the flooding of the area. This farm was still in the ownership of John Healy in 1963 but for whatever reason a slippage in proper maintenance and production brought the attention of the ever vigilant Land Commission and they moved to take over practically all of the remaining 60 acres and divide it out to others. A small portion of the farm still in their possession was the cause of friction and discord among members of the Healy family, in arguments over entitlement to its ownership.

When we look at what happened here in Baltyboys and see how the apparent lack of farming skills lead to the eventual loss of the land, one wonders what high expectations John Healy and his family had of owning and working a much larger farm, had it come their way at Newtown Great. Perhaps the idea was to sell it on, as Alice Mullee did.

Returning again to the Headstones in Ballymore Eustace Churchyard we note that they all played a part in the formation of the various stories. Thanks for this is due to Patrick Clarke who diligently sought them out and recorded the epitaphs thereon. Sadly the three people listed as having the headstones erected to their loved ones, were not themselves recorded as having been interred there. Where would Thomas Kelly of Blackditches be buried, except with his parents John and Mary ? Where is the burial place of John Healy and his wife Julia (Mullee), very likely Kilbride Cemetery ? Likewise where is John Kelly buried, did he ask to be buried with his first wife Eliza and their two children in Ballymore ? Or did his second wife Anne want to lay aside him or her first husband Bartholomew Egan, and where did she bury him ? Hugh Kelly’s wife Mary is certainly buried under that fine headstone she had erected in memory of her husband and children, long before the Healy’s arrived on top of them. Finally where is Tom Kelly buried ?