The Kelly/Healy Farm in Blackditches

The Kelly family associated with the district of Baltyboys in County Wicklow can be traced back to 1760. Right through the 1800’s they were tenants of three substantial farms of land. All three families were related to each other and in the story we are about to tell it will be seen how it all came together and how it also came asunder as the name Kelly vanished from the scene.

Part of the story will emerge under two separate titles ;

“Tom Kelly and the Egans of Baltyboys”

“The  Kelly – Healy Farm at Baltyboys”

This segment of the story will be of interest to followers of the Mullee/Molloy story and in particular the Mullee family of Newtown Great Co. Kildare and their Kelly relations.

Towards the final stages of the family ownership of this fine farm, two men, John Healy and Tom Kelly, were destined to play a part in its devolution. Both of them were related to the Mullee family and their stories will tell how they became involved.

John Healy was a nephew of the last incumbent Patrick Mullee (1872- 1939) as his mother Julia was Patrick’s sister. As we have seen the expectancy that John had of getting the farm at Newtown Great came undone when Patrick died without making a will. The Healy/Mullee family connection began when John Healy’s father, also John, a farmer’s son from Sandybanks, made his way across West Wicklow to the area known as Blackditches, situated just past Valleymount on the way to the Wicklow Gap. He would have been a farm servant on the 62 acre farm on the estate of the Marquis of Waterford, in the tenancy of Thomas Kelly, a single man aged about seventy years, and where his parents John and Mary were tenants, back to the early 1800’s.

If he did not already know, John would soon learn that Thomas had a sister Mary, married to a substantial farmer Peter Mullee, with lands on the Downshire Estate, at Newtown Great. Another sister was Anne Glynn who had a guest house in Dalymount, Phibsboro, in Dublin. Another brother. Hugh, will feature in the story of his own farm at Baltyboys Lower.

There is no doubt that Mary would have had plans for what might eventually become of this family farm, where she had been born and reared at Blackditches. Her eldest daughter, Julia, was approaching full age (21) and although John Healy was 23 years older than her and not in possession of any tenancy of his own, a match was made between them. What better way to start life together than for John to move up from the settle bed to the bridal suite in the same house. Their marriage was solemnised in the Chapel of Ease at Terenure, in Dublin on the 23rd of September 1884. The ceremony was conducted by Father Patrick Hanly P.P.

Wait a minute now while we survey this situation. One would have assumed that Father Patrick Hanley was Parish Priest of Terenure. Well he was not because he was in fact the Parish Priest of Blessington. He only came to Blessington in 1882 and was in such poor health that he was unable to conduct the business of opening a new school and had to seek the help of Rev. Edward Rowan, the Parish Priest of Valleymount. So to September 23rd  1884 and we ask why did the Mullee family expect the Rev. Father to travel to Terenure to marry their daughter to John Healy, when it could all have been done in Cross Chapel, the local church of all the participants. All that Terenure had to offer by way of a church for this special occasion was a small Chapel of Ease that had been built originally as a girls school in 1866 and was the only one in Terenure, until the present Saint Joseph’s was dedicated on April 24th 1904. Up to then Terenure was part of Rathfarnham parish. It must have been one of the last ceremonies Father Hanley conducted because he is recorded as dying and interred in the grounds of Cross Chapel and his replacement, Father Thomas Curran, selected and in position, all in 1884. The witnesses were both Mullees, Patrick and Mary J. and assuming they were Julia’s siblings, they would have been teenagers. The marriage certificate tells us that John was a farmer (well not quite yet) and his place of residence was Blackditches. His father was Patrick Healy, described as a farmer.

John and Julia had four sons as follows;

    Patrick (1886) – Peter (1887) – Thomas (1889) – John (1890)

Looking back at the history of this Kelly farm at Blackditches we begin with the epitaph on the family headstone in Ballymore Eustace Churchyard, which reads as follows: