The Allen family, Errigal, Ballygawley

Recollections of a happy childhood at my grandparent's farm - Errigle is more frequently now spelt as "Errigal" now

In my younger days, during the summer months when the school were closed for July and August, I was always staying at the farm, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I got involved in the everyday farming activities which included feeding the cattle, milking the cows, making hay, bringing turf from the bog, taking baskets of tea and bread to men in the field, mowing ben-weeds (ragwort), collecting eggs, driving the tractor, stacking corn, digging potatoes, delivering pigs, catching hens, spraying potatoes, taking the cow to the bull, etc. to name a few. There was no television, but there was so much to do that nobody was ever bored. In the evenings people would make their ceilidh, that is sit round the welcoming open fire or cast iron range, fuelled by the turf from the bog and ell yarns, the men principally would lead the conversion, and there would be a blue layers of pipe smoke round the living room, some would cut a bit of their Walnut plag and have a chew and it was occasioned by a spit towards the fire. Women were busy with knitting, embroidering or darning or they would go into the kitchen and produce some home made cakes or bread. There weren't any toys about, but you could have got things like an empty reel from sewing thread and a pencil and a rubber band and a nail and wound it up and got it to roll along the floor, or you could have got cardboard and made little model houses or cars and lorries.  We were never bored. The weather always seemed to be good, but if it was wet, there was some task or other to do indoors.  Granny Allen and Grandad Allen were very respected, though out of earshot, some of the younger members of the family referred to them as "The oul doll" or the "Oul fella", but if they thought that grandad was  close, he got "The boss". He was a bit frail in his older years, and had a bad chest, and smoking the pipe didn't help, he was never as content as spending all day in the barn round the corner "budding purties", that was taking out the shoots., prior to seeding in the fields.  Granny Allen was one of the kindest persons that I had the privilege to meet, she lived to a good age, but eventually died from a couple of strokes. They were never all that well off, but she always insisted on giving me half a crown, when my father and I came to see her on his motorbike. I always thought it strange to hear him saying that he was going home, even though our home was in Omagh.  Grandad Allen was fond of a bottle of stout and he stayed about the house on the 12th July celebrations, but some of the men coming back would smuggle him a wee drink, but Granny Allen wouldn't know about it.  One time Dennis and I came home from the town of Ballygawley after a band practice at Lisbeg Orange Hall, but it ended up in Gormley's pub on Church Street and we had what you would call "one over the eight", probably more me than  Dennis, because he could hold his drink very well, but we didn't know how to face granny Allen, so we ended up at Joe Allen's house, also in Errigle, and Ivy, his wife made us tea and ham sandwiches to help us sober up.  It was just one of the more light-hearted incidents that I can remember that we got up to. In fact in those days you would have driven more carefully and the cars weren't racers and if you were caught behind the wheel, you would have got a light ticking off by the boys in blue,  as some of them were nearly as bad themselves. My brother Charles and sister Elizabeth stayed there too, but I was there the most and my cousin Lawrence Allen from Belfast (Jim's son) did come for a couple of years; we probably learned some bad habits too, but it was a sort of a rebellion getting away from our parents;  some of my other cousins from Omagh used to call at Errigle, but not stay. I was reading in a bygones book called "Memories of Ballygawley" published by the Ballygawley Historical Society and they stated that people in the country areas, even though they had a physically demanding life in bygone times were more content than those living in the slums of Belfast, which I would entirely agree to. The nearest town to Errigle is Ballygawley, but in bygone days, the Allens used Augher and Clogher as their main shopping towns and Clogher was where they took animals to market. Glenhoy Presbyterian Church was their place of worship, but in latter years, burials were carried out at Ballynasaggart Church of Ireland, possibly because Glenhoy graveyard was running out of space.  Unfortunately the Presbyterian church records were destroyed by a Mrs. Dales, a disgruntled minister’s wife, after his death.

 Lately I have been contacted by my second cousin, once removed, Tony Allan from Hout Bay, South Africa. He has been desperately trying to trace his roots, and is the grandson of Robert Allen who migrated to South Africa before the turn of the century, and who erected a headstone in memory of his father Isaac Allen born in 1823 and who died in 1875. He was touring through Ireland in 2006 and passed by very close to Ballygawley en-route to Scotland, where he thought his kin originated from,  unaware of the situation. He was still none the wiser when he returned home to his native South Africa, but a shance meeting with a Tony Grimes led him to send off a few exploratory letters to Allens in the Ballygawley area and my cousin Russell Allen was one of them. Russell replied to him and when Tony saw the picture of the headstone, it confirmed that the Allens of Errigle were his relatives.  Subsequently. I was talking to Joan Allen, who is my second cousin, once removed, and I was able give her my email address and she put Tony in touch, and I was able to supply him with some pictures of the area and more importantly, I was able to send off a copy of the Allen Family Tree, that I had started  in November 1989, and this was largely because her father Joe (Joseph Allen) who carried a lot of this information in his head but at the time I was drawing it up he had transferred the information onto paper, so it is thanks to him that a lot of this information has been saved.  The family tree dates back to 1750 when Joseph Allen was born.  He had three sons Joseph Allen of Techany, Isaac Allen born 1787 of Errigle and Samuel Allen of Garvaghy. My my direct line from Isaac Allen is then Isaac Allen born in 1823 (Robert Allen's father), then Isaac Allen born in 1851, Alexander Allen born in 1889 and Isaac Allen, my father born in 1918.