Mary Ann McCracken

McCracken was born in Belfast on 8 July 1770. Her father, Captain John McCracken, a devout Presbyterian of Scottish descent, was a prominent shipowner and a partner in the building in 1784 of the town's first cotton mill. Her mother Ann Joy, came from a French Huguenot family, which made its money in the linen trade and founded the Belfast News Letter. Unusually, before her marriage she had run her own milliner's shop and subsequently managed a small business manufacturing muslin.{{Cite book|last=Edna|first=Fitzhenry|title=Henry Joy McCracken|publisher=Talbot Press|year=1936|location=Dublin|pages=41}} From the publication of Common Sense (1776), Ann Joy was an ardent admirer of Thomas Paine and remained so until, in 1796, with The Age of Reason he turned his invective from aristocracy to religion{{cite book|last1=McNeill|first1=Mary|title=The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866|date=1960|publisher=Allen Figgis & Co|location=Dublin|pages=115}} (her daughter accounted the "infidel publication" a "pity").{{Cite book|last=McWilliams|first=Cathryn Bronwyn|url=https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/181458/mcwilliams_cathryn_bronwyn.pdf?sequence=1|title=The Letters and Legacy of Mary Ann McCracken (1770-1866)|publisher=Åbo Akademi University Press|year=2021|isbn=9789517659949|location=Åbo, Finland|pages=115, 578–579}}

Along with children of other enlightened Presbyterian families, Mary Ann and her elder brother Henry Joy ("Harry") attended David Manson's progressive "play school" in Donegall Street. In classrooms from which he sought to banish "drudgery and the fear of the rod", Manson offered "young ladies" the "same extensive education as the young gentlemen".{{Cite journal|last=Drennan|first=William|date=February 1811|title=Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Persons: David Manson|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30073837|journal=The Belfast Monthly|volume=6|pages=126–132|jstor=30073837|via=}}{{Cite journal|last=Metscher|first=Priscilla|date=1989|title=Mary Ann McCracken: A Critical Ulsterwoman within the Context of her Times|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1989_num_14_2_2552|journal=Études irlandaises|volume=14|issue=2|pages=(143–158) 146|doi=10.3406/irlan.1989.2552}} Mary Ann developed a love of mathematics and of literature.{{cite book|last1=Courtney|first1=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|date=2013|publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation|isbn=9781909556065|location=Belfast|pages=131}}

In 1788, brother and sister attempted a school of their own: a Sunday morning reading and writing class for the poor. It has been suggested they followed the example of Robert Raike's Sunday School movement in England{{Cite book|last=Stewart|first=A. T. Q.|title=The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down|publisher=Blackstaff Press|year=1995|isbn=9780856405587|location=Belfast|pages=55}} But unlike Raike who insisted on church attendance and catechism,{{cite book|last=Moses|first=Montrose J.|url=https://archive.org/details/childrensbooksa01mosegoog|title=Children's Books and Reading|publisher=Mitchell Kennerley|year=1907|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/childrensbooksa01mosegoog/page/n117 103]}} the McCrackens made no concessions to sabbatarian or sectarian sentiment. As a result, they were not long in session before the town’s Anglican rector (and Lord Donegall's factotum), William Bristow, appeared at the door of their Market House schoolroom and, with several stick-wielding ladies, put "the humble pioneers" to flight.{{Cite book|last=Pinkerton|first=William|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FwswAAAAMAAJ|title=Historical Notices of Old Belfast and its Vicinity|publisher=M Ward and Company|year=1896|location=Belfast|pages=188}}

The McCrackens were a political household in a town agitated by the American Revolution and by the low-level tenant insurgency of the surrounding countryside (in the year of Mary Ann’s birth, the Hearts of Steel had entered the town, besieged the barracks, burned the house of the wealthy merchant and land speculator, Waddell Cunningham, and sprung one of their number from prison).{{Cite book|last=Bardon|first=Jonathan|title=Belfast: an Illustrated History|publisher=Blackstaff Press|year=1982|isbn=0856402729|location=Belfast|pages=34–36, 47–51}} The family's minister at the Third Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street, Sinclair Kelburn was a strong supporter of the Volunteer movement. On the pretext of securing the Kingdom against the French in the American War, the volunteer militia or National Guard as it was later styled, allowed Presbyterians to arm, drill and convene independently of the Anglican Ascendancy. Kelburn preached in his uniform with his musket leaning against the pulpit door, and at Volunteer conventions urged the case for Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary reform.{{cite book|last1=Courtney|first1=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|date=2013|publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation|isbn=9781909556065|location=Belfast|pages=85–86}} Unable to "approve of hereditary legislators, because wisdom is not hereditary", Kelburn did not disguise his democratic and republican sympathies.{{Cite book|last=Gray|first=John|url=https://www.reclaimtheenlightenment.net/mary-ann-mccracken-pamphlet|title=Mary Ann McCracken|publisher=Reclaim the Enlightenment|year=2020|location=Belfast|pages=6}}

McCracken's niece, Anna McCleery relates that "reared among such influences," Mary Ann was "from her early years intensely interested in politics, and various political incidents, in which some of her relatives were concerned, became indelibly imprinted on her memory".McCleery, Anna (1896), "The Life of Mary Ann McCracken, the Sister of Henry Joy McCracken", in Robert Magill Young, Historical Notices of Old Belfast and its Vicinity, Belfast: Marcus Ward & Co., p. 180

In the 1790s, following their mother's example, McCracken and her sister Margaret started a small business that pioneered the production of patterned and checked muslin.[https://eprints.utas.edu.au/2772/1/Female_Merchants_in_the_BIa.pdf Gender in the Economy: Female Merchants and Family Businesses in the British Isles, 1600-1850, Pamela Sharpe p.22] Initially a small scale operation employing workers in their own homes, by 1809 having gathered and taught a number of young women to work at the tambour frame it had moved into factory production.{{Cite journal|last=Metscher|first=Priscilla|date=1989|title=Mary Ann McCracken: A Critical Ulsterwoman within the Context of her Times|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1989_num_14_2_2552|journal=Études irlandaises|volume=14|issue=2|pages=(143–158) 144|doi=10.3406/irlan.1989.2552}}

In 1815, amidst the post-war collapse in demand, they were obliged to close. But during earlier downturns in trade, the sisters had distinguished themselves as employers by refusing to cuts costs at the expense of their employees, among them young female embroiderers and apprentices.McNeill (1960), p. 246 Mary Ann "could not think of dismissing our workers, because nobody would give them employment".{{Cite web|title=Mary Ann McCracken|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zfkcscw/articles/z4y4vk7|access-date=2021-07-02|website=BBC Bitesize|language=en-GB}} The "sphere of woman's industry", she complained, "is so confined, and so few roads open to her, and those so thorny".{{Cite journal|last=Metscher|first=Priscilla|date=1989|title=Mary Ann McCracken: A Critical Ulsterwoman within the Context of her Times|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1989_num_14_2_2552|journal=Études irlandaises|volume=14|issue=2|pages=(143–158), 144|doi=10.3406/irlan.1989.2552}}

In the textile industry, McCracken witnessed the development that was beginning to isolate Belfast and its hinterland from the rest of Ireland: the accelerating application of machinery which expanded industry while holding down labour costs.O'Neill (1960), p. 133 When in the early 1790s linen and cotton weavers began to unionise in protest of stagnant wages and rising prices, in his News Letter her uncle, Henry Joy, objected that in competition with England, lower labour costs were Ireland's only "rational hope".{{Cite book|last=Gray|first=John|title=The San Culottes of Belfast: The United Irishmen and the Men of No Property|publisher=Belfast Trades Union Council and the United Irishmen Commemorative Society|year=2018|location=Belfast|pages=8–9}} On pages of the Northern Star her friends were divided. While Samuel Neilson (who had pledged his woollen business to establish the paper) proposed that Volunteers assist in enforcing the laws against combination; Thomas Russell urged labourers and cottiers to follow the weavers' example.{{cite web|last=Quinn|first=James|date=2002|title=Thomas Russell, United Irishman|url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/thomas-russell-united-irishman/|access-date=18 May 2020|website=historyireland.com}}

For her own part, McCracken was fascinated by the possibilities of mechanical substitutes for labour. Would it not be possible, she asked her brother, "to contrive some useful machinery to supply the use of horses and servants" and as a visitor to the Poorhouse, she was to press the guardians to see whether the washerwomen might be relieved by "any new constructed washing machines, or any for wringing". McCracken hoped for a future in which, by reducing drudgery and increasing output, mechanisation would afford workers the energy and the time for greater education and leisure.McNeill (1960), pp. 284, 132

From 1784, the musician and collector Edward (Atty) Bunting was thirty years a member of the McCracken household. Mary Ann and Harry attended the Harpist Festival Bunting staged for the benefit of the Belfast Charitable Society (and arranged to coincide with the town's Bastille Day celebrations) in July 1792. In 1808, with her Gaeilgeoir friends, the poet Mary Balfour and the brothers Samuel and Andrew Bryson,Courtnay (2013), p. 53 Mary Ann became a founding member of the Belfast Harp Society. For its short life-span to 1813, when a second festival was staged, Bunting was its musical director and Arthur O'Neill (under the patronage of his former pupil, Dr James MacDonnell) its resident master harpist. McCracken acted as Bunting's unofficial secretary and contributed anonymously to the second volume of his work The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1809.{{cite book|last=O'Byrne|first=Cathal|title=As I roved out|publisher=At the Sign of the Three Candles|year=1946|location=Dublin|page=192}}

The Belfast "renaissance of Irish music" has been seen as "the precursor by a century of the Irish Gaelic Revival".{{Cite book|last1=McNeill|first1=Mary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fe-iDwAAQBAJ&q=mary+ann+mccracken+bunting&pg=PT105|title=The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866: A Belfast Panorama|publisher=Allen Figgis|year=1960|isbn=9781788550840|location=Dublin|pages=84}} Advertised as an appeal to those "wishing to preserve from oblivion the few fragments which have been permitted to remain, as monuments to the refined taste and genius of their ancestors", Bunting's patriotic festival may have been more antiquarian than revivalist.{{Cite journal|last=Boydell|first=Barra|date=1998|title=The United Irishmen, Music, Harps, and National Identity|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30064324|journal=Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr|volume=13|pages=(44–51) 47|doi=10.3828/eci.1998.5 |jstor=30064324|s2cid=255973612 |issn=0790-7915}} But there was an interest in the command of the language: Irish classes were offered at the Harp Society.{{Cite book|last=Hutchison|first=W. R.|title=Tyrone Precinct|publisher=W. Erkine Mayne|year=1951|location=Belfast|pages=88}} Mary Ann is known to have studied from Charles Vallency's Irish grammar.{{Cite book|last=Vallancey|first=Charles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nBVcZue2L5EC&q=A+Grammar+of+the+Iberno-Celtic+or+Irish+Language|title=A Grammar of the Iberno-Celtic, or Irish language.|date=1782|publisher=R. Marchbank|location=Dublin|language=en}}Gray (2020), p. 22

File:United Irish badge.gif

It is almost certain that Mary Ann McCracken took the United Irish pledge to "form a brotherhood of affection among Irishmen of every religious persuasion", and "to obtain an equal, full and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland".{{Cite book|title=Belfast politics: or, A collection of the debates, resolutions, and other proceedings of that town in the years 1792, and 1793|publisher=H. Joy & Co.|year=1794|editor=William Bruce and Henry Joy|location=Belfast|pages=145}} She may have done so with her brothers (Harry, William and Francis were all United men), but in any case not later than March 1797. She wrote then to Harry of her hopes that the good example of their school friend, the botanist John Templeton in taking the "test" would soon be followed by the Templeton sisters. McCracken's biographer, Mary McNeill, notes, it would have been "out of keeping with her character" for McCracken "to expect others to undertake responsibilities which she would not shoulder herself".McNeill (1960), pp. 126, 129-130 This was at a time when, with the King at war with revolutionary France and with the Viceroy, Lord Camden, rigid in his opposition to Catholic emancipation and reform, the thinking in the democratic party was turning increasingly to the prospect of a French-assisted insurrection.{{Cite journal|last=Curtin|first=Nancy|year=1985|title=The Transformation of the Society of United Irishmen into a mass-based revolutionary organisation, 1794-6|journal=Irish Historical Studies|volume=xxiv|issue=96|pages=468}}

McCracken assured her brother that she did not shrink from the prospect of political violence: she accepted that "the complete Union of Ireland" might "demand the blood of some of her best Patriots to cement”.Mary Ann McCracken of Belfast to Henry Joy McCracken in Kilmainham Jail. 26 March 1797McWilliam (2021), p. 304 Neither was she averse to deceiving the authorities and concealing guns.{{Cite book|last1=Gray|first1=John|title=The Women of 1798|last2=Furlong|first2=Nicholas|publisher=Four Courts Press|year=1998|isbn=9781851823598|editor-last=Keogh|editor-first=Dáire|location=Dublin|pages=53, 56|chapter=Mary Anne McCracken: Belfast Revolutionary and Pioneer of Feminism.}} Her sole reservation was in opposing political assassination and the killing of informers: "what is morally wrong can never be politically right".Letter to Henry Joy McCracken 2 June 1797. McNeill (1960), p. 142. McWilliams (2021), p. 132 Meanwhile, she seemed confident of the French, noting that "almost everybody in Belfast" was learning the language.Gray (2020), pp. 11-12

When her brother was committed to Newgate in 1796 and there fell out with his fellow prisoner Samuel Neilson, McCracken wrote urging him to make up as their "example of disunion" was "injurious to the cause".Letter Henry Joy McCracken, October 1797. TCD: MS873/136. McWilliams (2021), p. 385

In the absence of a French landing, the movement's northern leaders hesitated when on 23 May 1798 the call came from the United Irish directory in Dublin for a nationwide insurrection. Her brother, only just released from Kilmainham after a year and a half's detention, seized the initiative taking county command in Antrim. Henry Joy McCracken's proclamation on 6 June of the First Year of Liberty triggered widespread local musters. But before they could coordinate, the issue had been decided.{{Cite book |last=Bartlett |first=Thomas |title=Ireland, a History |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=9780521197205 |pages=222}} Commanding a body of four to six thousand rebels, her brother failed, with heavy losses, to seize Antrim Town.{{Cite book |last=McCracken |first=Stephen |title=The Battle of Antrim – Antrim's Story in 1798 |publisher=Springfarm Publishing |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-9162576-2-7 |edition=2nd Updated |location=Northern Ireland |language=English}}

In the weeks that followed, McCracken assisted her brother and other fugitives with money, food, and clothing. She was arranging for a ship to take him to the United States when, on 7 July 1798, Harry was recognised and seized in Carrickfergus. With great difficulty she managed to obtain an interview with him the same evening and the following morning, through his cell window, to take from his hand a ring that had “a green shamrock on the outside and the words, ‘Remember Orr’ on the inside.”{{Cite web|title=Constance Markievicz: The Women of '98 (November/December 1915)|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/markievicz/1915/11/women98.html|access-date=2021-08-31|website=www.marxists.org}} William Orr was the celebrated United Irish martyr hanged in Carrickfergus the year before.

With her father, McCracken was present at Harry's court martial in Belfast on the 17th, and walked with her brother, the same afternoon, to the foot of the gallows erected in front of the Market House in High Street. There he spurned a final offer to spare his life in return for betraying his confederates.McNeill (1960), pp. 181-191 Four had been executed in the preceding weeks, and their staked heads were on display. Harry's body was spared decapitation. General Sir George Nugent allowed the body to be cut down quickly and entrusted it to Mary Ann.McNeill (1960), p. 184-186 She summoned Dr James MacDonnell, who had been a friend to both Harry and Russell, in the hope his skill in resuscitation might revive her brother. MacDonnell demurred, sending in his stead his brother, John, "a skilful surgeon" whose efforts proved unavailing.McNeill (1960), p. 187

McCracken concluded a letter to Thomas Russell describing the "afflicting particulars" of her brother's death, by expressing the wish "that the cause for which so many of our friends have fought & have died may yet be successful, & that you may be preserved to enjoy the fruits of it".Letter to Thomas Russell, 18 July 1798. McWilliams (2021), pp. 416-422 Five years later, in July 1803, McCracken and her sister Margaret met Thomas Russell, then an outlaw, in the cottage of a weaver in their employ. Russell had come north in the hope of advancing the plans of Robert Emmet and Anne Devlin for a renewed insurrection. The sisters would not have contradicted the advice given to Russell by their eldest brother Francis, and by the brothers Robert and William Simms, that there was no appetite for a further rising.McNeill (1960), pp. 212-214 This Russell himself confirmed when news of Emmet's precipitous attempt in Dublin persuaded him to nonetheless raise the United Irish standard in County Down.Commentary by Kenneth Robinson in: {{cite book|last1=Birch|first1=Thomas Ledlie|title=A Letter from an Irish Emigrant (1799)|date=2005|publisher=Athol Books|isbn=0850341108|edition=Originally published in Philadelphia|location=Belfast}} p. 114 James (Jemmy) Hope was to find the same in Antrim: former United men were convinced the cause was hopeless.{{Cite web|last=Quinn|first=James|date=2003|title=The dog that didn't bark": the North and 1803|url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-dog-that-didnt-bark-the-north-and-1803/|access-date=2021-03-07|website=History Ireland}}

After his arrest, McCracken paid a bribe (£100 advanced through the McCracken sisters' sales agent in Dublin) in attempt to secure his release. When this failed, she commissioned her cousin, Henry Joy (Whig and loyalist), to defend him,{{Cite book |last=Clifford |first=Brendan |title=Thomas Russell and Belfast |publisher=Athol Books |year=1988 |isbn=0-85034-0330 |location=Belfast |pages=83}} and then, after his execution paid for his burial and for the support of his destitute sister in Dublin.McWilliams (2021), pp. 252-255 McCracken described Russell to her friend, the early historian of the United Irishmen Richard Robert Madden, as "a model of manly beauty" with a grace "which nothing but superiority of intellect can give."{{Cite book|last=Madden|first=Richard Robert|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nfEBAAAAMAAJ&dq=Russell,+%22the+unjust+and+rapacious+conduct+pursued+by+the+authorities+in+the+case+of+two+native+women%22&pg=PA145|title=The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times. Volume 1.|date=1846|publisher=J. Madden & Company|location=Dublin|pages=145–146|language=en}} Despite such admiration, nothing in their surviving correspondence suggests a desire for intimacy. What it does reveal is a common commitment to social justice. It was with Russell that McCracken shared her alarm at the unemployment and distress caused by the continental war and the recession in trade.McNeill (1960), pp. 133-134

This was also a mark of her friendship with Jemmy Hope, sustained until his death in 1847. Hope, who had laboured and organised among journeymen and weavers, regarded McCracken's late brother (after whom he named his first child) as being, with Russell, one of the few United Irish leaders who "perfectly" understood the real causes of social disorder and conflict: "the conditions of the labouring class".{{cite book|last1=Madden|first1=Richard Robert|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w_ABAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA235|title=The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times. Volume 1|date=1846|publisher=J. Madden & Company|location=Belfast|page=108|access-date=23 November 2020}}

File:Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797).jpg by John Opie c 1797]]

As had other women associated with the United Irish movement (Martha McTier, Jane Greg, Mary Anne Holmes and Margaret King), McCracken had read Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) (reviewed and commended in the Northern Star).Catriona Kennedy (2004), What Can Women Give But Tears': Gender, Politics and Irish National Identity in the 1790s (Submitted for the degree of PhD University of York, Department of History), p. 62. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10974/1/425459.pdf Writing in 1797 to her brother in Kilmainham she repeated Wollstonecraft's insistence that women had to reject "their present abject and dependent situation" so as to secure the liberty without which they could "neither possess virtue or happiness". She reasoned that if woman was created as a companion for man, "she must of course be his equal in understanding, as without equality of mind, there can be no friendship, and without friendship, there can be no happiness in society."McNeill(1960), pp.126–127

Of separate female societies or clubs within the republican movement (with which in Belfast the names of Martha McTier.{{cite journal|last1=Priscilla|first1=Metscher|date=1989|title=Mary Ann McCracken: A Critical Ulsterwoman within the Context of her Times|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1989_num_14_2_2552|journal=Études irlandaises|volume=14|issue=2|pages=147–148|accessdate=7 November 2020}} and Jane GregCatriona Kennedy (2004), What Can Women Give But Tears: Gender, Politics and Irish National Identity in the 1790s (Submitted for the degree of PhD University of York, Department of History), p. 159. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10974/1/425459.pdf have been linked) she was sceptical. No women, she believed, with "rational ideas of liberty and equality for themselves" could consent to a separate organisation. Keeping women separate could have but one purpose: to keep them "in the dark" and make "tools of them".Letter to Henry Joy McCracken, T.1210/1-46/7 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. O'Neill (1960), pp. 126-127. McWilliams (2021), p. 299 She asked her brother:

Is it not almost time for the clouds of error and prejudice to disperse and that the female part of Creation as well as the male should throw off the fetter with which they have so long been bound ...?" Might it not be "reserved for the Irish nation to strike out something new and to shew an example of candour, generosity, and justice superior to that of any that have gone before.

There is no indication from her correspondence that McCracken later read the more radical programme for women's equality circulating in Ireland from the late 1820s. Published under the name of the William Thompson, but declared by him to be a "joint property" with the Irish writer Anna Wheeler, the Appeal of One-Half the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to retain them in Political and Thence Civil and Domestic Slavery (1825){{Cite book|last=Thompson|first=William|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bmJBAQAAMAAJ|title=Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery: In Reply to a Paragraph of Mr. Mill's Celebrated "Article on Government"|date=1825|publisher=Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green|language=en}} called for absolute equality between the sexes based on "labour by mutual cooperation" and the collective education and upbringing of children. McCracken had found the EssaysWilliam Godwin (1797), The Enquirer: Essays on Education, Manners, and Literature. London: George Robinson. of Wollstonecraft's husband, William Godwin, on education and manners "less eccentric and more consistent with common sense" than the anarchism of his more widely-read Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.Letter to Henry Joy McCracken, 10 August 1797. TCD MS873/149. McWilliams (2021), p. 363 The more measured democratic spirit of McCracken's orthodox Presbyterianism did not lend itself to utopian speculation.{{Cite journal|last=Metscher|first=Priscilla|date=1989|title=Mary Ann McCracken: A Critical Ulsterwoman within the Context of her Times|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/irlan_0183-973x_1989_num_14_2_2552|journal=Études irlandaises|volume=14|issue=2|pages=(143–158) 149, 154–155|doi=10.3406/irlan.1989.2552}}McNeill (1960), p. 289

File:Cup-tossing, Nicholas Crowley c 1840 detail.jpg, 1842.McNeill (1960). note p. 256McWilliams (2021), pp. 67-68]]

With an active interest in the living and working conditions of the poor, McCracken dedicated herself to practical work. Already as a child, she had helped raise funds and provide clothes for the children sheltered by the Belfast Charitable Society in Clifton House. For broader change, after 1798 she increasingly looked to "the progress of public opinion".Letter to person unknown, 1838. McWilliams (2021). p. 580

After the Charitable Society's Poorhouse was returned from military requisition in 1800, McCracken's name appears from time to time in the Society's minutes with suggestions concerning the welfare of the women and children. Following a meeting organised in 1827 by the visiting Quaker social reformer Elizabeth Fry, McCracken formed the Ladies Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society which she was to serve variously as treasurer, secretary and chair. Thanks to the efforts of the committee, and over objections of more conservative subscribers to the Society, a school and nursery were set up for the Poorhouse children.McNeill (1960), pp. 254-260

McCracken was not content to have the children merely taught or minded: she was concerned with their education in the widest sense. Nothing "enraged her more than any suggestion that, out of a sense of gratitude for charity, the inmates of the Poorhouse, young or old, should willingly accept disadvantage or indignity". Drawing on her own "play school" experience with David Manson, she insisted on teachers of high quality and special ability, reading from worthwhile books, rewards, outdoor exercise and play hours during which children would have free use of their time.McNeill (1960), pp. 271-274

She took issue with the male board of governors who opposed allowing the Poorhouse inmates to individually "derive some little advantage" from their own labour. She protested that they were asking more of the inmates than of "the highest and best-educated classes" who invariably require "some additional stimulus to exertion, besides a sense of duty and public good".McNeill (1960), p. 275

In her late eighties, McCracken's correspondence continued to refer to "my out of door avocations": The Belfast Ladies’ Industrial National School for Girls, of which, having "never missed a weekly meeting", she was made president aged 90 in 1860;McWilliams (2021) pp. 10-11 a weekly visitor since 1813 to the town's Lancastrian schoolLetter to person unknown, 1838. McWilliams (2021), p. 581 (whose monitorial system had been anticipated by her own schoolmaster, Manson);{{Cite book|last=Hamilton|first=Elizabeth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-j42AQAAMAAJ&q=the+cottagers+of+glenburnie|title=The Cottagers of Glenburnie: A Tale for the Farmer's Ingle-nook|date=1837|publisher=Stirling, Kenney|pages=295–296|language=en}} collecting funds for the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick, managing the Belfast Ladies’ Clothing Society, and preventing "the use of climbing boys for chimney sweeping". She believed it better "to wear out than rust out".McNeill (1960), pp. 300-301

In a letter dated 1861, McCracken wrote that, while stooping and leaning to one side at age 90, she was still "able to go out on a fine day to collect for four public charities" and had a "brilliant hope" of an end to slavery in the United States.{{Cite news|last=Black|first=Jessica|date=2021-07-18|title=Mary Ann McCracken letters shed new light on last years|language=en-GB|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57808883|access-date=2021-10-29}}

File:Mary Ann McCracken bronze.jpg, March 2024]]

Among other Belfast merchants, McCracken's father, Captain John McCracken, did a brisk business supplying rough linen clothing and salted provisions to the sugar plantations of the West Indies.{{Cite web |title=Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America: The Flaxseed Trade and Emigration from Ireland, 1718–1755 (eBook) – BooksIreland |url=http://www.booksireland.org.uk/store/all-departments/scotch-irish-merchants-in-colonial-america-ebook |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210522182339/http://www.booksireland.org.uk/store/all-departments/scotch-irish-merchants-in-colonial-america-ebook |archive-date=22 May 2021 |access-date=2021-05-22 |language=en-US}} But when in 1786, Waddell Cunningham and Thomas Greg (his partner in a plantation they called "Belfast" on Dominica) proposed to commission ships for the Middle Passage,{{cite journal|last1=Rodgers|first1=Nini|date=1997|title=Equiano in Belfast: a study of the anti-slavery ethos in a northern town|journal=Slavery and Abolition|volume=xviii|pages=82–84}} Thomas McCabe, a friend of the McCrackens in the Third Presbyterian, rallied opinion in the town against them. The successful opposition was capped by the visit to Belfast in 1791 of the celebrated escaped slave and author, Olaudah Equiano.{{Cite book |last=Rodgers |first=Nini |title=Equiano and Anti-Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Belfast |publisher=The Belfast Society in Association with The Ulster Historical Foundation |year=2000 |isbn=0953960404 |location=Belfast}}{{Cite book|last=O'Regan|first=Raymond|title=Hidden Belfast|publisher=Mercier|year=2010|isbn=9781856356831|location=Dublin|pages=139–142}}

Wearing the famous Wedgwood brooch adorned with the image of a bound slave and the words "Am I not a man and brother" (1787),{{Cite web|title=The image of the supplicant slave: advert or advocate?|url=https://archives.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/discussion/supplicant_slave.html|access-date=2021-07-29|website=archives.history.ac.uk}} and boycotting sugar, McCracken became a lifelong and active abolitionist.[https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-47301 McCracken, Mary Ann, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] Noting that there is "no argument produced in favour of the slavery of women that has not been used in favour of general slavery", she suggested that her commitment to the emancipation of the African in the Americas was as of one piece with her commitment to the equality of women.

Following a visit to Belfast (in the footsteps of Equiano) by Frederick Douglass, in late 1845 McCracken helped establish the Ladies Anti-Slavery Association. The original declaration of the Association suggests McCracken's influence in both its tone and style:

We feel especially anxious that emigrants be prepared, by a thorough acquaintance with the true nature of this [abolitionist] question, to withstand the corrupting exhalations from slavery that have filled even the Northern States with prejudices against the negro and his abolitionist friends. Let us if possible, enlist in this righteous cause the sympathies of childhood as well as age, of poor as well as the rich, and not relax our efforts ...{{Cite web|title=Address from the committee of the Belfast ladies' anti-slavery association to the ladies of Ulster, [Belfast, Ireland], September 23, 1846|url=https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:dv144343w|access-date=2022-02-14|website=www.digitalcommonwealth.org|language=en}}

In 1859, after being the Association's driving spirit for more than a decade, McCracken was "both ashamed and sorry" to report to Madden, that Belfast "once so celebrated for its love of liberty", had "so sunk in the love of filthy lucre that there are but 16 or 17 female anti-slavery advocates". Save herself, "an old woman within 17 days of 89," there were none to hand out abolitionist tracts to emigrants bound for the (ante-bellum) United States where the issue of slavery was still to be decided.McNeil (1960), 295. Letter to Madden, 1859. McWilliams (2021), p. 782

In one of her last letters to the historian R. R. Madden, McCracken was able to record the moment of decision: the ratification in December 1865 of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Mary Ann McCracken did not share in the patriotic outrage over the government's move, following the rebellion, to abolish the Parliament in Dublin and bring Ireland under the Crown at Westminster. There had, she noted, ‘"always been such an union between England and this country, as there is between husband and wife by which the former has the right to oppress the latter". Why the vehemence now? Would a formal union (the creation of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland), "increase the sufferings of the poor? - of those especially who are entitled to our commiseration? ... the wretched cottagers of the south, whose labour can scarcely procure them a single meal of potatoes in the day, and whose almost total want of clothing make them fly the approach of strangers".Letters to Grace (Grizzel) Joy (c January 1799). McWilliams (2021) pp. 451, 448-450. Quoted in Gray (2020), p. 17

For McCracken a fight to retain or restore an Ascendancy parliament in which two-thirds of the Commons were the effective nominees of Ireland's greatest landlords had no appeal.McNeill (1960), pp. 201-205 In the wake of the Acts of Union (1801) and the blasting of hopes of a United Irish revival, she displayed a quite different pre-occupation. Writing to the News Letter she addressed "the Proprietors of Cotton Mills, and other Factories", admonishing them to attend to the health and safety of their operatives, and reminding them of the "serious responsibility" they assume in employing children.McNeill (1960), pp. 206-207

By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, McCracken was persuaded that "a better day" had dawned. Looking forty years back, she wrote of how "those who were gone" would have been "delighted" at "the political changes that have taken place – which could not possibly in their day have been anticipated, by peaceful means…” Letter to person unknown, 28 October 1835. McWilliams (2021), p. 578. McNeill (1960), p. 248. Presumably she refers to the delivery of promises denied at the Act of Union: Catholic Emancipation (1829) and parliamentary reform (1832). She might also have been thinking of Britain's final abolition of slavery in her colonies (1833), and of the Factory Act (1833), the first regulation of child labour. Although there continued to be "many evils under which we live", McCracken expressed herself as content "to wait with patience till the great Ruler of all events shall bring about a change through the progress of public opinion".McCleery (1896), p. 193 "The public mind", she believed, was "progressing in juster feelings" although not, she conceded, "at railway speed"Letter to Madden, 14 May 1845. McWilliams (2021), p. 651 (Belfast's first railway connection, to Lisburn, was completed in 1839).{{Cite book |last=Whishaw |first=Francis |title=The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland: Practically Described and Illustrated |publisher=John Weale |year=1842 |location=London |pages=430–437}}

How far this relative optimism under the Union survived the realisation of what would have been her worst fears for Ireland's "wretched cottagers", the country's dispossessed, is unclear. In 1844, on the eve of the catastrophe she asked "how is it possible for people to be contented who are in a state of starvation in the midst of plenty". Little of what McCracken wrote during the years of the Great Famine survives.McNeill (1960), p. 292 She collected for the Belfast Ladies Association for the Relief of Irish Destitution, a Presbyterian church initiative but determined "to sink all doctrinal distinction... for the one benevolent purpose of alleviating distress", and was a visitor to the first ragged school in Ireland, the Ladies Industrial School which, again, was determinedly opposed to Souperism, the exploitation of want and despair for proselytising advantage.Gray (2020), pp. 29-30

To Madden, she later reported that there had been those in Belfast who argued that, by inducing an "influx of strangers", the town's efforts to relieve the general destitution had been "highly injurious to own poor"; that "fever patients were known to have been frequently brought by the Railway Train & laid down in the street".Letter to Madden, 14 July 1847. McWilliams (2021), p. 663, pp. 263-264.

In 1849 McCracken again struck a note of optimism. Writing to her niece in London on the occasion of Queen Victoria's visit to Belfast, she expressed the hope that "a better spirit will shortly prevail betwixt the two countries, & among all classes of Irishmen".McWilliams (2021), p. 260 But such hope was not long entertained. In 1851, she wrote: “I fear the labours of the United Irish is about to be overturned, & the Orange system of religious discord & ill will be re-established – It seems as if the world was going back, in place of advancing in just & liberal sentiments.”Letter 155 (TCD MS873/71). McWilliams (2021), p. 282

McCracken would have been distressed by growing sectarian tensions in Belfast (in 1857 and again in 1864 these were to explode in deadly rioting). But in 1851 she may also have been responding to the violent disruption by Orangemen of the work of the new tenant-right movement that Gavan Duffy, invoking the spirit of '98, had optimistically hailed as the League of North and South. The general election of 1852 returned to 48 Irish MPs pledged to the legislation of tenant right, but most were also pledged to repeal the Act of Union, and despite the shared disaffection with rack-renting landlordism, none were returned from the Protestant north.{{Cite book|last1=Hoppen|first1=K. Theodore|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JLdnAAAAMAAJ|title=Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832-1885|last2=Hoppen|first2=Karl T.|date=1984|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-822630-7|pages=267|language=en}}{{Cite book|last=Courtney|first=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|year=2013|isbn=9781909556065|location=Ulster Historical Foundation|pages=156–160, 192}}

Although he had his own reservations about O'Connellism, in his last years McCracken's close friend Jemmy Hope chaired meetings of the Repeal Association in Belfast,{{cite book|last1=Courtney|first1=Roger|title=Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition|date=2013|publisher=Ulster Historical Foundation|isbn=9781909556065|location=Belfast|pages=109–111}} a town from which loyalist mobs had driven Daniel O'Connell when he had visited in 1844.{{cite book|last1=Foster|first1=R.F.|title=Modern Ireland 1600-1972|publisher=Allen Lane|year=1988|isbn=0713990104|location=London|pages=306}} McCracken was not alone, even among his Repeal allies, in describing O'Connell as "tyrannically despotic and viciously abusive to those who differed from him in opinion". On a principle to which she was firmly committed, "mixed education", O'Connell had reduced Thomas Davis to tears. Unmoved by Davis's plea that "reasons for separate education are reasons for [a] separate life",{{Cite book|last=Macken|first=Ultan|title=The Story of Daniel O'Connell|publisher=Mercier Press|year=2008|isbn=9781856355964|location=Cork|pages=120}} in a debate on a colleges bill, O'Connell had suggested that the Young Irelander's objection to separate Catholic provision was bigoted.

McCracken did acknowledge the achievement of Daniel O'Connell in drawing the Catholic masses onto the political stage: the "great moral regeneration" this had wrought in the Irish people entitled him, she believed, to "the lasting gratitude of all true philanthropists". She only wished that The Liberator had devoted the energies of a national movement to the abolition of tithes (levied atop rack-rents on behalf of the Established Church) rather than on repeal of the Act of Union.Letter to Madden, 26 November 1851, McWilliams (2021), pp. 700-701 Noting that in Belfast "many sincere and ardent liberals who were violently opposed to the Union, before it took place, are now as much opposed to Repeal", she allowed that it was "a difficult question, on which much may be said on both sides.”Letter 140 (to R. R. Madden 1844) (TCD MS873/156). McWilliams (2021), p. 262

Her overriding concern remained the welfare of working people. On their behalf she advocated policies "with implications far beyond the dimensions of either Union or Repeal or mere philanthropy".Gray (2020), p. 24 While conceding it was "too just a principle to be approved in the present state of society by the very rich", she proposed that all indirect taxes (which bear disproportionately on the poor) be replaced with an "income tax or property tax".Gray (202), p. 24. Letter to R. R. Madden, 15 October 1844. McWiliams (2021), p. 639-646

Such welfarist thinking, however, did not entail her reassessing the decision made a half-century before to press for a democratic and national government in Ireland. While she hoped that his history of the United Irishmen would be "instructive in shewing the certain evil, and uncertain good of attempting political change by force of arms",Letter to Madden, 23 June 1859. McWilliams (2021), p. 785 she could assure Madden: "I never once wished that my beloved brother had taken any other part than that which he did".{{cite book|last1=Madden|first1=Richard Robert|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w_ABAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA235|title=The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times. Volume 1|date=1846|publisher=J. Madden & Company|location=Belfast|pages=209–211|access-date=23 November 2020}}

File:Mary Ann McCracken.png

After the execution of her brother in 1798, McCracken learned that Harry had a four-year-old illegitimate daughter, Maria, for whom, to his great distress, he had been unable to make provision. McCracken took Maria in, determined to raise her niece as "an only affectionate daughter". Nothing in her correspondence suggests that McCracken had considered for herself the prospect of marriage and a family. (Her one disappointment with Mary Wollstonecraft was that, for all the "contempt" she had expressed for matrimony, she had married William Godwin. "How does it happen", she had asked Harry, "that people do not act according to their reasoning").Letter to Henry Joy McCracken, 10 August 1797. TCD MS873/149. McWilliams (2021), p. 363

McCracken's sister Margaret also remained single. Together with their niece Maria, they lived in the house of their brother Francis at 62 Donegall Pass (it is here that the Ulster History Circle has placed a blue plaque in her memory).[http://www.ulsterhistorycircle.org.uk/mary-ann-mccracken/ Ulster History Circle Blue Plaques] Maria later took her failing aunt into her married home,McNeill (1960), pp. 194, 302 where, on 26 July 1866, she died at the age of 96 years.

Mary Ann McCracken was buried at Clifton Street Cemetery close to the Poor House. In 1909, when the St. George's parish graveyard on the High Street was cleared for redevelopment, Francis Joseph Bigger reinterred what he believed were remains of her executed brother alongside her (and his daughter Maria),{{cite book |author=Guy Beiner |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8KqqtgEACAAJ |title=Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780198749356 |access-date=10 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191215082743/https://books.google.com/books?id=8KqqtgEACAAJ |archive-date=15 December 2019 |url-status=live}} and erected a tombstone on which she is described as the United Irishman's "beloved sister",{{Cite web |date=2021-10-18 |title=Great Women: Mary Ann McCracken |url=https://greatplacenorthbelfast.com/project/great-women-mary-ann-mccracken/ |access-date=2024-03-09 |website=Great Place |language=en}} and as having "wept by her brother's scaffold".{{Cite web |date=2024-03-08 |title=IWD 2024: Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney statues unveiled |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9rvqp40qvlo |access-date=2024-03-09 |website=BBC News |language=en-GB}}

The writer Alice Milligan claimed as a profound influence upon her a family servant who had previously cared for Mary Ann McCracken (presumably in Maria's household).{{cite book|last=Morris|first=Catherine|title=Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival|date=2013|publisher=Four Courts Press|isbn=978-1-846-82422-7|location=Dublin}} In Belfast, Milligan was to be a leading figure in organising the centenary commemoration of 1798, and in the pages of her monthly The Shan Van Vocht, and in her fiction, celebrated what she understood as the United Irishmen's appeal to nation above both creed and class.{{cite book|last1=Steele|first1=Karen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bAG_MyaeT14C|title=Women, Press, and Politics During the Irish Revival|date=2007|publisher=Syracuse University Press|isbn=9780815631170|location=Syracuse, New York|pages=39–40, 44–45|access-date=31 January 2021}}

McCracken collaborated with Madden on The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1842-1860, 11 Vols.).[https://books.google.com/books?id=nfEBAAAAMAAJ The United Irishmen, their lives and times (online version)] Madden's memoir of Henry Joy McCracken was written, Madden gratefully acknowledged, by Mary Ann herself. But her concern was not alone with the recollection of her brother. McNeill notes that "no detail in the tangled story of the United Irishmen was too small for her consideration. James Hope, Israel Milliken [printer of the movement's paper, the Northern Star], Lady [Letitia] Emerson-Tennent [daughter of William Tennent, who served with Harry on the Northern executive] and anyone who could supply information were written to, or visited".McNeill (1960), p. 304 Madden work remains a standard reference

In January 2021, the Belfast Charitable Society launched The Mary Ann McCracken Foundation in recognition of her work as a social campaigner. The Foundation has two main objectives: "to advance education of the public about the life and works of Mary Ann McCracken as a leading social reformer and philanthropist" and "in the spirit of the legacy and work of Mary Ann McCracken; to advance education, to prevent or relieve poverty, to advance human rights and promote equality".{{Cite web|title=Mary Ann McCracken Foundation – Belfast Charitable Society|url=https://belfastcharitablesociety.org/mary-ann-mccracken-foundation/|access-date=2021-07-28|language=en-GB}} Speaking at its launch, historian and broadcaster Prof David Olusoga commented on society's “…inaction and moral passivity”, believing this “…would surprise and disappoint women like Mary Ann”.{{Cite web|last=O'Kane|first=Jake|date=2021-02-13|title=Jake O'Kane: Belfast woman Mary Ann McCracken was a century ahead of her time|url=http://www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/2021/02/13/news/jake-o-kane-belfast-woman-mary-ann-mccracken-was-a-century-ahead-of-her-time-2218016/|access-date=2021-07-28|website=The Irish News|language=en}}

In May 2021, Belfast City Council agreed to erect a statue of Mary Ann McCracken on the grounds of Belfast City Hall. In proposing the motion, Councillor Michael Long (Alliance) said:

Mary Ann McCracken is a perfect example of the need to showcase the diverse nature of Belfast and how not everyone can be placed into a simple descriptive box. She was a Presbyterian but also an Irish republican who loved traditional Irish music. A campaigner for women being able to vote, she also was a successful business person at a time when females often didn't have those opportunities.{{cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Michael |title=Council gives green light to Mary Ann McCracken statue |url=https://belfastmedia.com/council-gives-green-light-to-mary-ann-mccracken-statue |website=belfastmedia.com |publisher=Belfast Media Group |access-date=31 July 2021 |language=en |date=31 May 2021}}

On International Women's Day (8 March) 2024, the statue was unveiled (together with a further bronze by the same artist, Ralph Sander, of the Irish republican and trade unionist Winifred Carney). It depicts McCracken handing out an abolitionist leaflet identified by the embossed Wedgewood brooch "Am I not a man and brother" image of a bound slave.{{Cite web |title=Mary Ann McCracken and Winifred Carney statues unveiled on International Women's Day |url=https://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/news/mary-ann-mccracken-and-winfred-carney-statues-unve |access-date=2024-03-09 |website=Belfast City Council |language=en}}

{{reflist}}

• [https://irishacademicpress.ie/product/the-life-and-times-of-mary-ann-mccracken/ The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken 1770 – 1866: A Belfast Panorama]. Mary McNeill, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, (1960) 2019.
• Mary Ann McCracken 1770-1866: Feminist, Revolutionary and Reformer, John Gray, Belfast: Reclaim the Enlightenment, 2020.
• [https://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/181458/mcwilliams_cathryn_bronwyn.pdf?sequence=1 The Letters and Legacy of Mary Ann McCracken (1770-1866)], Cathryn Bronwyn McWilliams, Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2021

External links

• [http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/lotw/1.html The Dictionary of National Biography]
• [https://archive.today/20130414192430/http://www.donegallpass.org/html/mary_ann_mccracken_philanthro.html Mary Ann McCracken, Social Reformer]
• [https://belfastcharitablesociety.org/mary-ann-mccracken-foundation/ Mary Ann McCracken Foundation] on the Belfast Charitable Society site

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