THE  HERDMAN  FAMILY
AND  SION  MILLS

 

 

At the time of the first potato famine in 1835, when the Herdman brothers, James, John and George came from Belfast to the district of Seein, work in the Mill must have provided relief for the poor people of the area.  

 

    
James, John and George Herdman - brothers and founders of Sion Mills
 

Sion Mills’ gain was Ballyshannon’s loss.   The Herdman brothers, in partnership with Andrew and Sinclair Mulholland and Robert Lyons, decided to build a flax-spinning mill near to the flax fields of Donegal and the north west of Ireland, and Ballyshannon in County Donegal, with the water-power of the River Erne – harnessed in the 20^th century by the Irish Government for a large Power Station - tried to entice them to go there.   However, they couldn’t get the land they needed there on a long enough lease. Their choice fell on Sion,  (or Seein, meaning a Fairy Mound), near Strabane in County Tyrone,  with the spectacular River Mourne, and they managed to purchase a flour mill from the Marquis of Abercorn on the initial strange lease of 3 lives plus 30 years, increased later to 60 years.   This later again changed to 500 years on the winding up of a Trust by the Abercorn family.  There was also a condition that the Herdmans would not build a grain mill and the Abercorns would not build a flax mill.   This was rescinded at the time of the famine so that the Herdmans could feed their workers.   No one is certain when or why “Seein” became “Sion” Mills, but it was before the arrival of the Herdmans as is born out by Major Humphreys (the Marquis of Abercorn’s agent and father of Mrs CF Alexander, the hymn writer) who refers in all negotiations on the lease to the “Sion Mill”.

 

The Herdmans had come to Ireland in 1688 from Herdmanston in Ayrshire.   The name is extracted from the Scandinavian Hirtman, meaning a Royal Standard Bearer.   The first to arrive in Ireland was a Captain Herdman who fought with King William at the Battle of the Boyne and settled at Glenavy, Co. Antrim.  Prior to 1835, they had been large farmers at Glenavy.  The immediate antecedents of the 3 brothers had owned Millfield Tannery, Belfast which the eldest brother, James, inherited from his father who died young.  His brother John went into  partnership with the Mulhollands in 1833 after turning round their business into profit in the Wine Tavern Street Flax-spinning Mill in Belfast.  Their Uncle William Herdman was a partner in the shipping firm of Langtry & Herdman  who brought the first steamship into Belfast, and a most esteemed member of Belfast society.

 

When Sion Mills was founded, the Company owned both Mills and the middle brother, John, went back to Belfast to run the Mill there.   In 1840, Robert Lyons was bought out by the other  partners  and Sion Mills amalgamated with the Winetavern Street Mill – J & J Herdman & Co..   The two concerns supported one another over the early years, which helped them to get through some financial crises.   The Herdmans bought out the Mulholland brothers in 1849, but continued to operate the two mills in Belfast and Sion Mills as one Company until 1862, when events took a tragic turn.  

James married Elizabeth Suffern of Belfast, from a Huguenot linen family (read more).  They had a large family, but not as large as his brother John, who married Elizabeth Finlay of Belfast and had 14 children (read more).  George married Anna Goudy, daughter of the Rev Dr Goudy who was Presbyterian Minister in Strabane and grandson of the Rev Porter who was hanged for his part in the 1798 rebellion (read more).  They had 3 daughters and only one son, Henry, who was a founder member of Royal Portrush and Royal Co Down Golf Clubs (portrait on right by Richard Hooke of Henry Herdman as small boy with his grandmother Sarah Herdman).

In 1856, George, the youngest brother, died of meningitis at Sion House and James ran Sion Mills alone until his retirement to Bath in 1866, due to an extra-marital affair which ended in Court and caused a widespread scandal.   He left the Mill equally in the charge of his two elder sons.   In 1862, John was murdered in Cliftonville, Belfast aged 51– shot by William Herdman, the son of his second cousin who lived in Dublin – in a family row.   The perpetrator was judged to be insane and spent the rest of his days in prison on Spike Island.   John left 14 children and the eldest son, Alexander took over and ran the Wine Tavern Street Mill (renamed the Smithfield Mill).  Although Alexander and his bride, Selina Gosselin, died tragically young of typhoid, the Smithfield Mill continued to be run by John Herdman's descendents until a tragedy in 1902 when the end wall collapsed suddenly and killed a number of the workers.  The Company became two separate concerns from 1862, with Sion Mills owned by James and his two eldest sons.

There is a remarkable account of John’s funeral in a contemporary newspaper, an extract from which reads:

“Immediately following the hearse were the male servants and workmen at The Lodge, wearing white head-bands and other emblems of mourning ………..Following the five mourning-coaches carrying the male members of the family were 32 members of the Clergy from all the Protestant Churches including the Lord Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore and the Moderator of the General Assembly.  Also the Roman Catholic Bishop and the Coadjutor Bishop and a number of the roman Catholic priests of Belfast  the Mayor of Belfast and the entire forty members of the Corporation and other officials and dignitories of the town……….The funeral having moved out on the Cliftonville Road, the concourse increased to such a vast number that any attempt to give a list of names would be useless, there being thousands present.  When the hearse and mourning-coaches reached the Antrim Road the numerous carriages waiting there moved forward to the number in all of some 140 vehicles of various descriptions, the drivers wearing white hat-scarfs.   To give some idea of the length to which the carriages extended, it may be mentioned that they took nearly half an hour to pass any given point, so that they fully occupied a mile of road.

The thousands who followed and went alongside the different conveyances on foot spread over about two miles in length, while the footpaths of the entire line of streets from Cliftonville to St John’s Church  were crowded with all classes of the community, standing, watching those more immediately forming the  funeral procession as it passed along.  The shops along the entire route, and also in other parts of the town, were closed, and the upper storeys of every house were occupied by those gazing at the cortege as it moved slowly and solemnly along.  Even the tops of houses, where convenient were occupied about the Commercial Reading-room, where those in the Commercial Hotel got out on the top of the building, and had thus a full view of the immense multitude which came down Donegall Street.

One very remarkable feature was the great stillness which reigned amongst the thousands present.  Scarcely a sound was heard but those of the horses’ hoofs and the footfalls of the pedestrians, while every voice was hushed in solemn silence.  Although thousands of old and young of both sexes were standing along the different streets, and in those branching off the route, yet the utmost decorum was reserved, and all evinced a spirit of seriousness, as if awe-struck by the event which had transpired and caused this public demonstration………….But the evidence of public feeling was not even confined to the inhabitants and evinced in our streets.  The vessels at our quays ran up their flags, half-mast high, and thus, in sailor fashion, put on mourning for the sad event”.

 

From this account, it may be ascertained that the Herdmans were an esteemed and important family in Belfast in the 19^th century, as, indeed, they became in the north-west of Ireland also.   As the business in Sion Mills flourished, the Herdmans’ reputation as fair, conscientious landlords and employers spread, attracting people to the area in search of work and a new life. 

The Second Generation
James Herdman, the eldest brother, as already explained, after the murder of his brother John, divided the business, hitherto known as J & J Herdman & Co.  John's eldest son, Alexander, took the Wine Tavern Street Mill in Belfast and renamed it Smithfield Mill.  James took his two elder sons, John and Emerson, into partnership to help run the Mill in Sion Mills.   When James retired to Bath in 1866, John and Emerson became equal partners in Sion Mills - Emerson living in Sion House; John at Carricklee near Strabane, which was bought from the Presbyterian Church and is still lived in by his great-grandson, James Herdman, today.

John Herdman married Mary Gosselin (sister of his cousin Alexander's wife Selina) and had one surviving child, a son, Emerson Crawford Herdman, who married his first cousin Olive, the fourth daughter of Emerson Tennent Herdman of Sion House.  He later became Sir Emerson.

Emerson Tennent Herdman married Frances Alice West, whose father, Dr Francis West, was the doctor in charge of the Tyrone & Fermanagh Hospital. They had 5 daughters and one son, John Claudius Herdman, known as Jack - later Captain Jack.

John and Emerson presided over great growth of both the village and the Mill.  They built the Presbyterian Church, the School, the Men's Institute, the Recreation Hall at the Mill and laid out the sports fields, including the famous Cricket Field.  The Church of Ireland came later after Sion House (originally a 3 bay square house built in 1845 by the leading Irish architect, Charles Lanyon) was altered by Emerson's brother-in-law, the well-known English architect William Unsworth, into a 50 roomed Elizabethan revival mansion in 1884.

John Herdman died in 1903 and his place on the Board of Herdmans Ltd was taken by Captain Ambrose Ricardo, husband of Emerson's second daughter Ella (Elizabeth Alice).  Emerson Tennent Herdman lived until 1919 (read more).  The photo below shows Emerson Tennent Herdman surrounded by his family at Sion House in c. 1914.

The Third Generation

In the beginning of the 20th Century, the Board of Herdmans Ltd comprised of Emerson Tennent Herdman and his son Jack Herdman, his son-in-law Ambrose Ricardo and his nephew Emerson Crawford Herdman.

The Ricardos were childless, but built The Brae in Sion Mills, designed by the Scottish architect William Williamson in the Arts & Crafts style in 1904.  Ambrose Ricardo tragically drowned in the village reservoir in 1923, having raised and commanded the 9th Battalion of the Inniskilling Fusiliers (The Tyrones) (see "A Wheen of Medals" by Bill Canning, published in 2006) and seen them practically wiped out at the Battle of the Somme.  He is buried in the tomb in the centre of the village in front of the Church of the Good Shepherd (read more)

Jack (John Claudius) married Maud Harriet Clark-Kennedy and lived at Camus, a Georgian house across the river which had been the Camus-juxta-Mourne Rectory.   They had 3 children, Emerson Tennent Rex born in 1902; Claudius Alexander born in 1903 and Iona Mary born on St Columba's Day 1911.  Jack and Maud moved into Sion House in 1919 on the death of his father and, with the exception of a few years in the 1930s when they moved back to Camus to save money when times were hard, lived there until they died in 1964.

Emerson Crawford Herdman and Olive Mary his wife (nee Herdman) had two children - Frances Mary, born 1901, and John Patrick, born 1904.  Olive brought across 1% of the shares in Herdmans Ltd from her side of the family, giving the Herdmans of Carricklee the controlling interest in the business which had been hitherto divided 50/50.  However, Emerson went off to war, as did Ambrose Ricardo, leaving Jack in charge of the Mill and he remained the Senior Director until he retired in 1946.  Sir Emerson died in 1954 and Lady Herdman lived to be 86, only giving up hunting when she was 82.

More details, stories and letters of the Herdman family, with photographs, can be found in Celia Ferguson's book "170 Years Spinning - Sion Mills and the Herdman Family".  This is available from this website.