Genealogy
Andrew (Lamont) Young's House Pictures
June 24, 2003
In June, 2003, we traveled to Co. Antrim. In part, our journey was so we could hunt for the house of Andrew Young and the linen mill owned and run by Andrew Young and John Sittlington near Larne. The house and mill were both built in the last half of the 1600s. The latest photographs of the house and mill were taken in the 1920s, and all we had to go on were the notes with the pictures on this website.
Thankfully, a friend and fellow hammered dulcimer player, Nat Magee of Larne, consented to go with us to find the house and mill. Without his help, we never would have had the success we did.
We went out looking for the houses of Andrew Young and John Sittlington on Tuesday, June 24. The information we had was a printout of these pictures and notes. From this we knew that the houses were in an area known as Ballygowan. Ballygowan Road turns off south from the N8 just west of Larne. We missed the turn, and went down to the next road, turned left, then turned back left again onto Ballygowan Road so we could look at the first part of it we had just missed. As we drove slowly, looking at the houses and buildings on either side of the road, mostly farm houses and buildings, we had not found anything that resembled the Young house, though we may have seen something that might have been John Sittlington's house. But as we got within eyesight of the N8 again, I looked over to the right and there it was - a house that looked so similar to the Andrew Young house picture, we had to stop and find out from the people what they knew about the house, if anything.
We parked on the side of the road and walked down the driveway to the house. The house had obviously been refurbished, but the layout of the windows and door, even the decorative border around the door was very similar. The daughter of the family living there was home, and she came to the back door as we had walked around the back with Nat. She did not know anything about the house's history. She said her father would know more than she did, but that if we went up the road to talk to Tommy (Tommy Maybin), who lived up just past the Chapel (the Catholic Church), he had lived there all his life and would know the most about it. So, off to Tommy Maybin's we went.
Tommy Maybin is 83 years old, and has lived there on a farm for most of his life. We talked about many interesting things, but when we asked him about the house we'd just been to, he told us that some of Nat's relatives had lived there years ago. When we showed him the picture of the mill, he said, "Oh, yes. That's right down here," and pointed in the general direction of the house. He told us how to get to it, and we went back toward the house, parked on the side of the road, and started wading through stinging nettles to get there. As we got close to the river (the River Larne), we saw the mill ruins, and it backed up to the horse pasture of the house we'd first visited! So, back to the house we went.
Upon getting back to the house, we found the father was there, and Nat introduced us all and asked about the house and the mill, especially the mill. He had not known what the building was. He said he had tried to buy it from the owner, but she had asked quite a lot of money for it. He had wanted to restore it and use it as a barn, I believe. He allowed us to go through the horse pasture to the mill, and we got pictures of it, I touched it, and then also got pictures of the house. Nat even took a picture of Brandy and I standing in front of the mill. Though we had not been certain whether the house was Andrew Young's before, we were now - here was the linen mill, which Andrew and John had run together, and the houses were supposed to be close to each other. Also, the father told us the kitchen had been added on to the back before they bought the house, and that something had been done wrong so that they had to have a contractor come out and fix something to do with the wall. The contractor found the original walls were 3 feet thick and made of native stone, large stones on the outside and smaller stones in the middle.
With such evidence, we had to consider that this was indeed Andrew Young's house. The location fit, the mill
was just yards away from the house, and the mill was on the Larne River, as stated in the notes we had. As I
said, we took some pictures. Here are pictures of the house below (click on the picture for a full-size view):
(Pictures taken by Rick & Brandy Davis unless otherwise noted.)
Young house 1 |
Young house 2 |
Young house 3 |
Young house front door |
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