William McNulty : Short Biography

William (II) McNulty, the son of William (I) was born in approximately 1853 in, we believe, Londonderry, Northern Ireland. On April 18, 1879 at the age of 26 he married Margaret Doherty, aged 24, in the Catholic Chapel of Melmount in Strabane, Co. Tyrone. Both resided in Sion Mills, and worked at Herdman’s Mill.

The name Sion comes from the townland of Seein,^[1] which lies to the south of the village. It is an Anglicization of an Irish place name Suidhe Fhinn (meaning "seat of Finn”) the mythical giant who built the Giants’ Causeway.^[3] The second part of the name is the English "mill".

The Herdman brothers, James, John and George, came from Belfast to found the Mill in 1835 to be near the flax-fields of the North-West. They converted an old flour mill on the River Mourne into a flax spinning mill, and erected a bigger mill behind it in the 1850s. The River Mourne was the reason that Herdman's Mill was built in Sion Mills. The immense water-power of the River Mourne provided 1000 water horsepower.

They began their own version of a social experiment in building the village, including homes, and the community of workers for the Mill. Believing in education they not only built a school to educate the children, but also had evening classes for adults. There was a village band as early as 1842 and George Herdman ran singing-classes for the girls who worked in the Mill. They were religious, and built the Churches, although for the first 30 years everyone attended Church together in a converted building in the village. They also believed in temperance for the workers and until 1896, when they lost a court case, there was no public house allowed in the village. Through the years, Sion Mills has had a well-known reputation as a very friendly and completely non-sectarian village, which is upheld as an example to the rest of Northern Ireland today. This atmosphere is due to the endeavors of the Herdman family who made it a policy not to discriminate between the denominations in any way, and provided work, housing and schooling for all. In 1888, Emerson Tennent Herdman was quoted to say: "I find it wise to give neither religion a preponderance, and to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and efficiency". ET Herdman also started the sporting tradition of the village when he founded the Cricket Club in 1864, and later built the cricket field and the football pitches as well as a Men's Institute and the Recreation Club. Through the years, the mill also provided first gas and later electric power to the village and the homes of the workers. Given the prevailing attitude of the owners of capital towards the working class in this time period, Sion Mills appears to have been a very decent place to live and work.

At the time of their marriage William was a “flax dresser” and Margaret a “mill worker.” As a “flax dresser,” his job would have been to use a “hackle.” A “hackle” was a set of combs used for combing the flax. This was a dangerous job as the flax dressers were subject to inhaling crop dust thus prone to develop “flax dresser disease” a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

William was 47 years of age at the time of the 1901 census. At that time, he lived with his wife, five children, James, William, George, Edward and Joe and his wife’s brother, George Doherty, at 84 New Street in Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, Ireland. The census shows he worked as a “tow sorter” at Herdman's Mill in Sion Mills.  Thheir son, Edward would pass away in 1915 of Meningitis.

Information gained from Herdman's indicates that there was a slow down at the mill around 1907, and we suspect that his sons Jimmy and Joe, moved to Belfast around that time. The 1911 census shows that Jimmy and Joe resided with the Goan family at 24 Elmfield Street, Clifton, Co. Antrim. In the same census, William, Margaret and their other children still resided on New Street in Sion Mills with a John Goan as a visitor.

The balance of his family relocated sometime after 1911 to Belfast. It is unknown what, if any, employment William had once relocated. In Belfast, the McNulty family address was 23 Milford Street, it appears that most of his children and grandchildren all resided at that address at one time or another. William died in Belfast before the time of his son Jimmy’s marriage in 1914. Margaret also died in Belfast in the early 1900’s and both buried Milltown Cemetery in that city.