William Orr

Life
1766-1797; United Irishman; b. Milltown, Co. Antrim, of Presbyterian farming and linen-producing (bleachery) family; later settled at [Farranshane, nr. Antrim town; m. Isabella Greer, 1788, with whom five children; his br. was appt. baron high constable, 1791; mbr. of Masonic Lodge; joined United Irishmen, c.1794; occas. contrib. to Northern Star; noted for height and dashing appearance; advocated moderate views at Carrickfergus meetings; made object of warrant for arrest on charge of administering the United Irishmen’s oath to two soldiers (Wheatley and Lindsay) at , July 1796; hid in Antrim Glens and captured while visiting his dying father, Sept. 1796;

unsuccessfully defended against charge of treason by Wiliam Samsonn and J. P. Curran; sentenced by Barry Yelverton (judge) and hanged at the Three Sisters nr. Carrickfergus, 14 Oct. 1797 - after failed attempts to remit the sentence and two postponements; issued a statement from prison attesting to his sympathy for persecuted Catholics, 5 Oct. 1797; his execution aroused great popular indignation and became the subject of a celebrated elegy-ballad by William Drennan (q.v.); letters from Robert Johnson to Henry Dixon in 1911-13 contain accounts of the Orr family [NLI Cat]. ODNB DIB RIA

[The entry in Dictionary of National Biography (RIA 2009) is by Desmond McCabe - online. ]

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Criticism
The Northern Leaders of ’98 - “No 1: William Orr” (Dublin: Maunsel & Co 1906); anon., Chapters in '98 History (London: Joseph H. Fowler 1938), pamph. [incls. “Wake of William Orr” by Drennan]; William Orr and Robert Emmet together form the subject of an issue of Wolfe Tone Annual, ed. Brian O’Higgins (1953).

 R. H. Foy, Remembering all the Orrs: the story of the Orr families of Antrim and their involvement in the 1798 rebellion (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation 1999), 174pp. Publisher’s notice: ‘Travelling to join their regiment on an April day of 1796, two Scottish soldiers, stopped at the end of their day’s march in Antrim town. In Hyndman’s Swan Inn, they found themselves in the company of John Orr and his friends. By the evening’s end both soldiers had sworn allegiance to the Society of United Irishmen. This event was to have disastrous consequences, not only for John Orr but for five Orr families of Antrim. They would suffer for their attachment to the United Irishmen and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity for all Irishmen be they Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter. From execution to exile, from treason trials to the treachery of the turncoat, from defeat on the street of Antrim to shipwreck in the East Indies, Remembering All the Orrs vividly recreates the extent to which the 1798 rebellion in Ulster had all the hallmarks of a civil war. Bob Foy’s fascinating story, much of which has remained untold for over 200 years, is carefully reconstructed by the imaginative use of original documents in Belfast, Dublin and London. It is above all a marvellous example of how local and family history can provide a very human perspective on a significant period of history.’ (Available at Google Books - online; accessed 02.03.2024.)

References
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, 10 vols. (Washington: University of America 1904), Vol. 3, selects “The Wake of William Orr”’ by William Drennan (p.925); also in Gill’s Irish Reciter: A Selection of Gems from Ireland’s Modern Literature, ed. J. J. O’Kelly [Sean Ó Ceallaigh] (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1905) [as supra]; Brendan Kennelly, ed. & intro., Penguin Book of Irish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970), pp.126-27. See further under Drennan (q.v.).

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