Martha "Matty" McTier was an Irish charitable activist and political confidante whose correspondence documents the radicalism and tumult of late eighteenth-century Belfast.
Early life and family
Martha McTier was born Martha Drennan in 1742 or 1743 in Belfast, and was known as "Matty" to her family. Her parents were Reverend Thomas Drennan and Ann Lennox. She was the eldest of her parents' three surviving children, she had one brother William and one sister, Nancy. There is no record of her childhood or education. She married Samuel McTier, a widower and chandler from Belfast, in 1773.
Letter writing
From 1776 McTier started corresponding with her brother, William, who was a United Irishman, physician, and poet. She and her husband remained in Belfast, but William lived in Edinburgh, Newry, and Dublin. Despite financial worries, the McTiers had a happy marriage. McTier suffered a mental breakdown in 1789, and while her brother described it as "distressing depression of spirits", in her only reference to this episode in her letters she mentions suffering panic attacks about money. Concern for her sister Nancy's increasing eccentricity and seclusion may have also added to McTier's distress. After a regime of bloodletting and confinement, McTier resumed normal life in 1792, and started to correspond again with her brother. When her husband became president of the United Irishmen in Belfast, McTier was drawn into the group's activities. She became friends with Thomas Russell, who was a frequent visitor to the McTier house. She wrote on his behalf to the Catholic Committee to secure him financial assistance. She greeted the French revolution with enthusiasm, like the majority of Belfast Presbyterians, and held many radical views but she was never a republican. She urged her brother to be cautious in his views after the executions of the French monarchs. She was invited to become the secretary of the new Humane Female Society in 1793, the society had founded the Lying-in Hospital, and she would remain active with the Society and the Union School for many years. She wrote to John Pollock when she heard in 1794 that he was amassing and fabricating evidence against her brother William, in which she threatened to make his underhanded dealings public. He relied with a sarcastic riposte, to which McTier countered with a letter that entertained Pollock so much he circulated to his political acquaintances. In June 1794 William was brought to trial for sedition, McTier remained cheerfully supportive, even suggesting that he should publish a periodical paper from Newgate. Her husband died suddenly in 1795, leaving McTier and her stepdaughter Margaret McTier in poverty as he died intestate. She and Margaret continued to live together, supported in small part by a small annuity from a cousin of McTier, and by taking in an orphaned girl as a paying guest. Her brother warned her in 1797 that in Dublin a rumour was circulating that she was writing for the United Irish newspaper, the Northern Star. She responded to him immediately with a carefully written denial, with the intention that it would be read by the local postmaster who was known to regularly open her letters. While nothing printed in the Star was attributed to McTier, it is possible she had made some small contributions. It appears that neither McTier nor her brother supported or were involved in the 1798 Rebellion. In the aftermath of the rebellion, she did petition on behalf of a young United Irishman, Joe Crombie, the son of the ReverendJames Crombie. McTier supported her brother in his relationship with Sarah Swanwick, whom he would eventually marry in 1800. His medical practice was suffering due to his political notoriety, and he struggled to support his new family. McTier helped in finding him a series of paying guests and encouraged their cousin, Martha Young, to bequeath him her fortune. She stayed for long periods with Young, with the boredom of these visitations relieved by her eldest nephew Tom Drennan who lived with her from 1803 to 1807. Young did leave her fortune to William after her death in 1807, which saw him move from Dublin to Belfast. Having, as she explained, so long "clung to free and rising Ireland", McTeir opposed as "degrading" Act of Union which in 1801 incorporated Ireland under the British Crown and Parliament at Westminster. She counselled Irishmen to "remain sulky, grave, prudent, and watchful, not subdued into tame servility, poverty and contempt, not satisfied till time blunts their chains and feelings, but ardent to seize the possible moment of national revenge"
Later life and legacy
At this point the regular correspondence between McTier and her brother ceased. Young left McTier her home, Cabin Hill, where she lived until Tom's death there in 1812. Having moved back to Belfast, she died there on 3 October 1837, at which point she had become blind. William's descendants hold a number of portraits of McTier. The collected correspondence of McTier and her brother spanned 40 years and 1,500 letters. They have provided an invaluable source for the period of Irish politics and history which included Grattan's parliament, the 1798 Rebellion and the passing of the Act of Union. The Ulster Museum also hold a portrait of McTier.
