This meeting was held on Zoom on Wednesday, 19th May at 7:00 p.m.

The speaker was Sharon Oddie Brown, Sharon is a regular visitor to Armagh from Canada in her research into the Jackson family and has spoken to the Armagh History Group on a number of occasions in the past. Her website The Silver Bowl contains a wealth of information covering a wide range of families that connect to the Jackson family.

Her talk is now available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d323LDbqmCk 

This is how she describes her talk:

“This sometimes-irreverent tour of The Letters and Papers of Eliza Jackson née Oliver (1815-1903) will begin by describing how I came to find more than seventy of her letters from several sources. The earliest letter is from 1860 and the last one was dictated by Eliza to a niece in 1902 when Eliza was 87 years old and totally blind. She covered a range of topics – including her faith, her family, her life on the farm, the price of turnips, her (fervent) politics and her frequent concerns over money.
Eliza was a daughter of a farmer and a wife of a farmer, both in rural Armagh, but she was also, in her own way, a Renaissance woman, one who was ahead of her time.
Her letters describe her life and attitudes, but they also shed light on the lives of other women in her class, time and place, women who have often been unseen in the dark corners of Irish history.
Her letters also challenge us to reflect on some of the issues that we continue to face today”
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If you would like to receive a link to the talk, please contact Catherine Gartland at: secretary@history-armagh.org