Robert Mackie Sibbett, known to family historians for his books and genealogies, was a Ballymena and Belfast journalist. His granddaughter Rosemary Sibbett has helped me and many others through the North of Ireland Family History Society (NIFHS); his cousin Wilson Sibbett (1948-2024) was eminent in my profession of laser physics. I am able to supplement the existing short biographies with several incidents – such as 1922’s mix of journalism, Freemasonry and Presbyterianism – because the Sibbetts were close friends of my Hills.

He was raised near Portglenone and initially worked for the Ballymena papers. Aged around 30 he was in reports of cycling and tug-of-war competitions. In 1909, a Belfast resident and Belfast News-Letter employee, he married Minnie Gibb Gamble:

That year he published a half-centenary booklet (The Revival in Ulster: or, The Life story of a worker) on William Montgomery Speers (1832-1906), a controversial Presbyterian schoolteacher. In 1912 his strong but carefully worded anti-Churchill anti-Home Rule letter appeared in the News-Letter: if and when Home Rule proved unsatisfactory, “our British allies” were found wanting, and “every fair and constitutional means” was exhausted, he “would hesitate at no action to safeguard the rights and liberties of Ulster”. Thus he appealed for present calm without excluding future violence. He signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912, giving his Clifton Crescent address: 

The Belfast News-Letter of 10 August 1920 said he was leaving after about 23 years “to take up another appointment”; the Belfast Telegraph of 30 September 1921 reports his arrival after a year with the Farmers’ Journal. He and the family settled in one of a small row of new houses on ex-Archbold land at Carnmoney Road, Glengormley. 

On the Shining Bann (1928) was almost what we now call a microhistory investigation, based on Telegraph articles and using written records of the manor of Cashel to revisit his Speers cousins, the Bann Valley and Portglenone: 

Sibbett transcribed many passages of dull local administration – road and fence maintenance, market weights and measures – without much effort to paint characters, but with many interesting and dated mentions of local citizens. Genealogy-centred family historians are not too keen on his prose style; they would prefer once-for-all indented pedigrees or clearly drawn trees, but must untangle a bunch of partly documented paragraphs. He writes about the descendants of the Elizabethan incomers, notably (from my point of view) Rev. John Hill and Mo(y)ses Hill, but omits the Hills of Carnmoney and the fact that Andrew Hill was a friend and immediate Glengormley neighbour. The book’s acknowledgements include: 

Any of these is worth further reading; “Miss E. R. Adams, Belfast”, for example, was Ellen Raphael Adams, a great great granddaughter of Rev. John Hill: 

Sibbett described the history of the Orange Order in other articles, expanded over time into two large curious volumes: 

- Belfast News-Letter, 1 July 1942. Joseph Davison is one of the 1941 mourners listed below.

Appreciating him today is not straightforward. We remark his very firm Presbyterianism (with literal acceptance of Biblical origin stories), lantern slide lectures on the destiny of Britain in Israel, and high standing as an Orangeman and historian of the Order. Personally I cannot ignore his friendship with my Hills and the kind support that he and Minnie gave when my grandmother died.

The Larne Times (30 October 1941) showed sincere appreciation and sub-Sibbett proofreading:

This roll of mourners ends with “lifelong friend” Samuel Nevin (1872-1949), another Killycoogan man, promoted from Head Constable to 3rd Class District-Inspector in 1921. The Belfast Gazette lists him as a transferred R.U.C. officer (without explicitly mentioning 1922’s violent troubles and controversial reorganisation of the police forces): 

Nothing sinister can be inferred: journalists had to work in the courts and with the police, and the strong Presbyterian representation is expected [1]. But this brings us to two examples where Sibbett in public life was on the edge of deep waters.  First, he was called – and he refused – to testify at the disciplinary hearing of John Nixon, the District-Inspector listed below Nevin. On 29 January 1924 Sibbett attended a meeting at Clifton Street Orange Hall. Officers of the local Orange Lodge (LOL 7) were installed, and at the subsequent tea – with Dawson Bates and other high officials present – Nixon, current Master of police-only Sir Robert Peel Memorial Temperance LOL 1334, spoke intemperately. This speech was reported and he faced a police court inquiry. 

- Belfast News-Letter, 29 February 1924.

Sibbett, by then with the Telegraph, was one of these “three newspaper reporters”.

- Belfast Telegraph, 19 February 1924.

Nixon was already notorious for his political views and his willingness to bend the rules; but he denied various accusations about anti-Catholic 1920s hit squads and, never formally charged, continued a Unionist political career outside the police. One of the worst incidents, at Kinnaird Terrace on 24 March 1922 [2], was the murder of Owen McMahon and others. 

It may be a moral certainty that Sibbett disliked Nixon’s methods; but the press reports do not say why he refused to testify about what he saw and heard at Clifton Street. Mr Dougherty, representing Semple of the News-Letter and Brennan of the Whig (but not Sibbett of the Telegraph?), says they thought it was unfair to be asked. Sergeant Bell says Sibbett (but not Semple and Brennan?) refused the summons on the spot. Joe Baker in The McMahon Family Murders (Glenravel Local History Project) is more explicit: The case against Nixon was based on the reports which appeared in the newspapers and the three journalists who wrote them refused to give evidence as they had received threats from supporters of Nixon.

To be clear: I have no information about threats or any irregular dealings between Sibbett and the police. But there is another coincidence (perhaps a red herring; the McMahons were associated with several pubs and it is not very surprising if some randomly chosen Belfast house is near one of them). Harmony Lodge 645 met on 10 March 1922 with my grandfather as Master and Sibbett in attendance [3]. Their adjoining family homes were a stone’s throw from the public houses on the two corners where Carnmoney Road met the Antrim Road. 

“Molly Anne’s”, or the Glen Hotel (later Glen Inn) is shown on the west corner at the foot of Carnmoney Road.

Upper photo: "Joseph O’Brien Glen Hotel": O'Brien is there in the 1911 census and newspapers. The Sibbett and Hill houses were built a short way up Carnmoney Road from the single figure standing here at the right.

Lower photo: "T. McMahon & Co.": in the valuation books Constantine O’Neill (of another well-known Catholic business family) is replaced by Thomas McMahon about 1915, and McMahon is replaced in the early 1920s by Bernard Laverty, the lessor of several nearby properties. Precise dating is not possible from these books alone: there is much overwriting, and the changes were in any case recorded retrospectively. 

On the east corner of Carnmoney Road was the Glengormley Arms. In the 1911 census James McKenna lives there; later he is replaced by Patrick McKenna: 

Both premises can be seen here (with a Belfast-Glengormley tram near its end-of-line turning point): 

The closeness of the Temperance Cafe raised much laughter.

Many versions of the same horrifying account were published in the March – April 1922 newspapers. Joe Baker’s compilation says:

This timing “a few months”, and McMahon’s interest in the Arms not the Glen, are not supported by the above 1919 extract. The Northern Whig (3 September 1921) reports a damages claim where Thomas McMahon says that, by July 1921, he had removed stock from his Glengormley premises to Dee Street, but there is no date given for quitting those premises.

Near the outbreak of war, Thomas Archbold had leased a roughly trapezoidal plot of ground to William Riecken or Reicken, a German national who was soon interned at Oldcastle and – this complicates the lease paperwork – obliged to deal through an agent or middleman. That plot, where the houses later bought by the Hills and Sibbetts were built, was bounded “on the South by property of Mr. McMahon” [4]. “Lislea” has been converted for business [5] but the Hill house “Seaforde” (with traces of its tailor’s workshop at the rear) remains a residential property, on the west side of Carnmoney Road – as said above – between the Glen Inn and Portland Avenue.

Mrs Hill bought their house from Riecken’s agent in May 1916, and Hill joined Carnmoney’s Royal Arch Chapter 645 in 1917. Sibbett, known to have been in Glengormley in September 1916, is named in a Carnmoney Road lease of 20 December 1921. The exact dates of first occupation of the houses probably differ from the dates on these lease papers, but it seems clear that both families were in situ well before March 1922. And whether or not McMahon held an interest in the Glengormley Arms across the junction, he held one in 1919 in this Glen Hotel and its attached grounds at the western foot of Carnmoney Road. I am not sure if this apparent Sibbett/McMahon proximity affects the Nixon case, but I have not seen it mentioned.

Second, Sibbett was a stenographer (in the days before universal electric recording apparatus) at the trial of Professor J E Davey (1890-1960) on charges of heresy. On 1 February 1927 “The Committee unanimously agreed to make the following recommendations…1. That a shorthand writer be employed to take down the evidence.” 

- General Assembly Record of the Trial (1927).

Davey, a close cousin of my County Antrim McAuleys, argued his case intelligently and was exonerated; but he was widely seen as too clever by half, and too willing to discuss modern Biblical criticism (often from continental and especially German scholars) in front of impressionable students and churchgoers. There are still splits between various Church branches on the topics he studied, and he was and is in great disfavour with some traditionalists.

-  Rev. Ian R K Paisley to Rev. Austin Fulton (1953); quoted in David Chapman’s thesis Hero or Heretic? (University of Manchester, 2016).

Again, today’s readers may have to pause, reset and appreciate that Davey and Sibbett and many others took these matters most seriously; there were and are thoughtless dismissals of “modernism”, but Sibbett possibly understood much and deplored some of Davey’s views on (say) Trinitarianism, kenosis, imputation and quantitative satisfaction. Speers had also faced mutterings about heresy, but the Davey case became a public make-or-break test of Presbyterian church teaching.

So Sibbett was a key witness of very controversial events. His personal accounts were not officially recorded – in 1924 because he refused to testify and the Nixon hearing was shut down, and in 1927 because, although familiarity with Presbyterian theology and its technical terms was essential to his fine shorthand work, his own views on Davey were not. In March 1922, with my grandfather Andrew (that year’s Worshipful Master), and others who lived near the ex-McMahon pub and met in Harmony Lodge 645, he must have had clear opinions about Kinnaird Avenue. I do not know what they were.

He was involved in milder but still sensational court cases, such as the 1937 prosecution of Dr Thomas McGimpsey Johnstone, the 1934/35 Moderator who had now (in his temperance committee role) criticised recent pub licence decisions in a speech that was taken to impugn the King’s Bench and their administration of justice. 

Johnstone and Sibbett were of one mind in discouraging alcoholic refreshment, and were also colleagues in the Irish Presbyterian Church Union (whose pledge “to defend the faith of their fathers and the Church of their fathers against the apostasy and indifference of the present day” sounds anti-Davey).

The papers are full of Sibbett’s support for good causes: the Glengormley Sabbath school, local bazaars, school accommodation, Glengormley Memorial Hall (interdenominational), the Glengormley Boys’ Brigade, the Church of Ireland Young Men’s Literary and Debating Society, and in the late 1930s the British-Israel World Federation; throughout there is solid backing from Minnie, a musician, composer and choir trainer who played the organ in Glengormley Presbyterian Church for decades.

A new song, “The Borderland”, the words of which are marked by patriotic and religious feeling, has just been published. The words and music are by Minnie Sibbett, who is to be congratulated on the charm of the melody and the spirit of the poem. The harmonies of the accompaniment are simple, but effective.

- Belfast News-Letter, 10 May 1922.

For many years he kept links with the Orange Order and local Masonic Lodges [6] – Press Lodge 432, Carnmoney Lodge of Harmony 645 mentioned above, and St Columba Temperance 637 (formed in 1930 on Ballyclare Road in Carnmoney and documented 70 years later in Israel Abernethy’s The History of ‘637’).

Robert Mackie Sibbett is at right, second row, silver hair.  Isabel McCune's These Fifty Years (1986) identifies these people as "Helpers at the first Flower Show" with an implicit date in autumn 1937, although newspaper reports ("Admirable Display at Glengormley") suggest that the first show was on 22  August 1936 and the second on 21 August 1937. The Tea Rooms building, later used as a Scout hut, still stands: 

Mr Sibbett signed his will, weakly, the day before he died: 

For my uncles (his neighbours), and the additional executor Mr McQuitty (a little further along Carnmoney Road), and some tailoring transactions 1938-40, see my article “Extra Pants” in NIFHS News, November 2020. 

Left: Northern Whig and Belfast Post, 20 September 1944. The R M Sibbetts, father and son, were both Belfast journalists. Bert wrote informative and creditable articles on modern science. The Whig of 11 May 1951 covers interplanetary travel fiction (with two Irish examples), cinema SF, German rockets, and Arthur C Clarke.

Right: Larne Times, 13 September 1945. “Miss McMillan” was Ria McMillan, the popular and kind Glengormley businesswoman who died in 2019. Max Jennings was a serial winner of farming and poultry prizes at local shows. 

Acknowledgements and references

         What the writer aimed at was a dignified sketch of a delightful area, full of the romance and glory of the past, and what he steadily avoided was digging into refuse heaps, excavating rotten remains, unrolling dusty manuscripts, barren in real contributions to knowledge, and interrogating acquaintances with no bent in their nature towards an understanding of the subject.

-        R M Sibbett, On the Shining Bann.

I thank Rosemary Sibbett for help and permission to reproduce the photographs below (one taken inside “Lislea”); Israel Abernethy, senior and junior, of Carnmoney; John Boyd, Eleanor Taggart and colleagues of the Glengormley Facebook group; and Joe Baker.

See also Sibbett’s entry in Dictionary of Irish Biography and the obituary notice in Belfast Telegraph 23 October 1941. 

Notes

[1] “Mr. Robert Clyde, J.P. (hon. treas. Portstewart Convention), and Mr. R. L. McKeown (one of its hon Secretaries)” and “John K. Wallace (Qua Iboe Mission)”: Sibbett regularly reported on the evangelical Convention meetings for the Telegraph. Qua Iboe was an evangelical initiative in Nigeria; Samuel Alexander Bill was its lead figure. Robert Lemon McKeown, its secretary and historian, lived latterly at “Ardmhoin” in Glengormley and died in 1942.

[2] On that day the News-Letter reported a fundraising recital in Carnmoney Presbyterian Church, where Miss Lottie Taylor sang “Jesus is Near” with words and music by Mrs Sibbett.

[3] Other well-known attendees included William Atwell, William D Beattie, Abraham Birkmyre (of the Glengormley family prominent in these leases and valuation books), John Davidson, James Dubois, Robert Kane (the Whitewell laundry manager) and local G.P. John Loughridge.

[4]

T A Archbold agrees a lease to "Wm Reicken" on 9 October 1914, and Riecken gives a power of attorney to A W Patton on 17 July 1916. There is a sublease of 26 May 1916 from Riecken to T L Cole, subject to a sublease of 1 May 1916 from Riecken to Hill of a piece (unspecified "portion") of the ex-Archbold land. Then, on 20 December 1921, there is a lease from Cole to R M Sibbett of a plot with 52 feet fronting on Carnmoney Road.

[5] Minnie’s family of Gibbs came from Lislea townland, which faces Killycoogan across the Bann.

[6] Members of one of these organisations would often but not always join the other; as far as I know, my grandfather was not an Orangeman.