Papers of the Shackleton family of Ballitore

Context

Creator(s): Shackleton, family, of Ballitore, County Kildare

• Administrative History ↴

  The Shackleton family is associated with the village of Ballitore in Co. Kildare. Abraham Shackleton founded a Quaker school there in 1726, which catered for Quakers from many parts of Ireland as well as local children both Protestant and Catholic. Abraham's grand-daughter was Mary Shackleton (1758-1826), author and diarist. In 1791 she married William Leadbeater, a former pupil of her father, and they resided in Ballitore. She wrote poetry, prose and fiction. Subjects of her writing include the Irish peasantry and Quakers. She corresponded with, among others, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Maria Edgeworth. Her best-known work, The Annals of Ballitore , was not printed till 1862, when it was brought out with the general title of The Leadbeater Papers (2 vols.) by Richard Davis Webb. It tells of the inhabitants and events of Ballitore from 1766 to 1823, and few books give a better idea of the character and feelings of Irish cottagers, of the premonitory signs of the rebellion of 1798, and of the horrors of the outbreak itself. The second volume includes unpublished letters of Burke and the correspondence with Mrs. Richard Trench and with George Crabbe. The school founded by Abraham Shackleton continued in existence until 1847. Another Quaker school was founded in Mountmellick in 1786. Thomas Wilkinson was a poet, a Quaker, and a friend of William Wordsworth.

• Archival History ↴

  Unknown

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Unknown