SOME of Newry�s best-known families were well-represented among the past and present residents, as well as ex-pats, from the Chapel Street and Kilmorey Street area at the re-union in 2005.

These included the Jennings, McParland, Carr and Carroll, Duffy, Fox, Gorman, Hughes, Feenan and Keenan, Kelly and Coulter, Bannon and Lambe, McElroy, McCourt, McGrath, Mc Givern, McGuinness McKeown, McKevitt, Mathers and Murtagh, Price, Traynor and Tumilty, etc.

Commenting on the visit home, after almost 60 years in the USA, of Hugh Jennings, born in Chapel Street, the `Minneapolis Journal` reported that the emigrant had become Alderman in that city, President of the Federation of Labour, and also President of the Stonecutters Union, and a court official.

�Hugh left for the United States at a time when conditions were vastly different from today. With grit and determination, he applied himself, and by his enthusiasm and tenacity reached the highest pinnacle of success. And the Newry emigrant won the confidence and esteem of people from every nationality, who consulted him in their difficulties, making him the city�s chief citizen.�

And the Minneapolis Journal stated: �Hugh Jennings will tell his brother, Patrick about the early days, constructing schools and other buildings here. And also the 17-day coach-ride across the prairie of South Dakota and the Rockies, out to the Columbia River, where he was foreman at the construction of a huge stone viaduct with its 22 arches, across the Mississippi River.

�Over the past 40 years, Hugh has resided at 818, Queen�s Avenue in Minneapolis. But his brother Patrick has beaten that record, having lived in the same house at Chapel Street in Newry for four score and three years. Hugh returned home on the occasion of Patrick�s wife having died. His own daughter, Rose, disappeared while on a visit to her father.�

The Jennings family tree shows that the clan have been in Newry since 1800, when Michael was born. He had a brother called Patrick, who emigrated to England, and two other sons, Hugh and James. Many of the men-folk were stonemasons, which was why they moved from Saval to 91, Chapel Street, in order to be near the quarries at Moor Hill, where work for stonecutters was plentiful.

Before the advent of bitumen, the streets of the frontier town were paved with granite sets, only now visible on the Mall, and a short stretch outside the Quays complex on the Fathom Line, as a reminder of times past.

Newry granite was famous worldwide, and exports to foreign lands gave much local employment. Ships would sail up the Clanrye River to Quay Street, disembark their cargo and re-load with granite. Patrick Jennings was employed as a shipping clerk, and later became a stevedore, responsible for loading the ships.

Patrick had a son of the same name; and it was a curious coincidence that he worked as a doffer in a spinning mill, looking after the bobbins. For his soccer superstar namesake and relative, Pat Jennings, has revealed how he had been employed as a `bobbin-boy` at a local spinning mill, before embarking on the road to fame and fortune.

The famous goalkeeper pops up in the family tree, drawn up by Pat�s cousin, Seamus Jennings, who spent some years in Canada with his wife, Maura Heaney from Burren. Her brother, Michael has run the Newry Golf Club. Returning home they had a shop, run previously by the late Cllr Niall McAteer in Chapel Street.

Son of John Jennings and Sadie Cunningham from Whitecross, whose father was a midfielder on the Armagh team, Pat is believed to have inherited his large hands and fielding ability from him. The Jennings family lived next door to his aunt, Mrs Molly McAteer, who operated a shop.

Pat stated: �My father was never out of work, when we were growing up, so we didn�t go hungry. But we weren�t exactly well-off either. That�s why, when I was young, I did all sorts of odd-jobs, selling bundles of firewood, at one penny a time; chopping up logs and selling them. Also, we would spend 12 hours a day, picking blackberries or rose-hips, selling them to Gavaghans.

�I also helped on a milk-round, and was a delivery-boy for a grocer in the town centre. Somehow I don�t think I was cut out to be a milkman. My employer, Peter Woods, knew I wasn�t the day that I jumped off the milk-cart and caught my trousers on a crate. I can still see the anguish on Peter�s face, as he surveyed three crates of broken milk-bottles, spread over the road, and the language he used!

�And though I didn�t have a mishap on the grocery round, I got lots of aches and pains. All the goods were loaded on a carrier at the front of an old push bike. So heavy were the groceries that, instead of riding everywhere, I spent a lot of time pushing that bike up the hills around Newry,� Pat ruefully recalled.

When he came to the end of a remarkable career, Pat regretfully reflected on the fact that he �never had the opportunity to play for an All-Ireland team at International level. There is one Irish side playing rugby, - so if the rugby types can make it work, surely the soccer authorities, North and South, can get together.�

Referring to sectarian abuse, Pat Jennings said: �Supporters are more concerned with religious and political differences than the players. Some of them gave me a hard time. I was appalled at the remarks hurled at me. It�s a sufficient ordeal for a teenager to play for his country, so it�s a nasty shock to find my home crowd, not exactly rooting for me. But I was finally accepted, - maybe the die-hards despaired of getting rid of me.�

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