Here in Ireland, the disconnect between the beers we drink and their origins and true history means that we are far removed from the personalities of those who founded or drove the expansion of our brewing industry in the past. We know very little about those brewery owners whose legacy has been reduced to a brand held now and brewed by larger conglomerates - and sometimes smaller entities - who may or may not care about the actual heritage of the beers that they curate. Those are the ‘lucky’ ones, as at least their names are still associated with Irish brewing, albeit with a history written sometimes by marketing people more so than researchers or historians. Add to this the unmentioned owners of the brands and breweries that are no longer known or spoken about and we have a huge number of unrecorded names and personalities who are now practically lost to the beer drinking public. Names such as Watkins, Perry, Stoer, Pim, Keily, Strangman, D’Arcy and a host of others might have a vague resonance with some people, but very little is recorded about the characters themselves, or at least not in any biographical way.
Who are these often misremembered and unknown people who gave their names to breweries and beers over the last few hundred years? Some of course have been well recorded, names such as the Guinness, both Beamish and Crawford, and Murphy have all been written about in depth in printed publications and online, but others are much more enigmatic or unrecorded.
In this new occasional series, I want to explore some of the less or unknown characters of Irish brewing and reveal a little more about their history, lives and connections to others in the brewing trade. This has been made much more possible in recent years given the online presence of genealogy sites, hard to source old books and publications, and old newspapers - and without those resources this series would be almost impossible for an armchair researcher and reporter. I hope to connect the reader with these personalities and give a little family history as well as exploring how they came to own breweries - or work them. This will still be a tricky enough task so unfortunately, we will still be in the realm of ‘perhapses’, ‘maybes’, and ‘possiblies’ as we investigate their origins and activities.
So, let's begin ...
-o-
Apart from the well-known entities listed above the next most mentioned character in Irish brewing is one John Smithwick, whose participation in Irish brewing history is rather unclear and muddied once any real digging is made into his purported history. I’ve written about the subject of the Smithwick’s brewery many times before - ad nauseam some might say - and given my opinion on its origins based on the published and available material in common sources and archives, but here I will look a little closer at the man whose personal history should be recorded as best we can, seeing as he is thought of (rightly or wrongly) as a large and important figure in Irish brewing history.
The quoted paragraph at the start is from a booklet printed in 1953 called ‘The Smithwick Story’ published by the Irish Publicity company in Dublin as part of a series they hoped to produce on Irish industrial businesses. The publication includes some pages on the history of the brewery and how it operated in the fifties as well as the challenges that lay ahead.
And that brief quoted history of Smithwick’s origin raises a few questions about the enigmatic John Smithwick who is purported to have begun the business in 1710.
Another version of the origin story is on the Smithwick’s Experience website, and states that the early eighteenth century was ‘a time of strict Penal Laws forbidding Catholics from owning land or running for local office. Into this scene arrives the orphan John Smithwick determined to defy the odds and begin trading’ and the general story being communicated by many sources is that John Smithwick was a Catholic orphan from Tipperary who came to Kilkenny and allegedly went into partnership with a Richard Cole on the site that now houses the brewery tour, and that he began brewing a red ale in 1710 - or variants of this tale. (Just to clarify, yet again, that this continuous brewing of the same beer is not possible, given the ingredients in the current beer at the very least.)
So who exactly was John Smithwick?
Sadly, and predictably given the passing of three centuries and more, information is quite scare, but by looking at a couple of independent sources - a genealogy site plus a book on the Smithwick’s family by Art Kavanagh* - we can put a little of his history together, especially if we go back a couple of generations from John to his grandfather, Lt. Colonel Henry Smithwick.
Henry Smithwick was a protestant born in Hertfordshire in England in 1599 and having moved to Ireland sometime in the early 1600s was in the employment - as was his father Robert - of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, a contentious figure in Irish history, to put it mildly. Henry was married to Mary Fortescue from Devon with whom he had two sons, Henry and William. He was part of the Cromwellian army and had land in Ballydarton in Carlow - where he also served as sheriff - as well as being resident in Waterford and Cork at various times. He died in 1670, and his sons both followed him into the army, with Henry junior achieving the rank of Captain in the army.
Captain Henry Smithwick was born around 1630 was listed as in ensign in 1649 in a section mentioning his father in "Depositions of Cromwell's Adherents" regarding the securing of the town of Youghal for English forces. He was registered on a census in Drogheda, Co. Louth in 1659, and as "Henry Smithwick, of Lord Lisburne's Regt of Foot, later Capt in Co Richard Coote's Regt of Foot" in Burke’s Peerage, and was still listed as being in the English army in 1692. He was familiar with Kilkenny as he removed the King James’s Royal Arms from the Tholsel (city hall) on the High Street and replaced them with King William of Orange’s. He was married to Sarah Meredith and had six children - one of whom was our John Smithwick. (This early history is set out in Kavanagh's book and backed up by the genealogy website that references Burke's Irish Family Records.)**
John was born in 1690 - there are no official, published records that tell us where, and married Jane Dunphy in 1719. Jane died in 1725 and they had no surviving children – they seem to have sadly lost 5 sons. He remarried at some point to Mary Grace who was born around 1710 with whom he had three sons, Edmond, Peter and Michael. He may have lived in Lazybush (Lousybush) just north of the city, as this is where Mary was from and where Peter was born.
There appears to be very little available history for John Smithwick but he seems to have been a protestant, like his father and grandfather, although his second wife Mary Grace was Catholic and so were her children. Kavanagh and other sources would seem to suggest that he remained protestant until his marriage to Mary Grace some time well after 1725 (given Mary's age and the date of his first wife's passing) and perhaps until his death. Both John and Mary died in 1768 and both are buried in St. Canice’s Church of Ireland Cathedral graveyard, very close to his first wife.
That's their gravestone at the top of this piece.
Of what John’s occupation was when he arrived in Kilkenny - if he didn’t already live near here - we are quite unclear, He doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in any military setting so it appears that he didn’t follow in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. Given who his father and grandfather were and the land they owned, it’s likely that John too was a man of some means at least at this time. Modern anecdotal sources mention a relationship with a Richard Cole as a brewer but there are no available records that show this. A Lease that claims to show the plot of land Cole being the site of the brewery near the St. Francis Abbey doesn’t mention John Smithwick and is also for a plot of land outside the Black Abbey Gate, so is clearly nowhere close to that site anyway. A short family history written by Walter Smithwick in the 1960s states that John Smithwick’s business at this time was unknown, and even the Smithwick’s Experience website now states that the brewery fell out of family hands and only returned to them in the early 19th century, so there is little history surrounding the so-called originator of the brewing dynasty.
So unfortunately, if not curiously, there is no published information for our John Smithwick being a brewer in any way – not an auspicious start to this series on Irish brewing figures! It does not mean that he wasn’t involved in brewing of course but the most optimistic scenario imaginable is that he was in some sort of business partnership with John Cole and that one or either had a small brewhouse at their house for the household's consumption - which was quite common – and somehow this morphed into him being a brewer, perhaps? In truth the house owner would never have been the actual brewer anyway, that would be done by one of the workers on the estate. So sadly, I can’t find any information that shows that John Smithwick started a brewery in 1710 as is often claimed, unless some more information comes to light or is released by certain parties.
The earliest written evidence of any of the Smithwick family owning a brewery was a few generations later, where through John’s son Peter, and Peter’s son John and then great grandson Edmond, the brewing arm of the business appears to have been started in 1827, having bought and converted a distillery for that purpose. There is mention in some sources that our John could not own a brewery in 1710 because of The Penal Laws forbidding Catholic ownership of businesses, but if he was protestant at this time - as reported by Kavanagh - then this law would not apply to him. It certainly would have applied to his children and grandchildren but they have never been shown to be connected to the brewery in any way by any source, and Edmond’s father John held lands and successful merchant businesses for many years prior to Edmond buying the lease on the brewery – surely he could have ‘declared’ his interest at least – if not ownership - in any brewery? The Smithwick family were certainly Catholic and staunch Nationalists by the 19th century it is worth adding.
It seems impossible to find how and why the 1710 reference was first mooted and what exact information led to this date being quoted, although it seems to first appear in print around 1892. Earlier sources such as trade directories or travel guides don’t mention the brewery, and those post 1827 don’t mention the date, nor any John Smithwick. For example 'The Official Illustrated Guide to the Great Southern & Western Railway' by George S. Measom from 1866 clearly states the brewery was established in 1828, which is near the right date and probably when they started brewing in any meaningful way. Perhaps there is some mention in the family records, but that would have been published with more detail surely – especially in the write-up by Walter Smithwick?
So, our first foray into the historical characters of Irish brewing doesn’t tell us much of who John Smithwick really was business wise, but it puts a little more history to the person himself. Hopefully new information will surface to throw some light on who exactly was the ‘mysterious’ - if less so now - Mr. Smithwick.
TBC? ...
Liam K
(Note. There is also a reference to a Smithwick marrying the daughter of someone in the Cromwellian army, Richard le Harte in Tipperary. This person is mentioned as a William Smithwick on one unverified genealogy website but there is no record of this daughter - Margaret - in any online biographies of Richard, nor does her proposed birthdate tie in with his timeline and marriage, and although a John is mentioned as a son the dates again don’t match and she would have had to have him at the age of 15, which isn’t impossible but not likely. Anyhow, the other family tree is from two seemingly reputable sources, so appears to be correct, subject to finding other information.)
*The Gentry & Aristocracy Kilkenny – Smithwick of Kilcreene St. George of Freshford Wandesforde of Castlecomer by Art Kavanagh
** This connection to English or Cromwellian soldiers and personnel is more common that one would think. If you go back far enough then many of us - including myself - had actual or reputed connections with those who came here at this time.
