The McAteer name in Northern Ireland seems to be centred around the town of Newry. I suspect that my McAteer branch connects to the greater Newry area as my grandmother often spoke of visiting, for health reasons, a farm near Rostrevor where she enjoyed telling a story of when she was a little girl being chased by a goat and escaping by jumping across a ditch. I believe that it was a family farm but we have no connections, that I am currently aware of, to this area.

Our earliest known McAteer is Hugh (1) from Belfast, born around 1825. He was a mason by trade, but his son and grandson, of the same name, were coach builders. Hugh was Roman Catholic and married a Protestant girl, Deborah Hogg, who was a nurse. As the story goes he died from Typhoid which she had apparently carried home from the hospital. He had given up his religion for his wife but when he was dying she brought in a priest to administer his last rites. Hugh died when he was about 35 years old and Deborah is said to have lived to 103. Hugh is apparently buried in Milltown (Catholic Cemetery), Belfast, Northern Ireland but on a fleeting visit to Belfast I was unable to find his grave. They had four children that I know of, one being my great grandmother Deborah McAteer.

A photograph of my great grandmother Deborah McAteer (1851 - 1911). She is surrounded by three of her daughters and two grandchildren. The names under the photograph are as given to me. The photograph was labeled "Grandma Simpson (Deborah McAteer), Aunt Aggie (Agnes Simpson, left rear), Aunt Maria (Simpson, centre rear), Aunt Liza (Simpson, extreme right), Harry James (front row, left), and Deborah James (front row, right, the youngest girl).

Deborah (above right) had two sisters, Agnes McAteer (pictured above left with her husband Thomas Pelan, a compositor in Belfast) and Susannah McAteer, whose daughter is said to have emigrated to the United States of America where she married a sausage millionaire?

Deborah McAteer married John Simpson, a poultry dealer in the Belfast markets. They had five daughters one of whom died when eleven years old. She was the first born and also named Deborah.

Deborah had a brother Hugh (2) who had a son also named Hugh (3) through whom the name continued but we have lost track of this branch which in all probability is still alive and well in Belfast. The third Hugh McAteer died at 30 Mount Street, Belfast in 1949 and is buried in the Belfast City Cemetery. I have no information on his marital status so no descendants are known to me at this time. He had brothers William and Thomas McAteer who married and had children but I have no information beyond them. Isabella McAteer (wife of Hugh McAteer (2), is named on the birth certificate of Annie Simpson. She would have been the sister-in-law of Annie's mother, Deborah McAteer, and witnessed the birth. Deborah (Simpson) Ettie, Annie's daughter and oldest child, also remembered a Hawthorne connection. Isabella McAteer, daughter of Hugh McAteer and Isabella Bertram married Joseph James Hawthorne, one of whose children was named Hugh McAteer Hawthorne b.1916.

Deborah James (pictured as a child in the the first photo), the daughter of Agnes Simpson, who in turn was the daughter of
Deborah (McAteer) Simpson, is seen here on her wedding day with her husband John Crawford.

This is a map c.1900 showing the homes of our McAteers and their relatives. They lived in the Markets area of Belfast beside the River Lagan close to the Albert Bridge and in the shadow of the gas works. Please note that a few of the names shown are not yet connected to our tree. I suspect that Patrick McAteer might be a father or brother of our oldest Hugh McAteer.

Market Street, where Henry Simpson once lived. looking towards East Bridge Street, Belfast c. 1910. Henry would have lived in one of the houses on the right approximately where the young men are standing.

Cromac Square, Belfast c. 1910, looking down East Bridge Street with Market Street off to the immediate left.