James Sinclair of Drumnaboy

James Sinclair of Drumnaboy in the parish of Camus, near Strabane in Co Tyrone, was first recorded in the 1901 Census. He gave his work as a farm labourer and religion as Presbyterian. He was aged about 42 years and his wife Letitia was about 39 years old and they had been married for 27 years. All their children could read and write English, but their parents could only read English. The four eldest children – Maggie, William James, Mary Ann and Andrew were spinners working in a flax mill, and Lottie (Leitia) was a ‘duffer’, someone who was responsible for combing out and carding flax fibres. All the other children were at school.

At the 1911 Census, the family was living in the nearby townland of Bearney Glebe and Maggie, William James and Andrew had left home. Their eldest son, William James, was a tram motorman in 1914 when he enlisted in the Royal Inniskillen Fusileers in Belfast in October 1914. He was discharged in as medically unfit in 1915, but re-enlisted in the Lowland Div. Train RASC (TA) in Glasgow in 1920 and was discharged two years later. He married Ann MacFarlane from North Uist, Inverness-shire, and the family emigrated to Australia in 1928.

Andrew was working for a farmer in the same parish at the 1911 Census, and Maggie had married Robert McConnell in 1908.

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