Why are 10 single siblings, aged 39 to 52, living together in Garvagh, County Tyrone in 1911?

+7 votes
183 views

In the 1911 Irish census, ten Mathewson siblings, aged 39 to 52, are living in house 30 in Garvagh, County Tyrone. I've been unable to identify any of them outside of this census. What is the story with these people? How do ten siblings never marry and end up living together?

WikiTree profile: Margaret Mathewson
in Genealogy Help by Stuart McCormick G2G6 (8.9k points)
Shame you cannot ask them really. Might be quite interesting.
Makes me think of the musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"...

3 Answers

+11 votes
Not sure why you cannot find then in 1901 all living together as in 1911. Try https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Tyrone/Trinamadan/Garvagh/1745275/

They do seem to be uncertain of their ages but it is undoubtedly them.
by David Loring G2G6 Pilot (128k points)
+7 votes
Are you sure they were siblings? Could the information recorded on the census have been inaccurate?

Could they have been sister or brother in laws to the 'head of the household' ?

Many times people did not marry.

1. Because they had nothing to offer a potential spouse, no money or very little, no land, if this address was a farm, the property may have divided between the 10 siblings.

They were planning to move/emigrate and were not at that time in the marrying mood.

2. There was significant political unrest with the question of Home Rule still being widely debated, perhaps they were politically active.  Tyrone had a small Home Rule majority, I can imagine many heated political arguments happening between inhabitants of small communities

3. There are other possibilities, they were unpleasant people with habits, behaviour and politics that were unacceptable to to others in the local community.

4. They did not wish to marry, perhaps other marriages within the extended family had not gone well.

The Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government (or "home rule") for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.
by M Ross G2G6 Pilot (742k points)
Since they were also all living together at the time of the 1901 census, I suspect some variant of #3. The living situation was durable (at least 10 years), not temporary, and none of them married during the decade between censuses. It's possible that none of them ever married.

Perhaps some event that reflected extremely poorly on one or more them made them all pariahs?
There are many options.

Another idea, maybe the head of household brother was a tyrant and completely in charge of everything and would not allow his siblings to marry.

Or more than a little unacceptable, they did not wish/ need to marry because they had all the 'benefits' of marriage at home with their siblings.

It is possibly a stretch but DNA testing has shown this situation did happen.
+6 votes
In that place and time, this kind of arrangement was not unheard of. There is a group of siblings like this among our family's distant cousins in the same county.
by K. Price G2G6 Mach 1 (14.5k points)

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