Remembering All the Orrs

Travelling to join their regiment on an April day of 1796, two Scottish soldiers, stopped at the end of their day's march in Antrim town. In Hyndman's Swan Inn, they found themselves in the company of John Orr and his friends. By the evening's end both soldiers had sworn allegiance to the Society of United Irishmen. This event was to have disastrous consequences, not only for John Orr but for five Orr families of Antrim. They would suffer for their attachment to the United Irishmen and the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity for all Irishmen be they Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter. From execution to exile, from treason trials to the treachery of the turncoat, from defeat on the street of Antrim to shipwreck in the East Indies, Remembering All the Orrs vividly recreates the extent to which the 1798 rebellion in Ulster had all the hallmarks of a civil war. Bob Foy's fascinating story, much of which has remained untold for over 200 years, is carefully reconstructed by the imaginative use of original documents in Belfast, Dublin and London. It is above all a marvellous example of how local and family history can provide a very human perspective on a significant period of history.