Family Loss and Reinterment at Seskinore (1866–1873)

McClintock burial ground, Seskinore Chapel of Ease

Tragedy Within the Family

The later 1860s brought a series of personal tragedies to the McClintock family.

Harry Edward McClintock died on 2 April 1866
Beresford George Perry McClintock, the eldest son, died aged nine on 31 January 1870

These losses followed the earlier death of Samuel John McClintock (1854), George Perry McClintock’s younger brother.

Together, they marked a deeply difficult period in the life of the family.

The Creation of a Family Burial Place

In response, George Perry McClintock sought to bring his family together in death as well as in life.

Following the construction of the Chapel of Ease at Seskinore, he petitioned for permission to remove the remains of his brother and children from their original burial place at Fintona and reinter them at Seskinore.

Ecclesiastical Petition (c.1873)

The following document records the formal request and its approval:

Marcus Gervais, by Divine Providence,
Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland,
Metropolitan and Bishop of Clogher

To our beloved in Christ, the Reverend officiating Minister in the Parish of Donaghavey,
and the Reverend Robert Vickers Dixon, Doctor in Divinity, Rector of the Parish of Clogherney, in our Diocese of Armagh—

Whereas Major George Perry McClintock, J.P., D.L., of Seskinore, near Omagh in the County of Tyrone, has presented a Petition to us stating that the remains of his brother, Samuel John McClintock (who died September 1st 1854), and also those of two of his children, namely Harry Edward McClintock (who died April 2nd 1866) and Beresford George Perry McClintock (who died January 31st 1870), were interred in the Churchyard of Fintona in our Diocese of Clogher, said remains having been interred in leaden coffins;

And that Major McClintock desires to remove said remains to the Burial Place constructed and set apart for the use of members of his family in the Churchyard attached to the Chapel of Ease lately built at Seskinore, Parish of Clogherney, in our Diocese of Armagh;

And praying us to grant him a Faculty for this purpose;

We, assenting to such Petition, hereby grant our licence:

To exhume the said corpses of Samuel John McClintock, Harry Edward McClintock, and Beresford George Perry McClintock, if the same can be discerned from the other corpses therein or near them interred;

To deposit and intomb the same in the said Burial Place in the Churchyard attached to the Chapel of Ease at Seskinore;

And we order that such exhumation, depositing, and intombing be conducted decently and reverently.

Source: PRONI DIO.4/32C/9/11/5

Interpretation

This petition reveals more than a legal or ecclesiastical procedure—it reflects a deeply personal response to loss.

By transferring the remains to Seskinore, George Perry McClintock:

established a family burial ground at the heart of the estate
reinforced Seskinore as the spiritual and emotional centre of the family
ensured that those lost would rest together within the landscape he had reshaped and defined

Legacy

The burial place created in the 1870s would remain central to the family’s story.

It later became the resting place of subsequent generations—including those whose lives were marked by equally profound loss—linking the early tragedies of the Victorian period with the final chapters of Seskinore’s history.