Waddell Cunningham facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Waddell Cunningham
A 1784 portrait of Cunningham by Robert Home
Born	c. 1729 Killead, County Antrim
Died	15 December 1797 (aged 67–68) Belfast, Ireland
Occupation	Merchant, politician, military officer
Political party	Northern Whig Club
Board member of	Belfast Charitable Society, Belfast Ballast Board, Belfast Chamber of Commerce
Military career
Allegiance	Ireland
Service/branch	Irish Volunteers
Rank	Captain
Unit	Belfast Volunteer Company

Captain Waddell Cunningham (around 1729 – 15 December 1797) was an important Irish businessman. He played a big role in the business and public life of Belfast during the Georgian era (a period in British history).

Cunningham helped set up the Belfast Charitable Society and its "Poor House" (Clifton House), which helped people in need. He also led a group called the Volunteer patriot militia. Even though he was a Presbyterian, he helped pay for Belfast's first Catholic church. Because of this, many saw him as someone who wanted change, especially during the American Revolutionary War, when people in Ireland were also thinking about independence.

However, Cunningham also owned land and bought and sold enslaved people in the West Indies. He was against giving full rights to Catholics right away. This put him at odds with other groups in Belfast who wanted more democratic changes. After the French Revolution, these groups, known as the Society of United Irishmen, began to challenge the power of the British government and the wealthy Protestant Ascendancy (the ruling Protestant class in Ireland).

In 1771, his house in Belfast was attacked and destroyed by tenant farmers called "Hearts of Steel". They were angry about rent increases and being forced off their land. In 1786, people protested, forcing him to stop his plans to use ships from Belfast in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1792, after Bastille Day celebrations, he tried to weaken a plan to work with Ireland's Catholic majority. But other Volunteers, who were part of the Society of United Irishmen, stopped him. As the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was being planned, Cunningham was a strong supporter of the government. He volunteered to join the local police force, called the yeomanry.

Waddell Cunningham's Early Life

Waddell Cunningham was born in Killead, County Antrim, around 1729. He was the youngest son of John and Jane Cunningham. Both of his parents came from families involved in farming and the linen and overseas trades.

By 1752, Waddell had become a ship-owner. He was involved in the "triangular trade," a shipping route that connected three places. His merchant ships carried rough linen clothes and salted food from Belfast to the British West Indies. There, these goods were sold to slave plantations (large farms that used enslaved people). From the West Indies, his ships carried sugar and rum to Baltimore and New York City. Finally, they brought flaxseed (seeds for growing flax, used to make linen) from the Thirteen Colonies (early American states) back to Ireland.

Business Partnerships and Growth

In New York, Cunningham met and partnered with Thomas Greg, another businessman from Belfast. Their company, Greg & Cunningham, became one of New York's biggest shipping companies. They made a lot of money during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). They even attacked and took goods from enemy ships.

After the war, they used some of their wealth to buy a sugar plantation on the island of Dominica. They named it "Belfast." Greg's brother, John, who already lived on the island, provided enslaved people for the plantation.

Improving Belfast

In 1763, Cunningham returned to Belfast. With Greg, he worked to improve the town's business facilities. They invested in the Lagan navigation canal (built in 1763) and new docks and quays. Cunningham was the first president of the Belfast Ballast Board, which later became the Harbour Board. They also helped build the White Linen Hall in 1785. These improvements helped bring the linen trade to Belfast, which had previously gone through Dublin.

Cunningham was also involved in many other businesses. He refined sugar, milled flour, made glass, and found new ways to salt herring from Donegal for export. He even started "Cunningham's Bank" in 1785 and was involved in insurance and tobacco smuggling.

Public Service and Challenges

As Belfast's richest merchant, Cunningham took on more public duties. He was a founder and major supporter of the Belfast Charitable Society, (1774). This society set up the "Poor House" (Clifton House), which was a place for people who needed help. He also supported the Belfast Royal Academy and the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge (which became the Linen Hall Library).

However, not everyone saw Cunningham as a good person. Many people, including those from his own religious group, were angry about him forcing poor tenants off lands he and Greg had bought. In 1771, members of a secret farming group called the Hearts of Steel entered Belfast. They burned Cunningham's house, surrounded the army barracks, and freed one of their members from prison.

Waddell Cunningham: Volunteer, Slaver, and Reformer

Even though Cunningham secretly supplied linen uniforms to the American colonists fighting for independence, he was quick to act when the American ship privateer John Paul Jones attacked Belfast Lough in April 1778. Cunningham helped organize his own Volunteer company. These Volunteers were supposed to defend Ireland from the Americans and their French allies. However, many Presbyterians in the Volunteer movement felt sympathy for their relatives in the American colonies.

Cunningham attended Volunteer meetings in Dungannon and Dublin. These meetings supported American ideas, calling for Ireland to make its own laws and be free from Britain's trade rules, called the Navigation Acts. After Britain agreed to these demands in 1782, Cunningham suggested that Belfast ships could join the Middle Passage (the journey that carried enslaved people across the Atlantic). Before this, only British ports had done this.

The Fight Against Slavery

Belfast's wealth was closely tied to trade with the West Indies, where plantations used enslaved people. However, the idea of Belfast ships directly carrying enslaved people was too much for the public. The protests were led by Thomas McCabe, who was also on the board of the Charitable Society with Cunningham. McCabe was a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Lane, to which Cunningham had given money. In 1785, plans for a "Belfast Slaveship Company" were stopped. The people who wanted to end slavery won a big victory when Olaudah Equiano, a former enslaved person, visited Belfast in 1791 to promote his book about his experiences.

Political Reform Efforts

After the French Revolution, calls for political change became strong again. Cunningham joined the Northern Whig Club. This club wanted to reform the system of "pocket boroughs." In this system, most members of the Irish House of Commons (Ireland's parliament) were chosen by the kingdom's richest landowners, who already sat in the House of Lords.

In 1783, the owner of Belfast's borough, Lord Donegall, ignored a request to nominate Cunningham as one of Belfast's two Members of Parliament. So, Cunningham ran for election in nearby Carrickfergus on a platform of parliamentary reform. He won with 474 votes to 289. This was a rare victory for a Presbyterian. However, a committee of the House of Commons overturned the result. They said that Cunningham's supporters in Belfast had unfairly influenced the election.

Views on Catholic Rights

Cunningham supported giving Catholics more civil rights, which they had lost under the Penal Laws. In May 1784, his Belfast Volunteer Company allowed Catholics to join. Under Cunningham's leadership, they marched for the opening of the town's first Catholic church, St Mary's. They had also collected a lot of money for the church.

However, when Wolfe Tone, a key figure in Irish independence, visited Belfast in 1791, he found that Cunningham was not convinced by his idea that Ireland could only become truly independent if Catholics were given complete equality.

Supporting the Government

On Bastille Day in 1792, Cunningham led his Volunteers in a parade in Belfast. He and other reformers still saw the French Revolution as a good thing, like England's Glorious Revolution. However, Cunningham became worried when he learned that the day would end with a public meeting where Tone's supporters, the Society of United Irishmen, would present a strong message to the people of Ireland.

Samuel Neilson, who published a newspaper called the Northern Star, found Cunningham the night before the event. Cunningham was complaining to Volunteers from the countryside about Catholics and talking about "sedition" (rebellion) that would be discussed the next day.

The message from the United Irishmen said that "no reform... would answer our ideas of utility or justice, which should not equally include all sects and denominations of Irishmen." This meant they wanted full equality for everyone. Cunningham, along with his church minister, William Bruce, and the publisher of a rival newspaper, Henry Joy, suggested a slower approach: "the gradual emancipation of our Roman Catholic brethren." But their cautious idea was rejected. Neilson said he was surprised that any part of the message was called a "Catholic question." For him, the only question was "whether Irishmen should be free."

As the United Irishmen prepared for a rebellion to create a republic, Cunningham declared his loyalty to the British Crown and the government in Dublin. He became a captain in the town's yeomanry corps, a local military force that supported the government.

Death and Memorial

Cunningham died in December 1797 at his rebuilt house in Hercules Street (now Royal Avenue). This was seven months before the rebellions in Antrim and Down. In November 1765, he had married Margaret (who died in 1808), the sister-in-law of his business partner, Thomas Greg. Margaret's father was a Belfast merchant named Samuel Hyde. Waddell and Margaret had no children.

His name was carried on by Cunningham Waddell Greg, the son of his business partner. Cunningham Waddell Greg and his sister Jane Greg were strong supporters of the republicans. In 1798, they were attacked by government supporters for helping United Irish prisoners.

Cunningham was buried under a large memorial in Knockbreda Church cemetery, which overlooks Belfast. The inscription on his memorial praises his honesty as a merchant, his generosity, and his loyalty as a friend. It states he died on December 15, 1797, at 68 years old.

Images for kids

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  Mausoleum of Waddell Cunningham, Knockbreda Cemetery, Belfast