People on board

McCARTNEY, Andrew

Andrew McCartney was born on the 26th of December 1884 in Ballymena, Co Antrim to Andrew McCartney and Margaret Ann McElhenny. Andrew was the fifth of their nine children, another Andrew having died in 1879 aged five months. Another girl also died in infancy. Andrew Snr. was a Tailor, from a family of tailors. The family moved to Preston in Lancashire some time before the birth of Isabella in 1888. They lived in Hawkshead Street where in the 1891 census both Andrew and his father were Tailors, the eldest son John was a ‘Cotton Creeler’ and his eleven year old sister was a ‘Cotton Weaver’. By 1901 Andrew, aged sixteen, was a ‘Wood Sawyer’ as was his brother John.

In 1906 Andrew McCartney married Annie Moran, daughter of a brewer and victualler. The following year a son Andrew was born and died. In 1908 a daughter Priscilla was born who subsequently attended St Wilfred’s and St Mary’s R.C. school in Preston, though the McCartney family were Protestant. A son John was born in early 1910 and almost immediately Annie McCartney emigrated to the US, to be followed by Andrew in July of that year. There he had a job as a Mill Operator in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Annie returned to England with the two children in March 1911 and was living with her parents in Preston in the census, and working in the cotton industry. However, Andrew does not appear anywhere in that census. Another son was born in Preston in 1913 which suggests that he had returned to England.

Andrew McCartney enlisted in the East Lancashire Regiment, Service Number 6793, and fought with the 1st Regiment in France. He was awarded the Star, Victory and British medals. By October 1918 he was with the 2/1st Shropshire Yeomanry, a second-line regiment that had moved to Ireland early that year. His brother John had died in 1914 and now his mother Margaret died on the 9th of October. Andrew was presumably returning to Preston for her funeral when he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th. He did not survive the sinking nor was his body recovered. His name is recorded on the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton.

In April 1923 his widow Annie, with her three young children, left Liverpool for Boston where her sister was living in Fairhaven. She then settled in New Bedford where she remarried.