Fiona,
I suspect the townland that your ancestors lived was KIllycarn. It’s 875 aces of mostly agricultural land. Up in the Antrim hills. Griffiths Valuation for 1862 lists Clarke Robinson there in a house with a small garden on James Reid’s farm. So Clarke was evidently a labourer/weaver. There were several other Robinsons living nearby Henry, William, Patrick & Neal. Some of whom are probably relatives. The modern Kilycarn Rd runs through part of the townland. There is a way of identifying where Clarke’s house is (or was, because it’s probably gone now). I can explain if you are interested.
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml
There’s a Clarke Robinson death registered in Larne on 9.12.1866 that may well be your man. He was aged 56. You can view the original certificate on-line on the GRONI website, using the “search registrations” option:
You will need to open an account and buy some credits. It costs £2.50 (sterling) to a view a certificate. The death cert will tell you whether his wife Ellen was still alive in 1866 and you can then search for her death, save that death registration only started in Ireland on 1.1.1864 so if she died before that it may be hard to trace.
In the 1901 census of Killycarn there were 27 houses with a total of 127 inhabitants. 3 of the households were Robinsons.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Longmore/Killycarn/
2 of the households were Presbyterian and 1 was RC. So it’s possible that the Presbyterian & RC families are unconnected, or it is also possible that there was a mixed marriage over the years and that someone converted to the other faith. The Presbyterians probably attended Buckna Presbyterian Church. I found this gravestone inscription at Buckna graveyard:
Erected by William J Robinson Killycarn In memory of his beloved Wife Elizabeth who died 2nd February 1880 aged 37 years 'She is not dead but sleepeth' Also his son William John Robinson who died 1st November 1912 Isabella Robinson sister of above named who died 17th June 1922. And the above named William J Robinson who died 3rd April 1923 Also Nancy Robinson who died 25th April 1965
I searched Glenravel RC graveyard but did not see any Robinson gravestones there. However agricultural labourers were rarely wealthy enough to afford a gravestone (whereas farmers generally could) and so most were buried without a gravestone. So the family might well be there but in an unmarked grave.
There were some iron ore mines around Cargan in the Glens of Antrim but they weren’t big employers, and they eventually proved too small to work at a profit and were closed down. However it’s possible that if Henry arrived in Scotland with iron ore skills, that’s where he acquired them. But many agricultural labourers went to Scotland to find work and just learned their new trade there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargan
One of Ireland’s problems is a lack of natural resources. No coal, oil, iron ore etc, and so apart from a modest amount of shipbuilding in Belfast and the Belfast linen mills (which mostly only employed women), it did not really get the industrial revolution that benefited England and Scotland where mills, steelworks, ship building, coal mining and all their support industries were major employers creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Much better paid than subsistence farming or weaving. Added to that you had the effects of a massive population explosion in Ireland – up from 3 million in 1750 to 8 million in 1841 (no-one is really sure of the reasons why but reduced neo-natal deaths seem to be a factor) and the famine. So some push factors and some pull factors saw huge numbers of people leave Ireland. Something like 2 million people emigrated from Ireland in the 1800s.
If you look at the Scottish censuses for the Glasgow area in the late 1800s, you will see that about every fifth person recorded there was born in Ireland. Scotland was a particularly popular place to go to work because it was easy and very cheap to get to. Several sailings every day from Belfast, plus regular sailings from Portrush, Ballycastle and Londonderry, not to mention Dublin. The shipping companies main business was cargo and the passengers were just top-up revenue. Competition was fierce and passenger fares very low. People working in Scotland could come home for weddings or the harvest, as well as holidays (Glasgow used to shut down for 2 weeks every July, known as the Glasgow Fair holiday and there would then be a huge exodus to Ireland). You could also send children back to stay with their grandparents, thereby leaving the wife free to work. You couldn’t do all those things so easily from Australia, America or Canada. For Presbyterians, Scotland also had the benefit of being culturally very close as well as geographically very close. Something that persists to this day, in religion, music eg piping, sport etc. The experience and welcome offered to a Presbyterian from Ireland was generally much better than that given to a Roman Catholic. For further information see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zr6ycdm/revision/2
