14 Facts About Waddell Cunningham

Waddell Cunningham was a patron of the Belfast Charitable Society and its Poor House; a commander of the patriot Volunteer militia; and a leading subscriber among Presbyterians to the costs of erecting Belfast's first Catholic chapel.

Waddell Cunningham was additionally engaged in sugar-refining, flour-milling, glass manufacturing, new techniques for salting Donegal herring for export, finance, insurance, and tobacco smuggling.

Commensurate with his position as the town's wealthiest merchant, Waddell Cunningham assumed broader civic responsibilities.

Waddell Cunningham was a founding member, and principal benefactor, of the Belfast Charitable Society, which established the "Poor House" just outside the town.

Waddell Cunningham was a promoter of the Belfast Academy and the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge.

For many such beneficence was poor compensation for the hardship that Waddell Cunningham visited upon his own countrymen, and co-religionists.

In 1771, members of the secret agrarian society, the Hearts of Steel were able to enter the town, burn Waddell Cunningham's house, besiege the barracks, and spring one of their number from prison.

Waddell Cunningham was a delegate to Volunteer conventions in Dungannon and Dublin which echoed American discontents in calling for legislative independence and freedom from the restrictions of Britain's Navigation Acts.

When, in the wake of the French Revolution, calls for reform revived, Waddell Cunningham became a member of the Northern Whig Club.

Waddell Cunningham favoured relieving the kingdom's Catholic majority of their civil disabilities under the Penal Laws.

On Bastille Day 1792, celebrating what he and his fellow Whig reformers still regarded as a French reprise of England's Glorious Revolution, Waddell Cunningham led his Volunteers in a muster and parade in Belfast.

Waddell Cunningham was alarmed by the knowledge the day was to end in a public banquet and meeting at which Tone's supporters, the United Irishmen, would move an Address to the People of Ireland.

Waddell Cunningham's name was carried by Cunningham Waddell Greg, the son of his business partner, who, with his sister Jane Greg a committed republican, were in 1798 attacked by loyalists for assisting United Irish prisoners.

Waddell Cunningham was interred under an imposing memorial, attributed to Roger Mulholland, in Knockbreda Church cemetery overlooking Belfast.