Grubb Family Tree

of Meylers Park, County Wexford; and Magorban, County Tipperary. (In America 1727-1730)
Married Anne Willan, 1707. 10 children (4 died young)

From The Grubbs of Tipperary by Geoffrey Watkins Grubb, page 42).

"The child of his father's old age, John Grubb was the first of our ancestors to have been born and brought up in Ireland, and he was to be the shortest-lived and the most unfortunate of them all. Whatever little schooling he may have had from his Irish mother, he had to rely on himself, and failure seemed to dog his footsteps. Not in his choice of an Irish wife, however. His marriage at the age of 25 to Anne Willan, daughter of William and Mary Willan, prominent Quakers in County Wexford, was both a sensible and a happy one. It took place after the form of the Quakers in 1707 when Queen Anne was on the throne of England. In all ten little "Grublets" were born on of the union, though four died young. They spent the first twelve years of married life at Meylers Park, cointinuing Sabbath Quaker meetings there, to which several of their religiously disposed non-Quaker neighbours used to come. This, however, drew upon John and Anne the anger of the clergyman of the parish, incensed at seeing his small Protestant congregation dwindling through the Grubb "House meetings." His opposition spread to some of the neighbouring farmers, and John's trade, not good at the best of times, suffered appreciably. A steady refusal, being Quakers, to take any form of oath to pass goods through customs for import or export, hindered the Grubb business the more.

"Anne, who went about barefoot as did most of hte Irish women, was kept busy about her large kitchen with her youngsters, with butter-making and cooking. She got on well with her mother-in-law, and both of them did a full day's man's work about the farm with the milking and poultry and ducks. But when Elizabeth died, it seemed clear the door was closing at Myelers Park; their funds had fallen very low: but where were they to go?

"At last the leading came in 1719 to move to County Tipperary. A certain John Boles, Clerk of the Cashel Meeting (their circumstances and desire for a move would have been notified to all the Quaker Meetings) offered them the opportunity to come and improve a somewhat dilapidated farm on his Woodhouse Estate at Magorban, situated about half way between Fethard and Cashel. To this day the remains of an old Quaker burial ground at Woodhouse evidences the size of the Quaker cause there..."