Amy loved fun and was the leader in pranks and adventures with her six brothers and sisters and her five cousins.
One day when her parents were out she and two of her brothers climbed through a skylight above the bath in the bathroom and out onto the roof. Round the edge of the roof was a lead gutter and they walked around the edge of the house. When they came to the front they looked down – guess who was standing on the lawn looking up? - their Mum and Dad.
The family loved fun, their father taught them how to swim and their mum used to show care to others by sending the children to the village with soup for the old and poor. Amy said
‘we had our reward when we saw the old faces crinkle with smiles’.
Rev John Beatty was the families minister and Amy would have learned a lot about India from his brother who was a missionary in India. On one of his visits home he came and lived for a year in a house next door to the manse, and his wife used to tell the children stories on a Sunday afternoon about India. We’re told that Amy would often stay behind and beg to hear more.
The children were taught in their home for quite a while and then Amy spent three years at a Methodist Boarding school at Harrogate in Yorkshire. But in 1883 she came back to N. Ireland.
The mills owned by her father and uncle went well for many years but it was competition with American flour that brought the first great change in Amy’s life – a move from Millisle to Belfast. She took lessons in music, singing and painting in a school in Belfast and the family lived in a house in College Gardens.
Amy’s father died on 12th April, 1885 aged 54.
Amy used to visit the streets around her home and bring children to children’s meetings. On Sunday mornings she had a class for ‘shawlies’ that is the mill girls who wore shawls instead of hats.
The work among the mill girls grew and grew until they needed a hall that would seat 500. She saw an advertisement for an iron hall that could be put up for £500. And so the work of the ‘Welcome Hall’ began which is now Welcome Evangelical Church. A stained glass window has just been unveiled there along with three murals on the Shankill depicting three eras of Amy’s life – Millisle, Belfast and India.
The Ulster History Circle erected a blue plaque on the front of the old schoolhouse (now Millisle Baptist Church) in November 2006 and another at the Welcome Evangelical Church in 2007.
Link to Welcome Evangelical Church Website
