Among the many buildings destroyed in the Los Angeles fires, I see, was the “McNally House”, a Queen Anne-style masterpiece listed in the US National Register for Historic Places.
Built in 1887 for the Armagh-born multimillionaire Andrew McNally (no known relation to the Diarist, alas), it was considered the finest of many mansions in the Altadena area of northern LA.
During its first owner’s lifetime (1838-1904), the property even had a private rail spur from Altadena Junction, the terminus of which was reached via McNally’s own railroad car.
Natural amenities, meanwhile, included views of the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Mapped Out – Frank McNally on a wealthy namesake’s mansion, destroyed in the Los Angeles fires
Sculptor Exculpated – Frank McNally on the forgotten Irish creator of one of England’s most infamous statues
Just a tweak, mid-winter – Frank McNally on the ups and downs of Christmas
Tower of strength – Brian Maye on Sinéad de Valera
The luxuriantly landscaped gardens also adjoined an avenue lined with deodar cedar trees, decorated every December and known as “Christmas Tree Lane”. That too is on the historic places register.
Unfortunately, proximity to mountain forestry meant the location was on the front line of the Eaton Fire, one of the worst of the city’s ongoing conflagrations. The house was destroyed in the early hours of Thursday. Christmas Tree Lane went up with it too.
Reared in Armagh City, McNally first learned his trade as a printer in Belfast, apprenticed to the shop of one John McWaters, where he spent seven years.
From “proof-boy”, he gradually rose to learn every aspect of the job, emigrating to Chicago in his early 20s and continuing a career there, first working for a “penny paper” called the Evening Star, then for the Chicago Tribune, where he met William H Rand.
The two men later became partners and, as Rand McNally, went on to build one of the world’s biggest map-making businesses.
Disastrous fires were not unknown in 19th-century America either, however. The great Chicago one of 1871 (blamed unfairly on Mrs O’Leary’s cow) destroyed their company’s headquarters.
But according to one account, McNally promptly moved two of the printing presses to the sandy, fire-proof shores of Lake Michigan, and resumed work there.
The partners later bought another print business that had survived the fire and, like a phoenix, rose from the ashes to flourish anew.
In the 1880s, now wealthy, McNally bought land in California, where he paid $15,000 to the celebrity architect Frederick Roehrig to design his great house.
So doing, he became a promoter for Altadena, persuading friends and associates to move to a neighbourhood that became known as “Millionaire’s Row”.
When McNally died in 1904, one of many obituaries (in the Chicago Citizen) recalled his Ulster roots and commented: “[He] possessed all the native shrewdness of the Northman and everything he touched turned into gold.”
The obit noted that, having handed most of the work over to his son, McNally Snr had taken to wintering in California.
There he indulged an ambition (perhaps inherited from his Orchard County upbringing) for “cultivating fruits, flowers, etc, and the rearing of birds”. Even these, however, “he turned to profitable account”.
In the early years of Rand McNally, the stock in trade had been railway tickets and timetables. By the early 20th century, the company was increasingly synonymous with road atlases.
This work extended beyond merely putting routes on paper. Not only were they the first map makers to include numbered highways, Rand McNally also erected many of the actual road signs.
The company can also claim paternity, or part of it, for the great American road trip.
Having an investment in the surname, if not – alas again – the business, I was intrigued to note that many of McNally’s obituaries referred to his “Scotch” or “Ulster-Scots” heritage.
This seems to have been a more specific way of attributing his business acumen to ethnicity than the “native shrewdness of the Northman” mentioned earlier.
And the surname does straddle Ireland and Scotland, in several anglicised variants including McAnally, McInally, and even McEnally (all of those giving voice to the definite article of the Gaelic original, so cruelly circumcised from my own version).
Indeed, as of the recent British general election, there is now a Frank McNally MP, representing Coatbridge in Lanarkshire.
So the great printer may well have had Scottish origins. But the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland states baldly that, unlike McNabb (“Scottish Gaelic, Irish”), or McNair (“Scottish Gaelic”), McNally is purely “Irish”, and widespread here, but “esp[ecially] Monaghan”.
This might explain the DNA test I did some years ago, one of those which supposedly trace your ethnic heritage to a millennium or so ago.
Half-hoping for something exotic – a hint of Genghis Khan, perhaps – I was a little disappointed to be declared 97 per cent Irish. The other three per cent was British, presumably Scottish, from a stray Pict somewhere. I couldn’t be any more indigenous if I tried.
But perhaps Andrew McNally was indeed an Ulster-Scot. Either way, he shares with the rest of us a name that has humble roots in the Irish failgeach, “meaning ‘poor, indigent’, perhaps a corrupted form of foigdech, ‘a supplicant, beggar’.”
Oh well. Wherever his ancestral origins, I’m grateful to Andrew McNally, late of Armagh, for helping to put our surname on the map, literally. I’m just sorry to see that his beautiful house is no longer there to keep it company.