Sir William Jackson Homan, 1st Baronet

William Jackson Homan, son of Rev. Philip Homan and Mary Anne Thomas, baptized 10 December 1770 St Peter, Dublin. Barrister, graduate of Trinity College Dublin, 1788. Married Lady Charlotte Stuart, June 5,1797, St. George, Hanover Square, London.

Sir William Jackson Homan, 1st Baronet (1771 – March 1852), was an Irish baronet: Homan was the second son of the Reverend Philip Homan and grandson of George Homan, of Surrock, County Westmeath, by his wife Elizabeth Jackson, daughter and heiress of the Reverend William Jackson, of Maghul, Lancashire. He married Lady Charlotte Stuart, daughter of John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute, in 1797. In 1801 he was created a baronet, of Dunlum in the County of Westmeath. He acted as agent for the trustees of Dromana (where he also resided) for his brother-in-law Lord Henry Stuart and then his son, Henry, until 1847.

Homan died in March 1852. His only son had predeceased him and the title died with him.

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'William Homan', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 March 2013, 15:04 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Homan&oldid=54630...> [accessed 28 November 2013]

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From Liam Cox, Moate, County Westmeath: A History of the Town and District, Athlone: Alfa Print Ltd., 1981: "Sir William was born in Dublin in 1771 and educated at Trinity College. In 1797 he married Charlotte Stuart, daughter of the 1st Marquis of Bute after an elopement, and was created a baronet in 1801. He was secretary of the Dublin Paving Board and acted as agent for Lord Stuart's Waterford estates. He worked for his wife's nephew, Henry Villiers-Stuart, when the Catholic tenants of Beresford, the sitting member, voted for Villiers-Stuart, who won the seat. Homan was among the prominent Protestants who signed the Declaration for a conciliatory adjustment of the Catholic Question in 1828. He had a son and heir, Philip George Stuart, born in 1802. He drowned at sea in 1821. Sir William died in 1852. On 14 November, 1850, his brother Rev. Richard Homan offered the Shurock estates in four lots for sale in the Encumbered Estates Court."

Protestant Declaration. (Declaration of the undersigned ... https://books.google.ca/books?id=xBpgAAAAcAAJ
1829.) Homan listed under category of "Baronets" as one of those protesting against the cruelty of the laws discriminating against the Roman Catholic Subjects of Ireland.

From Journal of the Waterford and Southeast of Ireland Archeaological Society, Vol. 3, circa 1894: http://snap.waterfordcoco.ie/collections/ejournals/105230/105230.pdf. The following is a description of a monument to Sir William Homan's son, Philip Homan, who drowned at sea in 1821, and the replication of the poem that Sir William Homan wrote and had engraved on the monument.

"The tourist who visits Lismore should not fail to visit Temple Declan, the ruined site of the ancient church built there by St. Declan, on the left-hand side of the now disused road which branches off at the Round Hill, and leads to Drumroe. He will find there the traces of a Kizzeen or churchyard for strangers, unbaptised children, etc., and within the enclosed fence he will behold a huge triangular-shaped monument, which was erected in 1821 for Sir Philip E. S. Homan, Bart., who then lived at Drumroe House. The following inscription, now almost undecipherable, was copied by the ‘present writer in August, 1893, and is said to have been composed by the baronet [Sir William Homan] when,plunged in grief for the loss of his son, who was drowned at sea. It is carved on a marble slab of a cruciform shape, and there are steps ascending to the interior of this remarkable cenotaph, on which the legend appears :-

1821. Death dwells here in silence./ No tombs record the grief of parents./ Here are no monuments to parents themselves/ Nothing to proclaim the vanity of grieving/ For those whom we so soon must follow./ Sunt breves mundi rosae/ Sunt fugitivae flores/ Frondes veluti annosae/ Sunt labiles honores./ Velocissimo cursu/ Fluun t anni/ Sicut celeres venti/ Fugiunt, evolant, evanescunt./ Nil durat aeternum sub coelo,/ Rapit omnia rigida sors,/ Implacabili funesto telo/ Ferit omnia livida mors.

Sir William Homan's father Rev. Philip Homan enlisted William Homan, then aged 15, to help run his uncle Richard's drapery business after the uncle had died. Times were difficult in the woollen trade and the business eventually went bankrupt: Dublin Evening Post – November 24, 1785 - The Rev Philip Homan, sole executor of the late Richard George Homan, of Francis Street in the City of Dublin, woollen draper, has appointed George Homan of Great Ship Street, Dublin, to receive the debts due to the estate of the said Richard George Homan, and all persons indebted by book debt, note or otherwise, are requested to take notice. The woollen drapers business, as carried on heretofore by the late Richard George, and formerly by his brother the late William Homan, is now continued by their nephew, William [Jackson] Homan, and Thomas Smyth, who transacted business for the late Richard George Homan, in the house No 7 Francis Street, where all the commands of the father’s friends of the house will be executed with the integrity and care for which the family have been many years remarkable.

Saunders’s News-Letter – March 3, 1789 Bankrupt – To be sold by auction, at No. 7 Francis Street, on Monday 9th March 1789 and every succeeding day until the whole is sold, the entire stock in trade of Homan and Smyth consisting of a great variety of superfine, refine and livery broadcloths etc

Hibernan Journal – September 14, 1807 His Grace the Duke of Richmond has been pleased to appoint John Rosborough Esq Secretary to the Commissioners for Lighting, Paving etc of the City of Dublin, in the room of Sir William Jackson Homan, Bart, resigned