And, in the face of all this, Margaret Henan named her first child
Samuel.
How account for the woman's stubbornness? Or was it a morbid
obsession that demanded a child of hers should be named Samuel?
Her third child was a girl, named after herself, and the fourth was
a boy again. Despite the strokes of fate that had already bereft
her, and despite the loss of friends and relatives, she persisted
in her resolve to name the child after her brother. She was
shunned at church by those who had grown up with her. Her mother,
after a final appeal, left her house with the warning that if the
child were so named she would never speak to her again. And though
the old lady lived thirty-odd years longer she kept her word. The
minister agreed to christen the child any name but Samuel, and
every other minister on Island McGill refused to christen it by the
name she had chosen. There was talk on the part of Margaret Henan
of going to law at the time, but in the end she carried the child
to Belfast and there had it christened Samuel.
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