Makin' Bacon

Bacon. In your heart of hearts, you always knew it would come down to bacon.

Back in Limerick, back in time, my family was in the pig trade. My great-great grandfather Charles Quaid (1840-1900) was a pig buyer, and so were his sons, and their sons. Not every one of them, it’s true, but it was definitely a pig buying family.

Limerick was, for a time, famous for its Limerick Ham. The city boasted several major producers, one of which was J. Matterson and Sons.

I’m no expert on the subject, but I think I’m on firm ground when I say that the production of bacon depends on a steady supply of pigs. Somebody raises a pig, then somebody turns it into breakfast. The Quaids weren’t either of those two; they were the middlemen, travelling around the countryside buying up choice pigs at fairs and markets.

Pig buying was a culture, a lifestyle, and for some reason it passed from father to son. Yes, always to sons. Charles Quaid (1840-1900) and Mary Nealon Quaid (1840-1917) had ten children. Of their six sons, four were pig buyers, and a fifth had a bacon shop. The sixth was my great-grandfather, who emigrated as a teenager. The tradition continued into the next generation. It must have been a calling.

And it was always for Matterson’s. Limerick had several large producers -- Shaw’s, O’Mara’s, Denny’s -- but the Quaid family appears to have been associated with Matterson’s. Charles Quaid, who like many other pig buyers in the 1870s lived on Athlunkard Street, later moved to Parnell Street (then called Nelson Street) to be near the Matterson’s plant. His son Daniel eventually took over that house, and sons Charles and Michael lived nearby.

The pig-buying Quaids all lived close to Matterson's,
and close to the train station (modern map).

One notable consequence of the pig-buying lifestyle was that the Quaid men, raised in the city of Limerick, often married women from out in the country. Mary Nealon herself was from western County Clare, and many of her daughters-in-law were from County Tipperary. This presumably reflected the pig-buying routes. Daniel Quaid (1872-1945), for example, was married to a Tipperary woman, and sure enough the 1911 Census finds him staying at a boarding house in Thurles, County Tipperary, the day before the fair. There were a number of other pig buyers staying in the same house, and if their reputation is to be believed, a few of them showed up at the fair with hangovers.

I learned of all this through a book called Pigtown: A History of Limerick’s Bacon Industry by Ruth Guiry, which is richly illustrated and available as a free PDF. Part of the author’s research included extensive interviews, including one with Charlie Quaid, whose grandfather and great-grandfather, both named Charles Quaid, were pig buyers. The eldest of all those Charlies was my great-great grandfather mentioned above, so Charlie the interviewee is my second cousin, once removed.

As I noted above, I am descended from Thomas Steven Quaid, The One Who Left, the one son who didn’t pick up the trade. Why he left, and in particular why he left so young, is a mystery. It wasn’t to escape grinding poverty; his father wasn’t rich by any means, but he made a decent living. There’s a story there somewhere.

In any case, I fully intend to embrace my newly-discovered ancestry. I’ll do the homework. I’ll add the USDA Daily Hog and Pork Summary to my daily reading. Did you hear that the negotiated carcass price for barrows and gilts has recently been above $100 per hundredweight?