Jim Smyth

The story of the life of Henry McCracken is inextricably fused with the history of eighteenth-century Belfast. Formed of stout Presbyterian stock, McCracken’s family were the founders of the Belfast Newsletter—the oldest English-language newspaper still in circulation, published since 1737—and also worked as textile merchants, rope-makers, and philanthropists. Where the McCrackens and Joys exemplified the economic dynamism and vibrant civic...