Kemmis family of Ballinacor, County Wicklow

This distinguished family of solicitors and army officers was of Anglo-Norman origin and had arrived in Ireland from Wales in the seventeenth century. One of its early representatives in Ireland, Thomas Kemmis (1753-1823), held a number of distinguished positions, including Crown Solicitor to the Treasury, Deputy Keeper of the Seals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, and Solicitor to Civil and Military Departments of the Ordnance in Ireland. He was succeeded by his third son, William Kemmis (1777-1864), a Crown Solicitor for the Dublin and Leinster Circuit. William married Ellen, second daughter of Nicholas Southcote Mansergh of Grenane, county Tipperary, in 1805, and in the same year commenced the building of Ballinacor, which partly incorporated an old dwelling house known as Drumkitt Lodge. His eldest son, William Gilbert Kemmis (1806-1881), died unmarried, and bequeathed the estate to his nephew, Colonel William Kemmis (1836-1900). A Professor of Artillery at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, Colonel Kemmis was the author of several instructional text books. He married in 1862 Ellen Gertrude de Horne Christy, eldest daughter and heiress of George Steinman Steinman of Priory Lodge, Peckham, and Sunridge, Kent. Their eldest son, William, succeeded to Ballinacor, while the second surviving son, Marcus (1867-1945), became heir to his maternal grandfather and assumed the surname of Kemmis-Steinman.

Like his father, William Henry Olphert Kemmis (1864-1939) followed a military career, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Artillery Militia. He retired on the death of his father to take on the management of the Ballinacor estate, and married in 1888 Frances Maude, second daughter of the Reverend Charles Beauclerk. Captain William Daryl Olphert Kemmis was the eldest of their three children. Having joined the Inniskilling Dragoons in 1912, he served in the First World War and retired from active service in 1923.

In 1927, Captain Kemmis married Winona Rosalie 'Jess' Armstrong (1893-1982), the second daughter of Captain Marcus Beresford Armstrong of Moyaliffe House, county Tipperary. When Captain Armstrong died in 1923, he bequeathed the Moyaliffe estate to Jess. Following the death of his only son, Captain Marcus Beresford Armstrong made the decision to pass the Moyaliffe estate to his second daughter, Jess. She and her husband divided their time between Moyaliffe and Ballinacor until the death of Captain Kemmis in 1965, when Ballinacor passed to his cousin, Major Richard Lomer.