Landed gentry: sequel for the Enrights of Templemaley

[smcarberry]

Presented without commentary, in furtherance of broader knowledge of Clare history:

"Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea: with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement"
online book at Archive.org, bio starts at p. 601

Kathleen Alice Averill is one of the most competent business women in Los Angeles. Every one who makes a success in business must have at least one big incentive. Mrs. Averill confesses that she had two: A strenuous endeavor to drown the overwhelming grief of an irretrievable loss, and second, an ambitious determination to make good as a business woman.

The story of her career is an unusual one. Some people who have been thrown from circumstances of luxury and comfort into comparative poverty spend all the rest of their lives living in the past. Mrs. Averill by contrast while keeping green the memory of her happy early years, has enthusiastically lived for the present, and has made the duties of the day ever paramount.

Her family name was Enright. She was born at her father's estate Templemaley near the town of Ennis in County Clare, Ireland. Her father. Captain Andrew Enright of the Clare Militia, afterwards the London Irish Rifles, was also born at Templemaley. Her mother was Alice Greenhill, a native of Canonbury Park, Islington. London, and daughter of William Greenhill, senior member of the firm of Greenhill Brothers of the London Stock Exchange. Alice Greenhill had one sister who married Alfred Cellier, a famous operatic composer of London and a close friend of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the composer.

The marriage of Mrs. Averill's parents was a runaway match of somewhat romantic character. On both sides there were objections because of the youth of the pair. They eloped from Ireland, were married in London at St. John's church, Norfolk Square, and set sail immediately for New Zealand on a sail boat, sailing vessels at that time constituting the only means of transportation to that faraway country. They reached Dunedin, Ntew Zealand, in exactly three months from the day they set sail from London. Captain, Enright took up sheep farming on a large scale, and they lived in the wilds of New Zealand for three years. The oldest brother of Mrs. Averill was born there. In the meantime there had been a family reconciliation, and Captain Enright being an only son and child returned to Ireland at the earnest request, of his parents. When they returned to Ireland they had traveled completely around the world on a sailing vessel. Captain Enright then built up another family estate in County Clare adjoining that of his father. On the death of his parents he inherited the entire estate, and became a large landed proprietor. His individual property he called Trinaderry. He and his family including Mrs. Averill were wonderfully happy for a number of years. Captain Enright like all the other proprietors of landed estates in Ireland at that time was boycotted, but manfully tried to overcome the deplorable conditions under which the landed gentry of Ireland were obliged to live. Finally Kathleen Alice and her two brothers, very young children, were deliberately set upon and stoned by the boycotting peasants, and would probably have been killed had not several of the police known as Irish Constabulary, then billetted in temporary barracks on the Enright estate, came to their rescue.

In disgust at this circumstance Captain Enright moved to England to a beautiful home called Kempston Lodge, in the village of Kempston, in Bedfordshire. From private tutors at home Kathleen Alice was sent to complete her education at a private college in the town of Bedford called Madame de Marchots French Protestant College. She graduated there at the age of sixteen. Two years later her father having in the meantime gone on the London Stock Exchange risked his fortune and lost, the entire family emigrated to America direct to San Diego, California. Shortly after coming to California Kathleen Alice Enright met her husband, Origin V. Averill, an only son of Dr. Maria B. Averill and Voltaire Averill, and was married. They lived very happily together for fourteen months, when Mr. Averill contracted typhoid fever, and Mrs. Averill was left a widow without children.

Such were the circumstances which prompted her to a business career. After a course in the Brownsberger College of Los Angeles, she went to work with the City Dye Works and Laundry Company, at that time a verj' small concern, in the year 1901, as stenographer and bookkeeper. Mrs. Averill has given eighteen years of close application to this business. It is with no small degree of pride that she has watched its marvelous growth, under the able direction of the president and proprietor Mr. J. J. Jenkins (a sketch of whom appears elsewhere). When Mrs. Averill entered the business it was a small shop, employing a half dozen people. Now it is one of the most scientific and sanitary plants of the kind in the United States and has a pay roll of two hundred and fifty employes. Mrs. Averill has been secretary and assistant
manager of the company since 1908, and those who know the business are aware that she has been very instrumental in its upbuilding.

Mrs. Averill now lives at her beach home which she built a few years ago in Venice, and drives back and forth to her work every day in her Buick car. She was reared in the Protestant faith as an Episcopalian, but has no church affiliations at present. The lure of the mountains and the charm of California are the attractions which entice her and her friends to the country ever)' Sunday. She is a firm believer in the religion "out-of-doors."