John Sinton

John Sinton, JP, (born Tamnaghmore House, Co. Armagh, 1 November 1835; died Ravernet, Co. Down, 13 September 1890), a Quaker industrialist and philanthropist, was the seventh child of nine born to David Sinton (1792 - 1860) and Sarah Green (1795 - 1856). Belonging to a large and well-known family descended from the Ulster-Scots Benjamin Cynton (born ca1640), John Sinton purchased a linen mill at Ravernet (sometimes spelt Ravarnette), Co. Down, close to Lisburn, Co. Down in 1873, and established another one at nearby Drumnavaddy. He was the younger brother of Thomas Sinton (1826 - 1887), linen manufacturer and Quaker philanthropist, who created the new village at Laurelvale, Co. Armagh, in the 1850s, and cousin of industrialist David Sinton of Cincinnati, once one of the richest men in America.

On 21 May 1857, Sinton married Eleanor Hemington at the Friends' Meeting House at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. They had six children, among them Walter Lyon Sinton (1858 - 1933), father of John Alexander Sinton, winner of the Victoria Cross (1916), and Caroline Sinton (1860 - 1918), grandmother of Lawrence John Hobson, O.B.E., C.M.G. (1922 - 1991), sometime Political Adviser to the High Commissioner for Aden and the Protectorate of South Arabia.