Blackwater Bank and Belfast Revival
The most conspicuous development within Ireland during 1859 was the Evangelical Protestant revival in Ulster. Its immediate roots lay before the calendar year. Prayer meetings involving young converts had begun at Kells, County Antrim, in late 1857, encouraged by the Presbyterian minister John Hamilton Moore. During 1858 and, especially, 1859, reports of conversions, intense religious feeling, prayer gatherings and crowded services travelled rapidly through Presbyterian networks, newspapers and personal testimony. It was therefore not an event that can responsibly be assigned to one day, but 1859 was unmistakably its year of greatest public visibility.