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Frances Berry was born in 1743, and was the only child of Knight Berry of Birr and Eglish and his wife Sophia, daughter of Captain James Sterling of Whigsborough. In 1759 she married Thomas Berry. They lived at Eglish Castle and had sixteen children. Frances Berry died in 1807 and is buried at Eglish.

James Armstrong Berry of Irishtown, Eglish was born on the 13th July 1770, the 8th child and 4th son of Thomas and Frances Berry of Eglish. He lived for most of his life on the townland of Ballinagulna, about ½ a mile from Eglish in a small mill. He was a Captain in the Eglish Troop of Yeomanry in 1808. In 1818 he married Margaret. In the census of 1821 he describes himself as a farmer and miller. In March 1834 he was living in Parsontown (Birr). His eldest son William was born in 1819 and died on the 17th April 1850 at Mossfield.

Robert Fleetwood Berry was born on the 1st January 1777, the twelfth child and seventh son of Thomas and Frances Berry of Eglish Castle near Birr. As a young man, he was apprenticed, from 1793 until some time after 1801 to Mr John Brennard, a cotton merchant and draper, of Castle Street, Liverpool. By 1804, he lived in Ireland and was employed in the linen business in Dublin. In 1812 was living at Gallen, King's County, being employed in connection with the Grand Canal. On the 14th of November of that year he married Elizabeth Crow at St. Catherine’s Church, Tullamore. She was the daughter of Edward Crow of the Round House, Cromac Street, Tullamore. After their marriage they lived at Shannon Harbour. He died there suddenly on the 21st August 1822 and was buried in the Berry enclosure in the graveyard of the Church of Ireland Church at Eglish, King's County.

Sterling Berry was born in 1771, the ninth child and fifth son of Thomas and Frances Berry of Eglish. He married in 1806 and died in 1828.

Thomas Berry was born in 1737 or 1738, the eldest son of John Berry (1702-1768) who was buried at Kilbeggan. In 1759 he married Frances Berry. Through her connection, he acquired Eglish Castle in the 1770. He was reputed to hold a large tract of land in the Barony of Philipstown as well as land in the Barony of Eglish. He farmed much of the land himself which for the most part was grazed by sheep. He also established a bleach green at Eglish. He died in 1815 at Eglish and was buried there.

Middleton Westenra Biddulph was born on 17 August 1849 at Rathrobin, Mountbolus, King’s County (Offaly). He was one of six children, and the eldest surviving son of Francis Marsh Biddulph (1802–1868) and Lucy Bickerstaff (d. 1896). She was born in Preston, Lancashire and they married in 1845. The Bickerstaff connection was to be an important one for the surviving sons of Francis Marsh Biddulph, and led to a substantial inheritance in the 1890s for Middleton W Biddulph, and his brother Assheton, who lived at Moneyguyneen, Kinnitty.
The Biddulph ancestors were from Staffordshire, and later Wexford, and had arrived in King’s County from as early as 1694 or 1660. Lt Col. Biddulph held about 1,000 acres, of which perhaps 600 to 700 acres he farmed with the balance leased to his long-standing Protestant tenants. His landholding was principally in the townlands of Rathrobin and those adjoining of Clonseer, Cormeen, Kilmore and Mullaghcrohy, all near Mountbolus, in the civil parish of Killoughy and the barony of Ballyboy.

Middleton Biddulph went to Foxcroft House boarding school in Portarlington, aged 11, thereafter to the Royal School in Banagher, and joined the army when he was eighteen, enlisting with the Northumberland Fusiliers (Fifth Regiment). Initially an ensign or cornet, he rose in the ranks quickly and was a Lieutenant by 1871, Captain in 1881 and Major from 1885. Before retirement in 1896 he held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He spoke French, German and Hindustani and stations included: Hythe March (1872), St Helier’s, Chatham (1879) Portsmouth (1881), Agra (1880), Mullingar (1882), Newcastle (1886), Colchester (1887) and Aldershot (1891). It was while he was at Mullingar with the Ist Batt. Northumberland Fusiliers that he was appointed adjutant of the Ist Northumberland and ordered to proceed to Alnwick. It appears that he met his future wife, Vera Flower, following on from an introduction by her brother Stanley Smyth Flower (1871–1946), who was also an officer in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. They married in 1891. Vera Josephine Flower was a daughter of Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, London. They did not have children.

When Biddulph retired from the army in the mid-1890s, he returned to Rathrobin and rebuilt the old house with the benefit of the Bickerstaff inheritance over the period 1898 to 1900. He employed Sir Thomas Drew as architect and William Beckett of Dublin as the builder. Once the new Rathrobin House was completed, Lt Col. Middleton Biddulph got on with his duties as a landlord and was a regular attender at the Petty Sessions, the Board of Guardians, and the County Infirmary, served as High Sheriff in 1901, and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the County in 1910. He was also on the board of the King’s County Joint Committee for Technical Instruction and the King’s County Farming Society. He and his wife left for England in June 1921 as the military campaign of the IRA in the locality intensified, and Rathrobin House was destroyed by Republican IRA forces in April 1923. While he seemed to have planned to return to Ireland after this, an attack on his land agent, Violet Magan, and his own declining health delayed plans to do so, and he died in Chelsea in May 1926.

Birr Business and Professional Women’s Club was formed in the County Arms Hotel, in November 1967. It was the first business and professional women’s club to be formed in Ireland outside of Dublin.

The Birr War Pensions Committee was established under the national Naval and War Pensions Committee.