“[…] and the Brogue their was good fun that night in Uncle James'”

This chapter presents a case study on a late 19th-century Ulster family and describes the first steps in planning a larger investigation of that network. The analysis is twofold. The first part looks at what the letters of one member can tell us about this social network and suggests ways to develop a Network Strength Scale for this historical community. Secondly, the analysis provides an overview of linguistic features used by the same informant. The data come from the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence and the study is grounded in Historical Sociolinguistics. The preliminary findings point to a high-density network with strong kinship ties. Furthermore, cooperative farming and membership in communal (sub)networks seem promising indicators to consider for a revised Network Strength Scale. The linguistic analysis reveals both well-known and lesser-discussed features of Irish English that may be interesting to study from a social network perspective.