Street in east Belfast, off the Newtownards Road in Ballymacarrett.
Named after Samuel Maziere Bryson, apothecary, antiquarian, and collector of Irish manuscripts. Born 9 March 1776, probably at Holywood, Co. Down, he was the son of the Presbyterian minister James Bryson. Educated in medicine at Edinburgh, he established a chemist’s shop in Belfast and became a licentiate of the Apothecaries of Ireland in 1806. He was active in the Belfast Medical Society and is recorded as having served as assistant surgeon to the 32nd Regiment.
From at least 1803 Bryson collected and transcribed Irish manuscripts, becoming a leading authority on Ulster place-names. He contributed to the work of William Henry Drummond and James Stuart, and his manuscripts later formed part of the MacAdam Collection in Belfast City Library. He was also associated with the Ulster Gaelic Society.
He died 28 February 1853 at his residence ‘Cluan’ in Ballymacarrett, then a developing suburb on the east bank of the River Lagan. The street was named in his honour.
Dictionary of Irish Biography, ‘Bryson, Samuel Maziere’; Belfast News Letter, 4 Mar. 1853;
F. J. Bigger, ‘Memoir of Samuel Bryson’, in Arthur Deane (ed.), Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society centenary volume (1924), 66–7;
Roger Blaney, Presbyterians and the Irish language (1996), 47–56, 224, n. 103.