The island of Ireland has had a turbulent history much before the
vikings invaded and settled on the island. It had once been
a
rugged tree covered wind-swept land in the north Atlantic.
Successive populations cut the trees for firewood, timber for
ships and
buildings without allowing for regrowth to cover the
demands. Further clearing of the land for crops that
had to
hold their place in the thinning or rocky soil frequently eroded
anything that remained. The introduction of sheep grazing
exacerbated the problems of the short growing season and wet
climate. The one crop that seemed to grow particularly well
here
was
the exotic south American plant of the potato which became a
prominent
crop after the 1600's. The seventeenth century Ireland "was
utterly wretched, and broken-hearted. Its agriculture was
miserable, and chronic scarcity alternated with actual famine; it
had
little commerce, and no manufacturers, save the slowly increasing
linen
manufacture of Ulster." [Hanna 621]
Around the 1600's Dublin had a population of about thirty
thousand. The Provence of Ulster in Northern Ireland had no
single town with more than five thousand people. The
scarcity of people also made immigration to Ireland a good
destination
for cheap help needed for the large English plantations under
development. It also was a good way to get rid of the
trouble
making Scots who refused to obey the kings commands.
Although
Charles I was trying to re-establish the Catholic church in
England in
the mid-1600's, Cromwell takes over the government and has
Charles executed in 1649. The Presbyterians that had been
fighting so fiercely in Scotland against Charles I now in Northern
Ireland came out opposing the death penalty and the tyrannical
methods
of Cromwell. John Milton who was a sworn Covenant, was angry
at
the Westminister Assembly for condemning his dangerous doctrine of
divorce. "He published a reply to the Presbyterian protest
when
he calls Belfast a "barbarous nook of Ireland," and exhibiting "as
much
devilish malice, impudence and falsehood as any Irish rebel could
have
uttered and would judge them to be "a generation of Highland
thieves
and red-shanks."
Oliver Cromwell
------ In 1649 Cromwell came to Dublin and ordered the
town
surrender. Upon rejection of the offer he took the town by
force
and slew many of the defenseless inhabitants. The
Presbyterians
were watched for their possible allegiance to Charles.
Cromwell
allowed the Catholics freedom to worship but punished the
Presbyterians. After 1658 and death of Oliver Cromwell,
Henry Cromwell in five years had subdued the rebellion, rendered
life
and property safe, given liberty to independent thinking, and
brought
many settlers from England and Scotland to southern Ireland.
The
Catholic lands were confiscated and almost three quarters become
owned
by Protestants after Cromwell. Popish priests were banished
and
Roman Catholic worship repressed. James II (r.1685-89), son of
Charles I, comes into Ireland from France to restore Catholic rule
and
the Monarchy. After marching northward without many problems he
puts Londonderry under siege. It is filled full of
Presbyterians
who
feared they would be slaughtered. They gathered courage and
arms
to
break
the siege and help defeat the French from taking Ireland. They
assumed that rewards would also come from their loyalty to saving
the
region for the English and Protestants. With the restoration
of
the monarchy this was thrown into doubt. 
King William dies in 1702 and was succeeded by Anne, the daughter
of
James. She was a tried and true Tory and interested in
invoking revenge on the Presbyterians and Covenanters for her
father's
death. The Presbyterians were somewhat protected by the
reigning power of the Whigs who saved the dissenters. By
this
time the Irish Presbyterian Church congregations numbered one
hundred
and twenty. They were divided into nine areas of Belfast,
Down,
Antrim, Coleraine, Armagh, Tyrone, Monaghan, Derry, and
Convoy.
[Hanna 617]
Queen Anne introduced the bill "to prevent the further growth of
Popery" in Ireland. It contained many clauses which were
focused
against the Roman Catholics in direct violation of the Treaty of
Limerick. One was that all public officials had to
take the
Sacrament according to the rites of the Episcopal Church.
The
Presbyterians assented to the demands because they had few seats
in
parliament or official standing anywhere. The bill was
passed 4
March 1704 besides the Catholic restrictions it also excluded
Presbyterians from the magistracy, customs, excise, post-office,
courts
of law, and municipal offices. So not only were
Presbyterians denied positions of law and influence but also minor
governmental offices that afforded at least a small continuous
source
income for their families. "Some Presbyterians residing in
Lisburn were excommunicated by the Episcopal authority for the
crime of
being married by ministers of their own church." They were also
forced
to pay tithes to the Episcopal church that they never attended and
whose beliefs they never adhered. In spite of this the
Presbyterian churches continued to thrive. [Hanna 618]
In 1710 the Duke of Ormond took over the government. He
exerted his power to appoint primates and commander of forces to
be
Lords Justices. A recently passed law which was used against
the
Roman Catholics now was forced on the Presbyterians.
This
was the infliction of severe penalties for refusing to take the
Abjuration Oath. The law came down on the Rev. Alexander
McCracken, of Lisburn, in 1713. Mr. McCracken was fined five
hundred pounds and condemned to six month in prison but because he
refused to swear an oath stayed in prison for two years after
George
was crowned king in 1716. School teachers were
imprisoned
for up to three months and doors of Presbyterian churched were
"nailed
up".
The emigration from Ulster is a remarkable feature of Irish
history. The Scots who came to Ireland were looking for
better
opportunities for themselves and their families. There was
no
loyalty of the Presbyterians to the ruling groups of
Ireland.
They left Ulster in crowds. Whole families and congregations
of
churches, including the ministers, migrated at one time. In
1728,
Archbishop Boulter states that "above 4200 men, women and children
have
shipped off from hence for the West Indies, with three years," The
"West Indies" was another word for the American colonies. A
famine struck in 1739-40 during which time about 400,000 starved
to
death. Continuing the emigration cycle "several years
afterwards, twelve thousand emigrants annually left Ulster for the
American plantations", From 1771 to 1773 about thirty
thousand
emigrants left Ulster which included ten thousand weavers.
Accounting for the increases in population from 1731-1768 the
number of
emigrates that went to North America in this period was
proportional to
one third of the entire Protestant population of Ireland.
[Hanna
622]
The deprivation of the land and the people of Northern Ireland is
recorded in a number of documents in the Public Records of
Northern
Ireland. One quote from the Murray papers gives at least
some
clues from the perspective of the land owner by James Hamilton in
1728-29,
America or stories of America brought thousands of immigrants
from
both Northern and Southern Ireland. By the mid-1700's a
thousand
wagons of Irish a year were making their way from Pennsylvania
down
into North Carolina. One letter from John Dunlap, who was
responsible for the printing of the Declaration of Independence,
wrote
on 12 May of 1785 to his brother-in-law in Ireland, "People with a family advanced in
life
find great difficulties in emigration, but the young men of
Ireland who
wish to be free and happy should leave it and come here as quick
as
possible. There is no place in the world where a man meets
so
rich a reward for good conduct and industry as in America."
[PRONI, emigration series:1] Many of the familes in my background
were
part of this group which
is largely known as the Scotch-Irish. They were forced out
of
Scotland and then forced out of North Ireland through economic and
religious inequities. Because the records of Ireland
have been decimated by the English event of burning the cenus
records
in 1922, it is very difficult, if not impossible to track the
families
back to the 1600's. Although I have a number of relatives
that
have Scottish names I can't prove when or where they
originated.
We know they continued a religious tradition that would have been
outlawed in Ireland and England. We have been able to identified
by DNA
that the Graydon family in South Carolina is associated with the
Graydons of Canada and have origins in Fermanagh Co., N.
Ireland.[Graydon DNA project] The records of Freeholders there
give us
a pretty good idea about this family. Other families that
did not
hold land and may have worked as serfs have no records to
trace.
The Spann family seems to be the only
one that came from southern Ireland. The fact that several
Span/Spann
were educated in Trinity College in Dublin indicates to me that
Rev.
Benjamin Spann and his sons were part of the English colonizaton
of
Southern Ireland. See the following families for their
lives.
- Family Members -
Northern
Ireland
(proved or suspected immigrants) - Bothwell, Burns,
Campbell, Jones,
McDowell, Renwick,
Graydon
Southern
Ireland
-
Spann
Elroy's History of the
Potato and the Famine
Return to History Index || Return to Elroy's Family Index || Ancestoral Chart #1
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