Cliffs of Moher, southwest of Galway.
photo Elroy Christenson

The island of Ireland has had a turbulent history much before the vikings (see viking history) 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."

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 families 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 census 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. Several were so dedicated to their religious beliefs that they came to the colonies to preach the gospel to their new congregations, often they were made up of other new Irish immigrants.  This includes, among others, Reverends John and John(jr) Renwick, David Bothwell and Meridith Moon. 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 colonization 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 , Moon
  Southern Ireland  - Spann


Elroy's History of the Potato and the Famine || Norway History including Viking Settlements in Ireland

History Index || Elroy's Family Index || Ancestor Chart #1  || Early Irish History

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web pages created by Elroy Christenson- elroy@next1000.com - last updated 11/10/12