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Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Derry (Londonderry) => Topic started by: Julesleeke on Friday 12 November 10 16:28 GMT (UK)
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Hello
I just thought I'd put this question out there:
Where in England did the English settlers come from who emmigrated to Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries? Has any sort of study been made of this? I'm particularly keen to know about the origins of the 'small' English tenant farming families as opposed to the 'big house' families whose seats in England are more commonly referred to in historical documents, peerage manuscripts on so on. Is there a pattern to the way in which the news of 'available' land in Ireland/Ulster was disseminated across England at that time? Were there certain key places where groups of families emerged from?
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Not sure there is a specific area you could pin it down to, although most came over as tenants of the London livery companies - so more likely to have been from the London area you might imagine. My own ancestors reputedly came from Yorkshire and Warwickshire though so really they came from all over! The family story is they served in the army with Sir Thomas Phillips of Limavady and came to Ireland to live on his land (pre Londonderry plantation).
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There ain't many english people in county londonderry but i would think that most of them came from derry/londonderry city and parts of coleraine as it would seem that they settled here where the london companies where. Most of the settlers here are scottish shown in the great amount of presbyterians here versus church of ireland (very little). The most of them would've probably came from the north of england mostly deprived families and the odd upper class family who would've took over all of the land some of them still own the land here theres actually estate like a couple of miles down the road from me.
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Not sure there is a specific area you could pin it down to, although most came over as tenants of the London livery companies - so more likely to have been from the London area you might imagine. My own ancestors reputedly came from Yorkshire and Warwickshire though so really they came from all over! The family story is they served in the army with Sir Thomas Phillips of Limavady and came to Ireland to live on his land (pre Londonderry plantation).
How do you know this where did the family get this idea out of are there any records that you have that may suggest this. Btw were your ancestors presbyterian or church of ireland because i have found a record of someone in my own family with the spelling of my name in the english form rather than the scottish form and am now beginning to think we are english and this might be true as there are very little of us in the county (english families usually came in small numbers) and the ones in county down all come from england and there are loads of them down there.
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Could someone delete this.
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There are early records of County Londonderry in the Guildhall Library, London.
Two very good reference books are by James Stevens Curl- both well indexed:
The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914 (published 1986)
The Honourable The Irish Society and the Plantation of Ulster, 1608-2000 (published 2000)
Both cost £50 when first published so they may not be widely available for reference from many libraries.
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Was just about to tell OwenC about those brilliant books by JS Curl - also good is "Coleraine in Bygone Centuries" by TH Mullin.
Also I disagree that there weren't many english settlers in the Londonderry plantation - I've found lots (although admittedly many more Scots have come since the initial plantation). Also the London companies had estates covering ALL parts of the newly created "Co Londonderry", not just in the 2 main towns. My ancestors were Church of Ireland and, by marrying mostly within their own church, many of the family names in my family tree are of english origin.
I would also have thought that most english settlers of a humble background would be likely to be the Londoners who came out as construction and other workers on the Company's estates. Those from further afield are likely to have lived on the english estates of the more affluent settlers who acquired estates in ulster, like the Beresfords who came from Kent and became Marquises of Waterford with large estates around Coleraine.
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Exactly. George Canning who was the Ironmonger's agent in 1640s came from Warwickshire and was supposed to have brought craftsmen with him and there are probably lots of other examples.
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The Londonderry Plantation was largely an English Plantation in the early 17th century - as mentioned many of the new settlements were built by the English and both the 'city' of Londonderry and the town of Coleraine were built primarily by English labour. A settlement was built as an executive headquaters for each of the 12 Company estate for example Ballykelly by the Fishmongers, and settlers lived in and around the villages as Derry was 'frontier territory' for the first four decades of the 17th century. Indeed maps of these settlements exist and most of the settlers in the villages were English and lived in English style houses. Some of these craftsmen actually ended doing quite well and became landholders. In the early period the settlers faced constant attack from the Irish Woodkerne. Sir Thomas Phillips, a servitor, and Englishman [although with Welsh roots] was granted the manor of Limavady and in 1612 he built Newtownlimavady a mile upstream from the old town and brought 25 English families to populate the new town, which became a Borough under his influence. Most of the office holders in the Borough had English sounding names so N'Limavady was a very English town. But the English never came in great numbers and indeed the native Irish were able to rent farms on the Phillips estate much to the chagrin of Phillips.
Scots started to come in larger numbers in the 1630s and soon were equal in number to the English. The 1641 rebellion shattered the new Plantation and many of the English went home never to return. In the aftermath of the rebellion during the Protectorate in the 1650s there was a massive influx of Scottish into north of the county in particular in the Baronies of Coleraine, Keenaught and Tirkeeran from Londonderry through Limavady and across to Coleraine when something like a second Plantation took place. Thus, if one compares the 1663 hearth money rolls with the 1630 muster rolls there is a distinct increase in Scottish surnames and a decrease in English sounding names. However, the English were still there and tended to be the landlords [for example Nicholas Lane in and around Ballykelly] and the Scots & Irish their tenants. Futher waves of Scots came in the 1660s and in the 1690's, and thus Presbyterian congregations were well established in many areas by the end of the century. The baptismal register for Ballykelly Presbyterian in the period 1699-1707 contains some 600 baptisms & the marriage register some 500 marriages in the years 1700-1728 showing that the Scottish colony was well established and embedded in the area [Ballykelly P Church served the Presbyterian inhabitants of Faughanvale, Tamlaght Finlagan and Magilligan].
It is very difficult to trace these early settlers back to Scotland or England - farmers and craftsmen leave little trace unlike the gentry and nobility. It may be possible if a settler had an unusual name. I have traced one family back to Scotland but they were minor landlords residing in the parish of Aghanloo, near Limavady - Abraham Hillhouse was listed with two hearths in the 1663 returns in Artikelly. He died in 1676 leaving a wife Janet and two known sons, Abraham Hillhouse jun his eldest son [received the 2 Largies & was at the siege of Derry] and his second son John Hillhouse received the manor house called Freehall and a fairly sizeable estate. Abraham Hillhouse senior also offset a tenement in the town of Irvine in Ayrshire upon his death so I assume that is where the family was from. But this is the exception rather than the norm in the course of research.
One could strike lucky for example in the Irvine parish registers of 1689 was the following baptism '7 July 1689: Elizabeth Fleeming, lau[ful]'ll daughter to James Fleeming & Jane Moor, parishe of Bellskellie [Ballykelly] & Co of Londonderrie in Irland, baptized'. This family appear to have gone home to their roots for refuge during the Williamite wars in Ireland, and the 'siege of Derry' ended three weeks after the child was baptised.
The key is to keep digging and to keep looking for the source material relating to the region where our ancestors resided. It is the sources that throw up the names. Keep a note of neighbours and kinsmen and think laterally because with the laws of diminishing returns it becomes fruitless if one just concentrates only on the family name. The good genealogist is also a good local historian.
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I have a relative in that who married there (six times removed great grandfather), i wonder if he was scottish is there any way of telling if he was born here? Its starting to seem that everyone in this county is actually english i always thought everyone was scottish.. if everyone is english why are the vast majority of protestants are presbyterians. Also was there an influx of planters in the ballykelly area at that time?
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Was just about to tell OwenC about those brilliant books by JS Curl - also good is "Coleraine in Bygone Centuries" by TH Mullin.
Also I disagree that there weren't many english settlers in the Londonderry plantation - I've found lots (although admittedly many more Scots have come since the initial plantation). Also the London companies had estates covering ALL parts of the newly created "Co Londonderry", not just in the 2 main towns. My ancestors were Church of Ireland and, by marrying mostly within their own church, many of the family names in my family tree are of english origin.
I would also have thought that most english settlers of a humble background would be likely to be the Londoners who came out as construction and other workers on the Company's estates. Those from further afield are likely to have lived on the english estates of the more affluent settlers who acquired estates in ulster, like the Beresfords who came from Kent and became Marquises of Waterford with large estates around Coleraine.
Hi thanks for the help but i don't think that book would be useful because my family aren't originally from Coleraine because they moved here in the 1800s they are actually originally from magilligan and i'm not too sure but ballykelly as one of them got married there in the early 1700s. I never knew there were so many english settlers here i always thought there were only a few english settlers as i always thought that most of the church of ireland people around now converted from being presbyterian to save money on taxes etc in papal times but there you go.
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A huge thanks for all your replies to this topic.
There certainly are surname distribution ‘patterns’ that emerge when exploring the settlement of Ulster by the English and Scottish during the 17th and 18th centuries and I now know that comparative studies have been made. On a quick surfing session on the net, I came across an excerpt from a book called Finding Your Irish Ancestors: Unique Aspects of Irish Genealogy (Mitchell). He reiterates that large numbers of English families settled in the southern counties of Ulster and were of predominantly northern English origin – Cheshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and were concentrated along the Lagan Valley, whereas the Scottish arrived at Coleraine and the Foyle. He also states that the London Companies had difficulty keeping the ‘ill-prepared and ill-suited’ English planters to stay in Ulster, so that the Companies looked to the more tenacious and adaptable lowland and border Scottish to tenant their estates, obviously resulting in the high density of families in the northwest with Scottish origins.
In this book the author makes reference to the research of W. Macafee‡. The two texts he cites indicate that “the evolution of predominantly English or Scottish settlement areas in Ulster was established from the earliest days of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster” and that the marked changes in surname distribution between the 1631 muster rolls and 1666 hearth money rolls indicate “a high level of internal mobility and population turnover”. In the second manuscript Macafee examined surname distribution in south Derry over time by comparing the 1659 census, the 1663 hearth money rolls, the 1740 religious census returns and the 1831 census. He likewise concluded that after 1700, changes in protestant settlement in Ulster were the result of “internal movements of population” and not the result of further migration from Scotland and England.
The geographical area that I have been primarily interested in establishing the surname origins within is Magilligan/Tamlaghtard. There were a number of English families there from the 17th and 18th centuries, amongst them: Gage of Raunds, Northamptonshire, Lane, Reynolds, Chase, Church, Cust of Yorkshire (Henry b:1646 d:1717) and Moorhead. I think there were more English families than those mentioned here. My own family, the Leekes/Leakes, appear to be of English origin and the surname was quite widely distributed across England by the 17th century in such places as: Shropshire, Tyne and Wear, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Cambridge, Gloucester, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, London, Kent, Devonshire, Cornwall and elsewhere (everywhere it seems!). To date I have been unable to source any records of their being in Magilligan before 1740. Senior members of my family have claimed that the Leekes were indeed English and arrived in Magilligan sometime in the early 1700s, after the Siege of Derry. They were a 'lowly' tenant farming family who appear to have first settled in Upper Doaghs.
‡The Movement of British Settlers into Ulster During the Seventeenth Century, published in Familia, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, Volume 2, Number 8, 1992
‡The Colonisation of the Maghera Region of South Derry During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, published in Ulster Folklore, Volume 23, 1977
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In 1740 there was a widow Leake in Upper Doaghs on a rent roll of William Bacon’s (D1550/149/1/4). It would appear that she died in 1752 leaving a will and that her name was Elizabeth. She had two sons, Thomas and James. The former is mentioned as living in Ballymargy on the 1740 Protestant Householders Survey. I think the same son later had a farm in Lower Ballyleighery according to his will index and the Gage survey mentioned below. James meanwhile took on the tenure at Upper Doaghs with his wife Catherine when his mother died in 1752. The only English record that I have found for a Leeke family who are contemporary, with a mother called Elizabeth and sons called Thomas and James, are the Leekes of Swallowfield in Berkshire (nr Reading) who must have remained in Swallowfield until at least 1717 when their Daughter Mary was married (All Saints Swallowfield) to one Edward Phillis, then whisked off to start their married life in nearby Stratfield Saye. Apart from the birth records of Elizabeth's (and husband Thomas') five children born in Swallowfield, there does not appear to be any later records of the Leeke family in that parish, no burials, suggesting that they moved on somewhere... To Ireland? I wish it were so! If the widow Leeke (of Doaghs) was the mother of that Swallowfield family then I have calculated that, having started her family in her early twenties, she would have (hypothetically) died in Doaghs aged around eighty, with Thomas and James dying in their sixties. The Ordinance Survey Memoirs (1831-1835) state that around that time "ther were 15 persons alive in the Black Row, Magilligan, the average age of whose ages was 90 years". Black Row was in the Doaghs.
The Gage family of Northhamptonshire were leased the whole of the monastic lands of Magilligan by the Bishop of Derry, which were in turn inherited by the half-brothers Thomas and William Gage and divided into a north and south estate in 1713 (Kirkham 1913). There are a large number of documents kept at PRONI pertaining to the Gage estate and comprising of title deeds and rentals (T1201 and D673). I would love to hear from anyone who has looked through this collection in order to find out how much information there is on the small tenant farmers. I know there is a book in the collection which is a survey of Hodgson Gage’s half parish in Magilligan in 1768 by Alexander Calhoun mentioning Miss Leake of North Ballyleighery division, a daughter of the above named Thomas, and his heir to the Ballyleighery holding after he died in 1766.
The question remains: From where did the English settlers of Magilligan originate and when did they arrive there? I had an interesting discussion with a Coleraine historian recently who suggested that, perhaps, some of the English families were brought there by the Gage family from Northamptonshire in order to work the land. When I investigated the surname Leeke in that county during the 17th and 18th centuries I found that there were indeed several families from around the Kettering area, close to Raunds where the Gage family hailed from.
On this topic Gortinanima said “It is very difficult to trace these early settlers back to Scotland or England - farmers and craftsmen leave little trace unlike the gentry and nobility” – how true! I would, however, be very interested in hearing from anyone who has managed to trace their ancestry back to England from Magilligan/Limavady and elsewhere in Co Derry/Londonderry during the period of history here discussed.
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If you buy the book scotch Irish origins you will find a list of tenants for the gage and Bruce estates I had ancestors in that for 30 years or so and I'm thinking these English ones bought it.... Not only that my ancestors are indeed Presbyterian so all religions had land taken off them not just Catholics
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If you buy the book scotch Irish origins you will find a list of tenants for the gage and Bruce estates I had ancestors in that for 30 years or so and I'm thinking these English ones bought it.... Not only that my ancestors are indeed Presbyterian so all religions had land taken off them not just Catholics
Hi Owenc
Yes I checked out the Scots Irish Origins book (Forrest) and a lot of the earliest info I have on my family in Magilligan came from that brilliant wee book. I now know exactly where in PRONI I can find The Gage Estate records which, I suspect, may turn up even more info from the 1700s than what I've seen so far. Thanks for the 'heads up' though! ;)
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Julesleeke,
I have just found your post although it is a number of years old, but it is topical for a problem that I have at Present.
My Ancestral family is Taylor and I have that they were at Aird, Billy Parish Antrim from 1734. They were C of I in the Religious census for Cary.
More than 20 years of searching had failed to find where they had come from before Aird. There were no Taylors there in 1669.
Just recently I have had a match to my YDNA test with an individual (Taylor) in the US. His immediate ancesters came from Coleraine Barony in Londonderry. His gt grandfather James Taylor was married at Aghadowey presbyterian Church in 1868.
The DNA experts tell me that this match is older than the 9 or 10 generations that I have back to 1734 at Aird. This has raised the possibility that my Taylors at Aird have moved there from somewhere in Coleraine, i am looking at that being about 1700.
We have always assumed that the Taylors at Aird were likely English as they were C of I. However this match that we have from Coleraine is obviously Presbyterian. I have seen some references to Taylors in Coleraine from as early 1630, mercers muster Roll 1655 Dunboe Summonister Roll. Also in the 1663 hearth Money rolls.
I have no Idea How I might find which family of Taylors mine came from.
Have you any suggestions ?
Wyanga
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I thought i’d come back into this thread a bit older and wiser.
I traced back my Smith line, and came up with the following surnames: Thompson, Irwin and Sinclair by generation.
All of these families lived in Bovevagh.
The Bovevagh area appears to be quite interesting in that it seems to be English rather than Scottish.
Would this be the case for all of these families that I have found?
The Sinclair, I believe is Scottish and I am not convinced that they’re from Bovevagh. But certainly Thompson and Irwin (I know of people from bovevagh/limavady with this name anyhow) would seem to be a local name there.
I would also like to say that I have an Ancestry DNA account and a lot of my matches from Limavady are very distant and related to American colonists.
I have no proof of this, but I keep coming across the Patton family, Campbells and Fultons. They seem to be prominent families, from England and Scotland. I have about 20 matches with those surnames in their tree.
But it is interesting that all of my ancestry matches from Limavady are from back in the 1700’s, despite having a great granny from the area. Aside from two Irwins.
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A huge thanks for all your replies to this topic.
There certainly are surname distribution ‘patterns’ that emerge when exploring the settlement of Ulster by the English and Scottish during the 17th and 18th centuries and I now know that comparative studies have been made. On a quick surfing session on the net, I came across an excerpt from a book called Finding Your Irish Ancestors: Unique Aspects of Irish Genealogy (Mitchell). He reiterates that large numbers of English families settled in the southern counties of Ulster and were of predominantly northern English origin – Cheshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and were concentrated along the Lagan Valley, whereas the Scottish arrived at Coleraine and the Foyle. He also states that the London Companies had difficulty keeping the ‘ill-prepared and ill-suited’ English planters to stay in Ulster, so that the Companies looked to the more tenacious and adaptable lowland and border Scottish to tenant their estates, obviously resulting in the high density of families in the northwest with Scottish origins.
In this book the author makes reference to the research of W. Macafee‡. The two texts he cites indicate that “the evolution of predominantly English or Scottish settlement areas in Ulster was established from the earliest days of the 17th century Plantation of Ulster” and that the marked changes in surname distribution between the 1631 muster rolls and 1666 hearth money rolls indicate “a high level of internal mobility and population turnover”. In the second manuscript Macafee examined surname distribution in south Derry over time by comparing the 1659 census, the 1663 hearth money rolls, the 1740 religious census returns and the 1831 census. He likewise concluded that after 1700, changes in protestant settlement in Ulster were the result of “internal movements of population” and not the result of further migration from Scotland and England.
The geographical area that I have been primarily interested in establishing the surname origins within is Magilligan/Tamlaghtard. There were a number of English families there from the 17th and 18th centuries, amongst them: Gage of Raunds, Northamptonshire, Lane, Reynolds, Chase, Church, Cust of Yorkshire (Henry b:1646 d:1717) and Moorhead. I think there were more English families than those mentioned here. My own family, the Leekes/Leakes, appear to be of English origin and the surname was quite widely distributed across England by the 17th century in such places as: Shropshire, Tyne and Wear, Yorkshire, Nottingham, Cambridge, Gloucester, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, London, Kent, Devonshire, Cornwall and elsewhere (everywhere it seems!). To date I have been unable to source any records of their being in Magilligan before 1740. Senior members of my family have claimed that the Leekes were indeed English and arrived in Magilligan sometime in the early 1700s, after the Siege of Derry. They were a 'lowly' tenant farming family who appear to have first settled in Upper Doaghs.
‡The Movement of British Settlers into Ulster During the Seventeenth Century, published in Familia, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, Volume 2, Number 8, 1992
‡The Colonisation of the Maghera Region of South Derry During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, published in Ulster Folklore, Volume 23, 1977
I have a few surnames in my family tree that look English and are in areas that were planted with English people.
I have found the families in the 1663 Hearth rolls listed as Planters. How do I tie down these families to a particular area in England?
I have looked into the surnames and they are both distributed all over England.
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Julesleeke,
I have just found your post although it is a number of years old, but it is topical for a problem that I have at Present.
My Ancestral family is Taylor and I have that they were at Aird, Billy Parish Antrim from 1734. They were C of I in the Religious census for Cary.
More than 20 years of searching had failed to find where they had come from before Aird. There were no Taylors there in 1669.
Just recently I have had a match to my YDNA test with an individual (Taylor) in the US. His immediate ancesters came from Coleraine Barony in Londonderry. His gt grandfather James Taylor was married at Aghadowey presbyterian Church in 1868.
The DNA experts tell me that this match is older than the 9 or 10 generations that I have back to 1734 at Aird. This has raised the possibility that my Taylors at Aird have moved there from somewhere in Coleraine, i am looking at that being about 1700.
We have always assumed that the Taylors at Aird were likely English as they were C of I. However this match that we have from Coleraine is obviously Presbyterian. I have seen some references to Taylors in Coleraine from as early 1630, mercers muster Roll 1655 Dunboe Summonister Roll. Also in the 1663 hearth Money rolls.
I have no Idea How I might find which family of Taylors mine came from.
Have you any suggestions ?
Wyanga
Can I just say I have found it the same with my Irwin matches and a few other surnames but I have no evidence as you say.
Even my own surname too.
What is interesting is that a lot of planters seemed to have moved around NI before settling , for example, land in Down and head to County L’Derry. I thought they landed in their own county originally.
Just as an example:
I have a match who has a Robert Irwin marrying Margaret Wylie in 1690, in Londonderry. Margaret Wylies family is from Aberdeen.
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If you buy the book scotch Irish origins you will find a list of tenants for the gage and Bruce estates I had ancestors in that for 30 years or so and I'm thinking these English ones bought it.... Not only that my ancestors are indeed Presbyterian so all religions had land taken off them not just Catholics
Hi Owenc
Yes I checked out the Scots Irish Origins book (Forrest) and a lot of the earliest info I have on my family in Magilligan came from that brilliant wee book. I now know exactly where in PRONI I can find The Gage Estate records which, I suspect, may turn up even more info from the 1700s than what I've seen so far. Thanks for the 'heads up' though! ;)
I bought this book. Unfortunately my family in Magilligan seemed to be regular farmers so weren’t anything important.
Unfortunately all I can go on with them is church records, which as you know are useless.