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Messages - Robert Stedall

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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 10:15 BST (UK)  »
Page 6

The impact of our findings

In summary, we have found evidence that Adam Downing was the son of Henry Downing (or Brett) by a wife Jane, of Major John Downing by Jane Clotworthy, of George Downing by Jane Montgomery, of Henry Downing by Jane Clotworthy and of Richard Downing by Jane Booth. My personal preference is to follow Alexander George Fullerton’s Memoir notwithstanding its shortcomings. There is at least some plausible evidence, however tenuous, that his parents were George Downing and Jane Montgomery. The Memoir is the only record which we have found which follows this route, and, in the absence of the Dublin Public Records Office, we have not been able to find what they seem to have established. Sadly, they appear to have left no notes.
 
Unfortunately for Alexander George, his magnificent coat of arms have quartered the Brett armorials with his own. As he was now contending that he was not descended from the Rev. Calybute Downing and Margaret Brett, he must have known that his arms were wrong!

If we accept the hypothesis that Arthur Downing of Lexham is the ancestor of Colonel Adam Downing, it means that the Irish Downings are descendants of the Norfolk rather than the Suffolk families. As there is no known connection between the two groups, it means that the Irish Downings are not related to Emmanuel Downing, Sir George Downing and his baronetcy, to Downing Street or to Downing College, Cambridge. This causes a significant change to our previous assumptions.

It remains a balance of probabilities.


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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 10:10 BST (UK)  »
Page 5

In 1901, William Colwell Downing and a professional genealogist from Philadelphia, R. Wilberforce, produced a Downing family history, which was well received and there is a copy in the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The principal objective was to link William Colwell of a well-to-do family in Pennsylvania to the Downing family in Ireland as descendants of Alexander Clotworthy Downing. Closer investigation shows that it is full of flaws; and it conflicts with the Downing of Gamlingay pedigree mentioned above. It is probable that they had access to the family tree provided by John David Downing at Rowesgift as they name Adam’s mother as Jane Clotworthy, but they revert to Burke by naming Adam’s father as Henry, but adding in a brother Nicholas.  In an apparent effort to overcome the difficulty that the Rev. Calybute did not have sons, Nicholas or William, they make them the sons of Emmanuel of the Suffolk family, who is included as a brother of the Rev. Calybute Downing. Yet, as explained above, they cannot be the sons of Emmanuel and Lucy.

It is also apparent that W. C. Downing and R. Wilberforce had seen the first version of Alexander George’s Memoir, as they copy its description of Henry as an officer of the guard of Charles II almost word for word. They present Adam as a hero of the siege of Londonderry, being granted land at Bellaghy by a grateful William III for his conspicuous gallantry. Contemporary histories confirm that Adam was present at the siege, but there is no mention of any great heroism on his part, and no record that he was at the Battle of the Boyne, except for the inscription on his mausoleum, which records that he showed “signal proof of his courage at the battle”. Furthermore, the land at Bellaghy was a leasehold from the Vintners’ Company and was not within the giving of a grateful King. It is apparent that evidence of Adam’s courage in the Williamite wars is based on several 19th century ballads published by the Orange Order to promote the valour of the ancestors of their members, who included the Downings. W. C. Downing’s and Wilberforce’s history has added confusion to those who have seen it, including myself!

In 1975, Sheelagh Elizabeth Church née Downing who was a descendant of Samuel Downing, a brother of Adam, lodged a pedigree with the College of Arms to demonstrate her entitlement to use to arms of Nicholas Downing recorded on his 1698 will. She made no attempt to extend the pedigree back further, but the College of Arms confirmed to her that Nicholas’s arms were those of the Norfolk Downing family even though they have no record of his pedigree. Bizarrely, Sheelagh Elizabeth named the parents of Samuel and Adam as Richard Downing and Jane Booth. The College of Arms say that she will have needed to provide evidence of this to allow the College of Arms to accept them, but are unable to confirm what this was. We have been unable to find any record of a Richard Downing and Jane Booth elsewhere, and Booth is not used as a given name elsewhere in the Bellaghy family.   

Evidence to link Adam Downing to Arthur Downing of Lexham

It has been explained above that Alexander George identified Lt. John Downing, who arrived in Ireland prior to the Battle of Kinsale, as the son of Arthur Downing of Lexham. This is corroborated in a footnote in Burke’s Royal Pedigrees of England, which states that Lt. John Downing’s descendants in co. Cork claim descent through the Wingfields from Henry III. Apart from this, the only tenuous evidence is the knowledge that Sir Richard Wingfield, the Queen’s Marshal in Ireland, was Lt. John’s grandmother’s second cousin. Perhaps he took a young kinsman under his wing. We also know that Sir Richard came to Derry in 1608 to put down O’Doherty’s rebellion, so it is plausible that Lieutenant John received rights to land there in lieu of pay. We have nothing to confirm Alexander George’s assertion that John married a Margaret and had a son George. Yet, a George Downing is recorded in a Muster of Londonderry in 1628 and was a tenant on the Fishmonger’s proportion with leases mentioning him there up to 1659. We have found no record of his marriage, or of him having children and no evidence of his purported son, George Downing, mentioned in the Memoir as the Comptroller of Customs, or of his wife, Jane, daughter of Hugh Montgomery of Ballygowan (now thought to be Hugh Montgomery of Gransheogh, who acquired lands at Maghera, near Bellaghy). Accepting the genealogy by this route requires a leap of faith.

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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 10:06 BST (UK)  »
Page 4

Shortly after this, the 1698 will of Nicholas Downing of Drumard near Bellaghy must have come to light.  Nicholas had no children of his own but he named a brother William, and a range of nephews and nieces including Adam Downing of Rocktown near Bellaghy.  He does not name Adam’s father, who had predeceased him, but Adam made a will dated 1716, in which he named his mother as ‘Jane’, and a number of siblings including a brother Samuel. From the two wills, it is apparent that the Downing family had been well established around Bellaghy for some time. Furthermore, the Rev. Calybute Downing had not included sons Nicholas or William among the meticulous parish records that he maintained. Alexander George Fullerton needed to think again. Yet the seal on Nicholas’s will carries the arms of the Rev. Calybute’s family, the Downings of Norfolk. 

At about the same time, John David Downing, the last member of the Downing family to live at Rowesgift, where the family records were stored, produced, quite independently, his own version of the Downing tree, having seen Nicholas’s will. He came up with a theory that Nicholas was the son of Emmanuel Downing and Lucy Winthrop. This made him a brother of Sir George Downing the first baronet. Adam was thus deemed to be a grandson of Emmanuel and Lucy. To complete the link, he named Adam’s parents as Major John Downing and Jane Clotworthy. These names appear to be completely spurious. There is no record in Emmanuel’s copious correspondence that he had a son Nicholas, and although he had a son John, this John was born at Salem in Massachusetts and probably never visited Britain and Ireland, becoming a merchant in Nevis, WI, before marrying on his return to Boston. As Adam had a grandson, Alexander Clotworthy Downing, it is reasonable to assume that John David Downing borrowed the Clotworthy name as a plausible maiden name for Adam’s mother, but it has now been established that Alexander Clotworthy was named after his godfather, Clotworthy Skeffington, and no suitably aged daughter Jane has been found among the records of the Clotworthy family in Ireland.

At some point before 1893, Alexander George and his genealogist produced a second version of their Memoir in the light of seeing Nicholas’s will, but they may not have seen (or they ignored) the tree produced by John David Downing. They now claimed that Adam was a descendant of Lt. John Downing, who fought at the battle of Kinsale. Their tree averred that this John was the son of Arthur of Lexham. He is shown with a wife ‘Margaret’ and a son, George, who assisted the head tenant of the Fishmongers’ proportion at Ballykelly and leased 3,000 acres. George, in turn, is shown with two sons, Nicholas (from the will) and George, the Comptroller of Customs for Londonderry, who, so they claimed, married Jane, daughter of ‘Hugh Montgomery of Ballygowan’, becoming the parents of Adam Downing. As Alexander George Fullerton never lived in Ireland, where he might have been able to research these new connections, his conclusions may have seemed a bit controversial. Yet his genealogist will have had access to the Dublin Public Records Office, which was destroyed in the troubles in 1922.

Our researches suggest that much of the ancestry shown in the second version of the Memoir is plausible. We know that Sir Richard Wingfield was a kinsman of John Downing the son of Arthur, and it is reasonable to assume that he took him under his wing at Kinsale and later in Londonderry. Burke’s Royal Pedigrees of England provide a family tree that includes some of Lt. John Downing’s children. In a footnote, it states that the Downings claim descent through the Wingfields from Henry III, so they seem to be of the Norfolk family. We have found leases signed by George at Ballykelly between 1618 and 1659, and he was later buried at the Island Church on Lough Beg near Bellaghy as was Nicholas. Although there was no Hugh Montgomery of ‘Ballygowan’, a Hugh Montgomery of Gransheogh lived near Bellaghy with ‘several daughters who he married well’. He also had a grandson William Montgomery who borrowed £800, a substantial sum, from Adam, apparently his uncle by marriage.
Not everything in the second version of the Memoir is correct. It still shows Sir George Downing as a son of the Rev. Calybute Downing, thereby incorrectly claiming the Downing Baronetcy for the Norfolk Downing family. It also shows the Rev. Calybute with a son Henry, but this time without issue. It names the wife of George of Ballykelly as Dorcas Blois, who is a member of a family in Spexhall, Suffolk, married to an unconnected George Downing, who is well documented and had no children. Yet in other respects the genealogy seems realistic, notwithstanding that we have not established its sources. 

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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 10:01 BST (UK)  »
Page 3

The conflicting family trees

Although the family trees provided by the Heralds in their visitations of Norfolk and Suffolk must have been available well before this, the record of Downing of Gamlingay (the country estate of Sir George Downing) does not appear to have been published in printed form until 1900, when it formed part of a collection of Suffolk Manorial Families edited by Joseph James Muskett of New England. The resultant family tree demonstrates that George Downing of Beccles, who died in 1564 could not have been born much after 1530. It follows that he could not have been descended from Geoffrey Downing, who was born in 1524, notwithstanding numerous records, which provide links at various levels to amalgamate the two families. As this family record is based on the Heralds’ visitations, the various wills already mentioned and Emmanuel’s and Lucy’s correspondence, it can be assumed with some assurance that it is accurate. Muskett makes the following note on the similarity of the armorial bearings and the complexity of linking the two groups:
The precise relationship between the Norfolk and Suffolk families, however, has not yet been ascertained, and has been the subject of much misconception and misstatement.
There were several early genealogical records published, but errors crept in, initially it would seem as a result of a biography of the Rev. Calybute Downing (of the Norfolk family), included in Athenae Oxoniensis Vol. III, pp. 105-108 written by Anthony à Wood in 1649. This avers, incorrectly, that he was the father of Sir George Downing (of the Suffolk family), the first baronet. It would seem that John Burke, in his Extinct Baronetage published in 1838, followed Wood in making the Rev. Calybute the father of Sir George. As he probably knew that Calybute had a son, Henry, he included him as a brother of Sir George. As explained above, this Henry seems to have changed his name to Brett. Burke then went further and claimed that Colonel Adam Downing of Bellaghy, the acknowledged ancestor of the Londonderry Downing family, was a son of this Henry Downing (or Brett). We have established no logical explanation for Burke to make this unlikely connection, but it has confused generations of later genealogists.
In 1891, Alexander George Fullerton, a great-great-grandson of Adam Downing, produced a ‘Memoir’ of his family emblazoned with quartered coats of arms to demonstrate his connection to the Downing baronetcy and his descent from Geoffrey Downing and Elizabeth Wingfield. He had married Lady Georgiana Leveson-Gower, the daughter of the 1st Earl Granville and grand-daughter of Lady Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire. It is apparent that Granville did not altogether approve of his parvenu son-in-law, despite his considerable wealth, and Alexander, who was a mere Captain in the Horseguards needed to demonstrate his credentials.  He looked no further than Burke to be able to show these connections and he produced a first version of his memoir which followed Burke. He included a short biography of each of the family members, and he fleshed out Henry Downing, Adam’s purported father, as follows:
We now revert to HENRY JOHN DOWNING Esq 2nd Son of the Reverend Calybute Downing and only brother of Sir George the 1st Baronet. He was an Officer in the Guards of Charles 2nd, a body of Troops of about 4000 men, horse and foot, commanded by the Duke of Albermarle, "consisting of Gentlemen of quality and Veteran soldiers excellently well clad and well mounted and ordered”, as Evelyn remarks, who saw them reviewed July 4 1663. He married Jane, daughter of [BLANK] and died circa 1698 leaving two sons, Adam and George, the latter had a son Adam who died S.P.

In reality, there is no evidence that Henry Downing (or Brett), the son of the Rev. Calybute Downing, married or had children. There is no record of him visiting Ireland and he is not mentioned in regimental records of the Horseguards. Also, there is no further evidence that Adam had a brother, George, with a son Adam, who died S. P.


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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 09:59 BST (UK)  »
Page 2

The Suffolk family

The earliest known ancestor of the Suffolk family was George Downing of Beccles, whose will is dated 15 December 1561. By his wife, Cicely, he had a large family, of whom George, the third son entered Queen’s College, Cambridge in 1569, and later became headmaster of the grammar school in Ipswich. According to a family tree for Downing of Gamlingay (the Baronetcy family - see below), he married a Miss Bellamy. (Although there is no other evidence to confirm that this was her maiden name, she was buried at St Lawrence, Ipswich in 1610.)  George made a will on 17 January 1611, proved in Ipswich on 3 October 1611, mentioning his unmarried daughters, but he also had a son, Nathaniel Downing, whose will, dated 7 May 1616, refers to his brothers, Joseph, Joshua, and Emanuel (sic) in addition to other family members.
Emmanuel Downing, born on 12 August 1588 at Edwardstone near Ipswich, was an exceptional personality. He graduated from Cambridge University, qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple in London and became a non-conformist preacher. He married twice, firstly in 1614 to Anne, daughter of Sir James Ware, the Secretary for Ireland, with whom he moved to live in Dublin. Following her death in 1620, he returned to England temporarily, where, in 1622, he remarried Lucy, the sister of John Winthrop, the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and its first Governor. He then returned with her to Ireland until 1625.  There is a biography written by Frederick Johnson Simmons in 1958 based on Emmanuel’s and Lucy’s correspondence. In 1629, he was invited by his brother-in-law to join the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but deferred travelling to America until the education of his younger children was completed. Yet some of his elder children joined John Winthrop in America. It was not until October 1638 that Emmanuel and Lucy set out with the remainder of their voluminous family. He became a key member of the colony, advocating slavery as a means of resolving the shortage of labour, and suggesting that native Indians should be traded for black African slaves. He was one of the founders of Harvard University, and George Downing, his eldest son by Lucy, was the second student to graduate from there. In 1652, Emmanuel and Lucy returned with some of their family to England, where he was appointed Clerk to the Council of State of Scotland, but died in Edinburgh on 26 September 1660.
George Downing also returned to England, where he became a strong supporter of the Commonwealth, preaching to Cromwell’s troops during the Civil War and serving as a diplomat at The Hague. Yet, following Cromwell’s death, he became a moving force in seeking the restoration of the monarchy, and was well rewarded by Charles II, becoming a baronet on 1 July 1663 and Secretary to the Treasury. He soon became extreme wealthy, building Downing Street in London, and amassing the fortune, which ultimately founded Downing College, Cambridge. His change of allegiance did not improve his relationship with his former Parliamentarian colleagues.

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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century
« on: Friday 11 August 17 09:57 BST (UK)  »
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE DOWNING FAMILY IN CO. LONDONDERRY

The following report summarises the research done by several people on the complexities of the Downing family. It will overrun one page, but continues in sequence.

Piecing together a history of the Downing family both in England and in Ireland has proved fraught with difficulty. Although there are numerous historic records for this well-connected name, in almost every instance, they conflict. The process is made more complicated, because Downing was not an unusual name in either England or Ireland, making it difficult to establish which individuals belong to particular family lines. Tradition dictates that the family came from Devon as confirmed by the inscription at the family mausoleum at Bellaghy. Some of the early parts of the 19th century family trees which we hold show a descent from Devonshire, but the more certain ancestry of the Irish families that we have been researching is from East Anglia, where the family was well established by 1500.
There are several families named Downing in East Anglia and elsewhere in England, for which no verifiable link can be established, despite their similar but not identical coats of arms. Most of the confusion has been caused by generations of genealogists, trying to shoehorn them together. The Memoir provided by Alexander George Fullerton (his father had changed his name from Downing to Fullerton) is a good example of this problem.

The Norfolk family

The Norfolk family descends with certainty from Geoffrey Downing of St. Paul’s Belchamp in Essex, born on 24 March 1524, who married Elizabeth Wingfield on 8 October 1549 (although the marriage record date is suspect), the daughter of Thomas Wingfield of Great Dunham in Norfolk. There are Wingfield family trees which confirm Elizabeth’s descent from a galaxy of Norman knights including the Plantagenet kings. They were often employed as soldiers and diplomats around the Crown, and Elizabeth’s second cousin, Sir Richard Wingfield was the Queen’s Marshal in Ireland at the time of the battle of Kinsale in 1601. Their son Arthur was married at Belchamp St. Paul on 20 November 1570 to Susan Calybute of a family of wealthy farmers occupying land at Castle Acre in Norfolk. This resulted in Arthur living on a part of the estate at Lexham.
Arthur Downing had two sons by Susan Calybute, John Downing, born in about 1571, and Calybute Downing, born in about 1577, It is apparent that this John went to Ireland, possibly in the service of his kinsman, Sir Richard Wingfield. Calybute married another Elizabeth Wingfield (a remote kinswoman of his grandmother) and lived at Shenington in Oxfordshire. They had a son, The Rev. Calybute Downing, who graduated from Oxford University, and was an acolyte of Archbishop Laud, through whom he hoped to gain a prelacy. When Laud fell from grace before the execution of Charles I, the Rev. Calybute had to settle for becoming Rector of Hackney. He had a surviving son, Henry, amongst a number of daughters by his second wife, Margaret Brett. According to a record on Geni https://www.geni.com/people/Margaret-Brett/6000000011002715652?through=6000000011002715646, Henry changed his name to Brett. He was baptised on 14 November 1640 at Hackney, but we have no verifiable record that he married or had children.


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Derry (Londonderry) / Re: Maj. Hugh MONTGOMERY of Maghera, County Derry, 1650
« on: Friday 28 July 17 19:29 BST (UK)  »
Rick, Did you ever read my book, Men of Substance. This has a lot about the arrival of Hugh Montgomery 'of Braidstaine' in Ireland which is confirmed by the Montgomery memoir.  Unfortunately it does not cover the later generations.  Robert

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Ireland / Re: Dobbins (Dobbyns) family..where do they come from ?
« on: Friday 23 June 17 09:11 BST (UK)  »
Have any of you come across a Dobbin family in County Antrim in the late 17th Century, who were the tenants of the O'Neills. They are mentioned in Fighters of Derry by W. R. Young. Captain Peter, Lt. Thomas, Lt. William and Lt. Henry were from Drumseugh and fought in the Jacobite Army. This resulted in their estates being confiscated.

There were also Major John Dobbin, Lt. William Dobbin (an advocate and probably John's son), Captain C. Dobbin and Anthony Dobbin (a magistrate) who all defended Derry. Major John was a great hero after his part in the attack to recover Windmill Hill.

Major John was also the overseer of a will of Nicholas Downing of Drumard near Bellaghy, who died in 1698 and he is described in the will as a cousin of Nicholas. I believe that Nicholas was the son of George Downing the head tenant on the Fishmongers' Proportion at Ballykelly, who moved to Bellaghy in about 1659 and was buried at the island Church at Lough Beg in 1663. I am trying to find the name of George's wife. I do not think that George had a sister in Ulster, who could have married a Mr. Dobbin, so it is more likely either that a Miss Dobbin married George Downing or that Major John Dobbin's mother and Nicholas Downing's mother were sisters. Are you able to identify them?  Robert

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Westmeath / Re: Missing Deaths Travers Family
« on: Thursday 11 May 17 09:01 BST (UK)  »
This should probably be on a different thread

A group of Downing Genealogists are researching the family of John Downing b. abt 1571 at Weasenham (probably) in Norfolk and died at Ballysaggart near Lismore in 1629. He appears to have arrived in Ireland in c. 1600 and he served at the battle of Kinsale. His elder children (at least) were born in Suffolk before he left for Ireland and the mother's name was Mary. After the end of hostilities he acquired Ballymanoch a property near Cork and later acquired Ballysaggart and other estates.  I have found a reference at https://archive.org/stream/journalofcorkhisv21896cork#page/140/mode/2up/search/Downing, which says that he married a Miss Travers. Having looked up the Travers family on Stirnet, I see that they moved from Lancashire to Cork, so it is likely that they met in Ireland and she is a second wife. John Downing had a 3rd son Lt. John Downing, who married Catherine Browne daughter of Sir Valentine Browne of Mullahiffe, Co. Cork. It is just possible that Miss Travers is his first wife, although this would conflict with the reference above. Are you able to shed any light on this? 

Robert Stedall 

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