DOWNING family of Castle Dawson & Bellaghy, 18th century

[dukewm]

Hi Peter,

I think we are "barking up the same tree" and just need to refine the connection.

Henry Downing, eldest son of Adam as shown in my last post of 31 May 16, was b. 1695/6 and died before 1766 (his Will was proved 1766).
The Henry you mention "of Rocktown and Dublin 1823", is certainly of the same family and must be a grandson of Adam (patriarch of the Rocktown estate).  I would love to see a copy of his Will.
Adam Gifford was a great grandson of Adam, buried in the Downing vault at St. Tida's Church, Bellaghy, on 23 Feb 1847.  He was born in 1784, the 3rd son of Rev. Alexander Clotworthy Downing and Tamison Nesbitt.
Alexander Clotworthy Downing was born 1734/5 (most likely 1735), eldest son of John Downing and Anne Rowe.  Anne Rowe's father, Rev. Simon Rowe, was the Rector of St. Tida's Church.

My line (supposedly) runs up through John, Adam's 2nd son, and I have very little on Adam's other children.  But I have a "broken link" in the generation that represents Adam's great grandchildren and we are trying to "prove" a WILLIAM Downing, born betw. 1754-1770.  This missing WILLIAM supposedly had two sons, William and James.  James is my Irish immigrant to Pennsylvania and his older brother William stayed in Ireland, perhaps becoming the "Linen Manufacturer" of Coagh, County Tyrone, listed in Slater's Directory 1846.

Information on people named in the Will of Henry Downing 1823 might provide clues to my puzzle.
I hope some of the data I have shown helps you out and if not, I have much more on the County Derry Downings.

regards,
Rick T

[Robert Stedall]

Rick, I have been plugging through all the Rootschat messages, trying to piece together everyone's reported findings and have compared them to the Memoir written by or for Alexander George Fullerton (1808-1907). The memoir is almost completely fabricated prior to Adam Downing, but might be assumed to be relatively accurate thereafter. I have also picked up other bits from the string of Rootschat messages. The Rev. Alexander Clotworthy Downing(according to a Rootschat message b. 4 4 1728) (who I now read from a PRONI document took his names from his two godfathers Lords Caloden (Alexander) and Massereene (Clotworthy)) seems to have married twice, first to Thomasine Nesbitt and second on 14 6 1753 to Elizabeth Giffard (Rootschat message). By Thomasine he had two children John Nesbitt (1768-1847), who m. Jane Brady (1801-36) and Medici, who m. Admiral John Dawson (1760 - ?) (per the Memoir). According to the Rootschat message, he had three further children by Elizabeth Giffard, William (1754-1803), who m. Jane Colwell in 1784, John (1760-1820) and Giffard (1762 - 1830).

You suggest that Adam Gifford Downing (1784-1847) was a third son of Thomasine, yet his dates do not fit. He is much more likely to be a grandson of Elizabeth Giffard, perhaps a son of Giffard b. 1762. 

I can provide more information from the Memoir on the children of Dawson Downing (Alexander George Fullerton's grandfather) if that would be helpful, and of the immediate descendants of John Nesbitt Downing and Medici Downing.

The Memoir (however suspect) mentions that Colonel Adam's son John remarried after the death of Anne Rowe in 1776. He married a Miss O'Neill, who was aged 16 and he was 79. There were no children!  It also mentions three children of John and Anne Rowe, Alexander Clotworthy, Dawson and Henry / John (it is different in two places). John lived from 1740-1792 and Henry d. unm. in 1796. They may be two brothers, but both were officers in the army.

I hope this does not add to the confusion. 

Robert

[Robert Stedall]

Rick, I need to comment on on the second and third para. of yesterday's post of 18.17.The record I have from the Downing Mausoleum shows Adam Clifford Downing, Lt. Colonel of her Majesty's 81st Regiment ... youngest Son of Rev. Alexander Clotworthy Downing Date at death: 21/02/1847. I thus suggest that Alexander Clotworthy m. first Elizabeth Giffard on 14 6 1753 who must have died after 1762 and second Thomasine Nesbitt. If Adam Clifford (not Gifford) was born in 1784 he was sixteen years younger than his full brother, John Nesbitt Downing, when his father was 5 - a bit of an after thought, but biologically possible. Sorry, this is my mistake!

[dukewm]

Thanks Robert !
I do have a lot on the children of Alexander Clotworthy Downing (A.C.), and your comments on his Godfathers is new to me, so that's much appreciated.
As for his "first wife", Elizabeth Giffard, we have not found any proof of her existence or marriage to A.C. and it would be fantastic to verify her, but some of that info you cite matches the 1901 Downing book and may be erroneous.  If you have ANY solid sources on that, we might just pop a champagne cork, because the 'William' you mention as A.C.'s eldest son by Elizabeth Giffard is my (supposed) 4th great grandfather (who we have NOT verified).
Without verification of William, we have been chasing alternate possibilities for years.

One other important note: A.C. entered Trinity College in Nov 1753 at age 18, meaning he was born in 1735 (or 1734 if his birthday was after Nov), NOT 1728, as the 1901 Downing book asserts.
The Downing book also claims that 'Clotworthy' Downing married Elizabeth Giffard on 14 Jun 1753 and gives the birth of William as 13 Mar 1754.  For all of that to be true, we must believe William was married in June, barely 18 years old, entered Trinity in November, and had his first child almost exactly 9 months after the marriage and 4 months after starting his college studies. (certainly possible, but how probable was that ?)
 
I suppose the good news is that William Colwell Downing, author of the 1901 Downing book and my 2nd great uncle, likely got much of his information from his own father, who presumably would have known the names of his grandfather (William) and great grandfather (A.C.).
At some point R. Wilberforce would probably have provided the more distant ancestry, but I have to believe the authors' immediate upline would have been well known without hired researchers.
 

Penny is descended from Dawson and she is probably the expert on his line.

Please give me a little time to review everything methodically and I will post new comments on Rootschat.

cheers

[dukewm]

Hi Peter,

Just checking back on old topics and wanted to reconnect.
I have been working with a group of Downing researchers and have a proverbial "ton" of info you may be interested in.  One of the group has started a Facebook page dedicated to the Downing Family of Bellaghy.  You may be able to contribute some of your knowledge to the group as well.

Just give me a shout, or send me a message via Facebook (Rick Turner - self employed)

cheers, Rick

[Robert Stedall]

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.

[Robert Stedall]

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.

[Robert Stedall]

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.

[Robert Stedall]

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.