Tracing my "Ulster Presbyterian" Roots from Ireland to Pennsylvania

Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Blog Post #31

By Tonya Graham McQuade

Some of my ancestors come from Fermanagh, Antrim, Cavan, Derry,

Donegal, and Tyrone in Ulster in Northern Ireland

This summer, my husband Mike and I had the opportunity to visit Ireland and Scotland, where many of our ancestors originated. We were both excited to see places our ancestors had lived, as well as learn more about what their lives might have been like and why they might have chosen to brave the journey across the sea to come to America so long ago. While in Dublin, we learned more about the “Great Famine” of 1845-1852 that caused more than one million deaths and led more than a million people to emigrate from Ireland, mostly to the United States. However, while it’s likely some of Mike’s “McQuade” relatives as well as my “Graham” ancestors said their goodbyes to Ireland as a result of the “Great Famine”, that’s not the story for most of my “Irish” ancestors. 

According to my DNA results on Ancestry.com, my highest DNA match is Scotland - 43% - with very little Irish. So, something confused me. When I look at my family tree, I see quite a few relatives who immigrated from Ireland. Weren’t they Irish?

As it turns out, most were not. They were actually from Scotland and England, but moved to Northern Ireland for both religious and political reasons. Many were Scots Irish Presbyterians; others were “Irish Quakers.” Both groups moved to Ulster in Northern Ireland from the lowlands of Scotland and various parts of England in the 17th century, and many immigrated to Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s. I decided I wanted to learn more about them, and as I did so, I made some very interesting discoveries.

My next series of posts will explore the following topics:

1. Who were the Ulster Presbyterians, and why did so many settle in Pennsylvania?

2. Where do my own Ulster ancestors - the Renicks, Archers, Jacksons, and Hamiltons - fit in?

3. How were these immigrants impacted by the French & Indian War (1754-63); and what were the circumstances and results of my 6th great grandmother’s sister and her five children being captured by Shawnee, who also killed and scalped her husband? 

4. How does all this relate to a book I teach my juniors, Conrad Richter’s The Light in the Forest, which we discuss as part of our Native American unit?

5. Who were the Irish Quakers;  and why did they move first to Ireland, then Pennsylvania; and how am I related to Rev. Thomas Lightfoot, Sir Anthony Jackson, and Presidents Andrew Jackson and  Richard Nixon (not the greatest presidential connections, I know)? 

6. What was the Great Famine? Why did so many people leave Ireland during this time, where did they go, and where do the Grahams fit into this story?

Many of my earliest Scots Irish ancestors on my mom’s side - the Renicks, Archers, Jacksons - first settled in Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s after leaving Northern Ireland. Others, including the Hamiltons, settled in Virginia in the 1600's, but I will focus here on the Ulster contingent. As it turns out, after landing in Philadelphia, they were among the first Scots Irish to settle in western Pennsylvania, along the banks of the Susquehanna River.

According to The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia: “As the prototypical “peoples in motion” of their time, the Scots Irish moved first from the Scottish Lowlands to Ulster during the seventeenth century at the behest of the English, who desired them to act as a Protestant colonizing force among Ireland’s native Catholics. After 1700, when faced with deteriorating economic conditions and mounting religious and political persecution as dissenting Protestants (not members of the official, state-sponsored Church of Ireland) in Ireland …  they chose to migrate again. This time, the Scots Irish came to America, migrating as servants and free people, individuals and families, and sometimes as political exiles and refugees.”

Sign from EPIC Emigration Museum in Dublin, Ireland

The text reads:: "Many Irish people looked for livelihoods in Europe and North America. Catholics found employment in European armies, while the first waves of emigration to North America were largely Ulster Presbyterians, seeking religious freedom and economic improvement."

Now, it doesn’t take much study of Irish history to recognize the tension - politically, religiously, culturally, and economically - that has existed between Ireland and Great Britain throughout the centuries. This tension has frequently erupted in violence, wars, oppression, purges, restrictions, exclusions, and deep-seated hatred. The disagreements between Catholics and various Protestant sects as the Protestant Reformation swept Europe played a huge role in all of this, with each group at different times exerting its power over the other. Religious tolerance and freedom certainly did not reign supreme, and many were charged with heresy and killed - often in atrocious ways.

One time this tension reached a climax was in the Nine Years’ War between England and the Gaelic (native Irish) earls, led by Hugh O’Neill, the second Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, the Earl of Tyrconnell. After their defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in October 1601, the Gaelic earls sought help from Catholic Spain, but ultimately, they were defeated. The war ended with the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603 (read more HERE), and Gaelic earls had to give up their titles, Brehon laws, private armies, much of their land, and control over lesser lords, as well as swear an oath of loyalty to the English throne. This they did, but then in 1607, during the “Flight of the Earls,” many of those same earls fled Ireland for Spain, Rome, and the Spanish-controlled Netherlands, never to return - marking the end of the old Gaelic Order in Ireland. 

This set the stage for the “Plantation of Ulster,” which began in 1609 during the reign of King James I and involved the organized colonization (aka. plantation) of Ulster by English-speaking Protestants (or planters) from Southern Scotland and Northern England. King James, you see, was the first king of a united England and Scotland, and he wanted to extend that rule to Ireland. How did he get that title? He was the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, who was executed and replaced with her protestant son James, making him King James VI of Scotland. Then, when Queen Elizabeth I died without an heir, he - as next in line - became King James I of England as well. 

So, my ancestors were among those who settled in various parts of Ulster after the Gaelic earls and their families were driven from their native land - a realization that definitely leaves me with a mix of emotions. Family research (and history itself) is certainly a mixed bag of good and bad, happy and sad, harmonious and haunting and harrowing. Some of my ancestors immigrated for political or economic reasons; others, because they experienced religious persecution where they were living. Whichever the case, the colonized land in Ulster, an estimated half a million acres in size, was confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs in the counties of Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Londonderry - and that's where my "Irish" ancestors lived. But then, all of us live on land that once belonged to Native Americans. Indigenous groups around the world have been pushed out of their homelands.

As explained online, King James and his assistants “saw the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicizing, and ‘civilizing’ Ulster. The province was almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic, and rural and had been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster's links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The colonists (or ‘British tenants’) were required to be English-speaking, Protestant, and loyal to the king…. The Scottish settlers were mostly Presbyterian Lowlanders and the English mostly Anglican Northerners. Although some ‘loyal’ natives were granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation was generally hostile, and native writers lamented what they saw as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners” (read more HERE).

John Knox Statue in St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh,

Scotland, on High Street along the "Royal Mile"

Scottish Presbyterianism traces its roots to John Knox - who also leaves me with very mixed feelings after our visit to Edinburgh in Scotland. We visited St. Giles Cathedral, where he is proudly celebrated, and toured a house across from the cathedral called the “John Knox House” where he lived for a time. I had learned about him before when I was studying church history and learned about Presbyterianism, which places an emphasis on the sovereignty of God, the authority of scripture, and justification by grace through faith. For many years, I attended Presbyterian churches (after having grown up Catholic). Still, hearing how the Catholics and Presbyterians attacked and killed each other - and how John Knox branded Mary, Queen of Scots, a “whore” and repeatedly called for her execution - couldn’t help but make me question his methods and whether anyone would know he was a Christian by the love he showed to others (John 13:35). 

St. Giles Cathedral, founded in 1124 by King David I, 

has been a working church for almost 900 years

As Presbyterians began to experience more persecution in Scotland for not being part of the Anglican Church of England, they began to look for other places to live, and Ulster - with its many land grants - provided that opportunity. Remember, this is around the same time the Pilgrims and Puritans also decided to leave England as a result of religious persecution. As early as 1636, a group of Ulster Presbyterians - in communication with Puritan leader John Winthrop - set out for America on the ship Eagle Wing, but bad weather caused them to turn back. They viewed the weather as a sign from God that they were not meant to leave Ulster and did not try to set out in large numbers again until 1718.

In the meantime, the 1662 Act For Encouraging Protestant-Strangers And Others To Inhabit and Plant in the Kingdom of Ireland inspired others - including French Huguenots and German Moravians - to immigrant to Ireland. The Act especially sought "Merchants, Traders and Dealers of Ability to exercize a Traffic as of skilful Artificers, Artizens and Workman for the making and working all Sorts of Manufactures" because so much of Ireland had been destroyed and depleted by wars (read more HERE).

So, why did so many Presbyterians - an estimated 200,000 before the start of the American Revolution - eventually choose to leave Ireland? And why did they choose to go to Pennsylvania? Apparently, for several reasons. 

One reason was the 1704 Test Act, which stated that those wishing to hold civil or military office had to prove they had taken communion in the Church of Ireland (tied to the Church of England), which effectively barred Presbyterians. The Test Act also refused to recognize marriages conducted by Presbyterian ministers and considered children born of such marriages illegitimate. Another cause for anger was the tithes demanded by the Church of Ireland. Memories of the 105-day long Siege of Derry led by the Catholic James II in 1689 and his Jacobite supporters, during which an estimated 15,000 people died of fever, starvation or were killed, also contributed. 

By 1718, many believed it was time to emigrate - and 319 Ulstermen, including nine Presbyterian ministers, addressed a petition to Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts, asking for a place to do so. Known as the Shute Petition, “it declared their ‘sincere and hearty inclination to transport ourselves to that very excellent and renowned plantation.’ The petition was carried to New England by Rev. William Boyd, the minister of Macosquin Presbyterian Church near Coleraine [in Londonderry]…. On his arrival in Boston in July 1718 Boyd met with the local authorities. They were keen to have new settlers, especially people used to farming and frontier life; the colonial government thought that Ulster settlers could be placed on the outer reaches of their colony” (see SOURCE).

 The 1718 Shute Petition is on display at the New Hampshire Historical Society

Soon after that, the Rev. James McGregor led his own family and many others from his congregation in Ulster to America. In his farewell sermon he said they were leaving “to avoid oppression and cruel bondage, to shun persecution and designed ruin, to withdraw from the communion of idolators and to have an opportunity of worshipping God according to the dictates of conscience and the rules of His inspired Word” (see source above).

So, why did so many Scots Irish Presbyterians settle in Pennsylvania? For one, many Presbyterians already lived there; in fact, the first "Presbytery" was organized there in 1706 by Rev. Francis Makemie, who is considered the "Father of American Presbyterianism." He had arrived in 1683 to begin planting Presbyterian churches in the American colonies.

Furthermore, according to the essay "Scots Irish," by Judith Ridner: “Pennsylvania had much to offer them. Because of the value proprietor William Penn (1644–1718) had placed on religious tolerance in planning his colony, Pennsylvania had a pluralistic society where these Scots Irish Presbyterians would no longer be stigmatized as dissenters. The colony’s economy, anchored by the rapidly expanding port city of Philadelphia, was also growing rapidly. An expanding flaxseed trade with Ireland during the eighteenth century, one closely tied to the immigrant trade, offered immigrant Scots Irish merchants abundant commercial opportunities in Philadelphia and encouraged farm families to continue the linen production they had done in Ireland in America. The growing colony and its practice of purchasing lands from Indians also offered newcomers abundant rural lands and a generally peaceful climate in which to settle. Finally, with Philadelphia as the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in America, the Delaware Valley also offered Scots Irish Presbyterians the promise of a spiritual home” (see SOURCE).

So, where specifically do my ancestors fit in? This post is already far too long, so tune in next time to hear about the Archers, Renicks, Jacksons, and Hamiltons!