Chasing Our Tales - Scots-Irish/Andy Jackson

Chasing Our Tales, The Scots-Irish Tale or Do You Think You are Kin to Andy Jackson

I was brought up on stories told by my grandmother. Her name was Harriett Elizabeth McBee. It is a grand Scottish name from the Clan McBane. But she continually confused me. She kept saying she was Scots-Irish. Sounded like Greek-Polish to me. I just didn't understand what she meant. How in the world could a Scottish family be Irish, and vise versa? Then I heard the story of Andrew Jackson, and I learned my lesson.

Andrew Jackson's family, too, was Scots-Irish. His family, like mine, had immigrated from Scotland to Ireland. The "plantation", or establishment of a new settlement in Ulster, in northern Ireland, with Scottish immigrants, took place roughly from 1606 through 1700.

For centuries, England had tried repeatedly and constantly to subdue the island of Ireland, and the Irish had stubbornly resisted. There had been attempts over the years to transplant English settlers to Ireland in an attempt to "infiltrate" or "control" the Irish people and their society, but these had failed, as well.

By 1603 two problems had arrisen. Ireland was draining the English pocketbook, and Ireland was one of only a few places in Europe which had remained Catholic during the Protestant Reformation.

At the close of the 1500's England sent an army of 20,000 men to crush an uprising in Ireland. When the English army failed, a new commander was named, a Lord Mountjoy. He was a truly ruthless conqurer, destroying all the food, cattle, and homes he could, starving the people of Ireland. Also by this time, Queen Elizabeth I had died, and James VI of Scotland had become James I of England.

Now, the Scots were not a whole lot better off than the Irish, and as the coast of Scotland was only about 25 miles from the coast of Ireland, King James decided to help out his dear Scottish folk by granting them new farm land in the "kingdom" of Ulster called Ireland. To that end by 1620 there were about 50, 000 Scots and a few English premanently settled in Ulster.

The Scots had, for the most part, been Presbyterians, and when James I died in 1625, his son Charles I was crowned King of England. And while James liked Presbyterians, Charles didn't like them any more than his father had liked Catholicism. So, Charles, being "fair to all" forced Anglicanism down the throats of the Scots-Irish, and anyone else in his kingdom!

The Scots chose to defend their religion from Charles, and their uprising defeated Charles and caused Presbyterianism to remain in Ulster. By 1640 there were around 100,000 Scots in Ireland.

When Cromwell ended the English Civil War and beheaded Charles in 1650, he took the side of neither Catholic nor Presbyterian, persecuting them,as well as the Anglicans. Cromwell died in 1660, and Charles II took the throne. The years 1660-1669 were known as the "killing times" because anyone not professing allegiance to the Church of England was killed.

One example of the "killing times" that has been passed down is that a fourteen year old girl was arrested because of her failure to give allegiance to the English King in a way that connoted his being head of the church. This fourteen year old girl was ordered to death by drowning for her lack of allegiance.

Thus by the end of the 17th Century the "Great Migration" of Scotch-Irish to America began. An estimated 250,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America between 1700 and 1776. The period of the "Great Migration" of Scotch-Irish took place at approximately the same time as the German Palatine migration to America. The causes for migration were similar, but the people were of different natures and different beliefs.

Now...back to Andrew Jackson. Jackson was born in 1767, the son of poor Scots-Irish immigrants living in the backwoods of South Carolina. He was seventh president of the United States; a hero in the War of 1812; a cotton farmer near Nashville. By the age of 14 he was a wounded veteran of the American Revolution and an orphan. His formal education was slight, but he found a career by reading law with a number of lawyers in North Carolina. Jackson married Rachel Donelson, the daughter of the founder of Nashville, Tennessee. In fact, he married her twice, but that is another story. With Rachael came the large, extended family Jackson had lost in his youth.

Jackson ran for president of the United States in 1824, but while the popular votes elected him, he lost in the electoral votes. However, he ran again in 1828 and won. He won a second term in 1832. Because of Jackson's support of Sam Houston, Texas became a state in 1845, the year Jackson died.

Now let's connect the ethnicity of Jackson and Donelson. It appears that Rachel Donelson's grandfather was Patrick Donelson. Patrick was born in Scotland about 1670. He had a son named John, also born in Scotland, but immigrated to Maryland. His wife was Catherine Davis, also born in Scotland.

They had a son John who married one Rachael Stockley, daughter of Alexander Stockley and Jane Matthews Stockley. Both Johns are listed in the DAR Patriot Index.

Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachael adopted Rachel's brother Severn Donelson's son ( one of a set of twins). They changed his name to Andrew Jackson Jr. And from there descends a mighty list of Jackson progeny who were really Donelsons.

The lesson we learn here, of course, is just because great-great-grandpa had the last name of Jackson, it didn't really mean he was a Jackson, and what's more it doesn't mean the Jacksons running around today are direct descendants of Andy.

But one thing is certain. They seem to have all come from that terrible time in Scotland and Ireland when nobody seemed to want the Irish to behave as Irish or the Scots to act like Scots! Mind you, they are all Celts, but that is a whole another story, too.

Andrew Jr. married a woman named Sarah Yorke of Philadelphia. Her father was Peter Yorke and her great-great-grandfather was Judge Yorke, an officer of the crown of England. They had five children--Rachael, Andrew III (oh, my has this tale grown!), Samuel, Thomas, and Robert. Andrew Jackson Jr.'s twin brother was Thomas Jefferson Donelson--so with him the line stays true...at least for a while.

However, Rachel's--remember Andrew Sr.'s wife-- brother, Samuel, also had a son who was named Andrew Jackson Donelson and was also raised by Andrew and Rachel. He graduated from West Point and was Presidential Aide to Jackson. Samuel's wife was Mary Smith (now don't even try to relate all the Smiths to the Jacksons!!).

Oh what a tangled web they wove! And we, dear genealogical reader, must untangle it thread by thread.

Andrew Jackson Donelson appears on the Tennessee Federal Census of 1840 living in Davidson County (Nashville is it's county seat), page 315, ID#TNS4a750729. He married his first cousin, Emily Donelson, who was the daughter of Capt. John Donelson and Mary Purnell. When President Jackson's wife died, Emily, her niece, had shared the duties of White House hostess with the president's adopted son's wife, Sarah. Of course the adopted son was really Rachel Donelson Jackson's nephew.

Whew! And we wonder why it is so hard to chase the tales. It seems that when they weren't marrying their cousins, they were marrying brothers and sisters-in-law, changing their Christian names and/or the surnames, naming all the children after all the previous generation, and truly messing it up for us!

But as long as we are chasing Jackson and Donelson tales, let's take a look at our own county. Our county telephone book lists 46 entries for Jackson and no Donelsons (one Donaldson). Remember to look at variant surname spellings.

But, as I have gone off on the Jackson/Donelson saga, I have failed to continue the Scots-Irish tale. One major group of Scots-Irish came with Rev. James McGregor from County Londonderry to New England in 1718. They landed in Boston, but settle in New Hampshire and established the town of Londonderry.

Most of the Scots-Irish immigrants, however, settled in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. From there they moved into Georgia, Kentucky, the foothills of Western Maryland, and Tennessee in the 1780's and 1790's.

The Scotch-Irish Foundation (PO Box 181, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010) was established as a non-profit corporation in 1949. It specifically collects records relating to the Scots-Irish and preserves their history. When someone becomes a member, they will be asked to submit a "Family Registration" form detailing information on their Scots-Irish heritage. Membership in the foundation costs $10.00, after which there are no annual dues.

Another source of Scots-Irish information can be found at the Ulster Historical Foundation. It is on the web at http://www.ancestryireland.com/. The postal address is 12 College Square East, Belfast BT1 6DD, Northern Ireland; telephone: (+44) 028 90 332288. The chairman is Dr. George Chambers.

The Public Records of Northern Ireland is online at http://proni.nics.gov.uk/index.htm. Their postal address is 66 Balmoral Avenue, Belfast BT9 6NY, Northern Ireland; telephone (+44) 028 90 255800.

As early immigrants to American, the Scots-Irish were an independent lot. They felt that God owned the land and that they, therefore should not have to pay for it. They marked their property by cutting their initials in trees on the boundary of what they considered to be theirs, then they cut circles in the bark to kill the trees.

While the Ulstermen were known for drinking, arguing, singing and dancing,the immigrant Irish women are remembered for spinning flax, milling the corn, working in the fields, and bearing 10-15 children (free labor for the farm). They also educated their own children. They felled trees and cleared around the stumps, rather than clearing the land more tidly as the Palatine German settlers had done.

Home made whiskey was importantf or trade and made a harsh life more tolerable. Because these people had immigrated in groups, often from the same parish in Ireland, neighbors gathered to clear land, build houses, harvest crops, and socialize. One of the first Ulster settlements was Donegal, Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna was a barrier, and beyond it lay the rich Cumberland Valley. Eventually, a ferry opened the Cumberland Valley to the Scots-Irish, and it became their heartland.

The Scots-Irish settled around the English and the Germans. The Germans were settled a little further inland than the English and provided a buffer between the English and the Indians. The Irish settled a little further into the frontier than even the Germans.

For every Indian killed, 50 Ulster settlers were either killed or kidnapped by the Indians. The Scots-Irish moved down the Cumberland to Virginia and the Carolinas. From Pennsylvania to South Carolina, they dominated the expansion of the American frontier.

In the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and the Appalacian Mountainss, two land grants existed during the 1740's. Four of the prominent Scots-Irish families who settled there were the Lyles, the Lusks, the Trimbles, and the Houstons. In our county telephone directory I find 5 Lusk listings, one Trimble, but neither Houston nor Lyle is listed.

As the Scots-Irish settle the eastern mountains, a trend seems to have developed. The old reivers, or robbers, of the Scots-English border became the frontiersmen and the mountain men. The tenant farmers of the Scots settled in many of the same areas as the Palatines, those folks from southwestern and western Germany near the Rhine River. And, although the groups are sometimes compared, the Scots-Irish were of a more squabbling disposition than the pacifistic Anabaptist Palatines, today's Amish and Menonites.

A final note, and one we Texans should consider. Did Andy Jackson help push the annexation of Texas because he just liked Sam Houston, or could it have been because Houston, too, was one of those tough, intelligent, hard headed Protestant Ulstermen who came from Ireland and helped to create the independent way of life we enjoy today? And a final note, Andrew Jackson Donelson Jackson'f former aide and nephew-in-law was President John Tyler's representative to Texas to urge annexation to the United States. However, Tyler lost his presidental election to James Polk, so it was Polk's administration which ushered Texas into the United States of America.

You may contact me with a request which may be published in a future edition of Painted Post Crossroads. Either mail your queries to Sue Seibert, P. O. Box 61, Mineral Wells TX 76068-0061, or email me at [email protected].

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you next time as we continue to Chase our Tales!