Scotch-Irish-L Archives

From:
Subject: Re: [Sc-Ir] Dick family query
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:12:51 +0000

Hi Katherine, thanks for sharing. It's really important to do so. Most of us are in the same boat -- can't get some line or the other back to the east coast.

You've done some great work (or someone has!) in that you got him to North Carolina and his church affiliation and neighbors are known. These definitely suggest he came from Ulster. We say this because in the south, where in some areas, as many as 95% of the folk are believed to have come from Ulster, a few weren't. They assimilated in the dominant culture, which was Scotch Irish. So before long their descendents, when asked what they were, said "Scotch Irish", which was true -- Scotch Irish is an American ethnic group, but some of them were English, German, French, etc, unfortunately, the same people who migrated to Ireland in the 1500s and 1600s. But yours looks and smells like an Ulsterman: he's Presbyterian and he's living with other Ulstermen.

Possibly he came in through a Maryland port. You will not know unless you are very lucky or channel him from the other side. The records don't exist, they were never made documenting immigrants in maybe 90% or so of the cases. The ones we do have records of are published and indexed in what's called "Filby". It's on line at ancestry. You can search in under a minute....Then move on to what's do able. In any case the vast majority of southern SI entered through Middle Atlantic ports, we are told by the reference books, and hoofed it south down through the inner valleys and the piedmont (however everyone thinks their ancestors came with the Rev. Martin on the most crowded 5 boats to ever dock at Charleston <grin>).

Obsessive reading of the histories of these churches will give you two things: perhaps some mention of where congregants came from and SURNAMES associated with him. These same surnames will be with him in Ulster. There's a couple huge histories of American Presbyterianism that may contain these details. If you go to the church, maybe no one's there who knows anything. Use books. Check our archives for on line stuff.

Of course your man's children married Ulstermen. They married ones from the same area of Ireland as they came from. It wasn't invented for the Scotch Irish, it's generally true -- one of the commonest methodologies or strategies that professionals use (and teach in classes, articles and books) is if you are stuck with the dude himself, trace his friends and neighbors. Who witnessed his will? Who was his neighbor? These are key clues. I just read a book that discussed this in immense detail, largely showing how to trace Missouri residents back to wherever. Most of them came from TN and (not surprisingly) VA. This is the source of many east TNers -- I've traced some families down from PA into VA and TN. One deed in VA id'ed four generations of the family in three locations: PA, VA, and TN. I wish I could find that deed for a couple of MY lines <grin>!!

> I haven't been able to find a marriage record for William, but his wife in
> his later years was named Rebecca. Some family tradition gives her surname as
> Tice, but I've yet to find proof of that.

Tice is a great clue because it isn't common. I'd keep my eye on it. I'd use LDS and the INternet to research wills, grants, and deeds in your MD area for instances of the name. Esp. look for published abstracts that will index every name in the will or grant (hard to find published deed abstracts). Recall that if he was born in the 1730s his father could have lived till 1800, so we're talking long thorough resaerch here. It pays off. My sister made a major breakthrough on one of our lines by resarching deeds in Allegheny CO, PA. In the 1880s she found a deed recording a transfer of land from the early 1800s when our ancestor inherited it from his dad. We were looking for the name of the dad for at least 50 years!! (our mother
and others were looking first). His name was in this deed. All we had to do is execute a
very common 101 strategy done by trained genealogists all the time. Took her one lunch hour too.....

Not only does it sound like a lot of the right work has been done (you know religion, children's names, wife's, associates, trade) but he's ripe for success. Ie he left a lot of records. Where did he learn to be a blacksmith? If in Ireland, we have apprenticeship records very early due to a tax. Unfortunately the tax wasn't paid if you apprenticed to your father. These records are hidden from amateurs who tend to think that all their records are in Ireland. Ha! These ones are in England. British. Also microfilmed and in LDS, I believe. I attended a lecture on Irish records in England and learned about it.

> If anyone wants to claim this William, or even suggest some possibilities,
> I'd be all too glad to hear about them.

Read the courses on immigration at www.genealogy.com/university.html. You can also take classses and buy books on the subject, but frankly, this is very good and I use it all the time, not my books. I re read it all the time and often see new clues I'd overlooked before.

To succeed in locating the place of origin in Ireland, you must learn to do Irish genealogy before church records and censuses. If you don't spend some time doing this you will not succeed. There's lots of books and free material on the Internet. Unfortunately most are aimed at the majority of Irish: Catholics who left during the 1800s not the 1700s. This is one of the thing that 'gets us'. Suddenly we are a minority and most of what is written is not relevant to us. Like WIlliam you must be a pioneer. If you expect to find someone who has already done the work and is on this list right now and is willing to share it, most likely y ou will be disappointed. You are probably the person who has to do the work. Then publish the results so it survives you.

When we start doing Irish genealogy the first thing y ou do is what is sometimes called a preliminary study. That's a study to determine where the DICK surname occurs in Ireland. I'd do TICE too. TICE appears to be English, based on IGI, and there definitely were occurances in Ulster. Again, IGI. Takes 2 seconds to figure that out.

With a preliminary study you check easy to get indexed sources to identify locales. You can use a book like Ryan "Irish Records". Also consult the LDS guide to Ireland. You check griffith's valuation index, probably using the CD, and the tithe applotment index (on CD). this gives you an idea if the surnames moved during the famine. You'll want to note neighbors.
You then check various other things such as religions censuses, spinning wheel taxes,
any surviving census fragments (1821, 31). You say 'he was gone by then". Yes, but you don't know if all his siblings and cousins left. You check the 1600s muster lists and taxes, etc. You can get the published index to the Irish Archives collections and check it. It'll not have much for your average Ulster Scotsman, but you check it. Eventually a pattern emerges.

Definitely check the archives of this list as the surviving McDonald deeds are in it as well as abstracts of any church histories in Ireland that I've read and the life work of one member who provided abstracts too.

You then eyeball locations to 'dig into'. Irish genealogy is local history, local history, local history. Your intermediate goal is to get to estates and a townland of origin. You can then check estate records. Our Irish ancestors were not named in censuses that were not taken. They are identified in private record collections of estates. They may be named in freeman lists in large towns, but all you get is a name. How do y ou know it's yours? You build a huge spreadsheet with all this stuff, and you watch for patterns.

You may find it helpful to use the Ulster Historical Foundation's database or someone to search church records. They don't really exist for most Presbyterians in the 1700s and they are not aggregated so yo can search easy. UHF has Antrim and Down. There are some on microfilm in LDS as well as at least 70 film relevant to Ulster including depositions from the 1600s regarding Irish rebellion atrocities, 1600s rent rolls, etc (from the Armagh museum). You can do a heck of a lot of work in the USA. I did prelminiary studies on all my lines from America using LDS and the Internet and in one line turned up exactly what a cousin had gotten from an agency in Northern Ireland -- except I had one additional piece of info. That I cheated to get <grin>! I got it at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. I knew where the NORRIS
in the Siege of Derry came from in Ulster.

Now my cousin was very depressed by the results because it didn't produce the origon of our ancestor. He quit. I was ecstatic as I knew what to do next . In doing it I'd learned how to do this work. He didn't do it so he not only could not continue but was unable to interpret the results in order to identify critical clues.

Since then I've figured out where they probably came from before. Unfortunately, Protestants in Ireland moved about a lot. Mine weren't in Swatragh in Derry for long.
I thought they were in a different estate than they were, which is why the first estate I
checked had none of them in the records. I gotta yet research the 2nd, but, from long reading of local history I know there was a large family surnamed NORRIS living up near Coleraine and possibly we're a spill over from there. They used the same first names as mine did.

My ancestor's wife's name was DOWLING, often believed to be a form of Irish DURAN, but it is also an English surname. It's common in Antrim. Not surprisingly, Swatragh is near one of the four bridges across the River Bann. Presbyterians often crossed those bridges to attend outdoor preaching events -- and there they met others. Those four bridges are REAL important to understand if you are doing research in the north coast of eastern Ireland. I have ancestors from the other side in Antrim too. I suspect most of the Dowlings in Antrim are English. It's easier to explain than howcome the Doran tribe of Wicklow blew north and got converted to Protestantism by the big wind. I could however be wrong....

Anyway, when y ou study an area deeply, you see all kinds of clues in your family information that you missed before your studies. And that's why you must do to find your family's origins in Ireland. In IGI, you got TICE in Antrim and Cork. This isn't surprising...There's the 'lost' English colony at Belfast which introduced English and Welsh surnames to the area, as well as a continual migration of English to Ireland in the 1600s.
Armagh was settled by English as well as L'Derry.

However Ollie Cromwell, who was a moderate of his day and has gotten v ery bad press,
somewhat undeservedly, settled his entire English army (the first standing English army ever) in Ireland in the 1650s. Many sold out and moved to the West Indies. Many who remained married Irish girls. Their grandchildren wre Catholis who often could not speak English. But they had English surnames.

IGI for Ireland is not good because there aren't so many church records. Most English parish rcords are in IGI as well as most Scottish. But not Ireland, so the lack of early TICE records in IGI in Ireland simply mean that there are fewer Irish records in IGI. It's still a fast easy start to eyeballing surnames in Ireland.

Also check out the DICKs in Cumberland, PA. The will indexes are on line at www.usgenweb.com . The reason to be aware is that maybe yours are also related. There's a genealogy I found of some McCAMEYs who left Ireland, a group of sisters. I forget where they came from. Several first came to PA and settled there. Some later moved to NC
and were joined by other sisters and families from Ireland. So some came directly to NC,
some went to PA first. Some moved from PA to NC. Some stayed in PA. All had different surnames because the commonalities were the wives and the location in Ireland. So be aware of all DICKs in America. My ex and I had friends in Worcester, MA in the 1970s
surnamed DICK, but they were Irish Catholics. So not all Dicks are Protestant in Ireland. These folk were college professors at the same college that my ex was teaching at.

Sorry for the long post.

Linda Merle

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