Ian Maxwell - Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records#

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors - 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

First published in Great Britain in 2010
Second edition published 2015 by
PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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South Yorkshire
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Copyright Ian Maxwell 2010, 2015

ISBN: 978 1 47385 179 5
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47385 182 5
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47385 180 1
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47385 181 8

The right of Ian Maxwell to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

To my sons Scott and Callum, without whose help this book would have been finished in half the time

INTRODUCTION

N orthern Ireland was established as a distinct region within the United Kingdom on 3 May 1921 under the terms of the Government Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous region was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster, namely Armagh, Antrim, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. These were the counties with the highest concentration of Unionists who had opposed a series of Irish Home Rule bills designed to grant limited autonomy to a parliament in Dublin. The partition of Ireland, however, left a deep legacy of mistrust and division that often manifested itself as political unrest and violence until the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The Provinces early history extends further back than written records and survives mainly in legends such as the Ulster Cycle. Before the arrival of the Celts during the second half of first millennium BC, Ulster was already sparsely inhabited by early migrants who had probably crossed the narrow sea from Scotland to the Antrim coast and gradually moved further south. They lived a primitive existence by hunting in the forests and fishing the streams and lakes. Next came the first farmers who used stone implements for felling trees and preparing the soil for grain and kept cattle, sheep and pigs. The Ulster landscape contains many examples of the tombs they left as monuments to their dead.

The first Celtic-speaking people appeared in Ireland during the Iron Age around 500 BC. These people, known to the Greeks as Keltoi or Celts, had dominated central and western Europe and spoke an Indo-European language, which would develop into the P-Celtic language of Britain and Gaul and Q-Celtic, the ancestor of Irish Gaelic. The Celts enjoyed the advantage of having weapons made of iron. They seem to have moved into Ireland directly from the continent, perhaps from northern Spain or western France, into the west and south of the county. Another wave probably came through Britain into north-east Ireland. The Celts would dominate much of Ireland for nearly a thousand years.

The historic period begins with the introduction of Christianity in the fifth century, and Ulster first emerges into the light in documents ascribed to St Patrick. Thereafter, it developed a highly literate society which has left us a substantial corpus of literature in both Latin and Irish. Using annals, genealogies, king lists and other sources we can assemble the names of the many peoples who dominated the island, the territories they held and the rise and fall of their various dynasties.

Much of Ulsters colourful early history has taken place in and around the ancient ecclesiastical settlement of Armagh. The name is the English version of the Irish Ard Macha the Hill of Macha the legendary queen who built her fortress about 600 BC on the hill around which the city would develop. More than 600 years later another queen of that name built the palace of Emain Macha a few miles from the city at the site now known as Navan Fort. It became the ancient seat of the Kings of Ulster. Archaeologists have discovered at Navan the traces of a giant temple, the largest prehistoric building in Britain, which was erected for the purpose of ritual destruction and burial beneath the mound that can be seen today. There was a royal settlement with an enclosure and archaeologists have unearthed ancient weapons, jewellery and the bones of people and animals, including the skull of a Barbary ape. Here too the legendary exploits of Cuchullain and the Red Branch Knights were preserved in the oral tradition. After the destruction of Navan, the centre of power moved to the present site of Armagh, probably in the fifth century AD. The abandonment of Emain Macha seems to be connected with the establishment of a very early church at Armagh by Patrick and his followers.