2020, what a year. I was thinking how history will record this year, and really the last decade in American history. The politics, the divide in political ideology of our people. And then I got to thinking about the history I have learned in the 20 plus years of genealogy. How different some of what I have learned is from the narrative I was taught in high school or college. I was researching some Scottish and Irish history too because it relates to one of my families, and then again, I thought. My family history, and I think many American's is not a history of one country but two. And there is quite a bit of that narrative I did not necessarily learn accurately either. So will some far off descendant or relative learn our narrative the way we may see it today, or under a different lens?
In 1641 a rebellion in Ireland caused the death of a son of a Robert McCurdy. The rebellion also involved Archibald Stewart in Ballintoy, Ireland. This rebellion is one of many skirmishes between Catholics and Protestants that occurred in Ireland for centuries. Archibald Stewart, a grandson of Ninian Stewart of the Island of Bute, was a steward of the Earl of Antrim. Antrim is home to many of the highlanders we Americans know as the Scots Irish, and the place we can trace our family history back to. It is these descendants of Ninian Stewart that are rumored to be the McCurdy connection to the royal house of Stewart of Scotland. (Contrary to the rumors, Margaret Stewart, the alleged connection is not descended from James Stewart the King of Scotland, but is connected rather to Robert the Bruce if the connection can ever be confirmed).
Meanwhile in what would become the United States of America, three Brownson siblings settled in Connecticut. The Brownsons community would become the Puritans we learned about in school. One branch, now under the name of Brunson would move to the Santee river in South Carolina. Joined by a settlement of Huguenots, the St. Mark's Parish Church would represent almost a century of the family history. All of the Brunson's in the south descend from this branch.
Nearby in Massachusetts and Vermont, settlers from the Wheelers, Hinds, Bent, Whittemore and many other families would also settle. My mother's maternal grandfather's family descends from many of these early settlers. As American's we were taught that the impetus for the journey to America was religious freedom. Ironically, that wasn't exactly the impediment that the new colonists faced.
Non-conformists, sometimes called dissenters, were prohibited from holding office until 1828, but the ability to practice the religion had been resolved long before the first shots of the American Revolution. I think rather, truth be told, it was other freedoms that drove colonists to the new country. In America, they could hold land, even if the cost of transport was indentured servitude. The poverty of the villages and a society based on land ownership of an entitled class system likely had as much or more to do with the desire to come to the wilds of America.
My mother's maternal grandmother's family were late arrivals to America. As a consequence, it is more difficult to trace their lines back as far. Because, for the most part, common laborers are hard to find in records prior to 1700. The only reason we know anything about the Brownson's is that an archeological survey was done on the village they came from. Now, there are areas within America we also can't trace as well. Descendants of North Carolina, South Carolina, early Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia are often faced with a gap in records. Many due to Sherman's march across the south which burned those records, though to be honest, fire has cost us valuable documents regardless of the cause in many areas of the country. Particularly Alabama, which has 80% of it's counties having burned records in it's past.
There is one family line we can perhaps trace further back, the Dudley's of the midlands, descending from an illegitimate daughter of Edward Sutton, the 5th Baron of Dudley who died in 1642. By all accounts, the connection of Martha Dudley to Edward Sutton, through her grandmother Catherine Sutton, a daughter of Edward Dudley and his mistress, appears to be legitimate. The Dudley's can be traced back to a John Dudley born in 1413 who was a gentleman of Tipton, but it is her maternal line, that can be traced back to royalty of England.
Unlike the McCurdy's whose claim to royal connections is fraught with barriers and obstacles, this is the one connection that appears to be legitimate. I have addressed these issues in a previous blog, but will expand on the connections again soon. Edward Sutton, the 5th Baron of Dudley's royal connections come through his paternal grandmother's family. His paternal grandmother's grandmother, Eleanor de Holland is a descendant of Edward Longshanks and his wife Margaret of France. She is also a descendant of Louis, King of France, Henry II, King of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry III, King of England and Llewyln the great. Though he is also descended from other aristocratic families, it is the descendants of Joyce Cherleton that gives his family line these connections.
Ironically, the Lords and Earls of Dudley would own the very ironworks that their descendants would one day work as common laborers who toiled in the dangerous work of the villages of Staffordshire. Descendants who would die in workhouses and lie buried in unmarked graves. I never understood the appeal of linking oneself to royalty but many find it worthwhile. Though to be honest, it does make it a bit easier to find a trail if you have that connection.
While my grandmother's paternal family were early colonists in American, her maternal family were early non-conformist in the villages of the midlands. My grandfather's American ancestor's cannot be traced nearly as far, but the Trahern's were among the first Methodist Episcopalians in Maryland and Virginia, though they appear to have had strong connections to the Quakers if they did not start out as such. Though religion does seem to take a prominant place in this blog, it is I think the context of understanding the motivations and path religion has had in the history of not just our country, but of England and my ancestors.
I think that to understand a bit of the early foundations of the United States, takes an understanding of English history of the same time. King James II, his son Charles, Cornwall. This is the history that drove many of the Scottish to Ireland, and then to the United States, but it also impacted our non-Scottish ancestors as well.
