Saturday, March 17, 2018

My Irish Orange

I am going to admit in this post that it sometimes takes much longer than it should for certain facts to get past the fences in my brain to settle on my psyche where the ideas about my family history roost. It is fitting that it should be on St. Patrick's Day 2018 that I should come to an important realization about my Gillespie family of Armagh, Northern Ireland, and that is that they belonged to the Orange Order.  I have been deeply involved in genealogy for over eight years now, but today this news comes as some surprise to me.

Given that I made the early-on mistake of bypassing the very words of one of our beloved family historians, Mary Gillespie Henderson, I think it is now only fitting to quote from her book, "Memories of My Early Years" published in 1937, page 33:
He [Mary's father] "walked" in the Orange procession there [Ontario, Canada] on July 12th with a lot of other men in carts, carriages, or on horseback. Father rode a white horse and wore his regalia, including a sash made by Mary Walsh. He had been a member of the Orange Lodge in Ireland and used to speak in familiar terms of King James, King William, the Battle of the Boyne, and the Seige of Derry, as though they were events of yesterday. On Orangeman's Day he decorated himself with an orange lily or bow of orange ribbon, yet on St. Patrick's Day he wore the green."
That seems to make very clear the Gillespie political persuasions. And yet eight years ago, when I went to study the history of Northern Ireland in the 1790s, I could hardly imagine how my Presbyterian Gillespie family could have fit into such a chaotic scene. On the one hand, Aunt Edith Gillespie had written how our ancestor, John Gillespie, was "instrumental in raising a company of volunteers for Lord Charlemount (Charlemont) in the Rebellion of 1798." This sentence seems to imply that the Gillepies were loyalists, and interested in defending Ireland from foreign invasion. On the other hand, the Gillespies were known to be Presbyterian, and Presbyterians in Northern Ireland had some religious freedom but limited civil freedoms, so I let myself imagine that they did not favor the English and left Ireland to practice their faith more openly. With that thought, I justified dismissing the words of Mary Henderson by thinking that her memories were only second-hand stories. After all, Mary's father, James, was born in 1810, Mary herself was born in 1840, and the story of Mary's memories was being recounted when she was in her 90s. Mary could not really have understood the politics of her grandfather's lifetime in a country she had never even visited (to our knowledge). That thinking was mistaken.

It could be that both premises were true - Gillespies were loyalists and they had limited religious freedom - because it was a complicated time, as explained more fully in this article, Irish Presbyterians: Church, State, and Rebellion. But why does the idea of Gillespies as English loyalists just land on my brain today? Because I recently found a British military record that could well belong to our family. The Thomas Gillespie documented in that record was born about 1778 in or near the town of Armagh in the parish of Richill. He was 18 when he joined the English military forces and he served over 16 years with the 5th Dragoon Guards, finally ending his service because of severe wounds received at Llerena in April 1812. This Thomas Gillespie fought for the English in the Napoleonic Wars. Sound familiar? Mary Gillespie Henderson, daughter of James Gillespie 1810-1899, and granddaughter of our progenitor John Gillespie (b ~1760), recounted memory of an uncle who served in the Napoleonic Wars. Hmmmm.

It's hard to know from the second-hand account of Mary Henderson's memory whether "uncle" referred to the sibling of one of her parents, or perhaps a grand-uncle, meaning the sibling of one of her grandparents. We do know there is a mysterious Thomas Gillespie in our family tree, the one born about 1777, who was enumerated in Oakland county, Michigan in 1840, later declared incompetent, and died in 1859. (See Gillespie Most Wanted.) Maybe that Thomas Gillespie was the veteran of the Napoleonic War? The possibility exists.

So with that, I beg the forgiveness of Mary Gillespie Henderson for second-guessing her memories, and having the wisdom and patience to pass them down to us both verbally and in writing. And for myself, I am grateful to finally get past my own preconceptions to arrive at a better understanding of our wonderful Gillespie family history.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Considering Cavanacaw

Well, some things take awhile. My Gillespie research has been at a virtual stand-still for the past five years. It's hard to know where to go when there simply are no Irish records to find, or at least the records that survive are, at best, spotty and incomplete. Nothing about that reality has changed much,  although I must give credit to the many Irish genealogical organizations and individuals who have applied countless hours to piecing together useful historical evidence to help our quest along. So occasionally I try to review our situation to see if any new evidence and/or brain power can yet be applied to the problem of better identifying our Gillespie's in Armagh, and then finding that longed-for link back to Scotland.

This time I zoomed in on Cavanacaw because that is an actual place name that was handed to us in a Michigan deed pertaining to Thomas Gillespie. It's about time we found out more about my half 4th great uncle. Instead of worrying about the identity of every Thomas Gillespie in Armagh, I focused on every Gillespie who lived in Cavanacaw. This slight shift of attention brought some interesting and informative results. I now have a much better picture of the brother of Elizabeth Gillespie, the Michigan pioneer who died in 1857 and whose probate records have lead to some exciting insights into our Gillespie family. But more than that, if my research is right, we have many more descendants with whom we might at some point find a paper or DNA connection. That's pretty great because it means we are still inching forward.

So just in time for St. Patrick's Day 2018, I give a nod to my Scot-Irish ancestors, and send out my renewed hopes for making new genealogical connections with my Gillespie clan.