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2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page i Exiles of ’98 Ulster Presbyterians and the United States Peter Gilmore Trevor Parkhill William Roulston 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page ii First published 2018 by Ulster Historical Foundation, The Corn Exchange, 31 Gordon Street, Belfast, BT1 2LG www.ancestryireland.com www.booksireland.org.uk Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publisher. © Ulster Historical Foundation and the contributors ISBN: 978-1-909556-62-1 Front cover illustration: A commemorative jug commissioned in memory of John Nevin who died in exile in Tennessee in 1806, Ballymoney Museum (Courtesy Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council) Back cover illustration: Summerville Cemetery, Augusta, Georgia, showing the burial place of James Bones, an exile from County Antrim. The inscription on his tombstone is shown alongside the inscription on the headstone to his father John in Duneane churchyard, County Antrim. (Courtesy Erick Montgomery) Ulster Historical Foundation Registered with The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland NIC100280 Printed by Bell & Bain Limited Design by J.P. Morrison 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page iii Contents Preface and acknowledgements iv Abbreviations v Notes on contributors vi Introductory essays 1. Eighteenth-century migration from Ulster to America 1 2. The 1798 Presbyterian Exiles, the Irish Diaspora in the United States, and the Shaping of American Politics 4 3. Hibernian Societies, St Patrick’s Day and The Shamrock 10 4. The American Edition of Plowden’s Historical Review 22 Studies of individuals 5. David Bailie Warden and the Political Influence of Irish America 25 6. John Neilson and James Dinsmore, Master Builders 38 7. Rev. John Glendy and the Presbytery of Baltimore 44 8. Rev. William Sinclair 53 9. James Simpson and the Presbytery of Huntingdon 57 10. Rev. Thomas Ledlie Birch 61 11. Rev. Robert Steele and Pittsburgh 71 12. Thomas Hoge 79 13. John Chambers 85 14. John Campbell White of Baltimore 92 15. Rev. John McNiece of New York 96 16. Rev. James Hull of New Orleans 99 17. Alexander Porter of Louisiana 109 Studies of groups 18. Associate Reformed Clergy and the 1798 Rebellion 117 19. Reformed Presbyterians and Rebellion-Related Migration 136 20. Exiles in Washington County, Pennsylvania 144 Directory of Ulster Exiles 147 Some Concluding Observations on the Ulster Exiles of ’98 219 Index 231 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page iv Preface and acknowledgements The origins of this book go back to a project commissioned by the Ministerial Advisory Group – Ulster Scots Academy on the contribution of Ulster Presbyterian exiles of the 1798 period to political thought in the United States of America. The project was delivered by the Ulster Historical Foundation and the initial research was carried out in 2013. Subsequently, the Department for Communities provided additional support to allow this research to be published for which we are very grateful. The publication of this volume provides another opportunity to thank those who assisted with that study: Keith Beattie, Alister McReynolds, Dr Linde Lunney, Prof. Richard MacMaster, Erick Montgomery and Dr Rankin Sherling. Since then others have shared information on particular individuals and we have acknowledged them in the relevant section of this book. 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page v Abbreviations Campbell, History of John H. Campbell, History of the Friendly Sons the Friendly Sons of St Patrick and of the Hibernian Society for the of St Patrick Relief of Emigrants from Ireland, March 17, 1777–March 17, 1892 (Philadelphia, 1892) DIB Dictionary of Irish Biography, 9 vols (Cambridge, 2009) Durey, Transatlantic Michael Durey, Transatlantic Radicals and the Radicals Early American Republic (Lawrence, KS, 1997) LoC Library of Congress McBride, Scripture I. R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Politics Presbyterianism and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998) MHS Maryland Historical Society Miller, Irish Immigrants Kerby A. Miller, Arnold Schrier, Bruce D. Boling, David N. Doyle (eds), Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675–1815 (New York, 2003) NAI National Archives of Ireland NLI National Library of Ireland PRONI Public Record Office of Northern Ireland RP Rebellion Papers in the National Archives of Ireland Wilson, United Irishmen, David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: United States Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca, 1998) Wilson, ‘John David A. Wilson, ‘John Caldwell’s memoir: a case Caldwell’s memoir’ study in Ulster-American radicalism’ in David A. Wilson and Mark G. Spencer (eds), Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (Dublin, 2006) 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page vi Notes on contributors Peter Gilmore, who received a PhD in history from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009, is an adjunct instructor in history at universities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has written extensively about the Ulster Presbyterian diaspora in the United States and is the author of Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Trevor Parkhill was Keeper of History at the Ulster Museum from 1995 to 2012, prior to which he had followed a career in archives, primarily with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. He is the editor of Familia: Ulster Genealogical Review and his books include The First World War Diaries of Emma Duffin (2014) and A Nurse in the Belfast Blitz (2016). William Roulston has been Research Director of the Ulster Historical Foundation since 2006. He holds a PhD in Archaeology from Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of a number of books looking at different aspects of the history of Ulster and is the co-editor of the new edition of Plantations in Ulster, 1600–41: A Collection of Documents (2018). vi 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page 1 1 Eighteenth-century migration from Ulster to America Trevor Parkhill It is now generally accepted that some 100,000, and perhaps as many as 150,000, had migrated across the Atlantic to colonial America from Ireland, principally from Ulster, by 1776, the great majority of them Presbyterians of Scottish origins.1 There is ongoing debate about whether the prime factor in these migratory waves was religious disaffection or whether, as is now more generally accepted, economic factors were uppermost in the decision to leave Ulster.2 It true that the first waves from 1718 onwards included significant sections from a number of Presbyterian congregations effecting a root-and-branch migration from Ulster, exemplified in the migration to New England of a large contingent from the Aghadowey congregation in County Londonderry, led by Rev. James McGregor.3 Thereafter, the decision to emigrate was more closely linked to prevailing economic conditions. This was particularly the case in the wave that arrived on American shores in the few years immediately prior to the American Revolution, when a combination of a downturn in the linen trade and the raising of rents on some landed estates prompted some 10,000 a year to leave. Nonetheless, the Presbyterianism that originated in Ulster was one of the determining factors in the pre-revolutionary American colonial culture.4 That Presbyterianism had been politicised throughout the eighteenth century largely in response to restrictions imposed by the Dublin parliament, citadel of the Anglican Protestant Ascendancy, on freedom of religious practice. The Test Act of 1704 was one of a number of measures that came to be known as the Penal Code, which were designed to obstruct the practice of the Roman Catholic religion. The restrictions it imposed on dissenting religions, principally Presbyterianism, included the religious ceremonies associated with marriage in particular, and the holding of civic office. Most crippling of all, perhaps, was the ruling that Presbyterian ministers would only receive a suitable training elsewhere. In the case of most, this entailed tuition at the University of Glasgow, itself something of a beacon of radical philosophical thought in the eighteenth century. 1 2106 Presbyterian exiles_Layout 1 15/05/2018 08:56 Page 2 EXILES OF ’98: ULSTER PRESBYTERIANS AND THE UNITED STATES This was especially the case when, in 1730, Francis Hutcheson was appointed by the university to the chair of moral philosophy. The son and grandson of Irish Presbyterian ministers, his teachings at Glasgow, where he himself had studied, earned him the title of ‘the father of the Scottish enlightenment’. His influence in Ulster was maintained by the contact he renewed with Irish non-subscribers to the Westminster Confession of Faith. His radical philosophy included the view that the end of government was ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ and that victims of unjust regimes had the right to rebel, a factor, says Finlay Holmes, ‘that contributed to the ideology of revolution in Ireland and colonial America’.5 Considerable numbers of licentiate Presbyterian ministers returned to Ulster with the intellectual and philosophical grounding that would be come an integral feature of the radical movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Irish emigration, again principally from the province of Ulster, resumed in considerable numbers following the conclusion of the War of Independence by the Treaty of Paris of 1783.6 One of the distinguishing features of this resumed migratory flow was the increasingly political element to be found in what was still a predominantly Presbyterian diaspora.