Irish Presbyterian Clerical Migration As the Key to Unlocking the Mystery of Nineteenth
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Part and Parcel: Irish Presbyterian Clerical Migration as the Key to Unlocking the Mystery of Nineteenth- Century Irish Presbyterian Migration to America by Rankin Sherling A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in History in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada October, 2012 Copyright © Rankin Sherling, 2012 Abstract: This thesis traces the migration of Irish Presbyterian clerics to the Thirteen Colonies and America over the course of the years 1683 to 1901. Further, it demonstrates that this clerical migration can be used in conjunction with what is already known about Irish Presbyterian migration to America in the eighteenth century to sketch the general shape and parameters of general Irish Presbyterian migration to the United States in the nineteenth century—something which seemed a near impossibility due to factors such as an absence of useable demographic data. In fact, it solves a problem that has bedeviled specialists in Irish-American immigration for thirty years: how to find and study Irish Protestant immigrants in the nineteenth century in a way which gives some idea of the overall shape and frequency of the phenomenon. The following thesis is interdisciplinary and broad in the techniques employed, questions asked, and the literature it has consulted, incorporating much developed by historians of religion, ethnicity, culture, the Atlantic world, Ireland, and Britain in this study of emigration from Ireland and immigration to America. ii Table of Contents: List of Graphs p. v List of Tables p.vi List of Maps p. ix Chapter 1: Introduction: The Pursuit of Irish Protestants in America: Problems and Solutions p. 1 Section I: Church and Ministers as Glue in Irish Presbyterian Society Chapter 2: Conflict, Theology, and the Centrality of the Church in Irish Presbyterian Society p. 35 Chapter 3: Ministers as Foci in Irish Presbyterian Church and Society p. 69 Section II: Inexorably Bound: Clerical and General Irish Presbyterian Migration, 1683- 1810 Chapter 4: It All Began Like Dripping Water: The Earliest Clerical Migration, 1683-1713 p. 95 Chapter 5: The Flooding Begins: Clerical Migration, 1714-1738 p. 142 Chapter 6: Cast Into the Internecine Doldrums: Clerical Migration, 1739-1769 p. 181 Chapter 7: iii Braving the Waves in an Age of Rebellion: Clerical Migration, 1770-1810 p. 222 Section III: Stepping Into the Unknown Chapter 8: Reading the Tea Leaves: Irish Presbyterian Clerical Migration to the United States, 1811-1901, and What it Suggests p. 271 Bibliography of Works Directly Cited: p. 318 iv List of Graphs: Graph 5.1 Clerical Migrants by Year, 1714-38 p. 177 Graph 6.1 Ordained Migrants, 1728-69 p. 205 Graph 6.2 Licentiate and Student Migrants, 1728-69 p. 206 Graph 6.3 Clerical Migration, 1739-69 p. 209 Graph 7.1 Clerical Migration, 1770-1810 p. 256 Graph 8.1 Irish Presbyterian Clerical Migration, 1811-1901 p. 288 Graph 8.2 Clerical Migration 1811-1845 p. 289 Graph 8.3 Clerical Migration, 1837-63 p. 295 Graph 8.4 Clerical Migration, 1855-77 p. 300 Graph 8.5 Clerical Migration, 1878-1901 p. 303 v List of Tables: Table 5.1 Clerical Migrants Organized by Known Place of Birth, 1714-38 p. 146 Table 5.2 Clerical Migrants Organized by Known Place of Birth, 1683-1713 p. 147 Table 5.3 Clerical Migrants Organized by County of Licensing Presbytery, 1714-38 p. 148 Table 5.4 Clerical Migrants Organized by Licensing Presbytery, 1714-18 p.. 150 Table 5.5 Points of Departure by County for Ordained Migrants, 1714-38 p. 152 Table 5.6 Points of Departure by County and Type pp. 153-54 Table 5.7 Irish Presbyterian Clerical Settlement in America, 1714-38 p. 168 Table 5.8 Irish Presbyterian Clerical Settlement in America, 1683-1738 p. 168 Table 6.1 Irish Origins of Clerical Migrants by County, 1739-69 p. 214 Table 6.2 Revised Origins of Clerical Emigration by County, 1739-69 p. 215 Table 6.3 Geographic Organization of Clerical Emigration (with date of migration) p. 216 vi Table 6.4 American Settlement of Clerical Migrants by Colony, 1739-69 p. 217 Table 7.1 Irish Origins by County, 1770-1810 p. 263 Table 7.2 Clerical Settlement by Colony/State, 1770-79 p. 265 Table 7.3 Clerical Settlement by Colony/State, 1780-89 p. 265 Table 7.4 Clerical Settlement by State, 1790-99 p. 266 Table 7.5 Clerical Settlement by State, 1800-1810 p. 267 Table 7.6 Total Clerical Settlement by Colony/State, 1770-1810 p. 267 Table 8.1 Irish Origins by County, 1811-45 p. 290 Table 8.2 U.S. Settlement by State of Migrants Arriving 1811-45 p. 291 Table 8.3 Irish Origins by County, 1846-54 p. 295 Table 8.4 U.S. Settlement of Migrants Arriving 1846-54 p. 296 Table 8.5 Irish Origins by County, 1855-77 vii p. 300 Table 8.6 U.S. Settlement by State of Migrants Arriving 1855-77 p. 301 Table 8.7 Irish Origins by County, 1878-1901 p. 303 Table 8.8 U.S. Settlement by State of Migrants Arriving 1878-1901 p. 304 Table 8.9 Irish Origins, 1811-1901 pp. 305-6 Table 8.10 American Settlement, 1811-1901 pp. 307-10 viii List of Maps: Map 4.1 Settlement of Irish Presbyterian Ministers in North America, 1683-1713 p. 138 Map 5.1 Traditional Area of Irish Presbyterian Settlement in the Eighteenth Century p. 219 ix Chapter 1: Introduction (1) The Pursuit of Irish Protestants in America: This study traces the migration of the most important subgroup of the Irish Presbyterian community, their ministers, from Ireland to America between 1683 to 1901. In so doing, it also uncovers the parameters of general Irish Presbyterian migration to America in the nineteenth century. I have not been able to uncover any study of the migration of any major Irish Protestant group to the United States in the nineteenth century. (I would be happy to be proved wrong as it would provide valuable opportunities for true comparative study.) So, in discovering the contours of Irish Presbyterian migration to America in the nineteenth century, this study sets itself alone, and in a real sense, there is no historiography to compare it to. On the other hand, there are many reasons that this is the first study. What follows is an introduction to those problems, my method of bypassing them, and finally an outline of how these chapters combine to provide the contours of Irish Presbyterian migration in the nineteenth century through the delineation of Irish Presbyterian clerical migration from 1683 to 1901. (2) A Bipolar Historiography Irish Presbyterian migration in the eighteenth century is, and has been for a long time, one of the most popular fields of study in American popular and scholarly history, and while the migration of Irish Presbyterians did not stop after 1800—in fact it almost certainly increased— almost no one has studied the phenomenon after 1800. Thus, the historiography of Irish Presbyterian migration to America is a bi-polar historiography. One pole is soaked with scholarship, the other is parched from the lack of it: the most-often studied American immigrant group of the eighteenth century, shunned to the point of historiographical nonexistence in the 1 nineteenth. This is not an exaggeration. Irene Whelan characterized the state of the study of Irish Protestant immigration to America in the nineteenth century well when she wrote, “[Irish] Protestant immigration [to the U.S.] did not cease in the eighteenth century, but we know little or nothing about those who left [Ireland] after 1800.”1 But how did this embarrassing state of historiography come to be? The first reason is that historians of Irish Protestant migration—mostly historians of Irish Presbyterians—have tended until very recently to simply stop their studies at 1776. There seems to have been a long-held custom that encouraged not only the cessation of a study of Irish Presbyterian migration in 1776, but that eventually encouraged the false assumption that Irish Presbyterian migration—or at least the heaviest and most important flow of Irish Presbyterian migration—stopped then, too. Almost all of the innumerable studies of Irish Presbyterians in America produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stop in or around that year. In the late nineteenth century, amateur descendants of Irish Presbyterians produced reams of studies on this group— whom they unswervingly called the Scotch-Irish—lavishing praise upon them and their bold and supposedly inherent traits. Significantly, a key aspect that early chroniclers emphasized about their forbears was their pre-Revolutionary arrival—a point which provided some contemporary social cachet as it allowed them to consider themselves as descended from the founders of the nation. The difference between colonist and immigrant was a very big deal at 1 Irene Whelan, “Religious Rivalry and the Making of Irish-American Identity,” in Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States, J.J. Lee and Marion Casey, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 282. 2 that time, and those Irish Presbyterians who arrived after the American Revolution were left out of the grander portions of the narrative.2 By the first decades of the twentieth century, a more professional style of history had begun to dominate the topic. Scholars such as Charles A. Hanna, Charles Knowles Bolton, and Henry Jones Ford, built upon earlier and well-stocked collections of material compiled by numerous amateurs, but were less hagiographic in their approach. They used “whiggish” techniques that were redolent of Macaulay, yet their works are still helpful because the material gathered and collected by both the early amateurs and early professionals is still highly valuable and explanatory, even if some or even most of their interpretations are dated.