The Origin of Our Brown Family

Scottish Covenanters

Our Brown family originated in the Lowlands of Scotland.  During the religious clashes of the 17th century our Browns are believed to have been Scottish Covenanters.  As such they would have come under persecution from the Crown.  Likely sometime in the late 17th century our Browns migrated (or possibly fled) from Scotland to Ulster, Ireland where they are believed to have settled in the area of Tandragee or Portadown, Armagh, Ireland. 

Religious Tolerance in Pennsylvania, USA

Sometime in the early 18th century, likely around 1720, one branch of our family migrated from Ulster to Pennsylvania, USA.  At the time, Pennsylvania was viewed as a place of great religious tolerance.  It became a very attractive and popular destination for many persecuted Covenanters.  Over the years this branch spread out across the United States.

Coming to Canada

Meanwhile another branch remained in Ulster.  We know nothing for certain of their early years, but by 1840 they were residing in the village of Tandragee where they were bakers.  In the late 19th century they migrated to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, with one branch later migrating to Michigan, USA.  By the mid-20th century we believe there were no more members of this family remaining in Tandragee.

The Dark Side: The Orange Order

On the darker side: during the 18th and 19th centuries County Armagh was at the centre of the religious clashes between Catholics and Protestants. Tandragee saw its share of violence during this period (as described below). Out of these tensions came the birth of the Orange Order, a racist, anti-Catholic fraternal organization that modelled its organizational structure on Freemasonry, and which was founded in Loughgall, Armagh, a mere 10 km from Tandragee.  Our Browns were staunch members of the Orange Order and its political cousin movement, the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society. Their shameful prejudices were taught in the family until the mid-twentieth century.

DNA Genealogy Research into the Origins of our Browns

FTDNA Group 39a

This family is listed at Family Tree DNA as Group #39a (formerly #64). The group contains two distinct sub-groupings:

1. 1. One branch which remained in Tandragee until the end of the 19th century and then immigrated to Canada;
   2. Another group who descend from an Alexander Brown who came from Ulster, Ireland to Reading, Pennsylvania in the early 18th century.

These two groups have a common ancestor likely born sometime in the 17th century. He most likely lived in Ulster prior to the Pennsylvania Browns coming to America, as it is unlikely that one of Alexander’s sons would have remained in Ireland and been the ancestor of the Tandragee Browns. It is far more likely that the Tandragee Browns descend from a brother or close cousin of Alexander. Thus we can establish the latest possible date for our common ancestor being approximately 1710 (the approximate birth age for Alexander Brown who came to Pennsylvania). 

Covenanter Migrations from Scotland to Ireland

It is most likely that our ancestors came from Scotland to Armagh during one (or both) of the two major waves of Covenanter immigration: either during the 1640s as settler-soldiers from General Monroe’s Covenanter army, or, more likely, during the 1680s/1690s with the much larger migration fleeing the persecution of Covenanters during The Killing Time.  A third possibility is a combination of the two: that one branch descends from an early settler-soldier from Monroe’s army and that the other branch were cousins who came over later fleeing persecution and settled in Armagh with their known relatives. 

It’s unlikely that these branches would have kept in touch beyond second-cousins, thus the earliest our common ancestor was likely born would be ca. 1600.  As such, historical and documentary evidence suggests that the most likely date range for our earliest common ancestor’s birth would be approximately 1600-1700. 

DNA and Historical Evidence Agree

Whether we follow the DNA evidence or the historical evidence and deductive reasoning we arrive at the same time-frame for our earliest common ancestor being sometime in the 17th century.

The Early Settlement of Tandragee – 17th Century

In the case of Tandragee, we see the religious tensions lived out. Tandragee was one of these “planned towns” described in the previous tab. The Project for the Plantation of Ulster of 1609 provided for four corporate towns in County Armagh. One of these was Tandragee, however Tandragee was never incorporated. It was planned on the lands of the former ancient kingdom of Oirthir (Orior) which had been ruled for centuries by the Uí Annluain (O’Hanlon) Clan. Sir Oghie O’Hanlon was the last of his long line to live in the ancient O’Hanlon Castle at Tandragee.

Following the 1598 Rising (during the Nine Years War), O’Hanlon and his family and followers were banished to Sweden. His estates were divided among various English Plantation grantees and in 1610, Sir Oliver St. John of Wiltshire was granted a substantial estate of 1000 acres of O’Hanlon land in Ballymore parish, including the former O’Hanlon Castle.  English settlers began to build houses on the estate around it.

Sir Oliver St. John, Viscount Grandison of Limerick

Eventually Sir Oliver St. John was raised to Lord Deputy of Ireland and in 1617 he was created Viscount Grandison of Limerick. By 1619, he had 17 families planted in Tandragee. By 1621, he had rebuilt the castle, which became known as St. John’s Castle, and he oversaw the building of 20-30 English-style houses and a watermill. At this time, the settlers of Tandragee were entirely English.

Sir Oliver St. John, Lord Grandison, died in 1631 and his title passed through his niece to the present Earls of Jersey. His property in Ballymore passed to his great-nephew, Capt. John St. John, who resided in St. John’s Castle, Tandragee. 

The Black Oath

In 1639, the ‘Black Oath‘ was introduced and required all Protestants living in Ulster to bind themselves to obey all Royal commands. The ‘Black Oath’ was designed to prevent the Presbyterian Scots in Ulster from aiding their fellow Scots in the Covenanter uprisings back in Scotland.

Our Browns were likely Scottish Covenanters and were most likely still back in Scotland at the time of the Black Oath.

The Scottish Covenanters – 17th Century

The Covenanter movement was a religious movement in Scotland throughout much of the 17th century that favoured the Presbyterian form of church government against the Episcopal form of church government favoured by the (now joint) English/Scottish Crown. The tensions ultimately let to civil war in Scotland and inspired revolutions in Ireland and England too.

Persecution & The Killing Times

The original Scottish National Covenant was proclaimed in 1638 and was supplemented by another document, The Solemn League and Covenant, in 1643. The Covenanters were zealous fundamentalist Presbyterians and were strong believers in religious freedom and non-interference from the state. Their movement was viciously put down by the Crown during the 1680s in a time that came to be known in Scotland as “The Killing Times”. Covenanters were hunted down and hundreds were summarily executed.

Escape to Freedom

In order to escape persecution many Covenanters fled to Ulster. When religious persecution followed them there, in the form of the Black Oath, and other oppressive measures, many of the Covenanters carried on to the American Colonies where they were attracted by the culture of religious freedom and frontier freedom from government interference.

In Scotland, the descendants of the Covenanters who remained behind eventually emerged as the Reformed Presbyterian Church, which, although small in Scotland, thrived in Ulster and in the United States. The influence of the Covenanters on the ultimate culture of zealous freedom that came to epitomize the formation of the United States of America is undeniable.

The Irish Rebellion 1641-42

At the same time as the Scottish Covenanters were beginning to stir in Scotland, trouble in Ireland was also brewing. 

Irish Uprising 1641

In 1641, the Irish launched a rebellion under Sir Phelim O’Neill against the Protestant population of Ireland. Religious prejudices on both sides have led to two very different accounts of this rising. But it would seem that the Ulster-Scots were in a hopeless position, having been gradually disarmed by the English to prevent them from aiding their Covenanter kin in Scotland. The uprising claimed thousands of lives.

As part of this rebellion, in 1641 in Tandragee, Patrick Oge O’Hanlon captured the castle and town, presumably in the name of his displaced family. 

The Invasion of Tandragee

In 1642, General Robert Monroe, Younger of Obsdale, was sent to Ulster to quell the rebellion. Monroe was commander of a Covenanter army from Scotland already seasoned from the Bishops Wars and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Sir Phelim O’Neill gave instructions for the assembling of Irish troops at Tandragee in an effort to oppose the approaching Scottish army. Monroe successfully occupied Tandragee for three days, burning the mills and several houses, in an event that came to be known as ‘The Invasion of Tandragee’. Patrick O’Hanlon fled and was eventually killed. However this did not extinguish the desire of the O’Hanlons to reclaim their ancestral lands and lesser skirmishes between the O’Hanlons and the St. Johns continued for at least another generation. General Munroe returned through Ballymore in 1646, but bypassed Tandragee, on his way to Benburb where he was later defeated by O’Neill. Many of Monroe’s soldiers remained and settled in Ulster following the rebellion.

Brutal Conflict

The conflict between the forces of Monroe and O’Neill was characterised as being extremely brutal even for its day with horrific stories of butchering of children. It probably did much to cement the foundations for later religious tensions in Ulster.

Civil War in England

Meanwhile, in England, civil war was breaking out at the same time as the Protestant English Parliament clashed with the Roman Catholic King Charles, thus distracting and weakening the British presence in Ireland.

Resettling Ballymore and the Later Plantations – Late 17th Century

Ballymore is Gaelic for “great town”.  Ballymore parish was re-settled after the British Civil War of 1641-42 during the restoration of the British monarchy under Charles II. Prior to this time Armagh had been settled primarily by English. Thus, most Scots in the area came after 1642, however there was a Scottish settlment in the nearby village of Clare as early as 1619, prior to the Rebellion.

The Killing Times and John Brown of Priesthill

During the 1680s, after political shifts and a failed uprising, the Covenanters now found themselves on the wrong side of the law in Scotland. Covenanters were hunted down and killed on the spot. This brutal suppression became known as ‘The Killing Times’.

The most famous of the Covenanter martyrs was a man named John Brown who lived at Priesthill in Muirkirk parish, Ayrshire, Scotland, and who worked as a courier. John Brown was executed in 1685 by John Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee, on his own doorstep in front of his pregnant wife and young children. John Brown’s family, like our Brown family, fled to Ulster.

Renewed Migrations

The 1680-90’s saw vigorous renewed migration of Scottish Covenanter Presbyterians to the north of Ireland to escape the brutal suppression of the failed Covenanter uprising. It is most likely during this time period when our Browns came from Scotland to Ulster.

The Battle of the Boyne

The Battle of the Boyne, in 1690, with William of Orange’s Protestants defeating King James II’s Catholic Jacobites, and the peace that followed it brought a new era of prosperity to Tandragee, at least for the Protestant victors. Local industries like milling and turning were revived and the weaving of linen became a staple industry. The smelting of iron appears to have died a natural death, but is still commemorated by a tract of woodland known in the locality as Forge Wood.

Marginalization of Catholics

The ongoing marginalization and oppression of Roman Catholics in nearby lands has been largely ingnored by British Protestant history writers until recent times. This ongoing oppression would eventually lead to the nearby village of Portadown becoming one of the founding flashpoints in the bloody hostilities between marginalized Catholics and colonizing Protestants.

Massive Scottish Immigration

The final large scale movement of Scots to Ulster happened in the 1690’s following the Battle of the Boyne when whole new towns and villages sprang up as Scots moved across the Irish sea to avoid famine in Scotland. There were no more wholesale plantations after this period as economic conditions in the north of Ireland were no better than Scotland, although there was still regular smaller scale movement between Ulster and Scotland.

Ulster-Scots

By the end of the plantation period an estimated 80%+ of the Protestant settlers in Ulster were Scots, the rest being English along with smaller numbers of French Huguenot, Welsh, Manx, German, Dutch and Danish. These other immigrants were eventually absorbed into the Ulster-Scots ethnic mix.

Ulster-Scots in a Lose-Lose Squeeze

The English administration transplanated Scottish Presbyterians onto Roman Catholic lands in Ulster, turning them into colonizing oppressors. Then the English administration persecuted those same Scottish Presbyterians whom at times they regarded as more troublesome than the Irish Catholics. Marriages carried out by Presbyterian clergy were not legally binding and Presbyterians could not hold public office. While a number of Scots converted to the Anglican Church of Ireland in order to find social acceptance and a number returned to Scotland, the vast majority remained in Ulster and maintained their Presbyterian faith. Over the next couple of generations many Covenanter families migrated to North America, most especially to Pennsylvania where they met with a culture of greater religious tolerance and acceptance.

Tandragee in the 18th Century

In the early years of the 18th century, the settlers in Tandragee decided to build a new church in Ballymore, near St. John’s Castle, whose mansion had previously been used as the place of Anglican worship. 

It was likely around this time when the first branch of our family emigrated from Ulster to Pennsylvania.

The Presbyterian Church in Tandragee

It is not known exactly when the first Presbyterians began to worship in Tandragee.  The earliest records date back only to 1825, however evidence suggests that some form of Presbyterian “meeting house” existed prior to 1825, but there are no records of any gatherings. There is a big gap between 1642 and 1825. Nearby Clare Presbyterian Church dates back to 1633 and it is likely that prior to 1825 any Presbyterians would have worshiped either at Clare or at the Church of Ireland parish church in Ballymore.

The School in Tandragee

In 1732 an English Protestant schoolmaster was installed to teach the English tongue in Ballymore parish. This implies that many of the parishioners were familiar with the Irish language (or possibly Scots Gaelic too, in the case of Highland soldiers who may have settled in the area).

Industry in Tandragee

In the early 18th century tanneries were common in the woodlands around Tandragee.  By 1740, Tandragee was “a tolerably good village”. 

In 1766, Ballymore parish was populated by 615 Protestant and 286 Roman Catholic families.

In 1789, a school was opened in Tandragee.  And in 1796, soap making had become another local staple industry.

The Troubles – Late 18th Century

With the ethnic and religious situation described in the previous tabs it was inevitable that clashes between Catholics and Protestants would break out and that these clashes would take on a religious, not just political, character. 

Fighting Erupts Locally

By the late 18th century there was great agitation in the country. In 1786, differences between the Protestant ‘Peep o’ Day Boys’ and the Roman Catholic ‘Defenders’ came to a head at Tandragee and a desperate fight took place. In 1787 another skirmish took place after which it is said that many well-to-do families “got up and left the country”. Further disturbances between Protestants and Catholics occurred in 1789, 1791, 1792, 1793.

In 1793, an Irish Militia Act required the listing, by parish, of all men between the ages of 18 and 45. These men were conscripted for service abroad for a term of three years. Exemption from service could be purchased.

Battle of the Diamond – Birth of the Orange Order (Locally)

In 1794 and 1823 Roman Catholic Defenders burned houses in the area. In 1795, troubles again arose, resulting in the Battle of the Diamond, which gave birth to the (Protestant) Orange Order. Tandragee became a stronghold for the Orange Order and still remains so to this day (2004).

This is Not Just History, It is Our History

For those of us who grew up half a world away from the locations of these events, it’s easy to miss the proximity. The distance from Tandragee to Portadown is 5 miles. Portadown to Loughall (the location of the Battle of the Diamond) is 5 miles. This is easy walking distance. Given the strong devotion of our ancestors to the Orange Order, it’s entirely possible that our ancestors were present at the Battle of the Diamond. No roll call was taken, so we’ll never know for sure.

Irish Civil War

Troubles throughout Ulster culminated in the Civil War of 1798. Tandragee escaped direct harm in this battle, although it is said that citizens of the town could be found on both sides of the fighting.

Tandragee in the 19th Century

In 1804, Tandragee, situated in rich countryside and within one mile of the Newry Canal, was inhabited by wealthy bleachers. Tandragee’s linen market was very successful. By 1814 there were 222 houses in Tandragee with a population of 1,081. By 1821 the population had increased to 1158 with 217 occupied houses.

In 1815, the Presbyterian minister of nearby Clare opened a private school in Tandragee. It seems reasonable to suggest that this may coincide with the earliest Presbyterian meetings in Tandragee. In 1819, the parish church was rebuilt and a public school was built, housing 60 pupils.

In 1823, there was a considerable disturbance in Tandragee and surrounding districts between Protestants and Catholics and a house and byres were burned.

Schools are well documented from 1824 onwards and in 1827 a Presbyterian congregation was established as an outgrowth of the nearby Clare congregation.

In 1831, a group of men from Tandragee deliberately disrupted celebrations of St. John’s Eve. During the disturbance on man was killed. Later that year there was an Orange Lodge demonstration in Tandragee in which 10,000 people attended. They are said to have “exhibited not less that 1000 guns openly and a great number of pistols.” In 1833 there was a procession after an Orange meeting at the castle gates which turned into a public riot. In 1834 there were more troubles again.

In 1836 the number of families worshipping in the Presbyterian congregation in Tandragee was 159, but only 53 actually resided in the town of Tandragee, the remainder were from adjacent lands.

By 1837 Tandragee was flourishing. The linen industry was extensive and there were several large flax mills which employed some 6000 people in the immediate area. There was also a meal mill on the nearby River Cusher. However, by 1846 the linen industry was in decline. There were also two hotels by this time.

During the years 1847-1855 there were no records kept for the Presbyterian congregation in Tandragee. Author Robin Greer suggests that this was due to great hardships suffered by the community from the Great Potato Famine of 1845-49 and the Crimean War of 1853-56. Later records imply that during this same period the minister of the congregation went without stipend for the equivalent of nearly six years. His stipend at the time was £40 annually. (In 2005 this would be equivalent to about £4000 or about $10,000 Canadian in modern currency.)

In 1861 the population of the town of Tandragee was about 2000 inhabitants. In 1863, Tandragee was first lit by gas. In 1888 there was also a successful spinning mill in town. In 1874 the Presbyterian congregation comprised about 65 households. In 1888 the census of the Presbyterian congregation was 248 adults and 206 children. In 2004 the membership was about 260 families.