September 18, 2012

ANCESTORS IN THE ATTIC

Most of you know that one of the reasons I wanted to visit Northern Ireland was to walk in the footsteps of my ancestors.  My great great great great grandfather, Mathew Kirk, went to America in 1772 with his two older brothers, leaving his parents and younger brother behind..  Conditions for the Scots-Irish Protestants had become unbearable as the Irish landlords kept raising their rents to a point where they were impossible to pay, and at the same time the linen industry was beginning to decline. Parishioners in the five parishes of Rev. William Martin, at his suggestion, decided many of them would go to America to start a new life. Mathew, together with his two brothers, John and Robert, set sail from Larne on the (I believe) ship, John and Mary.  About six months later the ships arrived separately in Charleston Harbor, some of the ships were found to have smallpox on board.

Life in America was not exactly what the new settlers had thought, but they were given land although the plots were not all close together and the new settlers had no tools to work with. The new government wanted the land to be settled.

It has been documented that John served in the American Revolution and as a result received land from the American government near Murfreesboro, TN, where he raised his family.  Not much is known about Robert, except that he may have had four wives (one at a time) and many children. Robert and Mathew both were loyalists during the Revolution and served briefly in the militia (Mathew would have only been 16 or 17 at the time). The Kirk family remained in South Carolina and Mathew is buried in the churchyard in Lancaster Co. near Charleston.

For reasons yet unknown to me, Mathew's son, James Johnston Kirk, at some point relocated his family to Wilcox County, Alabama, where his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Kirk (my great great grandmother) was born. This family of eight children lived in Civil War times, and a copy of a journal written by her brother, William Robert Kirk, has come down through the family to me. William was a chaplain in the Civil War, and the diary is invaluable in its description of the times then, even to a description of each brother and sister, as well as their parents, both to their appearance and their personality.  Many of William's brothers and brothers-in-law were either killed or taken prisoner while fighting for the Confederacy with a unit from Wilcox County.

Mary Elizabeth married a widower and  together they had five children; shortly after the marriage, he passed away, leaving her to raise the children alone. One of the daughters. Margaret Jane Davis, was my great grandmother, who married Marion Sheffield (he also fought in the war at the age of 16 alongside his father; they both were mustered out before the war ended).   And the family continues on down through my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Sheffield (Nonnie Mitchell) and my father, Clay Mitchell, to me, the investigator of this real life drama.

I hope that this trip to Ballymoney will bring amazing insights into the way in which my 5 greats grandparents and their son lived, and with any luck, since I am attending a conference of many people looking for the same thing, possibly find the descendants who remained in Northern Ireland.  This has been in my head for over ten years, and so I go the way of the wayward ancestor, searching for I know not what, but sure that I will indeed find links to this amazing story, uncovered first by me about twelve years ago. Stay tuned to my blog to learn about my quest and what I learn. The conference features renowned speakers about the life and time back then, and I trust we will tromp through at least one old graveyard, searching, as before stated from the Russian fairy tale, "I know not what, the path is long, the way unknown."

You know this is going to be a book.