Sunday, December 4, 2011

Henry Jackson of Dublin - a 1690 will


Occasionally, I order a will with the highest of hopes, and then when it arrives, I start thinking of the childhood ditty:

Here I sit broken hearted
Paid my dime and only farted.

I recently ordered a will transcript for a Henry Jackson of St. Peters Parish Dublin. It wasn't my most thrilling find since it turned out to be only one paragraph long, and didn’t even name a single relation. After I declaimed the aforementioned ditty, I did however realize that it wasn’t entirely useless.In fact, it may be that someone else will find it quite useful.

It would seem that poor Henry had to make his will quite quickly, as he was preparing to go to war in the service of King William to fight in the upcoming battles. He bequeathed everything to a friend, whose name I can’t quite decipher but which may be John Horst of Kinsale, Co. Cork. Sometime in the next seven months, knowing the frailty of all mankind and being shortly by God’s grace to enter into a battle in the service of their Majesties of Great Britain against our ffrench Enemies, he died. So, I guess I forgive him for not taking the time to name his mother and father, and any siblings, nephews and cousins and such.

The rest of the digging is now up to us. There are a number of Jacksons in Co. Cork in the 1600s which will be worth tracking in relation to him. One of them is a Lodowicke Jackson, a grandson of the Rev. Thomas Jackson who was the prebendary of Canterbury. I will do a post on him and his family in the next few weeks after I do more digging.

In the meantime, some of the Jacksons of interest are mentioned in passing in the footnotes that I have appended to the will. Over and above that, there are a number of Henry Jacksons in other counties in Ireland in this time frame. Given that families used first names as frequently as birds are usually recycled in heraldic arms, it makes sense to give these other Henry Jacksons a good solid sideways glance.

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