Gregory
(Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would
wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes:
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory:
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes:
"That was the curious incident."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze.
 |
| Sherlock Holmes - Wiki - Creative Commons. |
Why
did Rev. Richard Jackson (1602-1681), who sired at least 21 children by his three
consecutive wives, not name one of his sons Richard? After all, the family did
have a tradition of naming children after parents, and ancestors. One of his
daughters was named after his wife, and at least one of his grandsons was named
Richard. The answer probably lies in the fact that only 17 of his known
children have so far been identified, so there are clearly 4 more to be found. My
hunch is that one of them was a Richard.
Recently, the Beetham
Funeral Entries came to my attention. This document was drawn up just after
the death of Rev. Richard Jackson’s son William, and it mentioned a Nathaniel Jackson,
a brother of William’s still alive in 1688 at the time of William’s death. Nathaniel’s
place in the family is corroborated by notes from the 1705
will of another brother, Samuel Jackson, who includes mention of my dead brother Nathaniel of Leeds in
Yorkshire. In these notes, recorded by Arthur Tenison Groves, Nathaniel has
a son, although the wording of Groves’ notes is a little ambiguous on this
score.
Obviously, even though no Richard
was mentioned in this 1688 document, it does not mean that he didn’t exist. It
may mean that he had died before 1688, or perhaps had been disinherited. Two other
known brothers, Thomas and Francis, are also not mentioned in this document. We
know from the Biographical
Register of Christ’s College that Francis was recorded as dead in his
father’s 1682 will (which I have not seen). About Thomas, we have no idea so
far, but let’s assume that he had died before 1688. That would fit.
If there is indeed a missing son
named Richard, it is then quite likely that he joined his brothers William and
Samuel in the north of Ireland (or else, they joined him). One man worth
looking at in this regard is the Richard Jackson (1626-1678) who headed up one
of the significant Quaker Jackson families in Ireland. He started in the north,
and found his way south, as did several other men in the family. Conveniently
for this line of thinking, he died two years before this 1688 document where he
is not mentioned.
What
else do we know? There is proof that in 1645, Rev. Richard Jackson already had
14 living children. The birth of his son, Rodger Jackson, was imminent, and yet
Rodger is only the 11th child that I have found a record for, and
that includes the three more that were added from the Beetham Funeral Entries.
The
passage which includes the mention of the numbers of children is worth reading (and
the word Lord is indeed rendered as Lorp in the original). The passage is
from a letter dated February 28, 1645 to Right Honorable Col. Benson of Kendal as
recorded in The
Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland and Westmoreland :
First one Mr. Jackson ministr of Whittingham
neare Kyrby Lonsdall, a vry pious & honest able man haveing heretofore
entred bond as surety wth a popish recusant (I psume it was wth hopes to gayne
him to or Church) principall for the sume of 100li, this was donne before these
troubles, & the popish gentleman proveing a Delinquent all his lands & meanes
beinge sequestred, is utterly disabled to satisfy that debt, whereuppon honest
Mr. Jackson is like to beare the burden, but I feare it will breake his backe
& the creditours (now tyme begineing to be open (?) in Lancashire where Mr.
Jackson lives that suites may be tryed) doth labour to pursue Mr. Jackson &
recovr his 100li of him wch indeed is easyly done for the bond is cleere. Yet
if lawe pceede agaynst Mr. Jackson & compell him to pay it as it will do,
he will be undone, and not able to subsist haveing wife & many children, 14 children he hath & the
15th (is by this tyme borne for every houre his wife lookes for it) this
is this honest ministrs desire & I earnestly desire the same, that yor Lorp
be pleased to advise his friend (that will repaire to yor Lorp) what course may
be taken that Mr. Jackson may have satisfaction, if any be to be had out of the
delinquents estate of lands or woods, or any way whereby himselfe & the
publike be not priudiced, we leave it to yor Lorps wisdome, & information of
any that shall be imployed to come to yor Lorp. I am sure if yor Lorp can help
him you shall not neede repent of it he is so honest a ministr.
There were still 5 more children
who came after Rodger, which leaves us still short four names, but at least,
thanks to the Beetham Funeral Entries, we have found Nathaniel, alive in 1688,
but dead by 1705, and a known brother to the Jacksons of Coleraine. Hopefully,
we will soon learn more. Nathaniel is a tantalizing name for Jackson
researchers in Ireland. It shows up less frequently in the early settlements than
names such as William, John, Thomas, or Richard, and is therefore easier to
track.
Another reason for suspecting that
the Quaker Richard Jackson is connected to this family is that he had a
grandson named Nathaniel. The
property transactions of this Richard’s descendents, the Jacksons of
Mountmellick in Queens Co., include several Nathanial Jacksons, and the family
naming patterns also echo many of the other names in Rev. Richard Jackson’s
line. Mind you, with 21 children, the old reverend did use up a lot of names.
No wonder his last known child was named Vigesima.
It means twentieth, so I assume that
her father did not count the infant Maria who did not make it to her first
birthday.
If
the Quaker Richard Jackson (1626-1678) turns out to be a son of the Rev.
Richard Jackson (1602-1681), then he would have been 19 years old at the time
of his father’s financial distress, and a likely candidate to serve with
Cromwell. His step-mother, the mother of baby Rodger likely died in childbirth,
since Rev. Richard married his 3rd wife a year later.
If my
speculation is valid – and it will take more work to nail it down – it upsets many
earlier assumptions. The received wisdom amongst many when it comes to the history
of the Quaker Jacksons is that two brothers Richard and Anthony Jackson
left England and settled first at Carrickfergus in Antrim. Some sources are
unsure whether Anthony and Richard were in fact brothers, so we can set that
aside for now. It was in Ireland that this Richard met and married Margaret
Keete. His birth date was found in the minutes of the Quaker Mountmellick Meeting,
but his father was not named. It seems clear that this Quaker Richard was a
soldier in the Parliamentary army in 1649 and was amongst the first of the Quakers
to settle in Lurgen, Co. Armagh and then later in Co. Cavan and elsewhere. He
then uprooted to Mountmellick, where his son Robert, grandson Nathaniel, and
great-grandson Nathaniel, as well as numerous other descendents continued to
reside. These are some of the known facts.
I am not alone in questioning the supposed ancestry of these early
Quaker Jacksons, which has them descending from Sir Anthony JACKSON (1599-1666)
of Killingwold Grove. That link was
debunked by Sir Edmund T. Bewley as early as 1903: The Ancestor;
a quarterly review of county and family history, heraldry and antiquities
No. 7, 1903. pp. 66-71.
Sir
Anthony Jackson was a man of good family, a church- man, a courtier, and an
ardent Royalist; while the Anthony Jackson in question was a small farmer, a
Puritan, and a Cromwellian. Any one who has studied the early history of the
Society of Friends knows that the Society was at this time recruited mainly
from yeomen and the lower middle class, and not from the landed gentry. Few
would be likely to join its ranks who were not already imbued with Puritan
principles.[NOTE: The sons of Rev. Richard Jackson were
of yeoman and merchant class.]
Not
only is there an entire absence of any evidence of a descent of this Anthony
Jackson from the Jacksons of Killingwoldgraves, but there is a strong
presumption against any such descent.
It will be found, I think, that the first
suggestion of this descent came from ' George Henry de Strabolgi Plantagenet '
Harrison or whatever his proper designation may be whose unscrupulous conduct
in pedigree mongering is dealt with by Mr. Walter Rye in his Records and Record
Search in Portions of the Greer pedigree as given in the early editions of
Burke's Landed Gentry were severely handled by 'Anglo-Scotus ' in the Herald
and Genealogist (vi. 137) ; and I think the alleged descent from the
Killingwoldgraves Jacksons is almost worthy of a place in the Ancestor under
the heading of ' What is Believed.
Bewley (1837-1908), whose family were Quakers from Cumbria,
was not some crank who can be readily dismissed. He was a much-published
researcher, who was well respected in Ireland,
England and America. Over and above what he mentioned, there is one more clue
that makes me side with his suspicions.
According to the Memoir of
Halliday Jackson, Thomas GREER of London, one of the descendants
of the Jackson family, discovered the genealogy of the family extending back
four generations beyond the published record, as well as the coat of arms
confirmed to Richard Jackson in 1613 in the British Museum. I do not know what
he discovered with respect to the four generations of Jacksons, but I do know about
the Coat of Arms awarded posthumously to Richard Jackson (1560-1610), husband
of Ursula HILDEGARD, son of Anthony (1540-1560) and a grandson of Richard
(1505-1555). This crest contained the elements of three golden suns.
I have never seen a Jackson
crest with three suns being associated with any of the Jacksons in Ireland. The
crest that does show up in association with them – repeatedly - is a crest that
features three birds, not three suns. Sometimes, these birds are
cormorants, sometimes eagles, sometimes ducks. You can see many of them on an
earlier post on my website: Jackson Crests.
In
understanding the history of the Jacksons, it also helps to follow where people
like them were likely to start from and then move to. The recent posts by Dublin’s Trinity College about
the Down Survey of Ireland include maps of the Cromwellian Conquest. They are
a great help. One map, from 1649, shows which parts of Ireland were and were
not under British control. It is clear that the lands in Co. Cavan, where some
Jacksons had been “planted” in the early 1600s, were beyond the pale. Otherwise, the pre-Cromwellian Jacksons primarily
resided and conducted business in the Protestant strongholds of Londonderry,
Drogheda, Dublin and Co. Cork. The post- Cromwellian lands, where Jacksons took
up leases in the mid-1600s and afterwards, were primarily reserved for
Adventurers and Army. In short, these Jacksons were either leasing from the
supporters of Cromwell, or were owners because of their support of Cromwell.
Scientists and detectives use the word hunches rather than guesses
but it amounts to the same thing. Everything in this post is a guess,
but it is part of the necessary imagining that helps us to move past brick walls. No matter whether time proves me right or wrong, I promise to keep you posted. In
the near future, I will also be posting more data that may help us to suss out
where we should look next.
- For the genealogy of the known members of this family, SEE: The Silver Bowl Rootsweb Tree
- The documentation that I have posted on my web site which has lead me to this hypothesis includes dozens of documents - too numerous to mention. There will also be many more to come. One place to start is by looking on my page: What’s NEW.
- There are two researchers who shared key documents that were key to me being able to form this hypothesis: Jan Waugh and Iain MacRae. My profound gratitude to them, as well as to all the other researchers on whose shoulders I stand on as I peer into the murky past.
