Tullyvallen and My Quest for Jacksons

NOTE: Boring Alert. This post has been crafted for the pleasure of fellow nerds like myself. Other sensible people might choose to ignore it. If you don't, you will soon see why.

I am still trying to make sense of the presence of Jacksons in the townland of Tullyvallen in Co. Armagh from the mid-1600s onward - hence a post that is chock-full of maps. Initially the townland was included in the parish of Creggan, but later it was included in the parish of Newtownhamilton, just to confound us. Members of Jackson families either lived or else held leases there from 1688 through to at least 1856.

In the Trinity College interactive 1670 Down Survey map, the land ownership of Tullyvallen is described as follows:

Townland: Tullyvallen

Down Survey Name: Tollyvallen

1641 Owner(s): O’Neil, Henry (Catholic)

1670 Owner(s): Ball, Thomas (Catholic);Pierson, Captain John (Protestant); Rowley, Edward (Protestant); Hill, Samuel (Protestant); Bolton, Carrol (Protestant); Langford, Sir Hercules (Protestant).

County: Armagh

Baroney: Fews

Parish: Creggan

Unprofitable Land: 112 plantation acres

Profitable land: 1948 plantation acres

Forfeited: 1948 plantation acres

We can drill down a little further into the detail with a document in the County Louth Archaeological Journal. It summarizes information from the Books of Survey and Distribution and in the Abstracts of Grants. In my version of the relevant portion of the chart:

•  The date is the date of enrollment - a legal nicety.
• Under Acreage, the top number shows the acreage as it would be in Plantation Measure while the second number – shaded - is in Stature Measure.
• The numbers in brackets beside the surname are the identification numbers in the Down Survey Map.

Grantee	Acreage			Date	Townland/Remarks
Thos Ball (11)	163	0	0	1668	Tullyvallen part Prop of unprof ld.
Thos Ball (11)	446	2	15	1668	Tullyvallen (N. Side)
Thos Ball & Edward Richardson(11)	21	0	7	1668	Tullyvallen (North Side). Prop of unprof ld.
Thos Ball to the use of Daniel & Sarah Jackson (11)	240	1	13	1668	“in ye N.E. part of Edward Rowley’s retrenchment.”
	403	3	20
Carroll Bolton (11)	80	0	0	1669
Capn. J. Pierson (11)	257	2	34	1669
Edward Rowley (11)	91	1	21		These lands had been granted to Edw. Rowley in the time of Cromwell, but they were not included in the Acts of Settlement as they had been purchased by and conveyed to Thomas Ball.

The 1656 map is the earliest map including Tullyvallan that I have seen, and it may be the earliest that there is. This version is aligned West-East rather than the more usual North-South.

In this section of the 1670 Down Survey Map, Tullyvallen is shaded light green.

The portion of the Tullyvallen which is referenced most frequently with respect to Jacksons is the northern portion.

The Trinity College site also gives a terrain view, which makes it possible to follow the A29 as it passes through this land.

Here is the northerly part of Tullyvallen in 1864 Griffiths Valuation. The townland is now found in the Parish of Newtownhamilton - not in the Parish of Creggan (the boundaries were redrawn at some point).

There has been a considerable continuity of residency of Jacksons in Tullyvallen going back to the 1668 grant, and many of the sightings of them are listed on my web page, The most interesting is Richard Jackson who is mentioned in the 1766 religious census. He was a Protestant in Tullyvallen. Let’s assume that he was born in the early 1700s – so who was his father? It will be critical to learn this. 

Jumping ahead a century to the 1864 Griffiths records, there are still two Jacksons mentioned in Tullyvallen - and I would suspect that they are related to the earlier Richard (and Joseph and James):

Surname	Forename	Land	Notes
Jackson	Anne	Tullyvallan	This is on pg 69, and the parcels are identified as 369 and 369a and 369b. There are two records shown for leases to what look like cottiers’ houses– one leased for 15s, and one for 10s. The one property that Anne Jackson has title to is valued at £3.15.0. This is shown as a land valuation, but since the acreage is recorded as 0.0.0, I suspect it represents a reasonably substantial house – not land. I need to follow up with the post-Griffiths Valuation Books.
Jackson	James	Newry Street	In the town of Newtonhamilton.

NOTE: This is enough for now. I will take up the import of what I am learning from all this in my next blog piece which I intend to assemble on the topic of Tullyvallen and the Jacksons. Tomorrow, I will be at the Armagh Museum, so I will see what I can learn there before I go public with the next bit.