History by the Ounce

Thought experiment. I am standing beside a tall man who is much older than me. He has reddish auburn hair, whiskey on his breath and an air of certainty about him. He is dressed in a jacket, vest, shirt, breeks, stockings and boots. He is holding onto the reins of his horse, which stands quietly beside him.

This man is George JACKSON (abt 1718-1782), my 5^th great-grandfather. In my thought experiment, an inner voice tells me that I am limited to three questions. I could get it all wrong, spook him, and learn nothing. I fret that our memories, both his and mine, will have been shaped and reshaped by our culture, friends, family and more. My recent reading of a book of essays - Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit - is tangential, but it has been reshaping my approach to family stories. Solnit reflects on the need of truth seekers such as Orwell's character Winston, and at the same time the value of taking a meandering path to the truth.

… Winston's attempt to hold on to the truth of truisms – ‘Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth centre’ - is itself a desperate gesture of political resistance.” Elsewhere in the book, Orwell declares, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” which makes direct observations and firsthand encounters in the material and sensory world likewise acts of resistance or at least reinforcements of the self who can resist. P44 Thinking about Orwell’s roses and where they lead was a meandering process and perhaps a rhizomatic one, to deploy a word that describes plants such as strawberries that send out roots or runners to spread in many directions. The word was adopted by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to describe a decentralized or non hierarchical model of knowledge. “Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be,” they declared. “This is very different from the tree or root which plots a point, fixes an order”. The branching of trees and roots is often used as a model of lineage of the evolution of species or languages, as a family tree, as any chronological, branching transmission, which is why they say later, “The rhizome is anti genealogy.” p.125

I don't believe in ancestral guilt, but I do believe in inheritance, and Orwell came from people who benefited from the imperial enterprise and the domestic hierarchies and who sometimes held real power. Perhaps the most telling thing for me is how easy it was to trace his ancestry back for generation after generation. The very traceability is about people who were entered into the record, who were recognized, official. They were in the picture. p 168.

Michael Crummey, the 2025 winner of The Dublin Literary Award has also been shaping my approach:

“The only way to write a story that will have any kind of universal appeal – your only hope for it – is to be as specific and as local as you possibly can, so that the world you’re creating feels authentic even to people who don’t know the details,” he says. “If you’re able to do that, then your story has a chance of travelling.” Interview with Michael Crummey.

The man in my thought experiment, not unlike the father in the following Crummey poem, would have an unreliable memory and yet at the same time would not recall forgetting:

My father nods toward the coastline, to the bald stone shoals almost as old as light. That was 50 years ago, he says, as a warning, wanting me to understand that what's forgotten is lost and most of this he cannot even recall forgetting. From What's Lost. Michael Crummey, in Hard Light. London, Ont.: Brick Books, 1998.

There is an approach to history called: history by the ounce which means starting by assembling all the small bits, and then niggling away at those things that do not fit. It has helped me to learn (as many others had learned long before me) that the Catholic King James and the Protestant William of Orange, who were warring against each other in the late 1600s in Ireland and elsewhere, were not only combatants but also father-in-law and son-law. Not only that, but the funding for their armies came from two competing Popes. One Pope backed the Catholic King James while the other Pope backed the Protestant Prince William. You can’t make this stuff up. It is this kind of forgetting – the kind that we cannot even recall forgetting – which deepens divisions when it is coupled with rock-hard certainty.

… it should also be noted that the seventeenth century bloodbaths became enshrined in Irish historical memory to an extent which finds no parallel elsewhere, not even in Germany, despite the devastation which that country suffered during the Thirty Years War. Thus, Ireland was atypical not because of the experience of religious conflict or its severity, but because of the way its memory and commemoration divided the country for the next few centuries. SOURCE: The Protestant Minority in Southern Ireland.  Eugenio F. Biagini in: The Historical Journal. Vol 55. Issue 04. December 2012 p 1165

In 2019, as I was packing up after giving a talk to the Creggan Historical Society, a woman approached me – with some urgency in her voice – to tell me about a disturbing dream that she had kept on having. She had first had it in 1986, when she would have been a child, but it kept on being repeated and had haunted her ever since. In a follow-up email, she added more detail:

[I was] ... a very young child 7 or 8 years of age … on the left hand side of the river travelling in the direction of the church.  There was a school house on my left hand side, long and narrow, with the gable facing towards the river.  I was aware of the depth of the door in the palm of my hand as I opened it and could even feel the grain down the side of the door.  The feeling inside the building was not good so I ran out quickly.  I was aware of the sound of children in the background (like the noise you would hear in a playground). 

In her dream, she was running as fast as she could along the river towards the church.

the river was flowing towards me and I could hear it roaring in my ears.  Interestingly, there was a black and white collie/sheepdog running with me.

A friend who works with dreams and who stresses that a single dream can benefit from many interpretations, told me that the sheep dog, running along-side the dreamer (not chasing her), would generally be considered as both a powerful, and a positive symbol - an ally (sheep-dogging memory?). The message of any nightmare is: Wake up. Pay attention. The trigger for it could be personal, or it could be part of an archetypal journey representing the quest for identity. The depth of the door could come from the experience of the depth of the religious traditions entrenched within the schoolhouse or it could reflect the depth of the dreamer’s desire to explore, to understand. The feel of the grain down the side of the door is one of those particulars which adds a deeply visceral sense of texture to the meaning. Finally, rivers are historically seen as a source of spiritual strength, even when they are roaring and somewhat scary.

This child, this innocent, was travelling alone. Where was her family support? Her cultural support? Her spiritual/emotional support? What can this dream teach us about what to look for?

Martin Luther King’s most famous quote I have a dream is an example of how one person can transform memory into a shared dream and from there into a collective force for change. The private dreams that we all have, the ones that play out as we sleep, can also be a force for change. They can free us from the cultural forgetting which constrains us both as humans and as citizens.

Virginia Satir: SOURCE: Wiki.  Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem

In group therapy sessions which the psychiatrist Virginia Satir held in the 1980s, Satir would ask participants to describe an incident in their life which felt significant. Their fellow participants were then asked to act out the incident. The person who shared the story would then direct their fellow participants about where to place themselves on the stage, what tone of voice to use, and how, when and where to move. As in the novels of Michael Crummey, it was the particulars which mattered to Satir. The tilt of the head. The direction of the gaze. The position of the shoulders.

Sometimes a participant could not recall a family scene and so Satir would encourage them to simply invent one. This is where an intriguing kicker comes in. Afterwards, when these participants went home and told others about their experience, the invented details were often corroborated. The memory - supposedly invented - had turned out to be true.

Unfortunately, truth is not always remembered let alone honoured. Think of Cassandra - cursed by Apollo to see the future but to end up with no one believing in her predictions. The truths of the past can be dismissed as readily as the prophecies of a Cassandra. When the Creggan Parish dreamer made numerous enquiries at that stage as to the possibility of a school along that stretch of land she was assured there was nothing of the sort.  But there had been such a school, probably right where her dream had found it. Probably with a gable facing towards the river.

Using old maps and memorials of deeds, and starting with the local particulars, there are two likely spots for this schoolhouse, both within the twenty-nine acres which had been deeded for the use of the school. An archaeological dig might supply the evidence needed to prove this.

·         1738 Jul 5 ROD: 97-166-677727 Image 383 Btw Thomas BALL of Urker [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper], Co. Armagh Esq. of the 1 pt & John HANSARD Esq. Secretary to Incorporated Society for Promoting English the Protestant Schools in Ireland of other pt. demised to John HANSARD Lands of Urker then in possession of Incorporated Society containing 29 acres or thereabouts as the same has been enclosed by said Incorporated Society – map annexed -  Parish of Creggan Barony of the Fews for use of the Incorporated Society from 1^st May 1736 for lives [of royalty]for yearly  rent of £3 12s 6p. WITNESS: Laurence PAIN of City of Dublin, Gent & Benjamin JOHNSTON Public Notary City of Dublin.

·         1740 Feb 13 ROD: 102-303-70250 Image 179 Frances HALL of Strangford Co Down Esq. Demised to John HANSARD Secretary to the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland all that part of the lands of Urcher [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper] then in possession of the said Incorporated Society ...29 acres.. to hold for the use of the Society from the 1^st day of May 1736... for lives of [royal princesses] John HANSARD [SEAL]

John Donaldson, in his Account of the Barony of Upper Fews, mentions that Protestant families connected to the linen industry had settled along the Creggan River prior to the opening of the school. Since a school would need road access, there are two roads leading to the river that are worth focusing on. The road at the Milltown bridge is down river from another road up-river at Liscalgat, the townland where JACKSONs had lived before they moved to Urker Lodge.

Even though the odds are that the school would have been sited on the river, there is a third possibility of a site for the school: Ball’s one acre [#28 – circled in red in the map beneath] was also deeded for the use of the school:

·         1737 Aug 24 ROD: 98-67-67647 Image 57 Thomas BALL of Urcher [Urcher, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper] did make over to Hugh HILL. Minister of the Parish of Creggan. Trevor WILLIAMS Alexander McELROY, church wardens of said parish, one plot of land est. one plantation acre. being part of the Demesne lands usually occupied with or reputed as a Demesne of his Mansion or chief Dwelling House bounded to the east by the lands of Liscalgot [Liscalgat, Parish Creggan, Barony Fews Upper]to the north to the Glebe [Creggan Bane Glebe, Creggan, Barony Fews Upper]] on the west by the lands of Urcher on the south by the said lands of Urcher. To hold to the said Church Wardens and their successors forever in Trust for the sole use of the resident Protestant Schoolmaster to teach the English tongue in the said Parish forever. said conveyance witnessed by John JOHNSTON & Hugh McMASTER both of the Fews of Co. Armagh, Gent.. Also witnessed by George MIDDLETON of Dublin. Signed Thomas BALL.

We still may not have an exact location for the school, but at least there is a short list of likelihoods. We might need shovels and trowels and the expertise of archaeologists to become certain. Until then, this dream has made the feel of this location visceral in a way that a map cannot. Dreams and maps offer us two ways of looking, and there is a third. Genealogy.

My ancestral connection to Creggan Parish Charter School in Co. Armagh, probably the school described in the dream, begins with my earliest proven JACKSON ancestor, my 5^th-great-grand-father, George JACKSON (est. 1718-1782), a man who we refer to as Old George. In 1735, he was hired as the first schoolmaster and lived on site.

Master George JACKSON received his 1st quarterly salary of £2.10.0 Dec 3 1735. SOURCE: TCD 5419. NOTE: If this date is correct, and it likely is, George would have been receiving payments for two years before the school opened. If his estimated birth date is correct, he would only have been seventeen years old, and unmarried when he was first hired. Since both are unlikely, his alleged birth date needs more verification.

In spite of his mismanagement of the school, mismanagement which was documented while he was still in the job of schoolmaster, he remained in that role for a full forty-seven years. After his death, his wife, Margaret McLAUGHLIN (1722-1797) - aka O’LAUGHLIN, served as mistress for another eighteen years while two of their sons, George & David, were the next two schoolmasters. For decade after decade, the benefits of child-labour flowed to my family, as it did to other owners of nearby farms and local linen-related enterprises. The beneficiaries of the labour of children were predominately, but not exclusively, Protestant. The students were predominately, but not exclusively, Catholic.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, several members of my family recorded the bones of our family history, and their version was that the school-mistress Margaret was supposedly a descendent of the Royal House of Tara. This is not impossible, perhaps through the Uí Néill dynasty, but there is no proof of this. It may be that this family account arose out of an attempt at some whitewashing of their family’s history while living in a predominantly Catholic parish.

Other than her death date, what little we have about Margaret comes from the Creggan Church parish records: 1744 "Mrs JACKSON to be payed for working ye surpus & the linen for the communion table and keeping ye vessels clean. As for Old George, our family stories describe him with some frequency as a gambler, and not a very good one, having lost significant family assets in a game of Ducks and Drakes. As a result of this, becoming a schoolteacher may have been his best (and perhaps only) option.

Mary Cumiskey’s Creggan Charter School 1737-1811 describes some of the JACKSON family’s decades-long time with the school, and their impact on hundreds of children – many of them named - during the decades of the JACKSON’s (mis)management:

·         1737 School opened. New Master, George Jackson and his wife Margaret ...knowledge of the linen trade was essential.... the position of Masters and Mistresses was filled by patronage. p28. ·         1781 Sept 28: An unscheduled inspection of Creggan revealed children in rags, many of them barefooted, the beds extremely dirty and the house in general, dirty and in great disorder p. 32 ·         1799: Creggan Charter School was in deep crisis. The epidemic of scurvy was still raging, the Master’s reports were very incomplete, the children’s writing was bad and no inventory of furniture was sent, nor a catalogue of school books. The Society continued to send reprimands but with little response. p. 40 ·         1808 – all the students sick with distemper. p23. ·         1809 December: In the opinions of this Committee, Creggane ought to be suppressed, the house being so old and originally ill-contrived and deficient of the necessary offices not adapted for 40 children and requiring a considerable sum of money to repair, or rather rebuild it, before it could be rendered commodious or creditable to the Institution. ·         1810 March: That the Master be informed, in answer to his application on the subject that the land must be delivered up to the original owner upon suppression of the school. He may go on in the cultivation of it in the usual manner for this season. p.45. ·         1811 School closed SOURCE: Creggan Charter School 1737-1811. Mary Cumisky. See also my 2011 blog post: The Voice of Patrick Flynn.

In her History of the Jackson Family, Amy Oliver LLOYD (1874-1962), one of my 1^st cousins twice removed, recorded that Old George was not only a gambler, but was also locally (in)famous for his philandering. The ever-increasing accuracy and effectiveness of DNA tools could be useful in further pursuing this. As Amy recorded: He was noted for a wonderful skin, also his fondness for women! So much so, that even his great-great grandson, [Sir Thomas JACKSON (1839-1915)] said, whenever any girl for miles round had a particularly good complexion, the local people would say "Ah: She must be one of George Jackson's."

Records show that Old George’s son, George JACKSON (aft 1743-aft 1820) was a chip off the old block when it came to non-marital liaisons. After being found guilty of immoral interactions with Rose JOHNSTON, a daughter of a member of the Charter School board, he was fired and had to leave Creggan Parish. Based on parish records, he probably wasn’t even buried there. Had he been it might have been tricky. The twin walled enclosures of JOHNSTON and JACKSON graves are adjacent to each other and even their dedicated pews in the church were side-by-each.

Trinity College records: TCD 5240: Committee reports 7 October 1789 The Local Committees Report of the 29th Septr the Revd Doctor Hamilton’s Letter of the 3rd instant, the Petition of James Johnston and Rose Jackson otherwise Johnston his Daughter George Jackson the Masters Memorial and the Local Committees Certificate with respect to the said George Jacksons faithful discharge of the duty of office read: Resolved that it is the opinion of this Committee that the said George Jackson has by no means exculpated himself from the very immoral Charge alleged against him as stated in the said Petition and therefore that he is a very improper person to have the Care and Management of a Charter School and that it be recommended to the General Board to direct his removal from the office of Master of the said School and from the further service of the Society.

Family letters from the late 1700s, as well as a handful of legal documents, record that George jr. was living and practicing as a lawyer in Dublin, at least until the early 1820s. I have no idea what happened to young Rose. Did they marry? Perhaps. They were both of a similar social class.

These days, in Canada, Ireland, and in many other countries, we are at long last wrestling with the inter-generational legacies of residential and church schools. Thanks to the inspiration of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, our collective culture is taking a new approach towards addressing the truths of our pasts. Those of us who are descendants of the dominant culture are encouraged to atone. With my Old George being one of the skeletons in my closet, I find myself challenged to consider what actions I should take and what that word atone might mean.

In some versions of Christian theology, it is said that to atone means to seek to be at one with God. Our current secular version of morality seeks to be at one with Truth and Justice, but even this is not straightforward. What if we are guilty of confirmation bias, or what-aboutism, or of cherry-picking that particular set of facts that works best to put our own community of friends, relations and ancestors in a better light? What about the impact of power imbalances? What about availability bias – the impact of values on the algorithms used in digital searches?

The path to becoming at one with Truth can benefit from a whole range of approaches: songs, poems, dreams, stories – both oral and written – archives, archaeology and DNA. A deeper understanding of epigenetics may also come to add more to our understanding of inter-generational memory. At present it is indicating - in some studies - that at least some of our emotional wiring comes from the effects of juice around our genes (it is more complicated than this, but for now lets just call it juice), juice which is changed by experiences such as stress and can function like an echo from the past as it messages which parts of our inherited DNA to turn on or off (but not by changing our inherited DNA).

In 1983, my husband was in the midst of writing a fictional story about a woman who was a compulsive hoarder, but he was baffled about why she did what she did. So, he made an appointment with a therapist to have his character analysed. With a Carl Jungian level of synchronicity, the therapist’s next patient, who was waiting in a separate room, also happened to be a hoarder. Long story short, the therapist, believing that this could help her patient (and it did), gave my husband’s phone number to her patient. After this patient invited him to her split-level home, she toured him through all the rooms and hallways that were so full that entrance to many rooms was almost impossible. Then, she took him down to the basement. Down there, were dozens of boxes, filled with dismembered dolls. Heads in one set of boxes, limbs in other, torsos in another. Eventually, the therapist’s patient came to understand that her hoarding was an unconscious attempt to bury her memories of sexual abuse.

Since this therapist had never visited the home of her patient (understandable), it was a fiction writer with an eye to the real-world specifics that her patient needed to hear from in order to begin to heal. This approach has much in common with the history by the ounce kind of truth but is also an instance of the importance of imagination and intuition.

When Eudora Welty wrote Where Is the Voice Coming From?, a short story which had been triggered by the murder of the civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, there was no way that she could have known the particulars of his murder. The murderer had not yet been found. Even so, the particulars in her story accurately described the kind of man this murderer was, as well as many specific aspects of the time and place. Years later, Welty was interviewed about this:

“What I was writing about really was that world of hate I felt I had grown up with and I felt I could speak as someone who knew it.” Welty’s story was so accurate, her characterization of the murderer so precise, that The New Yorker changed several important details: Medgar Evers became Roland Summers, the time of the shooting shifted to a few hours after midnight, and Jackson became the nonexistent Thermopylae. “The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what’s told alive.” Yet, for Welty, the novel is not an apolitical or morally neutral genre: “Indeed, we are more aware of [the novelist’s] moral convictions through a novel than any flat statement of belief from him could make us.” The novelist contributes to social change in ways that the journalist cannot. “Great fiction,” Welty wrote, “shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean.” New Yorker: Murder in deep summer.

Where Is the Voice Coming From? is included in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, and its powerful five pages are as visceral as the dream about Creggan School. This is how individuals and communities can come to internalize the why of the doll parts in our collective unconscious. Such stories take us more deeply into an emotional understanding of that 1970s slogan: the personal is political. The truths in fiction are best taken seriously. Informed intuition can take us further than how far we can go just with the tools of science (which also matter).

Two good examples – both are worth reading.

In Words to Shape My Name, McKenna’s novel follows several of the lesser known people connected to the United Irishman Edward Fitzgerald [see: Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald]. Much of the detail, like Welty’s, is invented (by necessity), and like Welty’s is probably true. While reading it, I recognized that my own feet had - in the 21st century - walked the same streets as Fitzgerald's. When one of the characters sang a verse of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or the Lament for Arthur O' Leary by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, an 18^th Century lament by a wife for a murdered husband [p237], this triggered another recognition for me. It is the poem which had inspired Doireann Ní Ghríofa to write her memoir A Ghost in the Throat. In it, she finds her own voice. Both books use the power of the particulars in ways that enable our feelings to not only anchor us more deeply in history but also to take us deeper into a revitalized understanding of the present.

Given that the personal is political it can also be true that both the personal and the political can be – and often are – intergenerational. As Colin Woodward points out in his many books and articles there is tantalizing evidence which suggests that our actions and values are like some unseen baton which keeps on being passed from generation to generation. Centuries-long immigration patterns have shaped the current day perspectives and values of America, and can help us to understand why their politics has become so divisive. By studying settlement at the level of electoral districts, which is more precise than going county by county, he has linked inter-generational cultural impacts to today’s voting patterns with startling conclusions (at least startling to me).

The Perplexing Geography of Abortion Opinion, …  there has never been one America but rather several Americas, most of them developing from one or another of the rival colonial projects that formed on the eastern and southwestern rims of what is now the United States. These regional cultures — “nations,” if you will — had their own ethnographic, religious and political characteristics, distinct ideas about the balance between individual liberty and the common good and what the United States should become. … Absent a national abortion ban, the states in which women can terminate an unwanted pregnancy will largely be determined by the legacy of events, migrations, and conquests in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and the political science incentives they created in some places and not in others.

America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy and in The surprising Geography of Gun Violence The geography of U.S. life expectancy — and the policy environments that determine it — is the result of differences that are regional, cultural and political, with roots going back centuries to the people who arrived on the continent with totally different ideas about equality, the proper role of government, and the correct balance point between individual liberty and the common good. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into Americans’ overall health and longevity are revealed, along with some paths to improve the situation. … The reason the U.S. has strong regional differences is precisely because our swath of the North American continent was settled in the 17th and 18th centuries by rival colonial projects that had very little in common, often despised one another and spread without regard for today’s state (or even international) boundaries. At Nationhood Lab, a project I founded at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, we use this regional framework to analyze all manner of phenomena in American society and how one might go about responding to them. We’ve looked at everything from gun violence and attitudes toward threats to democracy to Covid-19 vaccination rates, rural vs. urban political behavior and the geography of the 2022 midterm elections. This summer we’ve been drilling down on health, including a detailed examination of the geography of life expectancy published earlier this week. Working with our data partners Motivf, we parsed the rich trove of county-level life expectancy estimates calculated from the Centers for Disease Control data for the years 2017-2020 by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s County Health Ranking and Roadmaps project. We wanted to answer the bottom-line question: Is your region helping extend your life or shorten it? “We don’t have these differences in health outcomes because of individual behaviors, it’s related to the policy environments people are living in,” says Jeanne Ayers, who was Wisconsin’s top public health official during the Covid pandemic and is now executive director of Healthy Democracy Healthy People, a collaboration of 11 national public health agencies probing the links between political participation and health. “Your health is only 10 percent influenced by the medical environment and maybe 20 or 30 percent in behavioral choices. The social and political determinants of health are overwhelmingly what you’re seeing in these maps.”

As I was writing this piece, the French historian Peter Nora had just died - days earlier - at age 95 [NYT, June 3, 2025]. Although much of his work had long fallen out of fashion, it had illuminated the role that chosen memories and identities play in the writing of history. We are all shaped by which events, people or actions our community has chosen to remember. He called them our lieux de mémoire. Sites of memory. Symbols of our shared identity. Recently, historians have become more focussed on what we are choosing to forget. When the bodies of neglected and forgotten babies are unearthed at Tuum in Ireland or when multiple children’s graves are discerned on the grounds of residential schools in Canada and the USA, we are unearthing more than long-dead children. We are unearthing our own ghosts in the throat. Our lieux de oubli.

Alex Haley in his books and TV series Roots: The Saga of an American family, and Queen: The story of an American Family  used the story of his own family history to reveal much of what had been forgotten – and repressed - about the complexities of the lives of slaves. His version of the experiences of his great grandparents - somewhat fictionalized, but not necessarily untrue - became something of a lieux de mémoire for an entire nation. Written as popular history, it resonated with a vast audience.

In a startlingly romantic presentation of a relationship between a slave and her master, the slaveholder, Col. James Jackson Jr., professes undying love to Easter even as he prepares to leave the plantation to join the Confederate Army. Their affair is no secret to Colonel Jackson's wife, Lizzie. Both villains and victims come in all colors in this production: Queen, who calls herself Little Miss In-Between, is abused by blacks as well as whites, and a white character mouths anti-Semitism. NYT The tangled roots of Alex Haley.

This James JACKSON (1822-1899), was the son of James JACKSON (1782-1840) of Ballybay, Co. Monaghan, and was also a grand nephew of Henry JACKSON (1750-1817), the United Irishman who had fled Ireland after being charged with making cannonballs and pikes in his Dublin factory to be used in the fight to overthrow British rule. 

Genealogical research, including the work done by writers such as Alex Haley, continues to add to history by the ounce. It is a sad irony that the United Irishmen motto: Equality: it is new strung and shall be heard did not reliably include the idea of slaves being valued as equals and free.

Since reading Haley’s books, I have became even more curious how much the behaviour of the slave-owner James JACKSON closely mirrors aspects of Old George's behaviour. Patterns of inherited tendencies of behaviour are not as predictable as eye colour and such, but it seems that there are discernible echoes. and it may be that future DNA studies will find links between these two JACKSON families. After all, the distance between the Ballybay JACKSONs and the Urker JACKSONs was close to a half day's horse ride from one home to another and they often visited each other for lengthy stays.

When it comes to financial inheritances, there are a number of reasons why none of the benefits that Old George might have gained from his exploitation of children didn’t get passed down to future generations. Old George’s 3^rd great-granddaughter, Amy Oliver JACKSON, recorded that some years before the school closed in 1811: [Old George’s] eldest son David, married Margaret Bradford, a violent-tempered red-haired woman, who, disgusted at the money being spent to get back the Mt. Leinster property, burnt all the Title Deeds. Her description of Margaret BRADFORD (1739-1820) may have been influenced by hearing the story as told by her grandmother, Elizabeth OLIVER (1814-1903) who would have been understandably peeved over the impact of this on her family, but the lost JACKSON lands were never recovered. The truth was that red-haired Margaret would have brought COULTER and BRADFORD money into the marriage while her husband David does not seem to have added to the family coffers. Perhaps because his focus was elsewhere. On gambling to gain back past losses.

A second disruption to the family's financial resources was that David and Margaret's only son John JACKSON (1780-1817) died young, leaving his wife Elizabeth McCULLAGH (1788-1880) with four children under the age of six to care for. Sadly, their youngest child was born on the day that John died. For decades after his death, his widow Elizabeth struggled financially, until in 1846 (early on in the Great Famine) the bailiff seized all her cows at Urker Lodge for failure to pay rent. It wasn’t until the late 1800s, when Old George’s’ 2^nd great-grandson, Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915) made his fortune in Hong Kong as CEO of HSBC, that the JACKSONs of Urker were finally able to pay off their loans. 

I have come to accept that memory is like ketchup, a thixotropic liquid. It remains solid until you shake it up a bit. Shaking things up can open up doors to becoming at one with our ancestral origins. Another is to incorporate stories (both oral and written), dreams, as well as local and family archives, legal documents and archaeological finds. The history by the ounce approach. We also learn more when a wider community walks the path by the river with us, and follows the rhizome-like paths of family, friends, politics, money and memory. It is the many friends who I have made while on this journey who have helped me to drill down into the niggly parts that didn’t quite fit. Some still don't fit.

People say that if you go back in time and step on a butterfly, it could change the whole future. Which is terrifying because I’ve stepped on loads of things, and now I’m wondering if I caused Brexit. Diane Morgan aka Philomena Cunk in her role as a comic commentator on history, culture and current affairs.

In spite of the satirical insight of Philomena Cunk, there continues to be more to learn. Stay tuned.

PS My three questions for Old George (my limit is three, and these three are what first came to mind):

• What do you think that I am most likely to misunderstand about you and your times?
• What has brought you the most joy or the most sorrow?
• If you could relive your life what if anything would you change?

 

 

JACKSONs and St. Johns Killowen

 

St. Johns - on the western shore of the River Bann.

 Because most churches tend to be locked mid-week, I had not expected to gain access to St. John’s Killowen in Coleraine on a Monday in February, but even so I tested the door and my Irish luck prevailed. Since the cleaning staff had the week off, a handful of parishioners had subbed in for them. They let me in and could not have been more welcoming. In the following quote, I have highlighted the date of the construction of this version of St. John’s. In the paragraph which follows, you will see why this matters. 

The original parish church, which was part of a priory founded in 1080, was, in 1830, converted into a school-house; and a small neat church, without either tower or spire, was built at an expense of £1000, towards which £300 was given by the Clothworkers' Company, £100 by Bishop Knox, £50 by the Irish Society, and £170 as a gift and £380 as a loan by the late Board of First Fruits. SOURCE: Genuki.

Inside the church is a memorial which had been erected by Richard JACKSON (abt 1730-1789) in memory of his 2^nd wife Anne O’NEILL (1737-1781). Obviously, he had died decades before the current St. John’s was completed, so it is likely that this plaque had first been installed in the earlier church and then reinstalled in the new one after the original church was converted into a school. Lesson to self: keep an open mind about where one might find things. UPDATE: April 27, 2025: A plaque in praise of William KINKEAD was installed by Richard JACKSON at St. Patrick's, Coleraine and was similarly effusive. 

SACRED to the memory of ANNE, the Wife of the Right Honourable RICHARD JACKSON of Jackson Hall in this Parish. She was the only Daughter of CHARLES O'NEILL Esq. of Shane's Castle in the County of Antrim. Her Virtues cannot worthily be celebrated by the most exalted monumental Panegyric Or by the Strongest Testimony of Approbation Which a frail Mortal can bestow. Yet justice to her Memory demands That her Name be transmitted to Posterity As an illustrious Example of eminent natured Endowments improved by a Variety of most valuable Accomplishments. In her Acts of Piety whether public or private She was uniform, constant, unwearied. In her observance of the Sabbath scrupulously exact. Steering equally between Luke warmness and Enthusiasm In her relative duties. Domestic, Conjugal, Parental. She was tender, steady, condescending, faithful. She was with MARTHA studious of Oeconomy. (Frugal without Parsimony and liberal without Profusion.) But with MARY, She chose that one good Part Which she considered as the ONE THING NEEDFUL. In her Charity to the Poor. She was judiciously diffusive. In her Conversation, affable, obliging, & instructive. In her whole Deportment, humble, upright, conscientious. Her example shewed Truth embodied. And, while it displayed the Excellency of Virtue, demonstrated its Practicability. She exchanged the Frailties of this mortal State for the Blessings of a glorious Immortality And her hopes of glory were perfected in Fruition. Through the old sufficient Merits of that SAVIOR In whom she trusted On the anniversary of her Father's Death, August the 6th 1781 In the 44th year of her Age, Blessed Saint for thee to die is gain.

 Anne O’NEILL’s obit can be seen in the mid-August edition of the Belfast Newsletter:

Early on Monday morning, the 6th inst, died, at Coleraine, Mrs. Ann Jackson, lady to the Right Hon. Richard Jackson; and most deservedly and deeply lamented by rich and poor; but chiefly by a fond and affectionate husband, whose grief and affliction is beyond description, further than by saying that it is in a measure proportioned to his loss, which is immense and irreparable.  14-17 Aug 1781. Belfast Newsletter

Although Richard’s tribute to Anne aligned with the usual list of virtues commonly attributed to women of her class in that era, several aspects of it puzzled me. For example, what did he mean by: judiciously diffusive?  Did it mean that she was possessed of diverse and wide ranging (i.e. diffusive) thoughts, but then restrained herself when (judiciously)? expressing her opinions? Also, itseems a bit odd to have a wife praised as both Mary and Martha. Finally, why was ONE THING NEEDFUL capitalized (because it was a biblical reference?)?

King James Version: Gospel of Luke 10:42 38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 9 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. 40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. 41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Right after the phrase, ONE THING NEEDFUL, Richard follows up with a mention of Anne’s commitment to Charity. This would imply that she led a life of action not a passive life of adoration. Of course, the meanings of words are shaped by the way that they are used, and the contextual shadings of meanings shape-shift over time. Three hundred years ago diffusive was a common word to use in conjunction with morality and virtue. Initially, I had felt that Richard’s use of diffusive, was weird and possibly pretentious. That probably wasn’t fair. SEE: OED:

So how might Anne have felt about her husband’s effusive panegyric? We don’t know, nor do we know much else about her. An engraving of Shane’s Castle, her parental home, was done about 1780 and it gives us some understanding of the level of financial privilege which would have shaped her view of the world. After her marriage, she probably lived at Jackson Hall in Coleraine for the most part. Richard had taken on the rebuilding of the older Hall, and it was now a significant heap (as my Irish friends often refer to such buildings). They also would have spent considerable time in Dublin. Their youngest son was born there when Richard was serving as M.P. for Coleraine.

NOTE: The ruins of Shane’s Castle were used as the setting in the TV series “Game of Thrones”. Much of its narrative describes wars for succession among noble families. This seems appropriate.

As the mother of three sons and three daughters, Anne was described by Richard as: Steering equally between Luke warmness [Luke warmness:  a puzzling word choice] and Enthusiasm In her relative duties. Domestic, Conjugal, Parental. She was tender, steady, condescending [condescending: another puzzling – to me - word choice], faithful. 

We know little about most of her children, but a catalogue from Adams features a painting of daughter Mary Jane (1773-1802), wife of  John Hamilton O’HARA (abt 1756-1822). She has the longish face and a cleft chin commonly seen in many JACKSONs of Coleraine descent:

IRISH SCHOOL (18TH CENTURY) Portrait of Mary Jane O’Hara Oil on canvas, 67cm x 55cm Indistinctly signed and dated 1792 Mary Jane O’Hara was the second daughter of the Right Hon. Richard Jackson of Jackson Hall, Coleraine and his wife, the Hon. Anne O'Neill, only daughter of Charles and Catherine O’Neill of Shane's Castle and sister of John O’Neill, 1st Viscount O’Neill.

 As Richard’s wife, did Anne tend to agree with what we know of his political and business decisions? He was known to have managed his land-based wealth such that the value of it all grew during his lifetime, and so it is not surprising when he praises Anne for being studious of Oeconomy (Frugal without Parsimony and liberal without Profusion.). Unfortunately, these virtues were clearly not passed on to all of their children. George, their last surviving son and the final inheritor of the family baronetcy, was twenty-three years old when his father died. PRONI has dozens of letters in their collection revealing how often young George keeps on trying to weasel more money to fund his lifestyle from the agent managing the estate. It was thanks to his improvident actions that Jackson Hall had to be sold.

Unfortunately, Sir George was not a financially prudent man. Before he married Anne Woodville, he was spending money faster than he was earning it. This may be why in their married life they kept separate accounts. It wasn’t that Sir George was poor. There were significant incomes from the various family properties that he had inherited, but by 1801 when he was a bachelor living in Beach Hill, Surrey, England, he was short £30,000, and had to borrow from friends in order to pay the interest on his debts.

In 1838, the original Coleraine lease was still connected to him by a slender thread. Leases in Ireland were often given for the term of three lives, which meant that they could be renewed until the last of three named lives died. In the instance of Jackson Hall, which was the main Jackson family residence in Coleraine, George’s was the last life on the lease, the final legal toehold. When he died, all connection of the Jacksons to this land was broken. SOURCE: George JACKSON and email Serendipity.

A couple of weeks after I had stumbled across Richard's panegyric to Anne, I had an appointment booked at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin so I could access Edith Johnson-Lijk’s six-volume masterpiece, History of the Irish Parliament. This book includes the political record of Richard and many of his kinsmen. When I'd booked my time in Dublin, I hadn’t known that these books were (supposedly) stored off site and I was told it would take another week for them to arrive. By then, I would have left Dublin so  I wandered aimlessly and somewhat dazedly in the Reading Room, glancing at the bookshelves while wondering how best to use my time, when I spotted them on an uppermost shelf. Although the set I had requested was definitely off-site, this set was obviously not.

In the middle of the top shelf – 6 vols.

Richard JACKSON’s entry is three pages long and he was only one of many JACKSONs who had served as MPs. His tenure had been preceded by his great-grand-uncle Samuel JACKSON (1641-1706) who had settled in Coleraine in the mid-1600s, then his grandfather William JACKSON (1669-1712), and then by his grand-uncle, Thomas JACKSON. Even his wife’s father, Charles O’NEILL (1702-1769) of Shane’s Castle Randalstown had also served as an MP.

Johnson-Lijk researches more diffusively than many historians. In her History of the Irish Parliament, she often includes telling details of squabbles between members, and tracks how agreements and disagreements played out inter-generationally amongst the various political families. They were not all cut from the same ideological cloth, nor were they all alike when it came to character. 

Richard’s father-in-law, Charles O’NEILL, was described as violent by nature and by disposition an enemy of Government, while Richard was described as the opposite: a most worthy and religious man and very timorous in his disposition. He was described as wanting the courage that is necessary for a minister and that he could benefit from support from Chief Secretary Sir George Macartney - to help him bottle up his terrors. He was respected as a quiet decent man and a sensible man of very strict integrity. He never speaks in the House, and (unlike his father-in-law) was reliably supportive of the government.(Lord Harcourt has given his recommendation.) He was known to be detail oriented: Jackson’s most important duty was probably the calculation of the interests and inclinations of MPs and the preparation of the Parliamentary Lists and numbers which the government used to calculate its own strength and that of the opposition.

Although Anne was praised for her Charity to the Poor, Richard’s sense of charity seemed to have been constrained by the biases of his class. He voted against Catholic relief in 1774 and then in 1780 voted against Grattan’s declaration of the rights of Ireland. In this, he was typical of many of the Protestant landowners of his time. Since his kind of Christian charity had its faith-based and class-based limits, it is not surprising that it did include donations to Coleraine’s St. Patrick’s Church:

in 1771 the rector of St. Patrick’s Church, Coleraine, wrote to him about the state of the church building and that the parishioners – many of whom were probably Presbyterian – could not, or would not, raise sufficient sums for its restoration. Jackson expressed a willingness to subscribe £200 personally and persuaded the Irish Society to subscribe a further £200.

This is the same church where I got locked into the graveyard (while photographing graves) and had to climb over this fence to get out.

A devoted family man, Richard spent the last years of his life at Holywell, Oxford, to be near his youngest son Richard JACKSON (1768-1797), who like all of his sons (and unlike his daughters), died without issue. His son George JACKSON (1766-1840) would be the final one to inherit the family baronetcy, but the political influence of this branch of the family had already diminished when Richard came to the end of his last elected term in 1783 after serving for decades as the Rt. Hon Richard JACKSON MP firstly for Coleraine, and later for Lisburn and Randlestown.

POSTSCRIPT: Another JACKSON

A final surprise find at St. John’s was the grave marker of Mary GIVEEN née JACKSON. Mary's parents were John JACKSON (1744-1824) & Sarah BRUNKER (1751-1820). Her uncle, Henry JACKSON, (1750-1817) was a United Irishman - one of those in his family who had to flee Ireland for America because of their politics. SEE: JACKSONs of Lisnaboe, Co. Meath.

Here lieth the body of Mary third Daughter of John Jackson of Crieve County of Monaghan Esq. And wife to J. Stephenson Giveen of Cabin Hill. She departed this life on the 10^th of June 1813 in the 28^th year of her Age. As a Child she was Dutiful. As a Wife and Mother Affectionate and tender. And as a Christian Obedient and Resigned. This stone was placed here by her husband as a token of his attachment and esteem.

OTHER SOURCES:

• Dictionary of Irish Biography. as well as   
• An historical account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, ancient and modern NOTE: Some of the JACKSON history here, particularly attributing the marriage of Samuel JACKSON to Susannah BERESFORD, is inaccurate.
•  Mentions of JACKSONs in rootsweb.