Nov 21, 2018

John 1 (repost to restore lost material)

Caution:  With this the TMR becomes quite personal, a series of reports and speculation on ancestry. It's a family thing I wish to do, and for technical reasons this old and dusty blog is the most convenient way.
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John Farrell is our first known ancestor, a Scots-Irish man born in1763 in Kilkinney, Ireland. From there he disappears from written history until midnight of July 15/16, 1779. He appears then at the Battle of Stony Point  on the Hudson River, some 40 miles north of New York City.  We meet him as a 16-year-old soldier of the Virginia Continental Line, serving as a drummer to Captain Robert Gamble's  8th Company of the 7th Regiment of Virginia Volunteers.  As a drummer, essentially a signal man,  he would have ranked as a junior staff non-commissioned officer, perhaps just slightly above a corporal.

How he made his way from his Irish birthplace to the  Battle of Stony Point on the Hudson River  is unclear. Family lore,  plausible but never documented, holds that he arrived in colonial America with seven brothers. All we know firmly, beyond the obvious Atlantic crossing,  is that John landed here after 1763 and before 1779 as part of the very large 18th Century Scots-Irish immigration from Ireland, primarily Ulster.

The most typical of these emigrant families landed at Philadelphia and trekked inland to the east slope of the Appalachians in southern Pennsylvania. Many, perhaps most, sooner or later drifted southward to high lands of Virginia and beyond. Only a relative few settled along the coast,  tidewater country, where the land and culture already belonged to earlier English colonists, an English aristocracy supporting the state-sponsored Anglican church and not welcoming the crude Scots-Irish. 

It is probably safe enough to imagine our John as solid member of these hill people or,  as I once heard it said by a prominent journalist in the region,"...a good old Piedmont boy, not no low-country snob." In any case, he was there somewhere, growing from boy to young warrior to Kentucky land owner and direct progenitor of nine generations (and counting) of American Farrells.

John would have been 12 or 13 when the Revolution broke out, 1775/76.  As said, we don't know exactly where or how he lived  
before he  joined the anti-English Virginia army. One hint, however,  points to the Piedmont country of the northern Shenandoah Valley. His rifle company, the 8th  Co. of the Seventh Continental Regiment, was apparently raised on that Virginia frontier by Captain Gamble.

If we care to reasonably speculate more about John, we need a quick review of general history.



THE SCOTS-IRISH

The Scots-Irish are, loosely, just what the name suggests, a mixture of the two Celtic nationalities.  Importantly, they also include a north-English population, also more or less Celtic, who, over the centuries, refused to kneel before the Crown of England and its feudal-system nobility.

The Scots were generally Celtic lowlanders, clans around  the western reaches the old Hadrian Wall, begun by Roman Legions around 122 A.D to fortify the loose border between themselves and the untamable lowland Celts to the north. Unable to conquer them,  Rome chose a Plan B; wall them out, harassing them occasionally in a way reminescent of rattling the zoo cage of a dangerous carnivore.   

For some 15 centuries more, until the 18th Century, the lowlands were scarred by back-and-forth war. Both shifting alliances and bitter combat flourished among northern English clans and the nearby, often intermixed,  Scottish tribe and clans. They are often known as the "Lowlanders," recognizing they were not quite Scots nationals, beholden to the nobility further north, nor quite English, loyal to royal fops in far-off London.  It was probably this defiance of distant aristocracy that led to them to become a separate and testy  group, a nation without home.

The Scots-Irish also refused organized religion as it existed in feudal times, declining rule by the Popes of Rome or, after Luther and the Reformation,  Rome's Protestant offshoots, primarily the established Church of England  and its counterpart, the Church of Ireland.  As Jim Webb has it, they simply refused to follow secular or religious leaders who were not intimately connected to their local or regional clan groupings. Webb, revealingly, calls his history of the Scots-Irish Born Fighting.

Anyone insisting on an oversimplified explanation of these ancestors of ours can safely use the term "anti-authority."

It is a mistake to understand Irish history as strictly Catholic versus Protestant, but that centuries-long cat fight is useful context. And it gives us a shorthand way to broadly distinguish our Farrell line, Protestant, from the other and much larger group of Catholic Farrells. If you meet a Protestant Farrell the odds suggest a person associated with the Scots-Irish immigration to colonial America in the pre-Revolution1700s. A Catholic Farrell is more likely to be part famine-driven migration of the 19th century.

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Back to our John 1 of Kilkinney.  "Farrell" has been a native Irish Roman Catholic name for some 11 centuries. It often occurs among the war-like revolutionaries opposing English colonization, English theft of Irish property, and anyone's Protestant faith.  But, since our John 1 was almost surely a Protestant (if he was anything at all), and probably a Calvinist of one stripe or a other, how did the conversion happen?  

The simple and, I think, probably correct answer is "lust." We can pretty safely rely on a common folk observation that when two societies collide, "First they fight, then they (fornicate)." 

The Lowlanders crossed the narrow Irish Sea and settled in the Irish north, among the native, Catholic, Irish with whom they often battled.  

But then on one soft spring evening a svelte immigrant lass espies a handsome young Irish stalwart of the Farrell clan. In the immortal womanly way she schemes to win his notice. A  twitch of tidy hips as she passes him on her way to the village well may do it. Her's does. Jaw agape, he will have her and no other. He leaps from his horse, approaches, and whispers in her ear. She smiles.

"Aye Sir, but ye must abandon Rome if ye would hope to enter here."

He asks himself what the Hell the Pope has done for him lately. A  Protestant Farrell line begins.

We don't know when this -- or something with the same result -- happened. It could have been John's father, grandfather, or earlier, likely during the centuries of  heavy Scots-Irish presence in Ireland. My personal guess would be somewhere in the1600s.

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A few years after the Revolution our John 1 married Cristina Pursley and sired several children.  One was William who married Mariah Hayes and fathered my great-great grandfather, Richard, who fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. Among Richard's sons were John  Richard Farrell who died young, about 29, never having seen his son, John Ray Farrell, my grandfather. John Ray and his wife, Emma Allie Clark,  were parents of my dad, Ottis Rollin Farrell.

Geography: Our direct-line family lived in Virginia, then near Boonsboro, Kentucky from about 1783 until about 1835. John was awarded land there (Kentucky Land Warrants numbers 885 and 886 totaling 300 acres) for his three years of service in the Virginia Continental Line. Most of his children moved to Monroe County, Missouri in the middle 1830s.  About 1930 our direct line moved to northwest Iowa (Luverne et al. then Fort Dodge)  until the 1960s and 1970s. At present it is scattered around Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. It might be said we arrived and lived as hardscrabble country people for nearly two centuries in this nation and are only recently emerging as somewhat civilized city people. I would not strongly contest that viewpoint.

John 1 died about 1824. His William, migrated to Monroe County, Missouri in the early 1830s along with most others of that region, fleeing hard economic times.



(This all remains a draft and a work in progress.)

Nov 19, 2018

Hillbillies and Rednecks: Yes

(Draft)

All my patrilineal kin have long been at least vaguely aware of our rural mid-south mountain past.  I think we can now add something approaching actual information to the suspicion that we are the droppings of mountain folk all the way back to colonial years.

Recent wanderings through the thin family records and general histories of the times and places  persuade me our early Farrells, freshly arrived from Ireland after 1763 and before 1779,  rather quickly built their log cabins somewhere in the Piedmont country.  Plausibly, they took up ground -- probably squatted as was was common -- near the Shenandoah Valley.  By 1783, just after the Revolution, they had trekked further west,  to the environs of Boonsboro, along the Kentucky River. I have spent time around there, and it is a land of hills and dense forests, not overburdened with good roads and trails even in the 21st Century.

The Shenandoah Valley from east to west is a narrow corridor, a few dozen miles wide.  From north to south it stretches a few hundred miles. In its northern reaches it includes Augusta County, Virginia where a source or two say John's military company was raised. It isn't much to go on, but it is the best we have at present.  It is consistent with a social/economic argument Jim Webb makes: Our Scots-Irish people, with their protestantism and small assets,  were unwelcome along the sea coast -- tidewater country. The coast was a bastion of wealthy, or relatively so, English aristocrats, and Anglicism was the state church.

As Webb has it, the Presbyterians from the Scotland-England border lowlands and northern Ireland were encouraged to move inland fast for two main reasons. One was the simple snobbery of the earlier and monied colonists loyal to King George. The other was fear of Indian attacks in resistance to European encroachment.  Maurading natives still raised frequent scares among the coastal elites who reasoned that a line of truculent white settlers with a fighting tradition -- namely us -- along the mountain ridges to westward might absorb the fury of Indian raiders.

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Direct Line Ancestors

(Incomplete. Stay tuned.)




1. ...  John Farrell born Kilkinney, Ireland 1763, died 1824 near Boonsboro, Kentucky. In 1789 he married Cristina Pursley. who was born about 1770 in Virginia and died about 1830 near Boonsboro, Kentucky.

2. ... William Farrell born near Boonsboro, Kentucky on March 3, 1796 and died died in Monroe County, Missouri on October 1, 1874. About 1820 near Boonsboro, Kentucky he married Mariah Hayes  who was born about 1803 in  Oldham County, Kentucky and died January  14, 1872 in Monroe County, Missouri.

3 ... Richard FARRELL born September 6, 1826 in near Boonsboro, Kentucky and died May 13, 1888 in Monroe County, Missouri. On January 29, 1855 he married Minerva Grove (Graff) in Monroe  County, Missouri. They had several children.

4 ... John Richard Farrell born in Monroe County, Missouri in (about 1867) died Monroe
County, Missouri 1893. (Died of pneumonia after falling through ice while hunting).  He was the father of my Grandfather John Ray Farrell



5 ... John Ray Farrell  born August 11, 1893 in Monroe County, Missouri, died November 20, 1979 in a Webster City, Iowa nursing home.  He married Emma Allie Clark in Monroe Country, Missouri. They were parents of my dad, O.R. (Ott) Farrell.



6 ... Ottis Rollin Farrell -- Born May 8, 1916 in Monroe County, Missouri, died February 13, 2004 in Spirit Lake, Iowa.  In 1939 he married Norman LaVonne Dingman who was born February 25, 1913, near Lehigh, Iowa and died September 11, 2007 in Spirit Lake, Iowa.

7 ... James Ottis Farrell born September 22, 1940 at Lutheran Hospital in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In June 1965 he married Delphine LuRae Huebner who was born October 4, 1943 in Hawarden, Iowa and died in August 1990 in Victor, Iowa of complications of multiple sclerosis.

8. Jon Rollin Farrell born Dec. 4, 1965 in Cresco, Iowa. Married Kimberly van Syoc in Duneland Beach, Indiana.

8. Lisa S. Farrell, born Nov. 13, 1968 married David  Schwarz in 1993 in Wahpeton, Iowa.

9. Justin Rollin Farrell (son of Jon)

9. Ryan Michel Farrell  (Son of Jon)




Nov 12, 2018

Another research note

E-mail: lucius@hargray.com     Sat Jan 3 13:22:47 2004
Name: Wilbur Cross
Subject: John Farrell
Surnames: FARRELL, O'FARREL, O-MORE
Query: We are seeking family history about the Farrell's, who fought against Oliver Cromwell before moving to Ireland where several members sat in the Parliament of James II in 1699, and some intermarried with Chieftain Roy O'More of Ireland. There was also a mention of a chief residence in Longford. We'd appreciate knowing sources of informatioin on these subjects. 


Also:

from: https://www.myheritage.com/names/christina_pursley

Christina Farrell (born Pursley) was born in 1770, at birth place, Kentucky, to Benjamin Pursley and Pursley (born *Ann).
Benjamin was born in 1744, in Probably Hampshire County, Virginia now West Virginia.
Christina married John Farrell in 1789, at age 19 at marriage place, Kentucky.
John was born in 1763, in Kilkenny, Ireland.
They had one son: William C Farrell.
Christina lived in 1810, at address, Kentucky.
She lived in 1830, at address, Kentucky.
Christina passed away circa 1830, at age 60 at death place, Kentucky.

Mid-19th century marriages from Missouri genealogy trails


John Farrell Mariam Grouf 18 Feb 1846
Cristina Farrell Richard Farrell 4 Feb 1847
Richard Farrell Cristina Farrell 4 Feb 1847

William Farrell Angeline Holloway 27 Jun 1848