JACKSONs of Creggan - Drogheda detective work

 

I have been told that the Corporation of Drogheda placed the JACKSON coat of arms over the town hall, in gratitude for the munificent gift old George gave them (I wish he had been sleeping when he did it) but I never had time when passing through, to see if it was the one[1].

 

This quote from an1874 letter from Eliza Jackson née Oliver has hooked my curiosity for years. Her phrase - to see if it was the one - presumes that (unlike me) she actually knew what her husband's family crest looked like. Supposedly the baronial arms of her son, Sir Thomas JACKSON of Stansted, echoed the heraldic symbol of this earlier JACKSON family crest. The sheldrake included on his arms was very similar to the common duck, but of more varied colour. Two other JACKSON families, the Forkhill JACKSONs and the Doncaster JACKSONs, both had shovellers on their crests – a bird of the same species, but with a long tuft on the breast and another on the head[2].  Both the sheldrake and the shoveller are scarce in family arms, and Sir Thomas once claimed that he was kin to the Forkhill JACKSON's, a claim that was not far fetched but still without proof.

 

Brendan Matthews from the Millmount Archival Library, Drogheda Co. Louth Ireland did a search on my behalf for this crest installed over the town hall, but even he could not find any mention of the JACKSON arms ever being erected on any building within the town of Drogheda - in spite of the fact that Drogheda has one of the more intact records of Civic and Municipal buildings, emblems, etc, that were erected and bestowed from the mid 17th century. An earlier town hall was demolished (at 3:00 AM when under a preservation order![3]) and the next town hall, known as Whitworth Hall[4], was constructed in 1865 by Benjamin Whitworth, ten years before Eliza Jackson wrote her letter. We have no idea which town hall she was referring to, but Whitworth Hall does not have a JACKSON crest.

 

The other possibility is that the crest was not in fact in Drogheda, but somewhere else. After all, Eliza, who tended to be a woman of much precision, did not insist that there was such a crest, merely: I have been told ...  As it happens, there is a Drogheda Square in Mountmellick, a town with strong JACKSON connections to the Quaker community there going back to the mid 1600s and including several Richard and George JACKSONs. Delores Dempsey, Manager of the Mountmellick Museum & Conference Centre told me in an email: There is no record of a JACKSON family crest being erected in Drogheda Square, Mountmellick.   Our town hall is located further down the town in Parnell St. ... There is a reference in the book[5] to a Richard JACKSON (1643 - 1697)[6].  He was born in Lancashire[7] in England and was approx. 16 when he arrived in Mountmellick.  He came with William Edmundson in 1659.  They settled in Antrim and Down and later moved to Armagh[8] in Northern Ireland before moving south to Mountmellick. To date there are no proven links of “our” JACKSONs to the Quaker JACKSONs, but several shared aspects of their history make them worthy of our notice: both families allegedly originated in Yorkshire[9]; they both seem to have been in a similar social class – trades people, not gentry; and finally, they lived in close proximity with business ties that probably overlapped.

 

Who was George JACKSON?

 

I think we can safely assume that the George JACKSON who was moved to give this munificent gift was in fact related to Sir Thomas JACKSON, and so there are then two obvious possibilities. Firstly, he might have been Sir Thomas’s great-grand uncle, a solicitor in Dublin in the late 1700s, early 1800s and a man who Eliza may have known about (several of his letters have survived).  This George JACKSON seems to have died shortly after 1820[10], but I do not know if he ever married or had any family (let alone another son named George). He himself was a son of the George JACKSON (1718-1782) of Liscalgot and then Urker who in turn was the great-great-grandfather of Sir Thomas JACKSON of Stansted (whose named his second son George).

 

According to family oral history, the ancestors of this earliest known George JACKSON (1718-1782) came from Co. York[11] (some say Northamptonshire[12]) in Cromwell's army and were granted lands in Co. Carlow[13] and Co. Kilkenny[14]. He was master of the Charter School at Liscalgot (near Crossmaglen)[15], probably as early as 1737 when the school first opened its doors. This might not have been his first career choice, but since he had recently lost most of the family lands in an ill judged bet on a game of cards (in his defence, he was in a fit of despond after being jilted by a lady from Bath) he may have had little choice.

 

Trying to square the circle of oral history and known records can be a test of patience at the best of times. Let’s assume that George was in his early to mid twenties when he became enamoured with the lady from Bath[16]. After all, it is hard to imagine him being younger than 21 when his fortunes came a cropper. He would have to have already fallen in love, been jilted and then squandered the family fortune. That takes a bit of time. Working backwards from the date of 1737, we also need to allow him time to settle the debt before he could then hightail it off to the backwaters of Creggan and the schoolhouse at Liscalgot. If he started at Liscalgot in 1737, he would only have been 19 years old if the 1718 birth date is correct[17]. There was no mention of a previous schoolmaster at Liscalgot Charter School, so if there was one then George would have landed up there at a later date. It could not have been much later since Cumiskey's book, Creggan Charter School 1737-1811 mentions that in 1739 George JACKSON, schoolmaster, bought turf and cows for the school.

 

There may be silence in some records for other than the usual reasons of mice and time. This George could have been written out of wills and a veil of silence descended around him. It wasn’t only his gambling that could have been an issue. Sir Thomas JACKSON’s daughter Amy made the comment that George JACKSON was noted for his wonderful skin, also for his fondness for women! So much so that .... whenever any girl for miles around had a particularly good complexion, the local people would say “Ah she must be one of George JACKSON’s.”. If that wanton behaviour showed up a generation or two before him (as such things often seem to do), there may even be issues over the legitimacy of his or one of his ancestor’s births. Keeping an open mind is the best we can do.

 

What was the connection of George JACKSON to Drogheda?

 

Regardless of whether it was the jilted George or the son of the jilted George, why would one of them give this gift to the city of Drogheda? If it was because of ancestral ties, then I’d like to know who that was. It makes sense to focus on a George JACKSON of Drogheda who seems to evaporate after 1730. He was the son of Richard JACKSON, an alderman in Drogheda in the late 1600s.

 

In the Council Book of the Corporation of Drogheda in 1657, the first Richard JACKSON mentioned is the father of a subsequent Alderman Richard JACKSON. The timing of this first mention of a JACKSON in these records  is a rather neat fit with the story that the JACKSONs came over (if not for the first time) with Cromwell, especially since these records precede Cromwell’s time and then continue well into the 1700s.

 

This first Richard JACKSON of Drogheda most likely settled on the heels of the Cromwellian victory in 1649 and arrived as an “adventurer” rather than a soldier. “Adventurers” were men who had fronted loans to the English Parliament to fund the war and were then repaid in land that had been seized from the residents and previous owners. Presumably, a loan to The Crown is what drew Richard to Drogheda and then the subsequent legislation favourable to Protestants secured the ground under his feet. On October 10^th, 1656, a law was passed (and deleted in 1672) forbidding all papists to be henceforth free of the corporation and reserving grazing rights on the town’s commons to Protestant freemen only[18]. As the American folksinger Woody Guthrie put it: some folks steal with a gun, some steal with a fountain pen and in Irish history (as elsewhere) there are plenty of examples of where the people in power (religion aside) have done both in quick succession.

 

Corporate life in Drogheda at the time was controlled by Old English Catholic merchants (connected by blood to the minor gentry in the surrounding townlands) and New English merchants and/or Cromwellian soldiers and adventurers who were relatively new arrivals. Many of the new arrivals sold off their post-Cromwellian entitlements and never settled their families in Ireland. For those who stayed, having the Freedom of the City was not simply some fancy bit of paper – it meant the freedom to trade with other members of the Corporation without paying the customs or taxes levied on outsiders (or foreigners as they were called)[19].

 

One of the methods of gaining land at this time was by “discovering” it. “Discovering” meant finding land still controlled by Catholics (in this case, we are talking mostly “Old English”) whose lands had been forfeited to the Cromwellian plantations. If you “found” such land, and you were Protestant, then you were rewarded with a reversion of the lease of that land. The Catholic Freeman who had belonged to The Corporation before the triumph of Cromwell, were being treated as “foreigners” – i.e. people without rights.  Not that this lasted long. Already by 1659, several Catholic merchants were successfully standing their ground and the daughter of one of them would later marry either the Richard JACKSON who was an alderman and for whom this would have been a second marriage, or else a son of his if he had a son named Richard, which I suspect that he did [based on a reference in The Seventeenth Century Tokens of County Louth].

 

Although the first mentioned Richard JACKSON of Drogheda is described as a carpenter, this does not mean that he himself went around with hammer and nails at the ready. In all likelihood, he was a man who employed carpenters. By 1658, he is described not only as a carpenter but also as a sheriff and a mason [unless there was a RIchard JACKSON who was a carpenter and another Richard JACKSON who was a mason - not impossible] and he is also referred to as “Esq.” (Whereas a year earlier he was recorded in the Council Books as a mere “Mr.”). Clearly he was not only a jack of all trades, but also a successful one and a man who quickly became prominent in the life of the Corporation of Drogheda in the 1650s.

I do not know where he came from. The name “Richard Jackson” crops up in the line of JACKSONs associated with Coleraine as well as the Quaker line of farmers and small businessmen that moved to Mountmellick. In the 1641 depositions, there was a Richard JACKSON “late of ffarham” [Farham being a townland in the Parish of Urney, Co. Cavan] sought recompense. He was a button maker, an occupation which could lead to him becoming a merchant. Given the description of the goods that he lost to the rebels (including corn, hay and horses), he is likely to have had farming interests as well. A Richard JACKSON and his wife was also mentioned in the account of a Katherin BELLEW. They were kept prisoners by a number of rebels, including Patrick McLOGHLIN, gent.. Since these are names also associated with Drogheda, there may be a connection. There is no slam dunk in any of this.

By the time of the 1664 Hearth Money Roll for Drogheda, there were two addresses for two Richard  JACKSONs (possibly father and son) as well as one for a schoolmaster named simply: Mr. JACKSON.  

Address	Name	Occupation	#
The Garr Warde	Richard JACKSON		7
St. Lawrence Ward	Mr JACKSON	Schoolmaster	2
Pillory Street Ward	Richard JACKSON		1

Given that family members in these times often moved like flocks of birds, the schoolmaster is likely to be related to the other two. This supposition is given a little more weight by the record in the Council Book of the Corporation of Drogheda which records on 1657Jul 3 Granted unto Richard Jackson, Carpenter, ould walls and garden lienge East his dwellings in Lawrence Streete some tyme in howldings of Henry Pluncket, for sixty and one years for twenty shillings per annum, rent ye said Rich. At or before ye next Assemby to enter into a bond to bestow deposit and disburse to repaire ye premises ffifty pounds, before seaven years and ye same at ye expiration of his tearme to be in good repaire. I would assume that the Richard JACKSON whose substantial house in the Garr Warde sported 7 hearths was the elder Richard JACKSON, the one who was the carpenter, sheriff, mason etc To give some sense of where he stood in the economic pecking order of the day, only five people in Drogheda had more hearths than he did – and they only had one or two more.

The first Richard JACKSON was still active in the business of the Drogheda Corporation in 1669, when the bridge over the Boyne was in need of repair (the river separated the north of Drogheda in Co. Louth from the south of Drogheda in Co. Meath). He won the contract to serve as one of the overseers of the work[20]. He died in 1685 [SOURCE: The Seventeenth Century Tokens of County Louth], but his son Richard was already well established. Since this son was admitted as a freeman on February 23, 1666 and a sherriff in 1672, their civic careers overlapped. I am still trying to sort them out.[21].

 

I sometimes joke that doing this kind of research is a bit like the journalists who were breaking the Watergate story in the 1970s. Simply put, a most useful tactic is: follow the money. Usually in this line of inquiry, it means digging up dusty old deeds (and sometimes for fun, a few misdeeds), but in this case the advice of follow the money also turned up a connection of the JACKSONs to the production of actual money. At the end of the 1660s or early in the 1670s, Richard JACKSON of Drogheda – the one who was an alderman and son of a “carpenter” - was issuing his own currency in the form of brass tokens embossed with the symbol of an angel[22]. The symbol of the angel was probably associated with his shop or tavern and the tokens would have been used as a substitute for banking in his various business enterprises. These tokens seem to have been issued in small quantities since they all seem to have come from two related dies. Although not dated, they have a stop in the form of a row set with a flawed leaf, a flaw that was identified with a London workshop which was producing tokens between 1667 and 1672.

One of these coins can be seen at the British Museum. In their biographical information, this Richard JACKSON is described as an Irish male, retailer/tradesman, active between 1649-1672.

The reason for issuing these coins was that the government of the day did not attach much importance to issuing what they regarded as petty coinage – pennies, halfpennies, and farthings. Sometimes shop owners and simple traders filled the gap with their own brass coinage, which also made things work more efficiently for them, removed as they were from the financial centre of the mid-17C where one would otherwise have to go to raise capital.[23] These tokens would have functioned pretty much as we would regard a promissory note or an IOU today (except on a smaller scale). Given how they were used, it is unlikely that JACKSON had a business large enough to punt him into the lower ranks of the gentry class, but he was definitely in the ranks of the emerging successful merchant class with fingers in many pies in the region.

Richard JACKSON –the future alderman - seemingly had the economic successes of his father to give him a solid start in life before he apprenticed with Edmund Graves. Graves was a Protestant, living in the Shop Street/Dyer Street area in 1663, whose tenancy in Drogheda had predated Cromwell. His Corporation career echoed much of that of Richard sr., although if the number of hearths in a home is in any way meaningful, he had fewer.

Launched into life with both a marketable skill set and money behind him, the younger Richard JACKSON became a sheriff in 1672 and Constable of the Staple[24] and then a coroner in 1673. A year later, he also became a warden of the Company of Merchants, then treasurer in 1675 and 1677, and finally rose to the rank of Mayor in 1678. His business interests included exports of wheat, rye, malt and hides[25]. We know that he remained active in the affairs of the Drogheda Corporation even though, in 1687-1690 when the Corporation was back in the hands of the Catholics during the Jacobite regime, he was one of the four Protestant aldermen who refused to swear an oath.  For the most part, the JACKSONs seemed to have kept their heads down and tended to their knitting as political control shifted from Protestants to Catholics and back again to Protestants. Although Richard JACKSON had refused to be sworn in to the Catholic dominated Corporation in 1687, he didn’t face conviction under outlawry acts and hence lose his leases to land during that time (other fared less well).

 

After the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, Richard JACKSON was once again an active alderman and then later served as auditor and viewer in 1698. His children were apparently born between 1672 and 1685. Already a widower in 1695[26], it was either himself or his son Richard who arranged a marriage with Elinor Conley[27] alias PIPPARD [aka Pappard][28]. She was raised Catholic and was born into the family of one of the PIPPARDs who belonged to the Old English Catholic merchant class long settled in Drogheda. Their marriage, in spite of the refusal of a Richard JACKSON to swear an oath in 1687, was one that bridged the religious and cultural divide.

Going back to the time of Cromwell, it is still hard to say how “our” Richard JACKSON came by his initial allocation of land. If only the family name had been something like  &#%@#* instead of the commonplace JACKSON, our work would be made easier – there are just so many JACKSONs and most infuriatingly, they didn’t stay in any one place. The short answer about their link to receiving Cromwellian allocated lands is that I haven’t a clue. The longer answer is that there are several possibilities and I will deal with that in another paper.

 

It is interesting to note that starting in 1657, the first generation -Richard JACKSON of Drogheda (carpenter, sheriff etc.) - seems to have been quite successful. His son, Alderman Richard JACKSON also seems to have succeeded although his various pension requests in 1713-1715 lead one to wonder how well he was doing near the end of his life. By 1727, his son George seems even more financially precarious as he pleads for money so he can place his two sons as apprentices. The Corporation finally says, enough in 1730: and yt for the future, no petition or application be received from the said George Jackson for any further relief. Perhaps this is part of the back story of "our" George.

 

How might the JACKSONs of Drogheda be connected to the JACKSONs of Creggan?

 

Again, it is back to follow the money – which in this case means chasing down leases connected to JACKSONs in both Drogheda and Creggan, but also looking sideways at leases involving people who had business dealings with them and were also their relations. Names such as: PIPPARD, M’LAUGHLIN and CONLY deserve our attention. For example, we know that a Richard JACKSON of Drogheda married an Elinor CONLY née PIPPARD[29] in 1699 and also that old George married a Margaret O’LAUGHLIN[30] in 1743 in the Parish of Clogher. Both PIPPARDs and M’LAUGHLINs came from families of known successful Catholic merchants, and in the PIPPARD’s case, successful lenders. We also know that Richard JACKSON was Protestant while Elinor PIPPARD was probably Catholic. There is also a strong possibility that the marriage between George JACKSON and Margaret M’LAUGHLIN was another Catholic- Protestant marriage. If this is the case, it would be striking since George and Margaret were married at a time (1743) when legal sentiment did not support “interfaith” marriages[31] - especially for a young schoolmaster of a Charter School who were created in part in order to drum the Catholic faith out of their charges.

 

 We also know that George JACKSON was a member of the Church of Ireland and that he and his wife were both were active in Creggan Parish (Church of Ireland), but the Creggan Parish church was often ingenious in how it straddled the Catholic/Protestant fault lines of the day. For example, whether or not the local Catholics and Protestants did or did not get along above the ground, when it came to where they rested after death, they shared the same graveyard. There was a fair amount of shuffling back and forth across the faith divide for various reasons. For example, the celebrated Catholic poet Art McCOOEY (1739-1773) when his parish priest refused him permission to marry his second cousin (Mary LAMB), he got married in the Creggan Church of Ireland church by Rev. Hugh HILL[32]. A headstone commemorating him was erected at Creggan church in 1973 and his poetry lives on forever.

 

Other clues that lead me to suspect that George JACKSON’s wife may have come from a Catholic family have to do with a set of leases that involved a number of families related by both geographical proximity and marriage to the JACKSONs of Liscalgot and Urker. In the mid 1700s, Rt. Hon John Lord BELLEW[33], a Catholic landlord who came from an old Anglo-Norman family with deep roots in Drogheda, executed a number of deeds with members of the COULTER and DICKIE families in the Parish of Creggan. Two of these 1735 leases not only involved Cavananore[34], a property that the JACKSONs through their links with the BRADFORDs and COULTERs maintained a connection to well into the 20^th Century, but were also witnessed by George PIPPARD and Cornelius M’LAUGHLIN[35]. It would not be surprising if Cornelius and Margaret were related. In fact the opposite – if they were not related – that would be surprising.

 

Both George PIPPARD and Cornelius M’LAUGHLIN turn up in enough deeds at the time representing the interests of Lord BELLEW that I suspect they were agents or solicitors of some ilk. Going from what can be seen in various deeds, it would seem that George PIPPARD was a son of Christopher PIPPARD (d 1736) and husband of Bridget. His family would have served on the Drogheda Corporation at the same time as the various Richard JACKSONs did.

 

So, after getting this far, who were the ancestors of this first Richard JACKSON of Drogheda, the one who was a “carpenter”? There are some tantalizing bits of evidence that don’t yet amount to a slam dunk, but whose convergence intrigues me. Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmorland aka Cumbria is one place to look. In the family tree that I have assembled for the JACKSONs of Coleraine, there is a Rev. Robert JACKSON who succeeded a Leonard JACKSON (1650-1734) as Rector at Tatham, Lancashire. This Leonard JACKSON was a brother of the Samuel JACKSON who lived in Dublin but who also had family and business dealings in Coleraine and whose family naturally was also from Kirkby Lonsdale[36]. Going from Samuel JACKSON's will, he died without wife or issue. Samuel's nephew, Richard JACKSON [1658-1730], was residing in a home at Mary Lane Dublin at the time of the death of Samuel (1705).  At the time of his death, Samuel JACKSON owned a number of lands called forfeited estates, including Castletownmoor, Co. Meath. In 1729, a Rev. Robert JACKSON leased lands of Castletownmoor, Co. Meath[37] to a John PIPPARD. Is there a connection here? Is Robert JACKSON a son of Rev. Leonard JACKSON? I don’t know. A Richard JACKSON of Dublin had signing authority for this Rev. Robert JACKSON. In another deed in 1735, this Rev. Robert JACKSONs sisters Abigail BUCKLEY née JACKSON and Jane JACKSON are both mentioned in connection with these lands at Castlemoortown. Their first names echo the names of women in the previous generation of Coleraine/Yorkshire JACKSONs (Leonard and Samuel’s generation). [NOTE: Since I wrote this, the relationships have become much clearer. SB Feb 23, 2016]

 

This may be a really big leap, worthy of an Olympic record, but it is not impossible that the JACKSONs of Drogheda will turn out to be somehow connected to the JACKSONs of Coleraine, the ones who originally came from Yorkshire. Even though the Drogheda JACKSONs were seemingly of more modest means, this could have been for many reasons (youngest son of youngest son and so on). There is much more to learn. And while we are at it, the Quaker JACKSONs of Mountmellick also deserve our attention, since the first four generations of their alleged ancestry are at least dubious. It may also be that the JACKSONs of Lisnaboe and later of Ballybay are also somehow tied in to this lot.

 

I hope to hear from others who perhaps can supply more information or else set me right if and when I am off track. After all, is there really that much difference on a family crest between a shoveller (descendant of Coleraine/Yorkshire JACKSONs of Forkhill) and a sheldrake (Sir Thomas JACKSON of Stansted)? Perhaps we will find out that there isn’t.

 

Additional material:

• Council Book of Drogheda - Jackson references
• Jacksons of St. Peters Church, Drogheda.
• Jacksons of Drogheda Family Tree