The Black Irish of Érie Descended from Spanish Pirates: A Memoir of an American Family: the Mitchells

By Elizabeth M. Walter

The Black Irish descended from Pirates: A Memoir of An American Family, The Mitchells is both a social history of Irish immigration and a genealogical study of particular families. Irish Protestants in the South, until the upheaval of World War II, retained a clannish allegiance years after leaving Ireland. The heritage of being a Black Irishman was deeply ingrained in the Mitchell family experience; one that resonates in the current generations physical appearance and self-identity. It is an open-ended story that may, one day, be resolved by advances in deciphering the human genome.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493175925

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Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth M. Walter.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2014903445

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4931-7593-2

                            Softcover                          978-1-4931-7594-9

                            Ebook                               978-1-4931-7592-5

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First U.S. Edition 2014

Rev. date: 04/16/2014

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CONTENTS

Preface

Irvin, Himself

The Black Irish

Piracy and Granuaile (Known as Grace O’Malley)

Assimilation and the Plantation of Ulster

Drury Mitchell

The Great Famine

Maureen O’Hara

Elizabeth Flan(a)(i)gn’s Legacy

Elizabeth Dickinson and Allen Flanigan

Irish Confederates, Forgotten Soldiers of the South

Civil War, The Reconstruction, The Railroad

The Great Depression: 1930s

The Consummate Southern Belle

418 North Pine Street: The 1940s and World War II

Genealogy Charts

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Author

More Family Stories and Additional Charts

PREFACE

É IRE IS GAELIC for Ireland. Rinn na Spainneach is Gaelic for Spanish Point, south of the Cliffs of Mohr in County Clare on the western coast in the Atlantic Ocean, an advantageous port for sheltering sailing ships.

Partly this book is written as social history through reading, research, and knowledge gleamed through travels in Ireland. It then shifts to narrative as a memoir of the 1940s written from an abundance of family tales, some that bear repeating. Since early in the 21st century it has become apparent that not only family experiences determine our perceptions but also our DNA. Whatever our genetic makeup may be becomes a strong factor in our personal sense of reality. Genetic genealogy, without a doubt, will supply more salient information in the future to questions of one’s personal heritage.

Several points to be mindful of when reading these pages: Proof in genealogy is very rarely an absolute (Powell, p. 236) women’s histories are obscured and lost, references to females are rare, as in et uxor, and spouse, where wives are not even accorded a given name. For example, in Decatur John Wesley Mitchell & wife are listed in the 1905 Alabama tax rolls.

As language has changed over the centuries coupled with a questionable literacy of the writer, there is a loose use of vowels: a and i particularly. Also, double consonants are problematic appearing in government documents, as in Flinnigin, or Flannagan or Flanagan or Flanigan, that occur all too frequently.

This is a tale of two families who left Ireland during difficult economic hardships at different times. Drury Mitchell came to Virginia in one of the years related to the Plantation exodus from Northern Ireland. There were five great waves of emigration beginning in 1717 and ending in 1775 with the advent of the American Revolution. Many Ulstermen arrived in the third wave between 1728 and 1750. One may assume that Drury came in that sequence of The Great Migration. Records simply do not exist to substantiate any supposition. With at least a thread of information, one may infer from generalized historical events or social history, specific actions that were taken by individuals like Drury.

My father, John Irvin Mitchell, spoke of his Irish heritage in fleeting references only occasionally in the course of his lifetime. The Mitchell family was clannish; until his marriage to my mother, Hilda Harris Mitchell, he was a member of the clan. She was descended directly from English 16th century colonists and as the tale goes, he was to a great degree ostracized by the Mitchell family for marrying an outsider.

The English government for centuries had viewed the Irish as fleeting references or as wild men and barbarians. It was an attitude not easily changed even though years had passed and the