Scots-Irish Migration to the Bahamas in the Eighteenth Century

By Keith Tinker and Colin Brooker

Beginning in the mid-16th century and down through the 18th century, thousands of immigrants of Scots-Irish origin migrated to the Bahamas, which included the Turks and Caicos Islands. The first, and smaller wave of immigrants came via Bermuda in the mid to late 1600s in the wake of the mass migration of pro-Presbyterians from northern Ireland to the Americas seeking refuge from religious persecution. Later, in the 18th century, as a consequence of the American Revolution, thousands of so-called Loyalists were exiled from the union of the original 13 rebellious colonies. Many of those exiled were of Scots-Irish origin. Thousands migrated to the islands of the Bahamas, where they eventually emerged as some of the leaders of society in all facets of administration and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796080605

Keith Tinker

to be followed

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Copyright © 2020 by Keith Tinker and Colin Brooker.

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Contents

Preface

Scots-Irish: Migration From Scotland To Ireland

Early Scots-Irish Migration

Scots-Irish Loyalists

Black Loyalists And Their Legacy

The Scots-Irish And Presbyterianism In The Bahamas

Vestiges Of Scots-Irish Architecture

Scots-Irish Names And Places

Glossary Of Scots-Irish Surnames

Bibliography

Preface

The late 1700s and onwards into the early 1800s were years of international turmoil which greatly influenced the shaping of the Atlantic world and positions of loyalty amongst its varied peoples. The carnage wrecked against the established classes by the masses during the French Revolution further established entrenched sentiments of patriotism among those Americans who choose to throw of the yoke of monarchy in 1776 in favor of establishing their own republican self-destiny. On the other hand, there were those Loyalists who demonstrated unwavering faith in the leadership of their respective monarchs to govern in colonial fairness and arbitrary justice. And then, there were the masses of people of color who became Loyalists, who were either completely or partially enslaved by psychological, political, social and economic circumstances, who undoubtedly envied the success of the Haitians in their rebellion against the French and longed to be just as free to chart their own destiny.

Keith L. Tinker (2019)

It may, perhaps, be difficult for many to perceive the perspective of this research which at times features such an apparent oxymoron usage of Scottish and Irish references in the same historical context with The Bahamas. For most persons living in the Atlantic world, Scotland evokes scenes of cold, craggy Highlands and vast expanses of marshy Lowlands; men playing eerie tunes on their bagpipes, attired in the distinctive colored kilts of their respective clans. Ireland evokes scenes depicting the shamrock, emerald green landscapes and the mischievous leprechauns. Conversely, reference to The Bahamas evokes scenes of the warm tropics where people lazily soak-up the sun, walk bare feet on the expansive strands of white (sometime pink) sandy beaches and leisurely bathe in the turquoise sea which surround the islands. As unrelated as the various regions and peoples may seem, however, there is a shared historical heritage which this book will attempt to explain.

The evolving socio-cultural heritage of The Bahamas, as is the case of the Atlantic world, was shaped by the constant migration of peoples to and from those islands. In the pre-Columbian era, it was the Lucayans who were recorded as the first to come and carve their cultural legacy. In the 1600s, waves of immigrants moved southward from the Bermudas in search of new lands to expand their economic and social lives. In the aftermath of the American revolutionary war, thousands of American Loyalists found refuge in the islands to escape the perceived tyranny inflicted on them for their allegiance to the English Crown. Later, in the early twentieth-first century, peoples of West Indian extractions swelled the population of the small cluster of islands I call home. Each migrant group made an indelible impact on the evolution of The Bahamas I know and now draw historical references through-out this research.

During my early years as Director of the National Museum of The Bahamas, particularly in the afternoons, I often congregated in the upper-level of the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation (down-town Nassau) with my colleagues, Deputy-Director of Museums, Kim Outten Stubbs and Bahamian anthropologist/archaeologist Grace Turner, Ph.D. to discuss, among other things, intrigues surrounding the socio-history of Cat Island.¹ Our collective ancestral names of McKenzie, Hepburn, Ramsey, Seymour, Turner and Nairn speak to a Scottish or Scots-Irish descent. One particular subject of common interest discussed was the origin and continued existence of a significant number of surnames of Scots-Irish descent who in the eighteenth century settled and dominated the demographic landscape of Cat Island and other islands in the archipelago. Included in the discussions was constant reference to the sometimes strange-sounding and spelling of geographical communities on those Islands. The urge to research this subject simmered and lingered in my to-do literary bucket list. The writing of this book now partially fulfills that outstanding wish.

In recent years, I became acquainted with research conducted throughout The Bahamas by Colin Brooker. Brooker is a pre-eminently qualified (and locally venerated) historic preservation architect who is world acclaimed for his research conducted during many years engaged in the service of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) particularly in the Middle-Eastern countries. Specifically, Brooker has conducted significant historical architectural research in The Bahamas on behalf of private and public entities, some of which revealed the presence Scots-Irish architecture scattered across the archipelago. It is, therefore, in his direct contribution to this book where the inclusion of photographic and historical narrative related to the Scots-Irish presence in the islands is articulated. Mr. Brooker extends a note of gratitude posthumously to Ms. June Maura, who suddenly passed away, as well as the Director and staff of the Department of Archives for their contribution to the research on this project. Other contributors to this research worthy of note include brothers, Messrs. Elton and Kirkwood McKinney of Crooked Island and Mrs. Patsy Cartwright and Ms. Anea Knowles of Long Island, who collectively made research for this work so much easier.

I shared aspects of this research with the classes I lectured at the University of The Bahamas to encourage discussion on the subject. One interested student, Durante Charlow, noted his Scottish lineage via the Charlow blood-line that migrated to the Bahamas from Bermuda. I honored his demonstrated interest by including his story in the narrative of this work. Similarly, several Bahamians have shared information on their Scots-Irish origins and as such have reserved a place in this book to share this information.

In the Anglo-Atlantic lexicon, the term Scots-Irish commonly refer to groups of Protestant settlers who migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland in the seventeenth century, where-upon some subsequently migrated across the Atlantic to Anglo-American colonial destinations in the eighteenth century. Interestingly, the term Scots-Irish is virtually obsolete in common English, or Irish or Scottish lexicon where it simply does not appear in general references.² Initially, the migrants journeyed to Ireland in search of economic opportunity. In the subsequent century, religious persecution forced many to leave their new homes and seek refuge in the Anglo-North American colonies.

It is, perhaps, noteworthy to state that from as early as the early 1600s, thousands of Scots and Irish were reportedly incarcerated and either thrust into a debtor prison or sold into virtual slavery during the evolution of colonial America to pay an outstanding debt. This form of white slavery was indentured servitude. Under this system, magistrates were empowered to sentence a person to virtual slavery for a period of five to seven years and exiled to any part of the expanding British colonial empire. Many of the unfortunate were political prisoners or persons convicted of serious crimes and sentenced into perpetual exile. Magistrates ordered the enslavement and deportation of thousands of rogues and undesirables who made [or could make life] unpleasant for the elite classes in their respective societies.³

The new migrants to the Americas arrived, psychologically drained. Lowlanders arrived virtually penniless and land-less refugees who turned to indenture servitude in order to survive. Highlanders, many more financially stable than their Lowland cousins on the other hand, used their personal resources to progressively succeed. Through the resilient spirit of the proverbial fighting Irish, the new Americans not only survived, but in many cases, prospered and became leading citizens in the arenas of politics, economics, religious and social life in their respective adopted communities. They overcame battles over rights to land with Native Americans and eventually tamed large acreages and established themselves as professionals in a variety of trades and industries. The successful immigrants developed enviable estates and political fame. Some emerged as distinguished leaders of the revolutionary movement which eventually led to the declaration of independence. Unfortunately for others, the bubble of prosperity and good fortune came crashing to a disastrous halt, created by a series of catastrophic, international events from which many never fully recovered.

During the revolutionary conflict, many Scots-Irish chose to remain loyal to British colonial authority and King George III. This fateful choice was made in direct opposition to the calls of the American colonial majority to repudiate the monarchy and establish a republic based on democratic values for the people and by the people. This ideal was vehemently demonstrated in the rebellious action surrounding the so-called Boston Tea Party. For the Scots-Irish Loyalists, the price for monarchial alliance was public derision, social rejection, economic black-listing, loss of property and assets, and eventual forced exile, first back to Europe, some to Spanish Florida and eventually to Canada and Sierra Leone, and the Anglo-Caribbean. Thousands of these Loyalists chose to migrate to the sub-tropical islands of the Bahamas where they began their sojourn as descendants of Scots-Irish in paradise.

Many persons of African descent migrated with the white Loyalists. Some as slaves, some as free men. The exiles in the Bahamas were given large acreages on many of the islands in the archipelago as incentives to partially compensate for loss of land back home and to provide them with an opportunity to re-create productive lives. The cultivation of cotton became the commercial crop of choice for those settled in the outer-islands. Politics and merchant-life consumed the industry of those settled in Nassau and Harbour Island, the two urban centers in the colony. Over the ensuing decades, the legacy of these Scots-Irish descendants became prominently demonstrated in family and individual names, Bahamian geography, aspects of culture and cuisine and in the general resilience of their descendants to succeed. In every significant avenue, these Loyalists re-directed the course of Bahamian history and helped to create the modern Bahamas which emerged

This book will attempt to trace causes and effects of Scottish migration to Northern Ireland in the seventeenth century. It will examine the reason(s) for the re-location by many across the Atlantic to English colonial destinations, and, their eventual evolution into the Scots-Irish. The work will cite research on the Scots-Irish presence in the United States and subsequent migration of some to The Bahamas. Focus will be placed on the identification of personal and geographical names as they appear on Bahamian maps and relate back to Scotch-Irish origins. Upon completion, our wish is for this research to expand existing Bahamian historiography on this specific aspect of Bahamian cultural and political history – that of Bahamians of Scots-Irish descent, including the lineage of my maternal grandmother and the Nairn clan.

Scots-Irish: Migration From Scotland To Ireland

Scots-Irish is an American term coined across the Atlantic and not commonly found in British, or Australian, or Irish or even Scottish lexicon. It refers to immigrants to the Anglo-American colonies during the seventeenth century who originally migrated from the Lowlands of Scotland mostly to Ulster in north Ireland. Perhaps, the earliest official reference to this group of people was made in 1573 by Queen Elizabeth 1 of England in a reference to the descendants of gallowglass mercenaries from Scotland who had settled in Ireland: We are given to understand that a nobleman named ‘Sorley Boy’ [MacDonald] and others, who be of the Scotch-Irish race… – Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery as cited in Leyden, op cit. 327.

Marilyn J. Westerkamp (1998) further explained:

The description of Scots-Irish (for those of Scottish heritage living in Ireland) did not exist until the era of Britain’s Jacobean kings in the early 1600s, when James VI/I (1603-1625), the Stuart king-made-heir to Elizabeth I’s throne, promoted the colonization program, more commonly known as the Irish Plantation, which instituted the voluntary relocating or planting of his countrymen (both Scots and English) in the northern third of Ireland to control the native Irish in the providence of Ulster and subdue rebellion against British rule.⁴

The colonization program afterwards became more commonly known as the Irish Plantation of Ulster.

The Scots-Irish immigrants are generally referred to as the Ulster Scots or Ulster Protestants to distinguish them from the predominantly Roman Catholic native Irish they settled next to in Ireland. In the early seventeenth century, the Northern Ireland settlements of Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone, Cavan, Armagh and Fermanagh came under the control of the English King James VI. Large numbers of English and Scottish immigrants were enticed with significant land grants to settle these counties. Eventually, the English settlement integrated all over Ireland, while the Scot settled mainly in Ulster. The Scottish immigrants were mostly poor (albeit industrious) Lowlanders migrating from the Border-Southwest region of Scotland.

King James’⁵ dual objective under the Irish Plantation program was to settle scores of poor, but highly industrious, loyal Protestant Scots in Ulster to aid in the development of the land and act as a religio-political buffer against the native, pro-Catholic and fiercely anti-monarchy Irish already settled there and simultaneously provide revenue to the crown as tenant farmers.⁶

Religion played a significant role in the fate of the Scots-Irish sojourn. Gordon Menzies, (2001) noted: migrating Protestant Scots embraced a national church that favored Presbyterianism over the king’s preference for a church governed by episcopacy and the monarchy’s divine right to rule.⁷ Despite the odds over religion between immigrants and king, the ardent religious and industrious resilience of the Scots became an asset to the English Crown. The immigrants diligently persevered, successfully cultivate the land assigned to them and simultaneously dug in as a fervent protestant buffer to the pro-Catholic majority surrounding them. Initially, the pro-Anglican monarchy of King James VI/I demonstrated religious tolerance towards the Scots and supported the Presbyterians in their rejection of Irish, anti-Anglican, pro-Roman Catholic supremacy.

In the years following the establishment of the Plantation of Ulster, the Scottish immigrants endured mercurial periods of peace and prosperity which were shattered by occasional bouts of violent persecution as the frequent changes in English government fluctuated between pro-Catholic and Pro-Protestant factions. In 1625, for example, pro-Catholic Charles I, heir to James VI., persecuted all anti-Catholic opposition who refused to declare allegiance to the papacy. The Plantation of Ulster Presbyterians were summarily persecuted. In 1649, Charles I was deposed and eventually executed. The pro-Catholic English monarchy was replaced by a Puritan, non-monarchial Parliament during the Cromwellian Interregnum Protectorate. This ushered in a period of relative peace and prosperity for the Scots-Irish.

By 1660, the brief period of peace was interrupted by the restoration of the monarchy with the ascendancy of pro-Anglican Charles II. In 1685, Charles II’s reign ended and pro-Catholic James II became king. For the duration of his brief three-year reign, James made every attempt, albeit unsuccessfully, to re-convert Britain to Catholicism. All protestants within his realm bore the brunt of his religious purges.⁸ In 1688, the so-called Glorious Revolution established a partial pro-Anglican monarchy, which worked assiduously to limit religious and civil activities in Ireland for those who chose to reject Anglican authority. The Scots-Irish, because of their staunch allegiance to the principles of Presbyterianism, became primary targets.⁹

In 1689, Protestant Mary II succeeded her father James II to the British throne as co-regent with her Dutch husband William III of Orange.¹⁰ The reign of the protestant co-regents (1689-1702) brought hope to the Scots-Irish of relief from religious and civil persecution. In 1690, the glimmer of hope was brightened when William journeyed to Ireland to fight his opposing, anti-Protestant father-in-law at the Battle of Boyne. The royal intent was to defeat the pro-Catholic foe, relax religious restrictions, improve economic opportunities and pave the way for Scot-Irish to be elevate to responsible civil positions and authority. This religious and civic freedom eventually faded with the succession of Queen Anne to the throne and deteriorated further with the succession King George I in the early 1700s. Despite the positive intent of the Act of Tolerance which granted anti-Catholic and anti-Anglican dissenters the right of freedom of worship, vestiges of the Test Act still lingered and demanded submission to the Church of Ireland in cases of marriages and the holding of public offices.¹¹

T. C. Smout, N.C. Landsman and T. M. Devine (1994,) commented on the travail of the Scots-Irish:

Before migrating to Ulster, Covenanters (those who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland as it