Irish church records (Presbyterians) refers to the records produced by Presbyterian congregations in Ireland between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. Presbyterianism was introduced onto the island at the very beginning of the seventeenth century as Scottish Calvinists (known as Presbyterians in Scotland) began acquiring lands in the northern province of Ulster and then settled there in large numbers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They became and remain the largest religious denomination in large parts of east Ulster and other parts of the north of Ireland. Because they did not conform to the official, state-run Church of Ireland, they largely produced their own religious records and so Presbyterian records are key resources for tracing Presbyterian ancestors in Ireland between the early seventeenth century and the commencement of civil registration in Ireland in 1864.[1]
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History of Presbyterianism in Ireland
The ultimate origins of Presbyterianism in Ireland, somewhat confusingly, lie in the Swiss city of Geneva. In 1541 the French theologian, Jean Calvin, arrived to the city to take up a position as a prominent Protestant theologian there. Five years earlier he had published his seminal work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. In this he laid out the basis of Reformed Protestantism or Calvinism, a much more radical form of Protestantism than the moderate branch founded by Martin Luther in Germany twenty years earlier. Calvinism, for instance, called for the faithful to follow an austere way of life, for churches to contain nothing that could be interpreted as idolatrous or ostentatious, and for all faith to be rooted in biblical doctrine. Perhaps most importantly, from the perspective of Presbyterianism, he argued that there should not be a hierarchical church ruled over by archbishops and bishops. Instead each congregation should be governed by its minister and most pious members.[2]
In the 1540s and 1550s Geneva became the epicenter of the radical Protestant Reformation in Europe. The godly of England and Scotland, facing persecution for their Protestantism at home during the reigns of Mary Tudor and Mary, Queen of Scots, often spent years on the continent and many headed to Geneva. They were fortunate enough that political events in Britain between 1558 and 1560 allowed both England and Scotland to renounce Roman Catholicism as the state religion and adopt Protestantism. In England a moderate Anglicanism was adopted, but the Scottish Lords of the Congregation, influenced by theologians like John Knox, adopted Calvinism. In Scotland this would become known as Presbyterianism, a Greek term which occurs frequently in Greek translations of the New Testament to refer to elders of the church. Throughout the country presbyters, senior ministers and elders of each congregation would govern the church, rather than power ultimately being vested in archbishops and bishops, much as it still was in England even after the Elizabethan religious settlement there.[3]
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This would soon impact on Ireland. The links between Scotland and the northern province of Ireland, Ulster, have been historically very strong. In medieval times a person could sail from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and be in east Ulster hours later. Hence, the MacDonnells of the Western Isles of Scotland ruled much of Antrim in north-eastern Ireland for much of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[4] However, the Scottish role in Ulster intensified dramatically in the early seventeenth century after the conquest of the Irish lordships of the province during the Nine Years’ War (c. 1593–1603). Scottish land prospectors began buying up large estates in east Ulster from 1603 onwards and then between 1608 and 1610 a formal plantation of west Ulster was organized by the English government. In this over half a million statute acres of land were granted to Scottish undertakers. Moreover, because of Scotland’s proximity to Ulster, a large proportion of the tenants elsewhere in the province were also Scottish.[5]
As they arrived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Scots brought their Presbyterianism with them. Over time they came to account for upwards of 10% of the population of the island as a whole and a much higher percentage in certain parts of Ulster, particularly in east Ulster where Belfast emerged as a thriving city in the eighteenth century. Over time Presbyterianism became as much a form of ethnic identity as a religious stance for people of Scottish ancestry in the north of Ireland and nearly 20% of the population of Northern Ireland still identify as Presbyterian today.[6]
Where to find Presbyterian records in Ireland
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English/British government in Ireland viewed Presbyterians as a radical, non-conformist religious group. They were, for instance, included with Roman Catholics under the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century that placed restrictions on everything from horse-ownership to the holding of public office. What this meant is that Presbyterian church records were kept and developed in a completely different manner to those of the established Church of Ireland. Individual Presbyterian churches kept their own records of baptisms, marriages and deaths down to the middle of the nineteenth century.[7] Copies of the vast majority of the records produced prior to the introduction of civil registration between 1845 and 1864 are available today at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in the Titanic Quarter of the city of Belfast.[8] Records of Presbyterian births, marriages and deaths produced after 1845 in the case of marriages and after 1864 in the case of births and deaths are housed in the General Register Office of Northern Ireland.[9]
What can be found in Presbyterian records in Ireland
Irish Presbyterian records are fairly typical religious records from a genealogical perspective, in that they include baptismal, marriage and funeral records. This makes them extremely valuable for tracing one’s ancestors in Ireland between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, especially so in the northern province, Ulster, where most Scottish Presbyterians settled during the early modern era. In such records people will find an approximate date of birth for someone (baptisms usually occurred within a week or so of birth in centuries gone by), details of their parents, godparents and place of birth, the specifics of who they married and when they did so, and the particulars of when they died.[10]
See also
Explore more about Irish Presbyterian church records
- Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians – Oh, My! at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Using Church Records to Identify Ancestors at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Townlands, Parishes and Baronies – understanding land administrative divisions in Ireland at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://discoverulsterscots.com/history-culture/story-presbyterians-ulster
- ↑ https://www.worldhistory.org/John_Calvin/
- ↑ https://theses.gla.ac.uk/1655/
- ↑ George Hill, An Historical Account of the MacDonnells of Antrim including notices of some other septs, Irish and Scottish (Belfast, 1873).
- ↑ Michael Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish migration to Ulster in the reign of James I (London, 1973).
- ↑ Robert Whan, The Presbyterians of Ulster, 1680–1730 (Woodbridge, 2013).
- ↑ https://ulsterhistoricalfoundation.com/presbyterianism/home
- ↑ https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/campaigns/public-record-office-northern-ireland-proni
- ↑ https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/contacts/general-register-office-northern-ireland
- ↑ https://www.presbyterianireland.org/Utility/About-Us/Historical-Information/Congregational-Records.aspx