Millenium File

Diane,

My understanding is that a millennium file is a tree on Ancestry which the owner has allowed any member to search. The information should be the same as on any tree, ie sourced by the tree owner. So you would need to contact that person to ask the source of their information. They may or may not have reliable information on where John Lawson was born. Some trees are more accurate than others.

If the family is Scots-Irish, then the vast majority of those Scots arrived in the 1600s. Some estimates indicate 200,000 Scots arrived then. Some as part of the Plantation – though Sligo itself wasn’t a Plantation county – and others as a result of famine in Scotland in the 1690s. Some came for other reasons. And there was some internal migration which led to Plantation settlers spreading to counties like Sligo.  By the 1700s many Scots were dis-satisfied with life in Ireland, for a variety of econominc and political reasons, and were leaving again either for North America or further afield. That’s not to say a Scot couldn’t have moved to Ireland in the 1700s but they’d have been going against the general flow.

MacLysaght’s “The Surnames of Ireland” says Lawson is an “English name found in most Ulster counties since early seventeenth century.” Evidently he thinks the origins are English rather than Scottish, and that they likely arrived in the early 1600s.

All the Lawsons in Sligo in the 1901 census were Church of Ireland. That fits with a settler background too.

Thanks very much Elwyn.

Could you explain the Scots that left Scotland in the Plantation schemes.

Was there incentive in terms of land and money to go to live in Ireland?

My Lawsons were Protestants.

My Lawsons were listed as Weslyan Methodists in the early Census of Canada.

My Lawsons were listed as Weslyan Methodists in the early Census of Canada.

Diane,

The basic thinking behind the early 1600s Plantation of Ireland (there had been other smaller less successful plantations previously) was to ensure Ireland remained loyal to the Crown. The Spanish Armada had attempted to invade England in the late 1500s and it was feared that another attempt would be made, using Ireland as an easy jumping off point. It was assumed that if Ireland were heavily settled with loyal English, Welsh & Scots, the Spanish would be less likely to try that.

Big landowners in Scotland, England & Wales were offered lands, with subsidized rents, in parts of Ulster on condition that they undertook to construct key buildings and roads, develop the farmland and to take a significant number of their tenants with them to ensure that there would be reliable fighting men nearby in the event of either a Spanish invasion or attacks by the native Irish.  These key landholders were known as undertakers, because they undertook to comply with the various terms of the deal. The counties where they were offered land were, Tyrone, Londonderry, Armagh, Fermanagh, Donegal & Cavan. Other settlers made their own way to Antrim, Down & Monaghan but weren’t part of the formal Plantation.  And some settled in other counties such as Roscommon and Sligo. There they acquired land in the conventional way (ie by renting or buying from local landowners) as opposed to getting it as a result of a grant from the Crown.

The King (James I) was Scottish, having been invited to accept the English throne, after Elizabeth’s death, in addition to his existing Scottish throne. So he particularly favoured Scottish landowners. The attached link gives details of the Chief Scottish undertakers and whereabouts in Scotland they originated:

https://www.angelfire.com/ut/humceltic/Undertakers.html

If you are interested in a detailed study of the Plantation then Philip Robinson’s book: “The Plantation of Ulster” explains it well.

Knowing that your ancestors were Methodists suggests that, in the 1700s anyway, they would have been Church of Ireland. All the Lawsons in Sligo in 1901 were Church of Ireland, so that tends to support that view.

Methodism took a lot longer to become established in Ireland as a separate denomination than in England. In Ireland there was considerable resistance to separating from the Church of Ireland. It was 1815 before Methodists started to conduct their own baptisms. Because of continuing loyalty and other factors, many continued to use the Church of Ireland for baptisms for years after this and it was 1871 before all Methodists routinely performed their own.

For Methodist marriages, the earliest that I am aware of, date from 1835 (Belfast Donegall Square, the first Methodist church in Ireland). However in the mid 1800s there were only a few Methodist Ministers (Methodism relied heavily on lay preachers). So that shortage led to the continuing practice of marrying in the Church of Ireland. In addition, in the early years, many Methodist Meeting Houses were not licensed for marriages so that too contributed to couples marrying in the Church of Ireland.

As far as I can tell, the nearest Methodist Meeting House to Drumfin was in Sligo town. It has baptisms from 1819 but no marriage records, indicating their marriages were in the Church of Ireland. 

So to summarise, you are unlikely to find many Methodist baptisms before 1820. Few marriages before the 1840s and only a handful for many years after that. If there are no Methodist records in the location you are researching, I would search Church of Ireland records instead, as that’s the most likely place to find the relevant event.

Not many Methodist Meeting Houses have graveyards and so they may be buried in public or Church of Ireland graveyards (which are open to all denominations). According to my guide to Church of Ireland records, Kilmorgan’s appear to be combined with Emlafad.  They start in 1762. The originals are in the RCB library in Dublin and there is a microfilm copy in the National Archives in Dublin.  Some years are on the rootsireland site (subscription).

I see a death for Robert Lawson of Drumfin in 1877. 

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_returns/deaths_1877/020558/7214047.pdf

No Lawsons there by the 1901 or 1911 censuses, though there appear to be some in the townland in the 1990s. I see an Alison Lawson of Drumfin mentioned in the Sligo Champion on 29.11.1995 as winning a prize in a competition the newspaper had run. There are other newspaper reports throughout the 20th century which mention Drumfin and Lawson.