Jackson and Robinson connection?

Roots Ireland lists the following baptisms for children of Joseph and Ann (no surname) Jacksonin Co. Armagh.
Mary1808Co. Armagh
JacksonJane1813Co. Armagh
JacksonRobert1815Co. Armagh
JacksonSophia1816Co. Armagh

Place of residence for Jacksons in Armagh is Ballymagerny

There were 6 Jackson farms in Ballymagerny in the tithe applotment records for 1828:

http://www.irishgenealogyhub.com/armagh/tithe-applotments/loughgall-parish.php

By the time of Griffiths Valuation in 1864, there were just 1 Jackson farms there occupied by Mary (likely a widow) on plot 10 with 13 acres. Nearby on 11b was a Margaret Jackson in a farm labourer’s cottage. There was a Robinson farm nearby on plot 4, which might or might not be significant. It is a very common surname in Armagh. There were 764 Robinsons in the 1901 census of the county.

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=nameSearch

No Jacksons living there by 1901. These Robinsons (all Church of Ireland):

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Armagh/Loughgall/Ballymagerny/1015903/

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Armagh/Loughgall/Ballymagerny/1015910/

Death of Margaret Jackson in 1871, aged 79.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/deaths_retu…

Would this help? https://www.johngrenham.com/surnamescode/twosurnames.php?surname2=Robin…

Hi Lynn,

I am the descendent of Thomas Robinson and Emeline (Emily) Armstrong who married in 1848 in Mono Mills.  Thomas was my great great grandfather.  One of his daughters married my Blair ancestor.

I have had an autosomal DNA test at familytreeDNA but I was unable to find a match to you there.  Either we are descended from different Robinson families or you have used a different name for yourself there.  Please let me know if you can find a match to Fred Blair as that may help me with my Robinson research.

You can look at my Robinson family tree connections at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Robinson-3700

You can also send me a private message from that page.

Wishing you well,

Fred

Hello Patricia,

What a break through.  The baptismal years for Mary, Jane and Sophia all match exactly the birthdates that I have for these three.  John (born about 1811) would fit in nicely.  Robert may have died or chosen not to go to Canada.  Do you know if Ballymagemy was a town or a parish?  Does Roots Ireland indicate the religion and/or church for the baptisms?

Hello Elwyn,

The information that you have provided points strongly to a move away from Ballymagerny by almost all of the Jackson's.  I wonder what happened?

Thank you both for this great info!  If you have any suggestions as to further directions for my research on this family it would be greatly appreciated. 

Best wishes, Lynn

Hello Fred,

A possible connection to the Robertson line is definitely a long shot on my part, since Robinson may have been Mary Jane Robinson's married name.  In any case, I will keep an eye open for Thomas Robinson and Emily Armstrong.  It is interesting that Mono Mills is in Peel County and borders Halton County where my family settled.  Also, my John Jackson (2 times great uncle, son of Joseph Jackson) had a son (Joseph Henry) who married a Francis Armstrong, and a daughter (Lucinda) who married a George Robinson.  I suppose we shouldn't read too much into this since that area was welcoming a large number of Irish immigrants, and these are fairly common surnames. 

Good luck with your research!

Hi Lynn,
The family lived in the townland of Ballymagerny. Sophia was baptized in the Church of Ireland. Here's the record.
Name:Sophia Jackson
Date of Birth:07-Nov-1816

Date of Baptism:13-Nov-1816
Address:Ballymagerny
Parish/District:LOUGHGALL CI
Gender:Female
CountyCo. Armagh
Denomination:Church Of Ireland
Father:Joseph Jackson
Mother:Anne Not Recorded
Occupation:
Sponsor 1 /
Informant 1:
Sponsor 2 /
Informant 2:
Notes:
© 2020 Copyright Armagh Ancestry
www.rootsi
You can see the other baptisms on rootsireland.ie.
Patricia, glanvil3@aol.com

Patricia -

Thank you for this baptismal record.  I hope that knowing the parish and denomination will be a help with further research; and, having the birth date is great.  I had Sophia's birth as November 3rd, but that was an estimate obtained by working backwards from her age at death (i.e. years, months & days), so your info is official.  Obviously the correct family - hurray!  I would love to give Sophia's mother, Ann, a surname.  Unfortunately, she only appears with a given name in both Irish and Canadian records. 

With many thanks and very best wishes, Lynn

Hello Bob,

Thank you for the link to the John Grenham website.  All leads are worth following. :)

Lynn

Lynn,

The family were Church of Ireland (Anglican). The main parish church (in Loughgall town) has records from 1706 onwards (with some gaps).  There are also churches nearby at Annaghmore and Charlemont but their records start much later.

Ballymagerny is a townland. That’s an administrative land unit which is unique to Ireland.  It’s not a town and it’s not a parish. It’s in the parish of Loughgall and is 263 acres of agricultural land. In the 1901 census it had around 21 famrs and labourer’s houses with a population of 263. With the exception of 1 car driver, all the adults were engaged in farming.

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Armagh/Loughgall/Ballymagerny/

The modern Ballymagerny Rd goes through the middle of the townland, a mile or so north of Loughgall, off the Red Lion Rd.

The Newry Telegraph of 12th May 1829 lists Joseph Jackson of Ballymagerny as applying to register the freehold of his lands. (This would have been to ensure he was a registered as a voter for elections).

The Warder & Dublin Weekly Mail of  26th Sept 1846 mentions the marriage between A J Pringle of Sallyvale, Grange and Martha, second daughter of Wm Jackson of Ballymagerny, at Loughgall church on 10th September.

I can’t find any other mention of the family in the newspapers.

You ask why the family moved away. I can’t answer that specifically but would assume it was for the same reasons that 8 million other people left Ireland in the 1800s, namely economic betterment.

Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that. 

Other factors led to the continued emigration too, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything. 

Your family were farmers and would have been better off than most of the population(especially if eligible to vote because you had to have land over a certain value to be eligible to vote, so Joseph seems to have had had a reasonable sized farm. It’s possible to get the actual size from the tithe applotment records on the PRONI site, but they won’t show the precise location. Normally the farm went to the eldest son. The other sons were expected to fend for themselves. The daughters were to be provided for through marriage, save sometimes for the lucky one kept back to look after her parents in old age! So most people had to leave. In your case it looks as though your family must have felt there were better opportunities elsewhere. The sale of the farm would have paid their tickets and given them some capital on arrival in Canada. It looks as though most of the other Jacksons must have done something similar. There’s a likely widow there so I’d assume her husband died and her sons had already gone. 

I found some other Ballymagerny Jackson marriages to give you some information on the other families. Some of these may have stayed in Ireland.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1845/09284/5361719.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1848/09340/5381998.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1846/09300/5367229.pdf

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1849/09360/5389682.pdf

Marriage registration started in Ireland in April 1845. Prior to that you have to rely on church records. Not all churches have early records and of those that do, not all are on-line (especially for Protestant churches).

I searched the PRONI site and it has a record of Thomas Jackson of Ballymagerny having probate granted on 26thMay 1781. The will itself was lost in the 1922 fire but it at least give you a name of a possible ancestor from the 1700s.

The PRONI site also details 4 Jacksons from Ballymagerny who voted: Henry in 1815, Thomas 1815, William 1817 & Joseph 1817. To have a vote they would again have had to had a specified amount of land. So they were all farmers.

You could probably learn a bit more about your family by going through the Loughgall Church of Ireland records.  Some of them are on rootsireland (subscription) but you need to check what years they cover. You may find that they don’t have the earlier years (that’s quite common with that site). In which case you would need to go to PRONI in Belfast and search them there. (Or get a researcher to do it for you).

You could also search the register of Deeds records for mentions of your families. They are on-line on the LDS site and there is a copy in PRONI. Sometimes in those records in the 1700s you get 3 lives leases which provide names and ages which can be very helpful.

"Thank you for this baptismal record. I hope that knowing the parish and denomination will be a help with further research; and, having the birth date is great. I had Sophia's birth as November 3rd, but that was an estimate obtained by working backwards from her age at death (i.e. years, months & days), so your info is official."
Lynn, remember that this record is a transcription and transcribers make mistakes. A look at the actual register page should confirm the correct date.
Patricia, glanvil3@aol.com

Hello Elwyn,

Thank you so much for all the information and leads to follow, as well as the history of the times and the place where my ancestors lived.  I have a lot of work to do! 

Hi Patricia,

Thanks again for the baptismal record.  My husband and I are looking forward to visiting Ireland again when it is safe to travel again, and hope be able to look at the records in person. 

You both have really inspired me.  The work you do through Ireland XO is fantastic - thank you again!

Very best wishes, Lynn