Doreen Guerriero wrote: > > I am researching the family of Samuel HAGAN b.Oct.1,1794 in Parish > Kilroot,Co. Antrim,NI. He married Margaret MACDONALD about 1819. Their > children who lived were > James b.Feb.12,1820 Belfast, Margaret b.1822, Elizabeth b.1830, Jane > b.1832, Robert b. 1833, Samuel b.1840 all in Carrickfergus. > Griffith's Valuation states their location as > Carrickfergus/T/C/Fergus/Davys Street. Is Fergus the townland? > The family were Church of Eng. when they emigrated to Canada in 1844. > Does anyone know of a church they may have belonged to in Carrickfergus? Any > information on this family would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. > Doreen Guerriero Sault Ste Marie, Ont. > [email protected] Here's part of something I posted yesterday on the Scotch-Irish list. The Jonathan Swift referred to is of course the famous Dean of St Patricks Cathedral, and author of Gulliver's Travels etc etc. "Here's an extract from Victoria Glendinning's "Jonathan Swift" "Duly ordained, Swift was appointed vicar of the seaside parish of Kilroot in the north of Ireland, near Belfast and the coastal town of Carrickfergus. It was a dismal appointment. The little church at Kilroot was in ruins, though its dependent churches at Templecorran and Ballynure were usable. It was a strongly Presbyterian area. Swift's congregations were minuscule. If he had been frustrated at Moor Park - where at least there was gracious living, and a well-stocked library he could use, and intelligent conversation - he was even more frustrated in rural Kilroot. The elderly Richard Dobbs, who lived at Castle Dobbs half a mile away, was Swift's most interesting contact there, a strong Protestant and `a stern and upright man who suffered a good deal from the gout' - as did Sir William Temple. Swift spent much time at Castle Dobbs, and read in its library. In 1689, five years previously, during the Troubles, this corner of Co. Antrim had been the scene of epic drama. William's general, the German mercenary the Duke of Schomberg, had marched on Carrickfergus, and Dobbs, then the mayor, had been briefly put in jail by the (Catholic) governor. When Schomberg prevailed, Dobbs had been the one joyfully to hand over to him the town's regalia. Later in the year William III himself landed at Carrickfergus, and Dobbs had presented him with a loyal address. These were stirring tales to be retailed to the new vicar of Kilroot, Jonathan Swift. Schomberg had been killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when the Williamite army definitively overcame James II's forces. Swift had been in Ireland then, on his first brief absence from Sir William's household: he wrote two ponderous odes celebrating King William's victories. Years later, as Dean of St Patrick's, Swift had a memorial stone to Schomberg erected in his cathedral, after vain attempts to persuade the Schomberg family to fund a monument themselves. The inscription reads, reproachfully (in Latin): `The renown of his valour had greater power among strangers than had the ties of blood among his kith and kin.' In the peace, there seemed only stagnation. Richard Dobbs described Swift's parish, with the exception of his own family `and some half dozen that lie under me', as being `all presbyterian and Scotch, not one natural Irish in the parish, or a papist'. Swift's animosity towards Scottish Presbyterians was reinforced by Dobbs and by the lonely futility of his own ministry in Kilroot; all his life, Swift disapproved vehemently of dissenters and non-conformists, protesting bitterly against all and any moves towards tolerance and inclusion. Dissent always seemed to him a far greater threat to the Anglican Church than did Catholicism. Catholics in Ireland, he later wrote, were `altogether as inconsiderable as women and children. Their lands are almost entirely taken from them, and they are rendered incapable of purchasing any more.' The result was that Catholicism `will daily crumble away': 'Tis agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger, a more dangerous enemy than a cat; yet if a man were to have his choice, either a lion at his foot, bound fast with three or four chains, his teeth drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full liberty at his throat; he would take no long time to determine. The cat represents dissenters and non-conformists. Swift's convictions in this area verge on bigotry. In the light of the subsequent history of Ireland, the views of the sensible second wife of Swift's friend Lord Orrery have a prophetic quality (though neither she nor Swift could have conceived of the twentieth-century marginalization of the Anglican Church in Ireland). She wrote to her husband in 1751: `Swift's bitterness against the Presbyterians I am confident did a great deal of harm in keeping up the spirit of division amongst us, so unworthy in X-tians, and sowing dislike in the breast of one honest man to another honest man. Lady Orrery herself had used to abhor Presbyterians and Catholics equally, `yet I have so far got the better of these wrong prejudices as to see the merit of persons in both these sects, and to pray to God Almighty that he will be pleased mercifully to break down the middle wall of partition between us'. Swift, bored and disappointed in Kilroot, did what most young men in such a situation would do, and what he said he always did when something goes amiss in my affairs'. He got involved with a woman." If you want to know more about the woman, you'll have to read the book! Charlie