LIST.htm

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Lists of Earl of Donegal
Petitioners and Royal Land Grantees

genealogies@juno.com

Please write "EARL OF DONEGAL" in your subject line.

The list below is from a photocopy (not the more legible originals) of pages 313 to 326 of the South Carolina Council Journal No. 33, January 6, 1767 to December 22, 1767, obtained from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia, SC and available on microfilm BMP D552, CO 5/490, Pro Reel 48. A question mark is placed after possible errors.

The lists below display only the names of reyal land grantees and petitioners and their dependants. I do not know if the names of some passengers are not on the lists because they were neither royal land grantees nor petitioners and their dependants.

Original documents are always the best sources of information. Please help keep others from being misled by informing me of any omissions or errors found below.

If one of your ancestors is named on this list of Earl of Donegal petitioners, please permit me to post your e-mail and web page addresses, and any other information you have about your ancestors at this web site. Your cooperation may help us to:

1. establish contact with other descendants of our ancestors and other Earl of Donegal passengers, relatives who stayed in Ireland, etc.
2. learn more from each other about who our ancestors were, exactly where they lived before they left Ireland (I did), etc. and benefit each other in unforeseen ways.

For example, discovering more information about Reverend William Knox (named on the second list below) might help find ancestors, etc. of other passengers, if he accompanied an entire congregation to America (as did Reverend William Martin) since churches in America or Ireland may have kept records of him. According to the land grant list, he was born about 1743. Locating the 100 acres he was granted (he was probably not married when he left Ireland) might help locate the American church he attended and his descendants, who may know more about his origins.

Long ago I visited Brougshane, County Antrim, Northern Ireland because my Stewart ancestors and the White family are said to have been neighbors near there. I saw my exact first, middle and last names written on one of the centuries old tombstones beside a small but well built old rural Presbyterian Church in which I read eighteenth century White and Stewart family baptismal, funeral, etc. records, but was unable to trace my kinship to them.

More information about Earl of Donegal passengers who received royal land grants "at or near the Long Canes or in Craven County" follows the alphabetical list below. Numbers before each name indicate the number of passengers listed under that name. Numbers after names refer to the lines of the petitioner/grantee list below. Click on UNDERLINED passenger names to visit web pages about them. I thank possible descendants of Earl of Donegal passengers whose ancestor's family names are CAPITALIZED below for writing me. Click here to read their E-MAIL. How accurate are Earl of Donegal passenger and land grantee lists? Read ANALYZE.htm.

In the original records, there are three lists, which are in the following order:

1. a list of petitioners and their dependants
2. a list of land grant recipients
3. a second list of petitioners and grantees who are not named on the first list of petitioners

Why are there two lists of Earl of Donegal petitioners? Did those named on the second list refuse to swear (see Matthew 5.34) that they were Protestants? Do the names of non-Protestant passengers not appear on any if the lists because they did not qualify for the Bounty? Were all Irish Protestants then Presbyterians?

In order to show all members of each family with the land granted to its head of household, I merged the original list of land grantees with the two petitioner lists below. Blank cells in the left column indicate land grantees whose names were missing from both petitioner lists. For example, Eleanor White received 100 acres, the maximum a head of household without dependants was allowed; could she have been the same person as Elizabeth White, who also received 100 acres, but whose name was not on the list of petitioners?

In the table below, why are some names from the land grantee list (in the right column) different from those in the left (petitioner name) column? Might both names have referred to the same person? For example, the only man named Stewart on the passenger list is James Stewart (spelled Stuart on the land survey). I also know that James Stewart received the 150 acres granted to "John" Stewart, so the same person was meant by both names.

Might the above mistakes been due to the clerk having been careless, bored, senile, drunk, etc.? Who writes flawlessly? If hundreds of people were waiting on the clerk to finish, would he have had time to carefully reread what he had written, or to confirm everything he thought he heard?

While waiting for their names to be recorded, did petitioners line up haphazardly, or next to other members of their family, friends, interesting people met during the voyage, etc.?

I subtacted the ages given on the petitioner list below from 1767 to obtain approximate birth years. Did any passenger consider himself to be eighteen a few days or months before his eighteenth birthday?

Text in italics below is from the original grantee and petitioner lists.

In the Council Chamber.
Tuesday the 22: December 1767
Present
His Excellency Governor
Honorable Cthniel Beale, Henry Middleton, John Drayton, Daniel Blake, Esquires

The Clerk reported to the Board that in pursuance of his Excellency the Governors directions he had been on board the ship Earl of Donegal Duncan Fergusson Master and had sworn the Irish Passengers arrived in her to their being Protestants and haveing come over on the encouragement and bounty given by the act of the General Assembly passed the 25th day of July 1761 - agreeable to a List he had delivered in at the Board

Petitions praying to be allowed the said Bounty from the undermentioned persons were then presented and read.

After the list above is written: Ordered that the Public Treasurer do pay the Bounty of Four pounds and two pounds Sterling according to their respective ages to Messieurs Torrans and Pouag in Consideration of their Passages and the remaining Twenty Shillings Sterling to themselves agreeable to the directions of the said Act.

Ordered that the Secretary do prepare the following Warrants of Survey on the Bounty.
In the above table, information from two lists are merged.

Below is a second list, which followed the list of land grantees.

The following persons presented petitions setting forth that they were also arrived from Ireland in the said ship on the encouragement of the Bounty and therefore prayed to be allowed the same viz.

Ordered that the public Treasurer do pay them the Bounty agreeable to the directions of the said Act.