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Archiver > AYRSHIRE > 1999-01 > 0915631905


From: Iain Kerr <>
Subject: Re: Scots in Irish War?
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 06:11:45 -0800


At 17:10 05/01/99 , Pamela M Robins wrote:
>Hello fellow-searchers
>
> I have recently (in the last month) been told that my 3 x ggf,
>Thomas DEMPSTER, was in Ireland from 1799 to cir 1806, to do with a war.
>
> Thomas married Margaret LEES in Ochiltree in 1798 and their
>first child was born there later that year. Thomas is next heard of in
>Scotland cir 1806 in his native Carsphairn in Kirkcudbrightshire. In the
>intervening years, three more children were born (Susan 1799-1800; John
>1802; Susan 1804; they are listed on Margaret's Death Certificate in 1855).
>At various times, Thomas is described as a Shepherd or a Hand-loom weaver
>(of woollen cloth), associated occupations.
>
> Does anyone know of a war or skirmish in Ireland at the relevant
>time that might have been an inducement to Thomas to head across the Irish
>Sea, as either a soldier or a shepherd? I wonder, too, at the type of war
>that enabled him to take his wife, as obviously he did with the birth of
>three more children to testify to it.
>
> The only clue is that his eldest son, John, was reportedly born
>at "Embry Castle", so far unlocated. On the 1841 Census, John lists his
>birth place as Ireland, but on a later US census, he says Scotland! Neither
>his birth/baptism nor that of the two Susans has been found in Scottish
>records which lists the rest of the 14-children family. This gives some
>credence to the family's Irish interlude.

Pamela,

There was no "Irish War" in the years 1799 - 1806. There had been a major
republican insurrection in Ireland in 1798 which was fuelled by offers of
aid from revolutionary France (which in the event did not materialise).
The subject is well documented in "The Year of Liberty - The Great Irish
Rebellion of 1798"; by Thomas Pakenham; originally published in 1969 by
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London; reissued in 1998; ISBN 0297 81955 0.

The rebellion was strongly suppressed and the British Army garrisons in
Ireland reinforced over the following years. That may have been what your
ancestor was involved in.

Of course the major military activity at those times was concerned with the
French, initially the French Revolutionary War 1792 - 1803 then the
Napoleonic Wars 1803 - 1815.

Yours aye, Iain  -  in Windsor in the former county of Berkshire

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