All My Ancestors

This is my post for the 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture:

The upcoming 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture will be a Genealogy treasure “show and tell”.   Here are the details:  Genealogists are treasure hunters of a different kind. Instead of searching for riches, we dig for information. Instead of prizing gold, we value documents – the visual proof of the life stories of families that have passed before us.

Share with us the image of and the story behind a document (or documents) that have been valuable to you during your search for an Irish branch of your family. How and where did you find these documents? What are their significance to your research and/or why are they special to you? Here’s your chance to show off some of your genealogical “loot” at our online “show and tell”.

I joined the “Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture” on faith.   When I signed up, I didn’t know of any specific Irish ancestors–I suspect I have quite a bit of Scots-Irish heritage but I have not jumped the pond, as they say.

In September of 2007, I went to Ireland and, like thousands before me, fell in love with the country.  I wanted to have relatives from this beautiful, pastoral, verdant place.

Lately I’ve been on a Mitchell quest, and those who follow my blog who are not all that interested in the particulars of my ancestral research, may be tempted to stop reading now from Mitchell overload.

But supposedly, the Mitchells are from Ireland.

I don’t know this from any primary resource so I have no document to share.  yet.  However, I have seen it in enough other sources that it makes me want to believe it, and of course, to continue my search.

In her “Let the Drums Roll: Veterans and Patriots of the Revolutionary War who Settled in Maury County, Tennessee,” Marise Parrish Lightfoot indicates that

John Mitchell, born in Orange County, North Carolina in 1760, was a brother of James and Andrew Mitchell, discussed above.  They were the sons of Andrew and Mary McGowan Mitchell, who emigrated from Ireland in 1752 . . . .

So my document for this carnival is not a precious marriage record or even an online passenger list.  It is instead a mention in an apparently well-researched, documented book.  It provides the beginning for a search for documentation that my this line were indeed from Erin.

I don’t have a firm plan yet for how to affirm this hope.  I feel the need to first explore the immigration history from that time period–I have read some pertinent histories but need to re-read portions now with this date in mind.  A quick check of my well-thumbed copy of “Voyagers to the West” by Bernard Bailyn indicates I may have to search for a resource that covers an even earlier time.   Were there lots of Irish who came to America during this early time period?  The same source that says the Mitchells were from Ireland also say the first settled in the “Scotch-Irish Colony” in western Pennsylvania.  What was this colony?  Somewhere else I read that Penn’s agents were traveling through Ireland talking up the benefits of the new country, and that they were so successful, they had to eventually “shut the door,” they had so many takers .  I do remember going by one castle ruin while we were in Ireland that our guide told us was that of William Penn’s father or grandfather.  William Penn lived 1644-1718, so if my Mitchells were influenced by his messages, it was not first-hand.

So it’s not a primary document but it is a clue.  And I’m very happy to have a semi-firm connection with Ireland.