Thompson in South Africa

Thompson/Thomson is a very common name in Co Londonderry. Looking at the 1901 census of the county there were 741, 42 of whom lived in or close to Coleraine. Can you be a bit more specific? Give us the names and rough years of birth of ancestors you know who were born in the county. Did any of them marry in Ireland?

What I can say by way of general comment is that if your ancestors were Presbyterian then they probably originated in Scotland and moved to Ireland in the 1600s.

Thanks. I will send details.Very interesting about moving from Scotland. Why would they have done that? My Irish history is very limited, will also do some research.

William Thompson was born In Coleriane in about 1820. He married Charlotte Yates. His children John, William, Anna Amelia appear to have been born in Ireland. The record shows they were in South Africa in 1848 when the fourth child was born. My  husband is descended from the son William whose birthdate in Coleraine is given as 30th March 1845. Many thanks.

Anne,

Statutory birth registration started in Ireland in 1864, registration of non RC marriages in April 1845. Your couple married and had children before those dates. So you need to rely on church records. Not all have survived and not all are on-line. Coleraine 1st Presbyterian baptisms & marriages start in 1845; the 2nd has baptisms from 1842 and marriages from 1809; the 3rd has baptisms from 1862 and marriages from 1845. Copies of those records are held in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast. If you can’t get there yourself you may need to employ a researcher.

I had a look in the 1831 census for Coleraine. There were 3 Thompson families with males in:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1831/Londonderry/Coleraine/Coleraine/Coleraine_Town_Meeting_House_La_Preaching_House_Lane/159/

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1831/Londonderry/Coleraine/Coleraine/Coleraine_Church_Street/231/

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1831/Londonderry/Coleraine/Coleraine/Town_Of_Coleraine_Church_Street/231/

One of those may well be William’s family. All were Presbyterian.

Being Presbyterian more or less guarantees Scottish origins.  The broad background is that in the 1600s, some 100,000 Scots settled in Ireland, mostly in Ulster.  That represented something like 10% of the Scottish population of the time. In the early part of the 1600s they came as part of the Plantation of Ulster or in the case of Counties Antrim & Down the Hamilton & Montgomery settlement. In the 1640s a 10,000 strong Scottish army came to Carrickfergus under General Robert Munro. It was disbanded in Ireland and many of the soldiers decided to stay on (because land was easy to obtain), and then finally in the 1690s there was a serious famine in Scotland and that led to 50,000 Scots moving across. Scotland’s only 13 miles away at the closest point. Not a big journey even then, and people were back and forth all the time.

The Scots settlers brought Presbyterianism with them. Presbyterianism was founded in Scotland by John Knox in the 1500s. (The native Irish were Roman Catholic).

So to summarise, with your family, what you have is someone with a Scottish surname, living in a part of Ireland  heavily dominated by Scots and whose religious denomination was Scottish. So without a shadow of a doubt, your family will be of Scottish origins.

If you are interested in reading a bit more about your family background, I can recommend “Eagles Wings – The journey of the Ulster Scots & Scotch-Irish” by Dr David Hume. It takes you through the history of the move to Ireland and then explains why in the mid 1700s and later so many of those Scots settlers were dis-satisfied with life in Ireland and moved again to North America or elsewhere.

Many thanks. This is fascinating.