CHAPTER 26
The Tracy Family History
Our Ulster Scots
Scottish Highlands photo courtesy of Marc Sexton.
It is not my purpose to tell the story of
Ireland, nor the story of the northern one-quarter of Ireland, which has been
known for centuries as Ulster. I wish only to tell the story as it applies to
our people.
In 1607, King James I of England took over Northern Ireland
through the normal process. (King James is the one who wrote the bible.) Ireland
at that time could not be considered a nation. For centuries it had been a
savage land, controlled by an unbelievable number of savage clan chiefs who
fought one another like savage dogs. "Murder and robbery were considered the
only occupations fit for a gentleman." The common people had no rights.
You had three entities that were constantly fighting one
another with some intervals of rest: England, Scotland, and Ireland. “The Scots
never kept their word. The Irish never kept their word. The English always kept
their word, sometimes.”
King James I was the first Scottish King to sit on the
English throne in 300 years. He was raise a Presbyterian. However, the religion
didn't take.
Ulster was rather primitive at that time. Most of the land
was uncultivated, consisting mostly of forest and wild animals. Wars had wiped
out the inhabitants of some areas.
King James I wanted some form of stability (political,
religious, loyalty) in this region so he could maintain control. He decided to
plant settlers from England and Scotland. (Plantation: Remember that word as it
comes back into American Colonial history as our people establish plantations in
Virginia, which are still there today.)
King James I, being Scottish, of course, really didn't
care much for the Scots. Never the less, he figured it was better to import the
Presbyterian Scots to Ulster rather than leave the land controlled by the Irish
Catholics: Anyone but Catholics!
Practically speaking, he knew that the Scots were far better at farming, and
virtually any other endeavor, than the English. So he gave liberal terms to
those Scots who were impoverished, to leave their land of ancestry, travel just
a few miles across the sea to this new fertile land. Wisely, he also sent
English settlers to Ulster to rule over the Scots. The English settlers would be
sent to run things and make sure that the profits from Ulster were sent back to
the English rulers on a regular basis.
The Irish who remained loyal to the king received
extensive land grants. Other Irish who sold their souls to the English, took an
oath of loyalty, and joined the Episcopal Church of England, were allowed to
stay. It was a good deal for the Irish. These Irish, under this new arraignment,
would join with their traditional enemy, the English, and be protected from
their even worse enemies, the other “Savage Irish."
The Presbyterian Scots outnumbered the Episcopalian English
six to one. The English would own the land, usually. The Scots would farm the
land, usually.
Ulster would flourish under the Scots. As well as farming they would raise
livestock and develop a successful textile industry.
They're developed a strange relationship between all of the
races. The English owned the land and ruled over the land. The Scots having no
better choice worked the land. They had few rights. The English controlled the
government. The English ruled.
“Land, the source of wealth and political power was in Protestant hands.” Thus,
the Irish Parliament would be controlled by the Protestant property owners.
Ironically, those who controlled Ulster, the English landowners, did not live in
Ireland.
They lived in luxury in England. They had local
agents whose sole job was to extract every pound they could in rent in the
shortest period of time. (I wonder if this is where the American Corporations
got their policy of quarterly profit returns?)
“All colonists were required to be well armed." The Ulster Scot Presbyterians
would fight the Irish Catholics from the day they entered Ireland...to this very
day.
As for the Irish: "When the Scots landed in Ulster, they fell
upon their knees and prayed to the Lord, then fell on the native Irish and
preyed upon them." One-third of Ulster consisted of bogs, forest, and mountains.
This useless land was given to the displaced Irish. It didn't matter because the
Irish were Catholic. The Irish Catholics had no rights. Many Catholics say that
this really bad relationship has lasted to this day.
As you can see from this story, I am Scotch-Irish. However,
my last name is Tracy, a very traditional and proud Irish name.
Our Peter Wallace Sr. entered this land before the year of
1704. If he was born in 1682, and we believe he was married in Ulster in 1704,
then we can conclude that he immigrated as a young man.
Peter would marry Elizabeth Woods in Ulster. They would have six children,
all born in Ulster. Four would marry first cousins who carried the name Woods.
There would be much intermarriage of Woods and Wallace first cousins. When I say
that I am telling you the history of our Wallace line, I also mean the Woods
line, for they are the same.
I would like to point out that there are tens of thousands of
Woods-Wallace descendants today in America. It is a distinguished line and many
of our cousins, smarter than me, have researched the ancestry. However, what one
historian accepts as fact, another says is unproved. There are many question
marks, which get in the way of my story. I hope that someday all of the
Woods-Wallace historians and genealogists will get together and agree on just
one unproved version.
Descendants of John Woods
The progenitor of the Woods family in Ireland was said to
have been Sir John Woods. In fact, according to historians, he headed the only
Protestant Woods family in Northern Ireland. (To make clear--According to the
context of the times, Protestant would be the Episcopal Church of England. I
should point out that there were other English, even Scottish families also
carrying the name of Woods, not necessarily all related.) It is said he came
from Yorkshire, England.
Originally, the Woods were from England. (Woodses, as was the original spelling,
is a traditional English name. Somewhere along the line the ‘es’ is dropped.)
They might have made their way to Scotland then to Ulster.
Cromwell arrived (invaded) Ireland in 1649, with an army of
20,000 troops. In the English army was a trooper named Woods. (Even though he
was in the English army and a Protestant, it is possible he was residing in
Scotland at the time of his entering the army.) Upon ending his military stint
in 1654 (?), he decides to stay in Ireland, provided with a land grant for his
military service. Of course, this land was forfeited by the disloyal Catholics.
In Ireland, it is not long before our Episcopalian Woods
become Presbyterians.
His wife, Isabel Bruce, is thought to have been a descendant
of King Robert Bruce of Scotland. King Robert Bruce and William Wallace were
equally famous. The two were contemporaries, born about the same time. So it is
possible that we all descend from Scotland's two greatest heroes.
This particular family, it would seem, actually belongs to
the vast bourgeois, (the social class between the very wealthy and the working
class; middle class.) except for the allied lines of marriage. However, they
were a proud people who believed in fighting...yes, even dying for what they
believed to be right.
We have a problem with tracing our ancestry in Ireland. In
1922 the Republican Army burned the hall of records. The Woods research was done
earlier than the burning but can not now be verified.
What we have from the Irish years comes down from family
tradition, generation by generation.
There is very little known about the children of Sir John and Isabel, except
that they did seem to have one son, John Woods Jr., and possibly a son, Thomas.
We come down through an incomplete line to our Elizabeth
Woods and her brothers.
From this Cromwellian soldier comes the following family:
Generation No. 1
1. JOHN WOODS, b 1654 in County Merth, Ireland. He married ELIZABETH WORSOP in
1681. She was born November 15, 1656. It is believed that she came from an upper
class family.
The family historian, Ruth Petracek, in her research finds
that historically the families of Wood and Woods (with an 's') to be two
different lines. However, whenever you are dealing with genealogy there are
rarely absolutes.
Children of JOHN1 WOODS and ELIZABETH WORSOP are:
2. i. ELIZABETH2 WOODS, b. 1681 (1682-1684?), Ulster, Ireland; d. 1745,
Rockbridge Co., Virginia.
ii. JAMES WOODS, b. Bet. 1684 - 1690.
iii. WILLIAM WOODS, b. Bet. 1684 - 1690.
iv. ANDREW WOODS, b. Bet. 1684 - 1690.
v. MICHAEL WOODS, b. Bet. 1685.
vi. JOHN WOODS III, b. Bet. 1685.
Generation No. 2
2. ELIZABETH2 WOODS (JOHN1) was born 1681 in Ulster, Ireland, and died 1745 in
Rockbridge Co., Virginia. She married PETER WALLACE SR. Bet. 1704 - 1705 in
Ulster, Ireland. He was born Bet. 1680 - 1682 in Scotland, Highlands, and died
Bet. 1723 - 1724 in Ulster, Ireland.
PETER WALLACE SR marries ELIZABETH WOODS: What their lives were like living in
Ulster--
As I told you before, as to his birth, we have a date of 1680
and another of 1682. Also, another source says he was born in the Highlands.
Family tradition says we are Highlanders. (Not all of our people agree with
this.) The date of death in 1724 is approximate. It is possible that he died a
year before.
The Lowlands are the fertile farm lands. Ulster is fertile
farm land. It makes sense that the Lowlanders made up the majority of the
immigrants to Ulster because this was their profession.
Nevertheless, when you are starving to death, it matters not
if you are a Lowlander, or Highlander. You go where your best chances are of
staying alive, to Ulster.The Presbyterians were confined to Ulster. They had no
political standing, thus they were open to persecution.
Peter Wallace Sr. and Elizabeth Woods married in 1704/05. In
the year of 1704, the English government, in concert with the Episcopal Church
of England, reintroduced the "Test Act” which invalidated all marriages outside
of the Church of England. This means that all Presbyterian and Catholic
marriages, from the beginning of time to the end of time, were invalid.
Under the “Test Act” Presbyterians were not allowed to be
married by their own ministers. Those who disobeyed the law were prosecuted in
Episcopal courts. We can then assume they were thrown in jail. The children were
then declared bastards. A man could be prosecuted for sleeping with his own
wife. Presbyterian services could only be held at night with the sermons
required to have prior approval.
The Presbyterians were allowed to hold public positions only
of low level. But to hold such a position required taking the communion of the
English Church. The Scots were not allowed to hold high government positions or
military rank; except those who sold their souls to the English.
There was more to the “Act.” Presbyterian churches were
closed. A Presbyterian could be thrown in jail for teaching school. Some
ministers were thrown in jail for preaching in public.
Education was restricted. You could not own a horse worth
more than 5 pounds. They could not buy, lease, or inherit land. However, if the
eldest son converted to the Church of England then he could inherit, and all
inheritance went to him.
In 1715, there was a Jacobite Rebellion. (The Jacobites were
always rebelling.) The English, being pragmatic, allowed the Presbyterians,
contrary to law, to join the English army. Our people fought loyally for the
king, then when it was all over, they were threatened with prosecution for
disobeying the very law. (Strangely, the Scots in Ulster were loyal to the
English monarchs, thinking that the true villains were the king’s advisers.)
“...the Presbyterians of Ulster...while uniformly loyal (to the king) they
received no favors in return.”
The Presbyterian Scots may have gotten what they thought was a good land
deal by moving to Ulster. But as you can see there were strings attached.
The Scots leased the land, developed the fields, raised
livestock and, in the beginning (from1607), made the previously undeveloped
earth prosperous.
As time went on the English landlords would raise the rents,
and raise the rents, and raise the rents again until the Scots were forced off
the land. When the leases expired the land was put up to the highest bidder.
When the landlords found that they could make more money using the farmland for
the sheep industry, and other livestock, they stopped the farming and used the
land for grazing. This deprived the Scots of the simplest crops necessary to
stay alive.
Landlords were pressured not to allow Presbyterian church
buildings on their property. Homes and farms were not leased to Presbyterian
tenants.
When the Scot families were forced off the land, the
landlords would bring in two Irish families to live in the same house, doubling
the labor force. To the greedy English this seemed like a good deal: double the
work force for half the price. The Irish were so desperate that they would
accept any terms. However, the Irish were not "fond of the plow." The once
prosperous farms deteriorated under the Irish tenants.
There were “Test Acts” and then “Toleration Acts," where
the Presbyterians were actually tolerated, not persecuted as much. It then
became a whole different ball game. It could really become crazy. At times the
Catholics would be the most persecuted, then it would come time to persecute the
Presbyterians and not worry so much about the Catholics. The Episcopal Church
could get so busy persecuting the Presbyterians that they would leave the
Catholics alone. During these interludes, Catholic priests could go about their
business as usually, building churches, running schools, and everything else
that Catholics do. Catholic lawyers could even practice in court.
The Church of England forced the Presbyterian Scots to pay
tithes to the English church. Sometimes the tithes would be more than the rent.
The greatest enemies were the landowners who were mostly
English. However, there were also the Irish and Scottish landowners who had sold
their souls.
The lives of our Ulster Scots depended on how the English
Monarchy, Church and Parliament felt on any given day.
Over the generations the Scots lived in Ulster it was a constant ebb and flow.
What history I have given you is the generic version. The persecutions, or times
of toleration, could change from one day to the next. You could have a
Protestant monarch one day and Catholic the following day.
The point I want to make is that the story of Ulster I have
told is true at times, but not all times. Again, ebbing and flowing over many
generations, different administrators and different monarchs produced different
policies at different times.
However, at no times was it pleasant for our people living in Ulster.
NOTE: If the Episcopal Church of England is not the true church than there is no
problem. If, however, the Episcopal Church of England is the true church, then
we are all in a lot of trouble!
Children of ELIZABETH WOODS and PETER WALLACE SR are:
1. William Wallace, b. 1706
2. Samuel Wallace, b. 1708
3. Andrew Wallace, b. 1711
4. Adam Wallace, b. 1713
5. Susannah Wallace, b. 1716
6. Peter Wallace Jr., b. 1719, Ulster, Ireland; d. 1786, Rockbridge,
Virginia.; married Martha Woods, 1744, in Virginia; b. 1720, in Ireland; d.
1790, in Virginia. He married Martha Woods, daughter of Michael Woods and Lady
Mary Campbell, his first cousin. (Historians refer to her as Lady Mary Campbell.
This would denote noble birth.) I descend from Peter Wallace Jr.
In the previous story I have told you how our
people lived in Ulster during the good times. As for the bad times: As in
Scotland, there would be times of famine. In 1716, the sheep herds were hit by a
rot. Then a severe frost came all over Europe and destroyed the food supplies.
In 1718, there was "a slow confluent small-pox, fevers and other afflictions."
Between the years of 1714 and 1718, there was insufficient rainfall. To add to
the misery, in 1718, the rents were raised 200-300%. In 1725, grains sold for
twice to three times normal. In winter, the people subsisted entirely upon
potatoes and when these ran out, as in Scotland before, families were forced
onto the roads to beg for food.
In 1716, an Archbishop wrote, "Upon the whole I do not see
how Ireland can on the p'sent foot pay greater taxes than it does without
starving the inhabitants and leaving them entirely without meat or clothes. They
have already given their bread, their flesh, their butter, their shoes, their
stocking, their beds, their house furniture and house to pay their landlords and
taxes. I do not see how any more can be got from them, except we take away their
potatoes and butter milk, or flay them and sell their skins."
Between 1700 and 1770, the country was wretched and broken
hearted. Agriculture was miserable, there was a chronic scarcity and even
starvation, little commerce, no manufacturing. “There was nothing left to induce
men to stay in Ulster.”
How our Ulster Scots survived, I do not know. But survive they did, otherwise I
would not be here to write this story…and pity the poor Irish.
For years it was up and down. The greater the persecutions
the greater the immigrations. “...each emigrant carrying away a sense of
intolerable wrong.”
Our people started looking to the colonies. "The scarcity and
dreariness of provision still increases in the North. Many have eaten the oats
they should have sowed their land with…The humour of going to America still
continues."
In the 1720's, there were crop failures, which forced mass
immigration to the colonies. Famine was the major cause of immigration in the
1720's. In 1723/1724 Peter Wallace Sr. died. With that event, our people decided
once again to "get out of there." It was off to America.
Peter's widow, Elizabeth, her six children, along with her
brothers, Michael, William, James and Andrew (Woods) and their families boarded
ship. Michael Woods family alone had eleven children. Michael's wife, Mary, was
of the might Campbell clan of Argyle. Nothing is known of Lady Mary (Campbell)
Wood's brothers; James, Gilbert, and Alexander. It is possible they too were on
board. It is also possible that other family members, whose relationship is
unknown, were also on board. Remember, our people always moved as families,
members of clans, and communities.
We all know from school why everyone immigrated to America.
It was to escape oppression. However, one must understand the people and their
purposes in life in the context of the times. For generations, these people knew
nothing but oppression. They did not know any difference. To them oppression was
normal. Some did indeed flee oppression so they could have freedom of religion
and political thought. However, most simply immigrated to get cheap, fertile
land and for the chance of a better life.
With this in mind, every Ulster-Scot family had members who
immigrated. In time one-third of the entire population would immigrate. The
Scots were always an immigrating people, mostly traveling to the continent. They
would go as members of clans, keeping among themselves, establishing they're own
Scottish communities, dealing with and trusting only other members of their
clan. They would even import their Scottish wives. Until King James I, they
never immigrated to England. They were not welcome there.
When necessary, they could integrate themselves quite well
into new societies and countries. The following story tells just how well. In
frontier Canada the Governor General, a Scot, made a tour of the wilderness. He
came to a Hudson Bay Company fort, managed by a Scot. (All Hudson Bay managers
were Scots.) He told the manager that he wanted to meet a typical Indian. The
manager looked over the band of Indians at the fort. Picking out the fiercest
brave he said, "Would ye come over here Macdonald."
There were three main reasons for the
immigrations: The increase of rents; The Church of England clergy using
“vigorous methods in payment of their tithes;” The success of ship’s agents.
This takes some explanation. The ship’s captains were paid
for every passenger they could place on board: The more passengers, the more
money for the captain. The ship’s captains would send their agents into the
countryside to hustle up business. The agents were not above exaggerating the
benefits of the new world. They promised plenty of fertile, cheap land, freedom
of religion, protection from excessive government, no tithe or taxes, even free
land. The friendly Indians were awaiting them with open arms.
Such was our Presbyterian exodus that in the year of 1728, in
the month of July alone: “...that the following were awaiting sailing to the
colonies: 3 ships at Larne, 5 at Derry, 2 at Coleraine, 3 at Belfast, 4 at Sligo.”
The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia
The Scots had done their job well. They had developed a primitive land for the English. Now the English wanted the Presbyterian Scots out of Ireland.
Recommended books
Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America, by
Charles Knowles Bolton, published in 1910. It has good information on Ulster and
the Colonial Scots.
Another book on the history of Ulster is The Scotch-Irish
in Northern Ireland and in the Americas, by Maude Glasgow. Just like the
history of Scotland, the truth is in the eyes of the beholder. Imagine the story
as told by a Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Catholic. With a name like Glasgow,
you can guess whose side she is on.
At this point I would like to introduce you to the Reverend
Neander M. Woods and his massive works The Woods-McAfee Memorial,
published in 1905. It is 503 pages with an extensive index. At this time, 2003,
the book is a rare item and not available on the Interlibrary Loan System except
in microfilm. If you have ever tried to research using microfilm then forget it.
It is impossible to work with.
Fortunately, it is available in reprint through Higginson
Book Company, 148 Washington St., PO Box 778, Salem, Mass 01970. The type is
light but easily readable.
The modern day published family historian is Ruth Petracek.
She has spent considerable time and money doing research on our ancestry. She
has published several books with genealogy, and often times fascinating
information. Her books are homespun. They certainly do the job, and well.
Unfortunately, all of her books were limited editions, just
for the cousins, and have not been available for over 20 years. Ruth Passed away
in 2003. A lot of the information in this chapter is based on Ruth's work.
My family history web site has 79 chapters. If you would like to
know more about the other chapters then go to my
Home Page
www.thetracyfamilyhistory.net