Scottish and Irish ancestors

buckleywilson

Hi. I am back again and still finding it hard to locate Ferris and Parkhill ancestors. Now I have the McDonalds in the Ferris line and Pattison in the Parkhill line, both appearing to come form Scotland. This gives more information to look through as they have more records BUT is there a useful source to read about migration from Scotland to Ireland?
A Ferris was possibly at Trinity College, 1831 and I still don't know for sure who the Rev James Bain's parents are as they most likely come from Scotland.
I have gone back to 4 times great grandparents on my father's welsh side and am refusing to discover any bakc stot=ries until my Irish roots have gone back that far.
HELP please

robertbruce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Scots_people

Elwyn

Buckleywilson,

The broad focus or geographical area of this board is the Glens of Antrim. The history of Scottish migration to the Glens is slightly different to the rest of Ireland. In most of the rest of Ireland the main influxes started with the Plantation of Ulster (1610 onwards). However the Glens were settled quite a bit before that in the 1500s by Scots from the McDonald/McDonnell estates on Islay and adjacent lands. They were granted land in Co Antrim by Queen Elizabeth and moved many tenants from Islay, Jura, Colonsay. Gigha and Kintyre to the Glens and the Route areas in Antrim

You can read up about the plantation in “The Plantation of Ulster” by Philip Robinson. It goes into the subject in considerable detail.

Then you have “Antrim & Argyll Some aspects of the Connections" edited by Dr William Roulston. That explains a lot about the multiple movements between Argyll & the Glens.

“Family Names in the Glens of Antrim” by Brian S Turner gives considerable detail about the surnames found in the Glens and where in Scotland many of them originated. I don’t see Ferris or Parkhill there but McDonald gets a huge mention with pages of information on them. Patterson (of which Pattison is a variant) gets one mention.

Trinity’s list of old graduates is available on-line. You may be able to trace your 1831 Ferris there.

https://www.tcd.ie/library/

I don’t know what Rev James Bain’s denomination was. If he was Presbyterian, and was a Minister in Ireland, then the Presbyterian Historical Society should have details of his career and of his family.

https://www.presbyterianhistoryireland.com

Also if he was Presbyterian and qualified before about 1850, he will have studied in Scotland at either Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrew or Aberdeen universities. They keep good records of students from the 1800s and earlier. If you e-mail them with rough dates of when you think he was there, they may be able to tell you a bit about him, and where he originated. (Presbyterians couldn’t get a theological degree in Ireland till the Presbyterian Theological College opened around 1850).

There are no formal migration records for anyone moving from Scotland. It was a domestic journey and folk went back and forth all the time. And still do. At the closest point it’s about 11 miles across to Kintyre. For most folk in this area, it was more like moving down the road than formal migration.