When Did Our Campbell Relatives First Come to America?

Several family members have asked, 

“When did our Campbell ancestors come to America?” 

The short story is that we first migrated from Scotland to 

northern Ireland during the mid 16th century. 

And from the Londonderry Port 

we came to the Colonies in America, 

as did tens of thousands of 

Scotch-Irish clansmen during the 17th century. 

We will enter the story with Duncan Campbell.
(I will put our GGGG...Grandparents in italics.) 

Duncan was born in Scotland in 1645, 

arrived in Northern Ireland 

by the time he was a young adult, 

and wed Mary McCoy at the age of 26.

Kilmacrennan abbey and old Church of Ireland video still.  Click to see video

     It was in Kilmacrennan, County Donegal, Northern Ireland, that Duncan wed Mary. An absolutely lovely area. Sheep graze on blankets of green grass; thickets, groves, and woods cover the hillsides; and speckling the landscape are stone fences, ancient ruins overgrown with vegetation, and cemeteries filled with Celtic crosses. 

Celtic Cross

     Why did Duncan leave Scotland? And why was he so 'old' when he married Mary? Since Duncan was not the eldest son, he did not receive an inheritance and so he had to find a way to make a living. With growing economic problems and an expanding population in Scotland, northern Ireland was a popular destination. And Duncan's Great-Grandfather Patrick had been born in Drumboden, Ireland and inherited an estate that his father had been granted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. (We will come back to those stories later.) We also know that Mary McCoy was Duncan's second wife. We have the date of that wedding, and even though the Church of Ireland did not begin to keep records until 1818 and there are scant records of any kind from the 1600s, we have learned some things about their marriage with the help of Elwyn from the Ireland XO message board for Donegal. 

     The Campbells were Presbyterian, as were most Scots after John Knox founded the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Patrick's Great-Grandfather Archibald Campbell, 4th Earl of Argyll, was a strong Reformation advocate. While there were few Presbyterian churches in Ireland in the 17th century, ministers of Scotch-Presbyterian immigrants were initially allowed to use Church of Ireland buildings after regular services concluded. This was soon prohibited by Church of Ireland Bishops though, and most Presbyterian ministers were expelled from the country. 

     Meanwhile, construction in Kilmacrennan was completed on the town's Church of Ireland in 1622. And by the time Duncan and Mary wed in 1671, numerous

Tower ruins of Kilmacrennan Church of Ireland

Presbyterian ministers had returned to northern Ireland. They traveled between communities and held services in people’s homes or barns. Elwyn explained, “in 1671, the couple may have been married in a private house by an itinerant Presbyterian Minister, typically over from Scotland. Or they may have even married in the local Church of Ireland, in the absence of the opportunity to marry in the Presbyterian faith.” 

     Over the next twenty-five years at least six children were born to Duncan and Mary in their home by the small farming village of Drumaboden. Since one-third of children died as infants and another third before reaching adulthood, it's likely there were more children in the family. Growing up in on the family farm, Robert, James, Polly, Hugh, John, and Dugal would have had plenty of freedom after their chores were finished. Children regularly helped with the family's chickens, pigs, and milking cows, the family vegetable garden, and even with the herds of sheep and cattle, and crops by the time they were about eight. Friends would have been plentiful; successful farming was not possible without helping one another, and Sunday worship was a time when adults and children of all ages got to know one another well over the years. And there may have been hedge schools, for John Knox had been a strong advocate for schools in each Presbyterian kirk (church) session so that people could read the Bible for themselves.

The Harvest by mid 16th century Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder

     Threshing was a community event every Autumn; the hay was first in August, then the corn. It might have been during such a time that James wooed Margaret Beard. Her birth is also recorded in the village of Drumaboden, and in such a small community they very likely knew each other from a young age. It would have been a particularly exciting time since a new Presbyterian church had just been completed in Kilmacrennan. When they were married in 1703, theirs may well have been one of the first weddings conducted there; Rev. Robert Drummond was its first minister, from 1702-1712. 

     By 1706 they lived in Londonderry where their first child John was born. Londonderry is located on the River Foyle with a port some twenty miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. It was a cosmopolitan city and the commercial hub for Ireland’s trade. What an exciting place this would have been; people traveled to and from Scotland, the Campbell family’s home country, as well as England and Europe--and perhaps best of all--the new Colonies in America.

     The city of Londonderry was a relatively new city, yet located on one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in Ireland. Its name was changed from Derry to Londonderry when a Royal Charter was granted for the city. This was in honor of the London guilds who underwrote the city’s new construction along with its fortification, settlement, and the Protestant Cathedral of St. Columb’s. 

     It was King James I who granted the charter for this ambitious project. His royal name was changed from James VI, King of Scotland and son of Mary Queen of Scots in March of 1603 when Queen Elizabeth, Queen of England and Ireland, died. As great-great-grandson of Henry VII and cousin of Queen Elizabeth--who had no children--James was proclaimed King of England and Ireland. And so James became the first monarch of all three thrones. 

     As we might guess, the unification of England, Ireland, and Scotland under one crown was not without disturbances. Among other things, there was continued conflict among Catholics, Presbyterians, Puritans, members of the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, and other Protestants. Bloody contention stretched back through previous monarchs and forward through the centuries.  Disputes continue to this day, even regarding whether to use the original name of Derry as the Republic of Ireland prefers, or Londonderry as used by the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. 

     In our Campbell family Civil War Era letters, ancestors from Ireland are described as Scotch-Irish and as Protestants. Notice in this letter that Protestants is underscored to differentiate the Campbell family from Catholic Irish, predominate in America by that time.  One wonders what stories William might have heard to add such emphasis in this 1868 letter to his nephew Archibald David Campbell, my GGG-Great-Grandfather. 

     Going back to Londonderry. It was the first planned city in Ireland, and the last

Drawing based on 1611 plan by J. W. Carey

walled city in Europe. In this drawing  we see the elegant Renaissance style that had become popular around Europe. Construction on the town began in 1613 and the walls were finished in 1619; St. Columb’s Cathedral, which King JamesI/James VI intended to establish a broader Protestant presence in the northern Ireland area, began in 1628. The city walls are an impressive 12 feet thick and 35 feet tall, and one of the only European walls to have never been breached. They even withstood 105 days of siege by Catholic King James II/James VII in 1689. Still intact today, the walls form a walkway of about a mile around the old inner city in which our family  shopped in the market for daily meals and stopped to talk with neighbors and friends. 

     There must have been many conversations about the Scotch-Irish clansfolk who boarded ships in the prosperous Londonderry Port to settle in the American colonies. The six to eight week journey across the Atlantic was hazardous, but the ships departing from northern Ireland were safer than their European counterparts. Thousands departed from this port every year, many on overcrowded ships with cots lined up side by side. Lice, scurvy, dysentery, and boils were common, food quickly became sour and moldy, and anxiety took turns with boredom. But land that was repeatedly reported as plentiful, cheap, and bountiful made the trip well worth such hazards for the quarter of a million people who emigrated from northern Ireland over the century for religious and economic reasons.

     It was in 1726 that John's sister Polly left for the Colonies in America along with their brother John and his wife, several children and in-laws, and many other relatives and friends. On that ship were future soldiers in the American Revolution, one who became a Federal Judge, another who would marry the sister of Patrick Henry, several who helped form the constitution and government of Pennsylvania, and others who became leaders in North Carolina and Virginia. They landed in the bustling port of Philadelphia.

The Presbyterian Church is #4 in this late 1700s engraving of Philadelphia by George Heap

     Whether John, his other siblings, and his parents James and Margaret also traveled on that ship or at another time is not recorded. During those years a great wave of Scotch-Irish came to the Colonies in America, sometimes two or three ships a day. During one week in 1727 six ships arrived in the Philadelphia Port. We do know that John traveled with his sister Polly to North Carolina, that he married Rebecca White in Rockbridge, Virginia, and they had several children. Their second child, Archibald, was born in Bedford, Tennessee, in 1728.

     Our Campbell family had arrived and settled in America.