Friday 29 March 2013

A History Lesson....Setting the Stage


Setting the stage is all about knowing your history, not just your family history, but the events happening throughout the time of your family. This can serve as rich knowledge to understanding what motivated our ancestors to moved where they did.

The family history for our Lightbody line, which we have always heard was two paths, the Scottish and the Irish. While this seems to be accurate and can be supported by research, there are in fact two very distinctive Lightbody lines which appear to not be related to each other, and a great heroic family tale, that if true, places some Lightbody family lines in Scotland in the middle of a great historic event. 

Lets first set the scene before we examine the actual path of our name. These are my versions of what I have gleamed from resources and history books and documentaries so its just the basics.

Background History

Catholicism was flourishing in most of Europe and throughout England, Scotland and Ireland by the 1400's. With the creation of the Church of England by Henry VIII from the Catholic Church in the 1530's, a divide was created causing the beginning of many wars between the two "churches" and often times between England, now Church of England, and Scotland, France and Ireland who remained a Catholic majority.

During the mid and later 1500's there was a Protestant Reformation which eventually spread to France and some of those who fled persecution in France from the Catholic monarchy and church may have found refuge in Scotland in the late 1500's.

Scotland and France had a long history of working together in opposing the English and with the death of Queen Elizabeth,  James Stuart, a protestant who was King of Scotland became King of England as well.

In Ireland, the country was established by the Gauls which had converted to Catholicism by who we know today as St. Patrick.

The land we know as Ulster today (Northern Ireland) was owned by several Irish Catholic nobility. When one of these men, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone found himself in trouble with the English crown and to seek freedom he traded half his lands to Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton, two Scottish Noblemen.

These two men began the "plantation" of protestants from Scotland to Ireland. The land were located in Antrim and Down. There were 9-10,000 settlers in the first few years.

When Hugh O'Neill and other Irish noble families left in 1608, their 4 million acres of lands were confiscated by the English crown and King James decided to reproduce what Montgomery and Hamilton did.

Artisans, gentry from Glasgow, Dumfies, Wigton and Invernary relocated. There were two problems they faced however. First was there were not enough people to work the land so some of the native Irish Catholics, previously removed from these lands came back to work them which led to the second problem, rebellion by the native Irish population.

By the mid 1630's problems between the Church of England which saw the monarchy as the head of the church and the Church of Scotland who saw Jesus as the head of the church clashed, along with unsuccessful growth expected by some of the Scottish planters, a decline began and some moved back to Scotland and others moved to the Americas. 

When Oliver Cromwell invaded, over 11,000 Scottish and English soldiers arrived to put down the Catholic rebellions. Tens of thousands of deaths occurred with the scorched earth policy of Cromwell, a devote protestant. 

Most of the Catholics were pushed back to beyond the Shannon river in the south but eventually with many of the planters leaving, lands were taken back. 

In Scotland a famine in the 1680-90's led to large scale migration of generally lowland Scottish Presbyterians to the lands in County Down, Armagh, Antrim, where we eventually see most Lightbody names located. The estimated guess is between 50-80,000.

This is significant since Lightbodys are mainly lowland families.  In addition there were the 1715 & 1746 Jacobite or Catholic uprisings which saw tens of thousands and more also immigrate mostly to North America.

Between 1717-1718 over 5000 left the lowlands for Ulster
1725-29 there were thousands more with 6000 alone in 1728
1740's was another famine
1754-1755 another period of migration
1771-1775 saw 25,000 leave Scotland.

This was the migration of the Scottish to Ireland. Also between 1717-1775 some 200,000 also left Ulster for North America, Australia and Canada. Ireland was just a stopping point. 

The earliest documentation from vital statistic records in Scotland show the family name appearing in the around 1590 and in the first decade of 1600. It was not until the late 1600's and most likely the early 1700's that we can find similar documentation in the northern part of Ireland. 

There has been the odd Lightbody family in other parts of what we now know as Catholic Ireland, most settle in Counties Down, Antrim and Armagh. What documents so far the can be found indicate most of the Lightbody families arrived most likely around 1740-1750 and in what is now the United States, Lightbody families began arriving around the 1740's. In Co. Armagh 1743 is a date listed for a probate of two Lightbody men.


The Lines of Lightbody Families


The English Line
The English line can trace it's beginnings back to the Domesday Book of 1066 and the name Boda (body). This line was very particular in it's location remaining in the southern part of England and migrating only to the mid upper part of England. There are English Lightbody families that have migrated from England but most remained.

The Scottish Line
The Lightbody family has for the most part been regarded as protestant and in particular as Presbyterian. This is very important because Presbyterianism was born out of the Scottish Reformation in the mid 1500's. Most documents that can be found indicate protestants were either Presbyterian or Church of England/Church of Scotland/Church of Ireland.

In Scotland there are two potential lines that could both be very real yet the evidence to support these are limited. That however is common. The French Line and the MacGregor Line.

The French Line
Some researchers of the family name in Scotland believe, some of the lines have their origin back in France in the 1500's. As the French protestants fled Catholic France they immigrated to Scotland. In the same time period in Scotland the name LaBaudy begins to appear. The name, depending on the accent and the language could be translate to look like Leghbodie if spelt phonetically.

The MacGregor Line
This is a very interesting story for sure. During the time of the wars between Mary Queen of Scots and the English Monarchy, a man by the name of John Reynolds MacGregor and his son John, crawled across a lake of thin ice to warn their fellow Scots of an impending attack by the English from some cliffs the Scots were to pass throughout the next day.

Mary Queen of Scots knighted them Sir Archibald Reynolds Lightbody and Sir John Reynolds Lightbody in honour of their slight build. This story comes from Dorothy Therese Lightbody's family line.

If this is true then some lines may be connected to the clan MacGregor. No evidence has been found to substantiate the family story. Perhaps this may be our line!


What about the Irish Line? After all some of us are Ulster Scots! 
For some of the Irish lines this would be very accurate. I believe now that our particular line may have had only one generation born, raised and died in Ireland so I don't think that makes us Ulster Scots.

For me, Ulster Scots were those from the original planters from the 1600's who had their own culture outside of the Irish. Ulster Scots were not part of the main society. They were presbyterians living in a world often ostracized by the Church of England protestants in Ireland and the native Catholic Irish. 

Some may disagree but I think and believe, just as some of our ancestors did and have written, we are Scottish. All the stories we have heard from our elders, grandparents and great-grandparents are that the Lightbody family was from Scotland. While we can document only the Irish part at this point, if the Lightbody families were among those who did leave Scotland for Ireland then we can reasonable speculate the Scottish stories are very true. 

There are Lightbody families throughout these three counties in the first few decades of the 1700s. Some owned mills, others were involved with community and local events of the day. 

After a few decades in Ireland there began another migration of Lightbody families. Some returned to Scotland and others took the trans-Atlantic voyage to the Thirteen Colonies and what would later become the United States of America. We can find Irish Lightbody families (unsure if there is an actual connection to our branch) in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire and Delaware states prior to the American War of Independence.

However, our family remained in Ireland until 1812 when they decided on the New World and in-particular..... New York! Did they have family there? We don't know yet, but what we do know is that they never made it New York. Fate, destiny, and the British Navy had other plans.




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