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Wakefield Memorial

Author: Homer Wakefield

Detroit Public Library, Burton Historical Collection: 929.2 W1374W

This book contains the history and genealogy of the Wakefield family of Boston.

Wakefield, Homer. Wakefield Memorial, Comprising an Historical, Genealogical and Biographical Register of theName and Family of Wakefield. Bloomington, Ill: Priv. print. for the compiler [Pantagraph Printing and StationeryCo.], 1897.

CHAPTER X.

THE ANGLO IRISH-AMERICAN FAMILY.

A CONSOLIDATION OF THE POSTERITY OF THE EMIGRANTS

MATTHEW, DAVID, AND ANDREW WAKEFIELD.

COMMON ORIGIN AND ANCESTRY.

Practically all, if not entirely all, of the Wakefields that settled in Pennsylvania, and as will be seen, others settling

later in New York and New Jersey, emigrated directly from Ireland, and are descendants of a common ancestor who

came from England before the middle of the seventeenth century. A traditional history, universal among this branch

of the family, and one that varies but little, in its essential features, has been received by the compiler of this work,

from descendants, now scattered in all parts of America. An epitome of this tradition begins with the emigrant from

England to Ireland. It appears that he was an officer of an English army stationed in Ireland for the purpose ofprotecting a forcibly established colony there, and that he shared with this colony a division of land, and that trouble

was encountered in holding the granted estate until the complete subjugation of Ireland by Cromwell in 1649-50.

One representative of this family has named the Norman invasion as the occasion of the settlement of his ancestors,

but this is doubtless erroneous, and the plantation of Ulster, before the middle of the seventeenth century is probably

the real incidence. History tells us that in the plantation of Ulster, Tyrone, Donegal, Armagh, Caven, Fermanagh,

and Derry, were parcelled out among English and Scotch colonies. The site of Derry was granted to citizens of

London who fortified and armed it. As an illustration of the difficulty encountered in holding said estates we quote

from history:

"In 1635 the English army was disbanded, and the Catholic Insurgents, in 1641. attacked Dublin and soon became

masters of the whole country. Ormond was forced to surrender Dublin and the inextricable knot awaited Cromwell's

sword."

The first official record of a Wakefield in Ireland, we find in the Remembrances of the Exchequer, Dublin; John

Wakefield is mentioned under date 1637. (See Records of Ireland, p. 610, pub. 1821-1825.)

In The Landed Gentry When Cromwell Came to Ireland, by John O'Hart, Dublin, 1884: Among the enrollments of

the adjudications in favor of the 1,649 officers, formerly designed the "49 lots," preserved in the office of the chief,

John Wakefield is enrolled.

These adjudications refer to the arrears of the commissioned officers who served Charles I before the 5th of June,

1649, in the various wars of Ireland. The index locorum of these enrollments is given on pp. 638-647 of the Recordsof Ireland, above mentioned. (See 3d ed. of O'Hart's Irish Pedigrees.)

It is confirmed by the above official records that the above-named commissioned officer in the English army of

Charles I was the landed proprietor of official record, which establishes without doubt the truth of the family

tradition as to their original progenitor. It is proper to say here that Charles I succeeded his father, James I, in 1625,and it was he who so much persecuted Puritans in England, and was responsible for their enormous emigrations to

New England. Many of these non-conformists, seeing in Ireland an opening for colonists, apparently equal to that of

America, were easily induced to join the English army for its conquest.

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We have no official records of the family relation of this progenitor, but we feel justified in assuming that the family

tradition, that two brothers were fellow colonists in Ireland, one of whom attained prominence in the army, and the

other in politics, is correct. In confirmation of this we herewith submit a record, which doubtless refers to the latter:

"Alderman Thomas Wakefield, Ulster's office, Dublin, buried in St. Werburgh's church, February 19, 1658." (See p.

1,063, General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales), by Sir Bernard Burke. It will be seen that hisarmorial bearing indicates his descent, either directly or indirectly, from the Yorkshire, England, family.

There is a family tradition that one of the early colonists in Ireland, William Wakefield, emigrated to America at a

very early date, but not being infatuated with American pioneer life, he returned, and settled in Ireland. If this

tradition is fact, it will be seen that there were probably three original Anglo-Irish emigrants. Turning to the records

of American families, we find the above tradition substantiated, in part, by records of a William Wakefield, who

sailed from Southampton, England, in May, 1638, on ship "Bevis," Robert Batten, master, with wife or sister, Anne,

William being aged 22, and Anne, 20 years. He was probably a brother or cousin of John Wakefield, of Wells andBiddleford, Me., as he accompanied on the above voyage, Annis Littlefield, wife, and several children of Edmund

Littlefield, father-in-law of the said John Wakefield. (See p. 136.) This William Wakefield, after eight years of

residence in Hampton, N.H., and Newbury, Mass., disappears entirely from American records, and may have

returned to the mother country, and fulfilled the tradition above given.

We have failed to obtain from the present day descendants, in Ireland, any data, necessary to the completing of the

line of descent to either themselves or their American cousins, so we again take up the traditions of the latter: Doctor

Albert Wakefield, who we will assume to be the son of the emigrant and military chieftain, John Wakefield, was asurgeon on the staff of William of Orange, when on his Irish invasion, and at the battle of the Boyne, July 1, 1690,

he dressed the wound of William with such skill, and so won his confidence and good will, that on the completion ofthe conquest, at the battle of Aughrim, July 12, 1691, by William's request, an estate, comprising the site of the

battleground, was granted him, and is now the property of the male line of descendants. Mr. David B. Pilch, of

Jersey City, N. J, a descendant, has in his possession a piece of William's waistcoat that was saved by the surgeon

and handed down to posterity as a memento of the historic occasion. Referring again to history, we find a detailed

account of the incident that is not without interest to the reader, and especially to the descendants of Dr. Albert

Wakefield:

"Some of the English dragoons approached the river and were fired upon by the Irish. They returned the fire, andwhile the attention of both sides was engaged by the skirmish, a party of Irish cavalry moved slowly down towards

the river, and halted behind a low hedge, and then wheeling about again retired. The movements of the king and the

group of officers accompanying him had been observed in the Irish army, and two field pieces were sent downconcealed in the center of the cavalry. The guns had been placed behind the hedge when the horsemen withdrew,

and when William rose from the ground and mounted his horse fire was opened. The first cannon shot killed two

horses and a man by his side. The next grazed the King's right shoulder, tearing away his coat and inflicting a slight

fiesh wound. Had the aim been slightly more accurate, or had the gunners fired with grape instead of round shot, it is

probable that the whole course of history would have been changed. The rumor spread through both armies that theking was killed, but the wound was a slight one, and having had it hastily bound up the king rode quietly through the

camps in order to show the men that the wound was not serious." (Battle of Boyne. Henty's Orange & Green: A Tale

of Boyne and Limerick. P. 148.)

Let us now turn to history in search of the conditions and circumstances under which the family estates were first

granted, surrendered, and later re-granted.

"It will be remembered that in 1642, in consequence of the dimensions which the Rebellion had then assumed,confiscated between two and three million acres of Irish soil. Debenture bonds were issued payable in land when the

country should be reconquered. Bonds for a million acres had been taken up, and money raised on them, for thetroupe sent to Ireland previous to Cromwell's arrival. Similar debentures were issued afterwards for Cromwell's own

army, not thrown upon the market like the first, but given to the soldiers in lieu of their pay. The intention was that

the men who conquered Ireland should remain to hold it. The country was to be occupied, in old Roman fashion, by

military colonies. * * * The Cromwellian conquest had been in fact a resubjugation of Ireland by England and in the

name of England. English authority had been, for the first time, completely established over the whole Island. The

new protestant gentry were shrewd men of business who meant to incur no more risks than they could help. They

had come to Ireland to push their way by English energy and enterprise.

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"So rapidly under the Cromwellian despotism had the wealth of Ireland increased, that having been brought to the

lowest depths she was now able (1663). after defraying all her own expenses, to settle on the King a permanent

revenue of 30,000 a year.

"So went matters all through the year 1687, and for ten months of 1688, when the news came that the Prince of

Orange had landed and that the King was a fugitive. Except in Ulster, among the persecuted Presbyterians, theEnglish could count on no friends in Ireland; and without a party among themselves, would be too weak to resist the

reviving energy of the native race.

"The uncertainty was at an end. William's overtures were construed into a consciousness of weakness, and all

Catholic Ireland was called under arms. The property of the protestant farmers and gentlemen was generally seized.

Cows and sheep were driven off; all was gone in three months, to the value of a million of money.' What could notbe consumed or carried off was destroyed, that 'the damned whigs might not have the benefit of it.' The gentlemen

throughout Ulster armed their tenants as well as they were able, and re-established their disbanded militia."

"The repeal was passed, Every one who held an estate under the acts of settlement was dispossessed. The old

proprietors were re-instated in their inheritance, and made the happy owners of the wealth which had accumulated

there. The rejected colonists were to receive compensation when they could get it. The Irish Catholics were thus

restored to all which they had lost by the rebellion of 1641. There remained to be recovered the forfeitures from the

Elizabethian wars and the six counties of the Ulster settlement. Process taken upon these was as complete as it was

summary. Almost all the leading Protestants in Ireland were comprehended by name in one sweeping act of attainer.Two thousand six hundred land owners, commencing with the Archbishop of Dublin and the Duke of Ormond, were

declared guilty of adherence to the Prince of Orange, and to have forfeited their estates by treason. The conditions of1651 were reversed. Then all Catholics were held responsible for the rebellion of 1641; now all Protestants were

partisans of the Prince of Orange (1689)."

"To King William himself the Irish Protestants were enthusiastically grateful. He had come in person to fight their

battle, and he had been wounded in their cause. Wherever he went he freely risked his life, and he was known to be

incapable of being influenced by mean considerations."

"Among the Scotch and English settlers in Ireland none had deserved better than the Non-conformists, none hadbeen worse rewarded. When the High Church party went with Ormond and the Kilkenney Council, at the close of

the rebellion of 1641, a Puritan army recovered the country to England."

"The Ulster Calvinists had won immortal honor, and saved England half the labor of re-conquest, by their share in

the defense of Derry. In them there was a vigorous and living power in antagonism to Popery."

"The Irish established a clergy, the Irish peers and the great land-owners were ardent High Churchmen, dreading

nothing so much as to be confounded with the Cromwellians, to whom most of them owed their estates; and, though

reconciled outwardly to the revolution by the want of discrimination in James Parliament, which had notdistinguished between them and the Calvinists, yet they were loud as ever against principles of church government

which tended, as they were pleased to say, to Republicanism."

"And now commenced the Protestant emigration, which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of English interests,

and peopled the American sea-board with fresh flights of Puritans. Twenty thousand left Ulster on the destruction of

the woolen trade. The stream had slackened, in the hope that the law would be altered. When the prospect was

finally closed, men of spirit and energy refused to remain in a country where they were held unfit to receive the right

of citizens, and thenceforward, until the spell of tyranny was broken in 1782, annual ship-loads of families pouredthemselves out of Belfast and Londonderry. The resentment which they carried with them continued to burn in their

new homes, and, in the War of Independence, England had no fiercer enemies than the grandsons and great-grandsons of the Presbyterians, who had held Ulster against Tyrconnell."

"In 1795, the word had gone out among the Defenders to resume work and secure the arms of the Protestant gentry.

First in Connaught, and then gradually in all parts of Ircland, bodies of men, who seemed to have started out of the

earth, were out at night on the prowl like wild beasts. Houses were burnt. When arms were demanded and were not

delivered, death was the punishment. Barracks were surprised in the darkness. Parties of militia were attacked even

in open day with desperate courage."

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The above are miscellaneous extracts from The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, by James A. Froude,

New York, 1873. It will be noted that the explanation is complete: First, why the cstate in Ulster was surrendered by

the family; second, why the second generation became adherents of the Prince of Orange; third, why the family seat

was transferred to Connaught; and fourth, why, other than the successors to the estate, emigrated to America. It isprobable that at least Alderman Thomas Wakefield was a High Churchman, as the aldermen were appointed by the

viceroy, and Ormond, the holder of this office from his appointment by Charles, was a High Churchman, andprobably made his appointments only from that class.

According to information imparted by Thomas Wakefield (son of the emigrant, David,) to his grandson, David H.

Wakefield, of Redstone, Penn., and by him transmitted to the compiler, Thomas Wakefield's grandfather (father of

David) was named Robert, who was a son of Robert. The elder Robert, died in England in the prime of life from a

wound received in battle; was an only child.

In harmony with the statement of Dr. William Wakefield, of Humboldt, Kans., that David Wakefield, the emigrant,

was a nephew of his ancestor, the emigrant Matthew Wakefield, sr.; and that of the late Mr. Campbell Wakefield, of

Heyworth, Ill., that his ancestor, the emigrant Andrew Wakefield, was a nephew of the senior Matthew Wakefield,

taken together with the official and traditional records given above, we must arrive at the following conclusion: The

emigrant from England to Ireland was John Wakefield, who had (possibly among other children), Dr. Albert

Wakefield, who had an only son, Robert Wakefield. Robert had (possibly among other children) Robert Wakefield,

Matthew Wakefield, the emigrant, who married Bridget Banks, and Andrew Wakefield, sr., who married MargaretReddick, and remained in Ireland on the family estate in Aughrim, where he died.

In order to bring together into one genealogical classification, the posterity of the descendants of the emigrants,

David, Matthew, sr., and Andrew, jr., we will begin the American families and trace descent from a common

progenitor, Robert Wakefield, son of Dr. Albert Wakefield, who is noticed above. Of Robert we can give no records

of birth, marriage, or death, except as above given.

CHILDREN.

Supposed to have been born on the family estate, near Aughrim, Ireland.

2.-1. ROBERT, born (???); married (???); died (???).3.-2. MATTHEW, born (???); married (???), Bridget Banks; died (???).

4.-3. ANDREW, born (???); married (???), Margaret Reddick; died (???),

SECOND GENERATION.

2. ROBERT2 WAKEFIELD (Robert1), son of Robert Wakefield; born(???); married(???); died(???); resided on the

family estate, on the road between Aughrim and Ballinasloe, Galway county, Connaught, Ireland.

CHILDREN.

5.-1. DAVID, born(???); married(???), Mary Jane Wade.

6.-2. ROBERT, born(???); beheaded for complicity in a plot against Catholic rule in Ireland.

7.-3. GILBERT, born (???); arrested with his brother Robert, and imprisoned for life.

8.-1. SAMUEL, born(???); escaped to Scotland, in a row boat, when detected in plot against the Catholic

government.

THIRD GENERATION.

5. DAVID3 WAKEFIELD (Robert,2 Robert1), son of Robert and (???) Wakefield; born (???), on the family estate,

on the road, between Aughrim and Ballinasloe, Galway county, Ireland; he married, (???), Mary Jane, or Elizabeth,

daughter of Jeremiah Wade, a wealthy landed proprietor, and neighbor of the Wakefield family, in Galway county,

Ireland. David Wakefield emigrated to America between 1768 and 1773. According to tradition, he was implicated,

with his brothers, in the plot against Catholic rule in Ireland, and when detected, David was hid by his wife in a

hogshead of clothes, with which she embarked on an American-bound vessel, and was three days out at sea before

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the captain of the ship knew that he was on board. By this means he escaped to America. Upon his arrival, he first

settled in Path Valley, situated between the Tuscarora and Conecocheague mountains, in Perry county, then

Cumberland county, Penn., where some of the younger of the children were born. After residing there for some

fifteen or sixteen years, he settled on the north of the Conemaugh, opposite Squirrel Hill, then in Cumberland

county, but now in Indiana county, and where the village of Centreville now is. After remaining there for some twoyears, finding the title to the land was defective, they again removed, five miles northwest, to near the head of the

west branch of Richard's Run, in Wheatfield township, some time between the years 1788 and 1794, where theyremained, and where David died, and is buried, no gravestone marking the place. After his death, his widow went to

live with her oldest daughter, Joanna, who married William Carroll, and resided in the Wolf Creek settlement, in

Mercer county, where she died.

CHILDREN.

20.-1. THOMAS, born 1757; married, Elizabeth Morton, niece of John Morton, signer of the Declaration ofIndependence; died, 1844.

21.-2. JAMES, born November 11, 1767; married, Mary Clark; died February 28, 1840.

22.-3. JOHN. born (???); married Elizabeth Newlon, 1803, who was his nurse while ill at a hotel, on a visit to

Dublin, Ireland.

23.-4. JEREMIAH, born (???); married, Isabella Lynn.

24.-5. DAVID, born (???); married Jennie C. Carrahan.

25.-6. JOANNA, born (???); married, to William Carroll, a nephew of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Va., also a

signer of the Declaration of Independence.26.-7. MARGARET, born (???); married, to Thomas Bracken.

27.-8. MARY, born (???); married, to her nephew, Robert Wakefield.

25. JOANNA4 WAKEFIELD (David,3 Robert,2 Robert1), daughter of David and Mary (Wade) Wakefield; born

(???); married William Carroll, a nephew of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Va., a signer of the Declaration of

Independence. Resided in the Wolf Creek settlement, in Mercer county, where her mother died. William Carroll

moved west in an early day. She had a son William who was a Methodist minister and a member of Erie conference.

[Ive omitted from this typescript much of Chapter X which does not pertain to my direct line.]