John Ireland, born abt 1752 County Antrim.....a Steel Boy!

Rose,

Regarding the surname Ireland, it is a common enough name in Ireland and it is found in Scotland too. There are 216 people of that surname in the 1901 census of Co. Antrim. Most were Presbyterian or Church of Ireland, broadly pointing to Scottish settler origins. Just one family who were RC. So it’s perfectly feasible that Ireland was a genuine surname, that his family were Presbyterian and lived in Co. Antrim.

Byrne’s Dictionary of Irish Local History 2004 has this to say about the Hearts of Steel:

“In the late 1760s the absentee Earl of Donegall attempted to raise a substantial sum of money to complete his mansion at Fisherwick Park in Staffordshire by imposing heavy fines upon his Antrim tenants as a consideration for renewing their leases. Inevitably, intermediate landlords sought to recoup their investments by canting farms at higher rates. Styling themselves Steelboys or Hearts of Steel, the under-tenants resisted and engaged in a campaign of intimidation, house burning and cattle houghing* to deter others from settling on new terms or from taking up the farms of ousted tenants. Evictions, excessive rent demands, increased competition for land, unrest over county cess and a fodder famine encouraged the spread of discontent into counties Derry, Tyrone & Armagh. In retaliation large numbers of troops were dispatched to the disturbed areas and several Steelboys were brought to trial at Carrickfergus but were acquitted by partisan juries. When the trials were brought to Dublin the defendants were again acquitted. After some fierce confrontations and executions the outrages dissipated about 177, assisted by large-scale emigration.”

*houghing = injuring cattle

So the timing of your family’s departure from Ireland sits well with that timescale. I have attached a page with some reading on the subject which can be found on-line on the JSTOR site. It’s possible that your ancestor might be mentioned in one of the articles or journals listed there. JSTOR has a search facility which may highlight the surname (though it’ll probably bring up any mention of the word Ireland which will obviously be quite common).

You will probably struggle to trace John’s birth and marriage. Only a handful of Presbyterian churches in Antrim have any records for the 1700s and so unless you are very lucky there’s probably no church records of the family to be found. And the few sets of records that do cover the 1700s eg Antrim 1st Presbyterian, Larne, Carnmoney, Lisburn & Rosemary St in Belfast are not on-line so you would need to go to PRONI in Belfast to look them up.

Rose,

In case you are particularly interested in the period around the 1770s in Co Antrim, I have attached a copy of a document held in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast. It’s a lecture given in the 1920s by a local historian near Larne. It goes into quite a lot of detail about the issues that faced the average man in the period 1750 to 1798, and explains why so many emigrated at that time. There’s quite a bit about the Hearts of Oak and Hearts of Steel boys.