John William Ballard born Newry

Liverpool Weekly Courier 27.9.1890 reports the death of a William Ballard aged 54. Tinsmith of 78 Blandford St, Liverpool. Well known in local Orange circles. Was for a while Grand Master of the Liverpool Province of Orangemen.

Served with the Black Watch in the Indian Mutiny. His Indian experiences contributed to the decline in his health.

Article says he was a native of Drogheda. Also a Guardian of the West Derby Union. (So if the workhouse Guardians minutes have survived, you should find mention of him there at their weekly meetings).

Article says he left a widow but no children.  Interred Kirkdale cemetery.

So his being a senior Orangeman tells you he was not Roman Catholic. Presumably the family was Church of Ireland or Presbyterian.

Drogheda St Mary’s Church of Ireland has records from 1763 onwards & St Peter’s from 1655. Some coverage of both on rootsireland. Original records are in the RCB library in Dublin.

There was a small Presbyterian congregation in Drogheda. Not sure if any records have survived. The Presbyterian Historical Society in Belfast should know.

David,

MacLysaght’s “The Surnames of Ireland” says of Ballard, “see under Bollard.” Of Bollard, “Of Dutch origin, this name came to Ireland in the early seventeenth century, and soon became prominent the commercial life of Dublin. The quite distinct Norman name Ballard (Middle English bald head) goes back to early Medieval times.“

If your family arrived in Ireland with the Normans (ie mid 1100s) then I would expect them to have been RC. If they were Protestant (and there can’t be much doubt they were given the Orange connections) I’d say they arrived in Plantation times ie 1600s.

Most of the folk who moved to the USA (and Canada) from Ireland in the 1700s were Protestant. And most of them were Presbyterian. (In the US often called Scotch-Irish. Here we call them Ulster Scots).  These were descendants of people who had moved to Ireland from Scotland (and in some cases from England & Wales) in the 1600s. By the early 1700s they were dissatisfied with life in Ireland (lack of spare land, rising rents, poor harvests due to bad weather, low prices for manufactured cotton and for crops, lack of employment opportunities, some religious restrictions etc) and having already moved once quite recently they were often ready to move again. By 1790 more than 400,000 Protestants (the majority from Ulster) had settled in the US.  Our “Native Irish” most of whom were RC, didn’t really start emigrating in significant numbers till the 1800s.

There’s a bit of a myth that Irish-Americans have always been a single coherent group. The Orange Riots in 1870 and 1871 in New York saw many violent clashes between former Ulster Protestants and Catholic Irish.  We are a mixed bunch.

Can’t really disagree with you. Whilst it’s absolutely right to be proud of your origins, as you pare back the genealogical onions you often find surprises. Folk have been moving around the British Isles and more generally across northern Europe for hundreds of thousand of years.  (Ireland has only been settled for 10,000 years. But England has been settled for 500,000 or more. So guess where most “Irish” folk probably came from?)  Most of us come from shared roots, and we don’t have exclusive ethnic identities like “Celtic”, “Irish” or Viking” even though many yearn for them. There’s no genetic science that supports that. (That understanding ought to be something that should unite, rather than be a source of dispute).

You mention Jameson, the founder of Jameson’s whiskey, established in the early 1800s. In Ireland we are very proud of it (and him). But, as you clearly know,  John Jameson was a Scot from Alloa, in Clackmannanshire, who had distilling skills and brought them to Ireland to make a little money. He wasn’t Irish at all. So what? He brought great fame and great whiskey to Ireland. That’s what we should be proud of.

Finally, I attach a note outlining the origins of perhaps the most famous Irish song there is. Danny Boy. Its background in my view shows the importance of acknowledging our shared origins when we approach our history.