Mangin; An Irish Huguenot family

pajah,

Just a general comment about the tithe applotment records. The tithes were a tax on land, and so in most cases the people listed in those records were farmers. You say:

”I have assumed it was my Thomas Mangin who appeared frequently in the Tithe Applotments Handbook working in various areas.”

In general, farmers didn’t do that. Farmers liked to stay put as far as possible. You don’t spend 10 or 15 years working and improving one farm and then go and start all over again on another. Some farmers occasionally had more than 1 farm (and so might appear in the tithes more than once) but they would be very close together. It’s not feasible to manage several different farms in different places at the same time. I think that where you find more than one Thomas Mangin in different parts of Ireland, in most cases, they would be different people.

I looked in the 1901 Irish census. There were 77 people named Thomas Mangan/Mangin in Ireland then. The name will have been equally common 100 years earlier, so expect lots of different Thomases across the country. I also noted that in 1901 they were all Catholic, so unlikely to be descendants of Huguenot refugees.

Regarding spelling of the name, it was common for spelling to vary. Having a single “correct” version is a modern thing. In the 1700s and 1800s our ancestors (many of whom were not all that literate) just didn’t bother. In addition, it was often down to the person recording the information, as to how a name was spelled. A change of Priest/Minister might well mean a change in spelling.

Elwyn/Patricia:

Janice was unable to post a reply so she forwarded her comments to me.

Roger

Janice

ELWYN: Thank you all for your valued comments. In thinking of Thomas working several tenancies I relied on the fact that they were penniless after fleeing France and he would have been forced to follow the practice of renting say an acre from a farmer in return for labour and part-proceeds of his crop. The earlier Thomas Mangin in Cavan mentioned in my narrative as a flaxgrower was very interesting in view of his likely connections to the Hone-Dyas land ownership and their inter-marriage with the Mangin family means he was almost certainly an early family arrival and in close proximity to Lisburn where close Mangin family friend Samuel Crommelin started his linen manufacturing. Flax was a familiar sight in the fields of Cavan. Planting of the flax seed in the spring.it took approximately 120 days from sowing until the crop was ready to pull so I imagined Thomas sowing and then moving to another tenancy for new plantings.. The family was well-connected and had several well-endowed inter-family marriages and landowners (Alexander Reuben Mangin owned 731 acres in Tipperary) and other inter-married families were landowners in areas where a Thomas Mangin worked. I found a Thomas and Pat working in Alexander's Tipperary area and I am guessing he may have moved between generous or related owners. My lot were a disparate bunch I'm afraid but thank you so much for your thoughts. Janice (nee) Mangin.

PATRICIA That is an interesting record especially since the name Delany crops up in my DNA records and also has a '21 degree' connection from Wikitree with an American Delany so I will explore further. The spelling MANGIN is the correct family French name but, as you say, not much attention was given to spelling and the name MANGAN with an A is common in Ireland which has made life more difficult. Thank you so much for your interest. Janice (nee) Mangin

There was always some weaving in Ireland right back into the mists of time. That was how they made their clothes. Originally it would have been mainly wool, then from the 1600s it was often cotton (imported from the Carolinas). However the US war of independence led to that crop drying up because the British navy had blockaded most of the US ports. Cotton won’t grow in Ireland due to the climate. Weavers in Ireland needed a new material.  Flax grows really well here and so they switched to it and the linen industry got going in a big way, particularly in the counties of Ulster.

You only get one crop of flax a year in Ireland, in the summer months. It won’t grow the rest of the year, so the idea of harvesting one crop and then growing another somewhere else doesn’t work. You would just grow another next year in the same place.

On the tithe applotment records you can see what size each Mangin/Mangan farm was. The area is recorded in Irish acres (bigger than statute acres). Most Irish farms were between 2 acres and 30, though there are a lot bigger than that too. Most farmers grew a mix of crops notably barley, oats, hay and similar. They’d leave half a field or so for flax. The farm labourers would then harvest the flax, process it and eventually use their spinning wheels to create the thread. They’d then manufacture the linen on portable looms (such as are still used in the Outer Hebrides to make Harris Tweed). The looms could be collapsed when not needed or when the family was moving. For most weavers it was a part-time activity that they could follow when they were not needed on the farm and there was no other work available eg Government road building schemes. In a society that lived largely by barter, weaving was also a cash based activity. They would take their cloth to the local, market and buyers would give them cash for it and that helped with things bartering couldn’t buy eg a ticket to America. But the thing to remember is that it was largely seasonal which helped top up the family income. When the big famines came in the mid 1800s, weavers in Ulster were slightly better off than labourers elsewhere because they had their weaving money to fall back on.

Labourers did move around to follow available work but, unless they were going to a city to find work, they generally stayed in the same area, often within the same county all their lives. If you are finding Mangins in the tithes in different counties at more or less the same time, then these are almost certainly different people. And judging by the 1901 Irish census, the majority of them were Catholic and so not likely to be Huguenot refugees who fled Catholic oppression in France, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Huguenots beliefs were Calvinistic, and so pretty similar to Presbyterianism. The majority of Huguenots families I have come across in Ireland show up in later records as Presbyterian or sometimes Church of Ireland (Anglican). But not Catholic. (Why would you flee France if willing to switch to Catholicism?). So I think you need check on the denominations of the various families in the tithes and you can probably eliminate the Catholic ones. And that will be most of them I suspect. There was a Huguenot church in Dublin and refugees there attended it for many years. There are some records. I assume they are in the National Archives in Dublin. Might be worth checking if any of your family lived in Dublin.

Elwyn:

A new reply from Janice.

Roger

Elwyn: Thank you. Your knowledge of this history is very helpful.

My thoughts were that Thomas and his wife might manage to sow more than one crop of flax within the sowing season in different plots but that might not be possible.

One or two other points. In the birth records I attached to my original narrative from Coolbanagher (Emo St James C.of I.) where all of Thomas' progeny were baptised gave me a launching pad 'in the area' in the Mountmellick group of parishes where large mills opened in the 1780s and the raw materials were produced to develop weaving but mainly wool and cotton which provided families with a second source of income as you will know. By 1837, there were an estimated 4000 people employed in the cotton and woollen industry in the Mountmellick area whereas flax was mostly grown in Northern Ireland. Again you know this.

Louis Crommelin who brought his linen expertise to Lisburn in 1698 at the request of KingGeorge 111 also brought 70 associates with him and this number had doubled by 1711. My first recorded Mangin, Louis, and his wife Jeanne Crommelin who married in 1691 in Berlin where they had fled, arrived in Lisburn in 1715, although it was thought several of my family had arrived earlier. For this reason I assumed, perhaps reasonably but maybe wrongly, that my Thomas, his parents and grandparents would have obliged by growing flax having a ready 'family' market in Lisburn and also Kilkenny where William Crommelin opened a linen factory in 1707. A Thomas was recorded in Tithe Applotments at Derryguile, Derryclonry, Killenny and the area seems to be the epicentre of Thomas' activities.

Louis' son, Captain Paul Mangin, moved from Lisburn to Dublin, married into a well-known family and had three sons & a daughter. His    g-grandson, Edward, was collated prebendary at Rathmichael, St Patrick's Dublin in 1800 and the family would have moved in Dublin's high Huguenot society at that time and been devout worshippers. Paul also had connections with Portarlington C.of I. and the Huguenot families there and records suggest that Thomas was sexton at Coolbanagher (Emo) C.of I. for a time.

Since the Mangins and Crommelins were so closely entwined I have tended to think of Thomas as a flaxgrower but I may be wrong. He did however survive the Great Hunger not leaving Ireland for New Zealand in 1863 so he clearly earned sufficient income to survive that horrendous catastrophe.

I tended to ignore their religion taking the view they were glad to be alive! and, when marrying Irish girls I questioned they would have been too worried what religion was assigned to them were but, in practice, followed the family martyr Etienne Mangin and his Calvin-inspired protestantism.

Again thank you Elwyn. Your time, interest and comments have been very welcome

Janice

Janice,

The problem you need to consider is that there were many Mangans living in Ireland long before the 1690s. They were a well established tribe whose ancestry can supposedly be traced back to Niall of the nine hostages (c 400AD).

Mangan Name Meaning, Family History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms

They are not going to have any connection with Huguenots refugees arriving in the 1690s and later.

I understand your suggestion as to why you think your ancestors might have switched to Catholicism but I am not persuaded. They fled to be able to pursue their particular religious beliefs, which they felt strongly about. Why would they choose instead join the denomination that had been persecuting them? They were perfectly free to follow their own denomination in  Ireland, and established their own churches here. As Protestants they probably had slightly better social standing than Catholics. Switching to Catholicism makes no sense to me. I have never seen a Huguenot family in Ireland that wasn’t protestant, normally either Church of Ireland or Presbyterian.

Huguenot Heritage sites - Huguenot Society of Great Britain & Ireland

My advice is to assume that any Catholic Mangan families you find are of native Irish ancestry and unlikely to be connected to yours. Yours are likely to be found in the Dublin area or around Lisburn.

Good luck with your research anyway.

Elwyn:

Response from Janice.

Roger

Elwyn: I doubt that I will ever find the answer. It was known that many Huguenots abjured their faith because they were unable or too poor to flee but continued to secretly (and dangerously) practice as protestants. Survival, both in France and their new countries similarly came first and we cannot be sure they all deeply shared the beliefs of family martyr Etienne Mangin but simply the name Mangin would have branded them a target in France I imagine. I wrote a short article for Wikipedia under 'Etienne Mangin' or 'The Fourteen of Meaux' if you are interested.

Yes I have studiously avoided researching MangAn but nevertheless am aware that the scribes of that era wrote as they heard.

Thank you again Elwyn. Janice