Family memoirs

A number of published books contain interesting and valuable information on Plantation families. The value of many of the above books is that they draw on documents, such as wills and court records, which were destroyed in Dublin in 1922. The books listed below represent simply a selection of the family histories that have been published and which can illuminate the lives of the participants in the Plantation scheme.

Archdale
Henry Blackwood Archdale, Memoirs of the Archdales with the descents of some allied families (privately printed, Enniskillen, 1925) covers not only the Archdales of Suffolk who settled in northern Fermanagh in the early seventeenth century, but also the Mervyns, a family originating in Wiltshire, who established a landed base in the Trillick of County Tyrone.

Cairns
H. C. Lawlor, A history of the family of Cairnes or Cairns and its connections (London, 1906). Read online here

French and Nixon
Henry Biddall Swanzy, The families of French of Belturbet and Nixon of Fermanagh and their descendants (privately printed, 1908) begins with the merchant family of French which had settled in the market town of Belturbet, in County Cavan, some time before the outbreak of the 1641 rising. Read online.

Hamilton
George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933) contains a wealth of information of the many branches of the Hamilton family who migrated to Ulster in the seventeenth century. This includes not only aristocratic families such as the Abercorn Hamiltons, but also those from middling backgrounds such as the Hamiltons of Priestfield in Blantyre who settled in the Strabane area.

Everard Hamilton, Hamilton Memoirs being historical and genealogical notices of a branch of that family which settled in Ireland in the reign of James I (Dundalk, 1920) is concerned with that branch of the Hamilton family which originated in Priestfield in Blantyre and settled at Ballyfatton near Strabane in the early seventeenth century.

Hassard
Henry Biddall Swanzy, Some account of the family of Hassard with a list of descendants in England and Ireland (privately printed, 1903)

Lindesay
Ernest H. Godfrey, The Lindesays of Loughry, County Tyrone: a genealogical history (London, 1949).

Saunderson
Henry Saunderson, The Saundersons of Castle Saunderson (privately printed, 1936) deals with a family that first settled in east Tyrone in the 1610s, acquiring the proportion of Tullylagan, before moving to Cavan in the mid seventeenth century.

Stewart/Stuart
Andrew Godfrey Stuart, A genealogical and historical sketch of the Stuarts of the House of Castlestuart in Ireland (Edinburgh, 1854).

Wray
Charlotte Violet Trench, The Wrays of Donegal, Londonderry and Antrim (Oxford, 1945)

Young
Amy Isabel Young, Three hundred years in Innishowen, being more particularly an account of the family of Young of Culdaff, with short accounts of many other families connected with them during that period (Belfast, 1929). Among the ‘many other families’ that Mrs Young deals with are those of Benson, Cary, Hart, Nesbitt, and Vaughan.