 Good afternoon everyone. It's great to be here. During the next few minutes, we're going to talk about reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry. Irish Caribbean ancestry is not on everyone's research radar, but this ancestry is rich in history, genealogy, and lost connections. Research reveals a migrant migration path that took thousands and thousands of Irish from their homeland to the Caribbean during the 17th century. As we dig deeper, some records also make for painful reading and can be disturbing for those people concerned with social justice. While Ireland was not the only country to lose citizens to indentured servitude and the transport of political religious enemies, rogues, vagabonds, and the poor, the story of the Irish and the Caribbean bear special witness. As a backdrop to this presentation, I want to report that when I got back home from last year's show, I discovered that Morris is a distant DNA cousin to my husband, according to two out of the three major DNA companies in the U.S. I was surprised number one because I didn't know that when I was in this very spot last year and number two, out of the original 13 British colonies in the States, we've traced my husband's ancestral lines back to just five of those colonies for over 200 years. Irish ancestry was not on our radar, let alone Irish Caribbean ancestry. Now, Morris and my husband's DNA matches at the edge of statistical reliability. There is always the possibility that the match is a false positive. However, I think we can all agree that Morris is the kind of cousin everyone wants to have. So we looked closer and Morris was not the only distant match where the grandparents and previous generations were in Ireland, so let's get started. Looking at this modern day map of the Caribbean, you can see the first challenge to reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry. There are thousands of islands that are part of 28 island countries populated by some 41 million people that compromise, comprise, sorry, the broad area known as the Caribbean. In 1992, Caribbean scholar, Michelle Rolf Krulot remarked the region and indeed particular territories within it has long been multiracial, multilingual, stratified, and some would say multicultural. In this multi-everything environment, reconstructing the Irish footprint left almost three and a half centuries ago is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. An enormous amount of research time and research resources have been directed toward the Hispanic influence of colonialism, the effects of European colonization on the Amerindian native settlements, and the legacy of African slave trade. Excuse me. What we want to do is narrow this scope and concentrate on the Irish Caribbean populations. Based on historical records, we need to focus on Barbados, the Leeward Islands of Montserrat, Antigua, St. Christopher, St. Kitts, and Jamaica. In 1678, the Irish comprised 70% of Montserrat's population, between 10 to 26% of the population of St. Christopher, Antigua, and Nevis, and 33% of the white population in Barbados. The Irish populated other islands in smaller numbers, but these are the islands of particular interest. Jamaica was rested from the Spanish in 1655. Jamaica is geographically a larger island and attempts to settle tongued out servants there began in earnest. In London, the Council for Foreign Plantations noted that every opportunity should be taken to contribute to the defense, welfare, or increase of Jamaica by allowing those who had been servants in Barbados to go there freely. Now, there were four main Irish Caribbean population classes. The merchant class, and in particular on Montserrat, younger members of the 14 tribes of Galway, sent to seek their fortune. Indentured servants, political military transports, and vagabonds, felons, rogues, transports. This brings us to the second challenge to reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry. Where are the records? They're scattered to say the least. Records important to understanding and revealing details are located in different repositories throughout Ireland, the UK, the islands, America, and the former colonial powers of Europe. Some records are non-existent. Indentured servants whose contracts were sold to others as the ship stopped, rogues and vagabonds swept off the streets. The sickly who died during the journey or out in the field, and all others too insignificant to have been recorded remain anonymous. Other records are lost to age and destruction. Multiple examples exist where records were transcribed by earlier historians only to have the originals destroyed by hurricanes, humidity, fire, and in the case of Montserrat, volcanic activity. Sometimes the Irish are merged with other nationalities in the records simply because they were part of the larger European colonization. Finally, lots of information on the forced transportation of the Irish to the Caribbean is now on the internet via blogs and info sites. Some of the sites are sourced, some are not. Some unsourced sites are merely plagiarized ramblings from previously published materials skewed by emotional opinion. Reader beware. I've compiled this list of resources for researchers wanting to take a deeper look at the records. Space constraints prevent me from listing every source I consulted for this presentation, but these are some of the best. Each of the books contain pages of primary sources used, many from the repositories listed in the first column. Using worldcat.org, researchers can discover where a copy is located that would be closest to them. Some of the books can also be found as a download for a fee at Google Books. I personally like the wiki pages from FamilySearch.org. The page for Barbados is quite informative and contains links to digital resources on the web, regardless if this link is sponsored by FamilySearch. Reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry is also a collaborative effort. I'd like to thank Brian Swan, who is in the audience today, for recommending merchants and merchandise in 17th century Bristol, and Nathan Murphy, who is with FamilySearch, who suggested other key resources. Now let's get back to the 17th century Caribbean. At that time, the Irish were already in the new world as indentured servants in Virginia. Irish men were serving at a Spanish military post in Florida, while other Irish were in established Irish settlements, not only on the Amazon, but in the other direction, way north at Newfoundland. In the Caribbean, the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English were all voraciously active in trade, piracy, and colonization. British historian Morris Ashley wrote, the Caribbean was an area where Europe's frontiers met. Some of the cash crops included cotton, indigo, tobacco, rum, spices, and in the later decades, sugar. Caribbean ports became very important to the movement of capital. They would be considered today part of that century's global economy. Here is a list of recorded sailings from Irish ports to the Caribbean, gleaned from David Dobson's book, Transatlantic Voyages 1600 to 1699. Quite a few of these ships carried passengers. Island resources and agriculture pursuits would make merchants from England, Europe, the American colonies, Kinsall, Galway, and other Irish towns wealthy. In modern times, we probably call these merchants CEOs. These merchants possess power, possess power, not only in trading, but their opinions and needs help sway in both government and the courts of justice. There's also an interesting story that's now a book about Baltimore, where a ship left for the Caribbean from that town and along the way, they turned to piracy. Enter in the most fundamental concept and backbone of the market economy, supply demand that demand was for human labor. Caribbean plantation owners and merchants needed labor to work the fields, take care of the households, work on the trading ships, and a host of other duties. Merchants and the law were only too eager to supply. Indentured servants were commodities to the plantation owners and merchants. Beckles writes in White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados 1627 to 1715 that English merchants involved in the servant trade to the West Indies regarded and treated servants not as individuals passengers, but as a special type of cargo. Individual bills of lading from the time period record multiple references to freight and half freight in the case of juveniles under the age of 16 years. Irish indentured servants who volunteered and smaller numbers of free Irish migrants were simply trying to better themselves. Kinsall was a major port for merchants to recruit indentured servants. The growing economy of the Caribbean created opportunities for Irishmen who were constrained at home by an increasing population. Let's look at the dawn of the 17th century Ireland labor pool. The population consisted of four main groups categorized by their roots in religion. Native Irish who were pre-Norman and universally Catholic. Older English who were Norman Catholics and political royalists. New English who were Protestant English settlers confiscating and settling lands of the defeated rebels and Scottish Presbyterians today's Ulster Scots. Now let's look at the events that led to the outflow of so many Irish specifically Catholic Irish during the 17th century. Key dates leading to poverty were 1580 rebels and monster are defeated. 1586 plantation of the monster by Protestant English settlers begin. 1595 Hugh O'Neill joins Red Hugh O'Donnell in rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I. 1603 Hugh O'Neill surrenders. The Tudor conquest of Ireland is complete. 1608 and forward. Plantation of confiscated Irish lands both native Irish and old Irish old English starts with its trickle down effect to tenant workers creating increased population reduced opportunities and social displacement. Now in 1641 the Catholic Gaelic rebellion begins in an attempt to regain confiscated land. At this point Catholics hold only 59 percent of land in Ireland. So what is it like to be on the losing side? Although this letter was written 159 years later during the United Irishman rebellion the conditions are the same. Henry Johnston of County Down is writing his brother Moses living in Pennsylvania. After telling his brother that his wife had passed away the previous winter Henry writes Moses since that time there is nothing here but disturbance, confusion and in many places rebellion. In the counties of Wexford, Wicklow and others many thousand have been killed some in battle and many by the sword of the law and yet there are many being tried which are mostly transported and at that time they were being transported to Australia after the United Irishmen rebellion. Now the low part of County Antrim was greatly involved in the troubles. Some killed in skirmishes with the military, some tried and shot, some hanged and not ended yet and in this county they had a battle in which many lost their lives and many in innocent people lost their all by plundering house burning and desolation. Such are the natural consequences of civil war and so that was a witness during that rebellion and we know that the same sort of circumstances of people losing their all by plundering house burning and desolation went on during the Catholic Gaelic rebellion. Now the key dates to leading to persecution include King Charles I was executed in 1649, Cromwell's army leased for Ireland and captures Draheda, Wexford and other Irish cities. During 1650 to 1655 Cromwell issues transport orders to rid Ireland of his Irish Catholic enemies. Now these are just some of the excerpts from some of the reading materials I listed in my source table and these come from Abbot Emerson Smith's colonists in bondage regarding the kidnapping of servants. January 20, 1654 a sweeping order for the governors of Carlo Kilkenny, Clonmel, Wexford, Ross and Waterford to deliver all vagrants to Captain Thomas Morgan Dudley North and John Johnson for transportation to the West Indies. April 1654 the vagrants of Limerick and Cork were ordered for Captain John Norris. June 1654 60 women from Connaught were granted to Colonel Stubbers for the West Indies. Also all persons in the jails of Clonmel, Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny and Carlo were entrusted to John Mylon merchant and this from a deposition taken in June 1661. It included the testimony of George Dell who was the master of Goodfellow who sold Mr. Samuel Simons to the Irish youth he brought over by order by the State of England for 26 pounds. Then one of these youths John King gave testimony in which he offered he with Divers meaning George Dell were stolen in Ireland by some of the English soldiers in the night out of their beds and brought to Mr. Dell's ship where the boat lay ready to receive them against their consent and brought them aboard said ship where there were divers of their countrymen weeping and crying because they were stolen from their friends they all declaring the same and there were kept until upon a Lord's Day morning the master then set sail. These excerpts were published in Merchants and Merchandise in 17th century Bristol. February 25th 1657 for a voyage from the port of Bristol to Ireland there to receive Tories and from thence to Barbados or any of the Caribbean islands and to return back to Bristol. Now Tories were dispossessed Irishmen who resorted to Banditry especially after the invasion of Cromwell and suppression of the royalist cause. November 30th 1694 though at the same time there is more than 6,000 pounds owing to your petitioner for ships employed in the transport service for the reducing of Ireland. July 26 1658 about eight weeks arrived on the island of Guadalupe and then sailed to the island of Antigua where master mate John Newark put to sail one servant. January 21st 1695 we cannot think anything will hinder Ireland's increase in the woollen manufacturers so much as by setting up a linen manufacturing there and reducing that kingdom to the terms of a colony equal with our other settlements abroad which also which will also tend very much to the securing our plantation trade preventing the exportation of its wool to foreign markets and supplying those markets with woollen manufacturers cheaper than we can hence. And one of Cromwell's more famous orders was to transport children about a thousand girls and a thousand boys to Jamaica while there is no proof that that ever happened there is a story that I found in the records where in colonial Virginia the Portuguese transported children as indentured servants to Virginia around 1620. Now the evidence that exists for that are is a letter from a Virginia city person a town in Virginia there who wrote back thanking the Portuguese official for the success of the children and that they were amicable to having more children transported so sometimes the evidence that exists for the transport of these political and military prisoners and also indentured servants and even children sometimes does not exist in the actual transportation but in the records that were created afterwards. We now have the third challenge to reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry how many Irish left Ireland during the 17th century and how many of that number went to the Caribbean. Now this is a picture of William Petty. William Petty was with Cromwell when they came into Ireland. He also stayed behind and served Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth in Ireland. Petty successfully secured the contract for mapping Ireland in 1654. The task was completed in 1656 and is known as the down survey now. His political anatomy of Ireland was published in 1691. He estimated that the Irish transported into foreign parts between 1651 and 1654 were 34,000 men. Most of these men left behind a wife and children with no means of support. Lewis Cullen a contributor to the publication Europeans on the Move studies on European migration 1500 to 1800 estimated 132,500 Irish migrated out of Ireland between 1601 and 1700. Another study by Henry Gemery contained in the publication Colonialism and Migration indentured labor before and after slavery states that in the years 1630 to 1700 the Caribbean received 59% of all immigrants from the British Isles. So the exact number of Irish who left Ireland and whose destination was the Caribbean will probably never be known but the records show that leave they did and in thousands both voluntarily and forced. So our final final challenge to reconstructing Irish Caribbean ancestry is answering the question is so many Irish migrated to the Caribbean where are their descendants today? Taking another look at this map will give our first clue. Where I circled there on the right hand side are the Leeward Islands and Barbados and then on the left hand side is Jamaica. Now the total land mass for the Caribbean island circled where the Irish comprised either a larger small part of the 17th century population comprises an area smaller than present day northern Ireland. That is not a huge land mass. If indentured servants were to receive land when they timed out it was only a matter of time when there would be no land left. The numbers of African slaves transported to the islands increased exponentially during the 17th century causing a dramatic demographic shift. Indentured laborers were no longer needed. Now English planners were also hostile to Catholic Irish servants. They were stereotyped as lazy drunken noisy and opposed to Protestant colonial interests. In Barbados an uprising by Irish servants created a hostile and very dysfunctional society. The Irish were greatly mistrusted. The Irish on Montserrat helped the French win victory over British rule on that island but within a short time the British took it back. Combined with no land and no opportunities it was natural for those Irish who could leave to do so. Now some of the Irish DNA lines just simply died out. Servants' journeys were marked by frequent outbreaks of diseases and a high mortality rate. Shippers' policies of packing servants tightly below deck guaranteed the easy spread of viruses. One master reported in Barbados a 22.8% servant survival rate on arrival. In the 20 years of servitude it is estimated that 50 to 75 out of every 100 white servants died without ever having a decent chance of survival. In 1647 yellow fever killed more than 5,000 people in Barbados including Irish servants. In 1663 about 1,000 Barbadian Barbadians went to St. Lucia as military, as soldiers but the settlement was wiped out by the Caribbean Indians. Now the Barbados Exodus is important because it was Barbados was the stepping off point for DNA immigration to other islands, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Rhode Island. No particular efforts were made to keep them in Barbados. They were expected at the end of their periods of indenture to go off as customary to Pennsylvania, Carolinas, and other northern colonies where provisions were more plentiful and weather more temperate. A few thousand had already left Barbados and the Leeward Islands for the French and Dutch colonies. And that was important because the French were also Catholics and it was a better political climate to be with fellow Catholics. Now the corporation of the Barbados adventurers was actually set up in London and it was set up to bring planters and their servants mostly Irish to the Carolinas in 1673. So that record exists on the UK side of the Atlantic and there is a corresponding record set in South Carolina where these Barbados adventurers did come and set up a colony. Now it was while it was not as successful as originally envisioned these planters did come along with their servants and these Irish that were originally Irish Catholics are the ancestors of their descendants in South Carolina and westward into the States. A number left Barbados for military expeditions with other Catholic countries, Spain and France in connection with the Dutch wars and they never returned. There is also an interior part of Barbados that used to be referred to as Scotland. It was long thought that these poor white Milata inhabitants are the descendants of the Irish Scotch indentured servants who never made it off the island and their nickname was the red legs and contrary to popular myth that they were called red legs because of their propensity to get sunburned on their white legs it's also been said that they had predominantly red hair so that is another popular story of how they got the name the red legs. Now moving on to Montserrat the 1677 78 census of Montserrat it was 70% Irish and I've listed it's been published and the link is down at the bottom of the slide and some of the names that you'll recognize as Irish Leary Murphy Casey Kelly Sullivan Donovan Riley Finney Dempsey Cleary Connor Lynch Barry Swinney excuse me Burke Neil McDonough McDaniel etc. interesting I have Niels that are in North Carolina in the early 1700s so this has been a very interesting research for me. Now fast forward to Montserrat of today now this is actually the island of Montserrat it's a satellite photo and the first thing you'll notice that it's actually a very small island the second thing you will notice is the smoke is actually coming from the Sofril Hills volcano now there was two catastrophic catastrophic oh gee goodness I'm sorry two catastrophic events that affected both the historical records located in Montserrat and also the population in 1989 a powerful hurricane Hugo swept over the island and destroyed a lot of the records and in 1997 the Sofril Hills volcano here erupted and just wrecked total devastation to the southern part of the island the results are that Plymouth the capital of Montserrat was permanently abandoned before the volcano activity the population of Montserrat was over 12,000 today the island's population is around 5,000 and the southern half of the island is now forbidden territory and considered too dangerous for redevelopment now the top left picture there is the courthouse and it's buried that deep in volcanic ash the second picture on top is a car the windshield in the top of the car is the only thing showing and the third picture there is a view of Plymouth from the Caribbean there totally covered in ash and totally abandoned so it's just like many other stories of irish records being lost Montserrat joined that list now here we go to Jamaica now this picture here are of school children it was taken in 1932 and it's in the book Wentz the Black Irish of Jamaica and it was written and researched by Joseph Williams he was a Jesuit priest and he was very curious because of all the families and particularly the children who had Irish surnames now this was 1932 and he did have historical records to go by but wouldn't he have loved back in 1932 to have the technology that we have today in using genetic genealogy DNA and we have it today where we can go and find these descendants because I'm sure if these were children back in the 30s that they are today's grandparents and great grandparents so we're going to move on now to DNA in Irish Caribbean ancestry and there's lots of questions about what DNA can do and help with Irish Caribbean ancestry and these are the questions that Morris and I deal with in our eye our eye carer project what kinds of genetics what kind of genetic footprint have the Irish left in the Caribbean can we distinguish the footprint between Irish Scottish English and Welsh DNA it's very difficult and that's why we need more studies of the populations individually for England Scotland Ireland and Wales to determine what their footprints are so that when we DNA tests in the Caribbean on these particular islands when it comes back European well what kind of European DNA can the people of the British Isles project Popeye help this differentiation now AT DNA will give matches autosomal DNA from 1700s but not the 1600s right now which company has the best BGA the best bi geographical analysis what reference populations are used if we're testing to see what populations that the current Caribbean people have if they're if the reference population of their ancestry is not in the database it will be lacking academic or science citizen scientist projects they're both happening right now which one's best and in reality probably both are what do the DNA testers want what's their culture what do they have to gain by DNA testing and funding now one of our project members is I care and I care is Jim Lynch he was actually born in Barbados he lives in Canada right now and he's been lucky he's been able to to research and trace his and his lynch ancestry back to Hamlet Mayor's Lynch born in Barbados circa 1769 and he was a free mulatto on his why DNA match page there at family tree DNA he is matching lynches and he does have a European haplo group now are you 106 while not the predominant haplo group in Ireland is a haplo group that is in Ireland so we would expect his results one would expect from somebody who descends from a lynch who came from Ireland and in fact Lynch is a surname that's linked to the 14 tribes of Galway now this is a picture of Jim's FT DNA my origins page and as you can see from the map he's got a huge predominant amount of European ancestry 91% 6% African and even a little a 2% of Central South Asian ancestry and this reinforces the knowledge that the Caribbean is such a melting pot of so many different ethnicities now some of their academic studies here this is from the annals of human genetics and they basically took three islands Barbados st. Thomas Jamaica and they this was the mean averages percentage as admixture estimates based on West African European and Native American and as you can see on these three islands there as which with most of the Caribbean the admixture estimates for the autosomal DNA came back in the 80% ranges for West African European and then Native American and this was published in 2007 now this was a research done by the National Geographic Society's International Genographic Project and Spencer Wells will be talking to us right after this presentation and will probably elaborate but they did some studies on Puerto Rico on the MT DNA and the Y DNA and they found on the Y DNA a large percentage of European ancestry a smaller percentage of West African and 0% Native American on the reverse side there was a large percentage of Native American ancestry for the for the maternal line then West African and then European then for the admixture it was 65% European 12% Native American and 20% West African in the study results it said it would take at least three distinct migrations of hundreds of European men each and practically no European women to Puerto Rico followed by intermixing with indigenous women it also would necessitate the complete decimation of indigenous men but not women to account for those numbers now two things here is that Puerto Rico has historically been a Hispanic island so the European DNA what can we say about the Irish where are the Irish in the statistics now another study that was published just last November in PLOS genetics they were studying the again the Hispanic islands of the Caribbean and they were looking for basically Hispanic influence on genetics and also Native American influence and African so at the bottom there you can see their charts that the red in the in the middle there they found European admixture and in percentages that compared favorably with the pulses of the early 17th century 16th and 17th migrations from European nations but again they were concentrating on the Hispanic population so when we look for DNA studies where we want to find out Irish and of course from British Isles we need to look look toward the Leeward Islands and Barbados because that is where the British were predominantly at and along with the Irish and Scottish now this is Ireland of the Caribbean 2014 it just so happens that when I was reading the Sunday paper this past Sunday here in Dublin I came across in the Sunday independent living section this advertisement cruise from Dublin Caribbean islands that's 4599 euros for 34 nights some of the places some of the places in the itinerary Bridgetown Barbados St. Lucia St. Kit Antiqua these are some of the same islands where the partakers of this cruise probably had ancestors whose brothers and sisters probably came 350 years ago to these very same islands they didn't pay this amount of money and it was basically a free journey for them but it was hard and it was enduring and for a lot of them it wasn't a journey that they would have ever expected to make so I wanted to end my presentation with this because a lot's changed in 350 years but the history and research that is out there that needs to be done the DNA testing that needs to be done is vital to understanding both Irish history and also for people who are descendants of this lost generation of Irish ancestors thank you