Under the Ascendancy

As the new century dawned the McCorkells were well established in Donegal and Londonderry. The period after William's victory at the Boyne became known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Power passed to the great landlords, churchmen and professions, all members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. Catholics, and to a lesser extent Presbyterians, were excluded from power, and harsh penal laws were passed to prevent "the further spread of Popery".

Presbyterians had grown strong through trade, especially in the towns and above all in Londonderry, which the landed classes resented. In 1704 the Sacramental Test was introduced in Ireland: every holder of public office, civil or military, had to take communion in the Church of Ireland. Twenty-four Presbyterian members of the Londonderry corporation resigned rather than comply. The Toleration Act of 1719 granted Presbyterians freedom of worship, but their sense of estrangement from the Anglican establishment remained, and it fed the great emigration of the eighteenth century.

That was not the only cause. Many of the cheap leases that had drawn Scots to Ulster ran out around this time, and landlords raised rents sharply, making Ulster a far less attractive place to put down roots. The emigrations of these years are covered in Chapter IV.

The early 1700s

Few records survive from the early part of the century, so it is hard to connect the families of the 1600s with those in the 1740 census. These are the entries I have found:

George Mackorkle, ship's surgeon

The National Archives at Kew hold the Admiralty's record of George Mackorkle, surgeon of the frigate Fly, with his salary for 1 July 1706 to 30 June 1707, and a letter from him dated 18 April 1709 asking to be released from service. I believe he is George McKorkel, baptised at Burt in 1681, son of Robert McKorkel "gent". A family of means would have been able to educate a son to become a ship's surgeon.

Andrew McCorkell of Ballyhaskey

In 1707 an Andrew McCorkell made a will in the Barony of Raphoe; no other details survive. An Andrew McCorkill of Manorcunningham appears in the marriage bonds in 1708, and an Andrew McCorcle married Martha Finaly at Burt in 1709.

On 14 December 1715 Adam, son of Andrew McCorkle and his wife Mary, was baptised at St Columb's Cathedral in Derry. Before this every McCorkell I have found was Presbyterian, but the Church of Ireland was the only legal church for most of the century, and many Presbyterians and Catholics married or baptised there while still worshipping in their own meeting houses.

In July 1727 a survey of the Forward estate mapped Ballyhaskey, All Saints parish, the same townland as Andrew M'Corckle in the 1660s, and records Andrew McCorkle as its first tenant. His house is drawn at the top of the townland, about where All Saints Church and Colehill Park stand today, which makes it very likely he was related to the earlier family, perhaps a son of Robert McCorkell, who left his will from Cullmactraine in 1691.

The map's title describes Ballyhaskey as part of the manor of Coolmactrean, the Cullmactraine of Robert McCorkle's will and the Coole McTreene where Sir James Cunningham died in 1623. Almost a century after Andrew and John mustered for Lady Cunningham in 1630, an Andrew McCorkle was still farming the old Cunningham lands.

I believe this is the same family that appears in the Hearth Money Rolls, and Andrew may also be the Andrew of the 1708 bond and the 1709 marriage; second marriages were common.

The 1740 Protestant census

Probably as a result of the first great emigration, the Irish Parliament ordered a census of Protestant householders in 1740. The originals were destroyed in 1922, but copies survive for some parishes, luckily for me including most of those where I would expect to find McCorkells. Unfortunately the parishes of the Barony of Raphoe do not survive, so families are probably missing. Ballyhaskey does not appear in later records, and that branch may have emigrated or moved north in the mid-1700s.

For the first time since the 1660s I can place these men in their townlands, which makes identifying their descendants much easier. Arsbel, presumably Archibald, at Carrownamaddy echoes Aaron McCorcell "of Carnamaddy" baptised at Burt in 1683.

Freeholders and the city

Altaghaderry is in the parish of Killea, on the border with County Londonderry, within five miles of the city. Joseph and William may be the Joseph and William of the 1740 census for Templemore. McCorkells were still at Altaghaderry in 1901, when Thomas McCorkell and his family were recorded there.

The Londonderry Journal and the shipping line

The Londonderry Journal began publication in 1772, and McCorkells appear in its pages from the start:

William McCorkell the innkeeper is almost certainly William McCorkell, founder of the McCorkell shipping line. His death is recorded in the Belfast News-Letter of 2–6 February 1795 (page 3): "Died – in the Bog side in the 74th year of his age, Mr. William McCorkell". That matches the date given by the family. His descendants, the Shipping McCorkells, are followed in Chapter V.

His son, also William (1772–1836), took over the running of the Journal with fellow Presbyterian John Buchanan in 1796, and in 1797 became the first McCorkell to be made a freeman of the city. In September 1799 the Belfast News-Letter listed him, as "Wm M'Corkell", among the grand jurors of the city and county of Londonderry at the summer assizes who signed a declaration in support of the proposed Union with Great Britain. His father had kept an inn in the Bogside; within four years of his death the son sat on the county grand jury.

Three clusters

By the late 1700s there were three or more clusters of the name. The largest was in the Donegal hinterland of Derry, mainly in Burt and Killea, with a few members established in the city who would play an important part in its commerce and industry in the next century. The second, almost all farmers, was on the north coast of Inishowen around Malin and Greencastle, seen in the 1740 census, and later generations there probably descend from them. The third was around Strabane and Cloughfin, in the papers of the Abercorn estate.

The Abercorn papers

The Abercorn estate papers at PRONI record a dispute in March 1778 over lime: the Cloughfin tenants wanted to take it from Mr Carey's farm as they always had, while McCorkill said there was lime on his own farm, but it lay deep. In the estate survey of 1781 Samuel and William McCorkle hold leases at Cloughfin, parish of Clonleigh, in the south of the Laggan.

On 11 May 1783 the agent wrote that William McCorkill of Cloughfin, whose new rent was £11, had come in with James Pinkerton, a substantial tenant and distiller of St Johnstown, saying he had agreed to sell Pinkerton his farm for £15, though the agent believed it was more. He added that young men from the town were taking linen to America and some tradesmen were going to settle there, but he hardly thought McCorkill would go, "as he is an elderly man". The hint that he might have been leaving for America is intriguing.

Late in the century

My body I commit to the earth or sea as it shall please God to order.Will of George McCorkill, 1791

The words are a seaman's, and so is the executor: Wapping, on the Thames below the Tower, was the sailors' quarter of London, full of lodging-house keepers and agents who handled seamen's pay. George was clearly unmarried and childless, with no closer family than his two sisters in Derry. He may have been a son of George Mackorkle the ship's surgeon; I can find no baptisms for him or his sisters.

The Flax Growers' Bounty, 1796

The Linen Board's bounty list of 1796 is one of the best census substitutes for the end of the century. Tenants were given four spinning wheels for each acre of flax sown, and a loom for five acres, so almost every tenant farmer appears. The names are listed by parish only, but the list shows how the name had spread over a hundred years.

William M'Corkle of Moville Upper is my 5x great-grandfather, the William of Curraghnagarry whose story is told in Chapter V. In all there were ten McCorkell farming families in Donegal and four in Londonderry, though Templemore straddles the county border.

The family stayed in Tamlaght Finlagan: the 1831 census of County Londonderry lists Robert, Thomas and William McCurkle at Drumacarney, and a William McCorkle at Carnowry in Magilligan, across the Foyle from Greencastle. The same census of County Londonderry shows many Inishowen names in that district, which is not surprising given the ferry between Greencastle and Magilligan, and Alexander and William almost certainly came from Inishowen. Peter M'Corkill at Dromore is well outside the usual area, perhaps a later arrival from Scotland. In the early nineteenth century another McCorkle family came directly from Paisley to Loughgilly in County Armagh; see Chapter V.

Into the nineteenth century

The McCorkells of Aughnish, near Ramelton

One family of the name was settled near Ramelton, on Lough Swilly. In the Flax Growers' Bounty of 1796 a James M'Corkle farmed in the parish of Tullyaughnish, and his son Isaac was described thirty years later as the son of "Mr. James McCorkell, near Ramelton". A Mrs Margaret McCorkell died at Aughnish, near Ramelton, on 16 January 1842, in her 82nd year. Born about 1760, she may well have been James's wife and Isaac's mother.

Isaac McCorkell, M.D., was born in Donegal on 21 May 1795. He served as a surgeon in the militia and went out to Jamaica, where he became a justice of the peace and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the parish of Manchester. In May 1824 he married Ann Smith, born in Kingston on 27 July 1805. They had two sons, Robert David Thompson McCorkell, born 22 February 1825, and William McCorkell, born 20 February 1826. Isaac died at Vere on 27 October 1831; Ann lived until 30 March 1864 and died in Kingston.

On the 27th Oct. last, at Vere, Jamaica, aged 33 years, Mr. Isaac McCorkell, surgeon, son of Mr. James McCorkell, near Ramelton, very much regretted by all who knew him.Londonderry Sentinel, 4 February 1832

The newspaper gives his age as 33, but a birth in May 1795 would make him 36. One of the two is mistaken.

Vere and Manchester were sugar parishes, and a doctor and magistrate there in the 1820s lived among the plantations and the enslaved people who worked them. The Legacies of British Slavery database at University College London may show whether Isaac or his widow had any connection with an estate or a compensation claim after 1834.

So at the close of the eighteenth century the family was firmly established in the north-west, confined almost entirely to Donegal and Londonderry. Emigration to North America continued, though less than in the middle of the century, and in the 1800s Australia became a destination too. Almost no ship lists survive from the 1700s, and those of the 1800s are far from complete. The number of McCorkells in North America and Australia shows that many made the journey, but connecting them to the families left behind is difficult.

Sources

1. The National Archives, Kew: Admiralty records, ADM 106/2952 and ADM 106/2960 (George Mackorkle); will of George McCorkil, 1791.
2. Protestant Householders' Census, 1740 (surviving copies).
3. Forward estate valuation, 1727.
4. Abercorn estate papers, PRONI (D623).
5. Londonderry Journal, 1772–84; Belfast News-Letter, 7–10 November 1786, 2–6 February 1795 and 24 September 1799.
6. Londonderry Sentinel, 4 February 1832 (death of Isaac McCorkell) and 21 January 1842 (death of Margaret McCorkell).
7. Flax Growers' Bounty List, 1796.