Whether events are shaped by the "Hand of God" or are just random permutations of the possible is a matter of speculation. A tornado strikes in Missouri and lives are transformed. Being that my Mother's family was situated in Missouri for multiple generations leads me to reflect.
By 1900, my Mother's grandparents Dan Igo, Emma Fisher, Robert Woods, and Mary Helen White were starting families in Missouri. Their ancestors a few generations before had left France, Germany, Ireland, and England, because of religious and political conflict. Few seem attracted for economic benefits, the present day motivation, North America being a site for refuge or banishment.
Lewis Igou probably didn't expect to leave Normandy, France, for Massachusetts and Maryland, but when Louis XIV rescinded the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and targeted French Huguenots for persecution, he and his family immigrated first to England in 1687 and then to America in 1688.
German Baron Johann Adam Fischer von Fischerbach probably had other plans for his son Adam, but when Adam injudiciously killed the King's deer, he was sent off from Silesia to Philadelphia for his safety in 1742.
If the English Parliament had treated the Scots-Irish better, instead of imposing test acts, refusing to recognize their Presbyterian religion, and discounting their service to the King, Michael Woods and his family might not have immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1724, and carried their animosity towards the English into the American Revolution a few years later.
Mary Helen White's ancestor Walter Powers was shipped to Massachusetts from Ireland at age 14 (1654) to be indentured to his future father-in-law Ralph Shepard, himself recently arrived from London in 1635, being an English Dissenter, at odds with the Church of England. Another of her ancestors, James Murray, a Scot who participated in Argyll's Rebellion, was banished from Scotland and transported to the "Plantations" in 1685.
These families, arriving first at Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, soon migrated to Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. By the early 1800's, they were in Missouri. Was this according to a grand plan? Or circumstance?
We probably ended up in the New World and where we are due to a fluke. Random is hugely important word, I think, in figuring out why things turned out the way they did in historical accounting. Just out of curiosity, why did this part of the family leave England so quickly?
ReplyDelete"he and his family immigrated first to England in 1687 and then to America in 1688."
Interesting point of view in this post. We're normally taught that our ancestors immigrated because they were looking for freedom, the garden of Eden, a better life and other precepts following a kind/line of ideological nonsense. We don't like to look at the migration as a settling, a skin saving, a getting out of Dodge, etc.
From looking at my family history, my contention is that people did not flock from England and Europe to settle in America in great numbers prior to the Civil War. The population shortage was made up for by having large families (10-16 children) and importing slaves. In Virginia, the Governor had to offer large land grants (1000 acres) to attract immigrants and develop the colony.
ReplyDeleteApparently, Lewis Igou and other Huguenots came to England as a group and then went to Massachusetts (later Baltimore and Pennsylvania) together. From Dennis Igou: "To further substantiate the above, the same family, Lewis his wife Esther and daughters Mary and Esther are found in London, England where they were granted citizenship on Dec. 16,1687. Both lists, the one granting citizenship in Boston and the other in London are made up of a hundred or more names that appear in virtually the same order in each collection."
ReplyDelete