trail through Londonderry

I've been thinking a lot about what I've come up with so far, and the major thing I've learned is that if our ancestors stopped in Northern Ireland on the way over to Pennsylvania, it could have been for several generations or longer. The family legend says that two boys stole a pig in Scotland (Ayrshire they believe) and stopped in Northern Ireland on their way across. I'd like to believe it, and find a pig, but it's more likely that Londonderry and Donegal were their new home; that's where they seem to be sailing from.

This may have been true for many of the Scot-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania and the new world. The king had put Scots (Protestants) in Northern Ireland for years, and the Catholic Irish weren't fond of the practice. One of the promises of the new world was that it wouldn't matter so much if they were Protestant or Catholic; they wouldn't be unwelcome in their own home. Scotland was crowded and they couldn't go back; there was no work and no land; Northern Ireland was liveable but not prosperous, and they were in an ethnic and political minority, forced to defend themselves against Catholic leaders who never wanted them in the first place. The woods of Pennsylvania were looking better all the time.

All the Scot-Irish traced their families back to Scotland and were still proud of it. Within a few generations they stopped talking about it, though they kept some of their customs and beliefs. I have yet to run into any references to where in Scotland they were from or who they still knew back there. I suspect the people they knew were already in Londonderry/Donegal.

Geneva Jane was the daughter of a fisherman near Londonderry/Donegal. John Wallace (~1750), having lived in the colonies, married, had a son, saw his wife die, and left his son behind to be raised by grandparents. But rather than returning to Scotland, he returned to Londonderry, where he met and married Geneva Jane, and had six more children before they returned to the colonies in 1799.

All these children were born in Ireland, including John Jr. and Robert; Robert would become the patriarch of our family. Geneva Jane's sister moved to Wallace Run in Pennsylvania. But when John and Geneva Jane finally moved back to the colonies, they settled in Cecil County Maryland. Robert would have been only three when they moved. His whole life was Ireland and Cecil County. Some of his siblings knew Ireland better than he did. But Scotland? Memory of Scotland was much more distant. I have been assuming/hoping that John was one of the pig brothers, but I have read that even their father was in Northern Ireland, and I'm no longer sure that was possible. In any case, Robert's mother seems to be thoroughly Northern Irish. Maybe research will clear it up.