Early Ulster Settlements

Scottish immigration into early Ulster was somewhat larger and more significant than is generally much talked or written about, probably because so few records from those times have survived or are publicly available. Some time in the early part of the 1600's, before the War of the Three Kingdoms,[1] or the establishment of the Londonderry Plantations,[2] or the influx of religious persecutions, a small groups of Scottish emigres began migrating from nearby Ayrshire Scotland,[3] to that part of what is now Northern Ireland. Recent research has revealed that several Jam?son families from the Ayrshire were part of those early migrations.

From within the Ireland Abstracts of Wills and Marriages, 1620-1923[4], we have a list of people given Denizen rights[5] to live in Ireland. We see on May 10, 1605 that rights were given to Gawin and John Hamilton. It is thought that these are the two brothers that James Hamilton brought with him to Ireland to help him administer his settlement there.

Just a few months later, on September 6 of 1605 we see that John Jameson, "a German,"[6] was granted Denizen rights. This was about eight months before James Hamilton started bringing over settlers, so it is possible Jameson was an employee of some kind and that this document establishes a connection between John Jameson and the Hamilton's and their settlement.

The document doesn't tell us where he lived, but we do know that Bangor, in the Ards Peninsula, County Down (near Belfast), was Hamilton's first headquarters. And we know that a baby "John Jameson" was born there about 1610. Could this older John be that baby's father? We don't have enough information to know for sure, but we do know that an Eleanor Jameson, "dau.", probably, of John Jamieson was reportedly "intimately associated with the Agnews of Kilwaughter and the Shaws of Ballygally."[7] So, the timing and place is right.

The document also does not tell us where he was from, only that he was a German. According to Linde Lunney[8], "The thing is, by that date Scots had settled and bred in many places round the Baltic and in Scandinavia. So this John was probably a Scot or the son of a Scot. I would also suggest that because of the timing and his association with the Hamiltons that he was possibly connected to them back in Dunlop, Ayrshire."[8]

Meanwhile, Gawin Hamilton acquired lands for himself in Holywood, near Belfast and along the River Bann near Coleraine. It is easy to surmise that Jamesons who already had a relationship with him and his family might have followed him there. The Ards Peninsula area of County Down, near Belfast, is and has been thick with Jam?son families since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century, suggesting they, or at least some of them, may have been descendants of John Jameson (that "German") or others from Ayrshire, Scotland