Confederate Societies May Offer a Clue
Question: My paternal grandmother belonged to an organization called Women of the Confederacy or Daughters of the Confederacy. I was told that she signed me up for membership when I was a child. However, when I contacted the United Daughters of the Confederacy they said they have no record of her or me. Are there other similarly named organizations that she might have belonged to?
Answer: There is the Children of the Confederacy, and United Daughters of the Confederacy, both at 328 North Blvd., Richmond, Va. 23220, and Confederate Descendants Society, Box 233, Athens, Ga. 35611.
These are the only Confederate hereditary societies for women and children with which I am familiar. If she was married more than once perhaps her papers were filed under a different surname.
Q: My ancestor, Stephen Nash, supposedly was born at sea about 1776, while his parents were en route from Ireland to America. I am unable to learn their names or port of arrival, though the family later lived in Tompkins and Tioga counties, New York. Where would his birth have been recorded?
A: Births that occurred during a voyage were entered in the ship’s log books. Unfortunately, few have survived, and without more specific information about the ship and port, further research along this vein is futile.
Nash is actually an English locality surname that is also found in the Irish counties of Limerick and Kerry. Most Nash families were concentrated in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine and New York at the time of the 1790 census. If you can locate your Stephen Nash in an 1800 census as a head of household, you’ll have a county in which to work that may turn up clues to his parentage and exact origin.
Q: Many of my ancestors were sea captains in New England. One was given a Letter of Marque, which he used very successfully. Who issued these letters and where would I find more information?
A: This was a license or commission granted by a government to a private citizen to capture and confiscate the merchant ships of another nation. They were used during the War of 1812 and Civil War. Check with the National Archives--Boston Branch, 380 Trapelo Road, Waltham, Mass. 02154, as it has cases relating to the activities of privateers during the War of 1812, enforcement of the naval blockade against the South during the Civil War, and numerous court cases from the New England states.
Q: My McCants (McCance) ancestors came from Newtonnards, County Down, Ireland about 1718 and settled on Black Mingo Creek, in Craven County, S.C. I suspect they landed at Charleston. How can I learn more about the family in Ireland and locate ship passenger lists for them?
A: Your family surname is a variant of MacNish and MacInnes of northeast Ulster. MacInnes (Mac Aonghuis) is the Scottish form of MacGuinness, and MacNish is a sept of the Scottish clan MacGregor, so eventually your “Irish” line is going to take you to Scotland. Consult Filby’s Passenger & Immigration Lists Index and Supplements to see if you can find your immigrant McCants.
For background on the Scotch-Irish settlements in South Carolina and the Seaboard Colonies, read “The Scotch-Irish in America” by Charles A. Hanna. In Volume II an immigrant relates his experiences of the voyage from Belfast to Charleston in 1732.
Another good source for Scotch-Irish research is Margaret Dickson Falley’s book, “Irish and Scotch-Irish Ancestral Research.”