Fishing for JACKSONS

There may be an easier way to do this, but if there is, I don’t know it. My earliest documented family member is George JACKSON (1718-1792) and then the fun begins. And it isn’t only because he allegedly lost the family lands in a game of card in a fit of depond over the loss of the love of a lady from Bath. It is also because his ancestors (including me) have such imperfect knowledge of where he came from. Amy Oliver JACKSON (1874-1962), daughter of Sir Thomas JACKSON (1841-1915), left us two incompatible versions of our family history. Both were written in the early 1950s and each claims a different county for the Jackson’s first connection to Ireland. Take your pick:

My Father came of an English family, one of whom went to Ireland as an officer in the Army in Queen Elizabeth's reign- was given a grant of land in County Cavan.

Or:

The Jacksons came from Northamptonshire and went to Ireland in Elizabeth's reign, and were given grants of land in Co. Carlow (N. Leinster) for distinguished service in the Army.

Worse than that, some of our older family histories give the family origin as Yorkshire, some Lancashire and then of course, as in the version above – there is the Northamptonshire option. Maybe all these versions are true. Maybe none are. Of course, Yorkshire and Lancashire are cheek by jowl in the north of England, but Northamptonshire is a good bit south. The Duddington JACKSONs are a tantalizing guess if the Northamptonshire part is right. Other JACKSON trees, such as the Quakers, or the Jacksons of Coleraine or the Jacksons of Drogheda also have arguments in support of them being connected to our dear old George.

The first thing I did was to double check the original versions of Amy’s histories to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t. So, what next? To use a fishing analogy, what I have been doing ever since is fishing with a seine net rather than a line. The resulting catch is such an impossible heap to do anything with, I have then entered the information on all these Jackson “fish”  into tables. A side benefit is that this information may assist others. So, here goes:

TABLES OF INFORMATION ON IRISH JACKSONS (mostly up to the mid1800s)

Description

Date