On Identity, Part 1

Greetings from your clever commie cunt in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, in the Never Never Land where corporations are people, money is speech, and the rights of the few  to excessive wealth, power, and property outweigh the rights of the many to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, author of the blog Notes from the Ninth Circle and group owner-administrator of Terran News on Faceook.  Just call me Chuck.  Or Protest Dad.  Or Mac Mheic Con Raoi, king of Gno, king of Delbhna Tir Dha Locha, king of Muintir Conraoi, king of Baile Mac Conraoi in Conmaicne Mara and overlord of Baile Conraoi in Corco Mruad, Chief of the Name of MacConroy, and primary heir of Tuireann Delbaeth mac Ogma, god of thunder and 6th High King of the Tuatha De Danaan in Ireland.

Okay, maybe not really on that last, as far as anyone knows, but I very well could be.  

I first connected with my Scottish past and ancestry after avidly watching the miniseries Roots in 1977 when I was 13.  My favorite character, and hero, of the miniseries was Chicken George.  It is what first inspired me to search for my own roots. 

Up to that point in my life, I’d always been told by my Anglophile mother that we were English, the Hamiltons that is, and Scotch-Irish in the case of the rest of our families.  Since I knew that families name or are often named for the places they come from, I sat down with our giant atlas and began scouring England for a city, town, village, or hamlet for anything Hamilton.  Disappointed but not too surprised, I happened to glance up the page to Scotland, where the town of Hamilton was properly marked.

I was really, really excited.  Mom resisted the idea that the Hamiltons are not English, but after several Saturday bus trips I later took to do research at the public library, she caved in.  I learned a lot about the House of Hamilton, found out that my Uncle Dick had traced the Stewarts, my dad’s mother’s family, back to the Royal Stuarts of Scotland, and discovered that the Buchanans, Haddens, Olivers, Adams, Hornes, Hawkins, and possibly Martins originated in Scotland.  And so, essentially, I thought of myself as Scottish-American, though the distance in time between me and the mother country in both space and time were quite lengthy.

One day in my sophomore year at uni, I went to see my granddad at the nursing home and experience one of the more disconcerting aspects of dementia.  He thought I was my dad.  But that wasn’t as disconcerting as what he told me next: that my great-grandfather Hamilton was not really my great-grandpa, at least not by blood.  That he, my grandpa, was a bastard, and that his father’s surname was King.  He told me that he had even worked for him at the A&P grocery, but that his da had never acknowleged him.  I later confirmed all this through my mother, who called my aunt after I told her.  Margaret replied that Aunt Lorraine had learned as much from my long-dead Great-grandma Hamilton and told her several months before, she just hadn’t gotten around to letting the rest of us know.

Still kind of grooving on the whole Scottish identity thing, I checked to see if there were any Scottish clans, houses, grains, septs, or families named King.  I was nearly overjoyed to learn that King was one of the pseudonyms adopted by members of Clan Gregor after they were outlawed for being, well, outlaws.

It was not until I returned from the Philippines in the early 1990s is when I began to do actual geneaological work to try and trace the lines back to at least the first illegal immigrant of that line.  Unfortunately, by that time Uncle Dick had died of cancer and no one knew where he kept those records, so either I will have to do all that work over again or just go with what I have.

My great-grandma Hamilton was born Anna Roach, and after a lucky find in an old, old family Bible learned that she was the daughter of Silas Roach Jr. and Alda Rice, both of whose fathers served together during the Civil War in the 10th Tennessee Infantry of the Confederate army, a unit nicknamed the “Sons of Erin”.  That they had subsequently moved to Arkansas Territory together indicates a certain Irish clannishness, making it like that when Anna’s parents moved their family to Indiana, they sought out other Irish-Americans.  Not definite, but likely, even probably. 

That being the case, my biological great-grandpa King was also likely Irish-American, and if that is the case, the most probable home for him and/or his ancestors was the southwest of the region of Connemara, also known as the barony of Ballynahinch, the westermost part of Co. Galway in Ireland.  Why?  Because in the 19th century the members of Muintir Conraoi, the MacConroys of Ballymaconry, almost universally adopted King as the anglicized form of their name after having used McEnry for a couple of centuries.

For a thousand years, the dynasty that became the MacConroys ruled the portion of the Delbhna people in the land known as Ti Dha Locha, or Land of the Two Lakes, also known as Gno, G-N-O.  They were one of eight branches, and the largest, of a larger population known as the Delbhna, who once rule Central Ireland.  They were pushed from their homes in Tir Dha Locha by the O’Flahertys in the 13th century after the latter were kicked out of Magh Seola east of Loch Orbsen.  The main branch went to Ballymaconry in the southwest of the west of what is now Co. Galway, a region known anciently as Connemara and since the 16th century as the barony of Ballynahinch, while the smaller group of the famil went to Ballyconry on the shores of Corco Mruad at the eastern end of Loch Lurgan (or Galway Bay).

The MacConroy was one of the four sea-kings of Connacht, the others being The O’Malley of Tir Umhaille, The O’Dowd of Tir Fiachrach, and The O’Flaherty of Iar Connacht.  Besides trading and smuggling in partnership with the MacTeige O’Briens of the Aran Islands, many of the MacConroys sailed and fought and robbed and reived with the Pirate Queen of Connacht, Grainne Ni Mhaille herself.  Hell, being descended from them is just as good as being descended from Clan Gregor.

Gaelic Ireland is often said to have died with the Flight of the Earls from Ulster in 1607, but in fact, Gaelic Ireland lived on in Gno Mor and Gno Beg (the divisions of Tir Dha Locha under the O’Flahertys) and Connemara (which remained without division) by law until 1625, and after that unofficially until the Cromwellian plantations of Connacht in the 1640s.

The MacConroys were so old school they never adopted medieval coats of arms.  Thus, they probably never adopted the system of primogeniture, sticking with the classic system of election from among the derbhine, or beyond that if there not a sufficient candidate within that small grouping.  So I could very well be The MacConroy after all.

Okay, a lot of that was a massive bunny trail.  But it is relevant.  Once I had started to wrap my head around that, I also started to learn that nearly all my Scottish ancestors, nearly all my ancestors period, in fact, had come to America from Ireland.  Sure, a few were directly from Scotland or England, but the overwhelming majority came from Ireland before landing in the Americas.  Which makes me Irish-American rather than Scottish-American.

Despite the fact that many in Never Never Land use it to mean that their ancestors come from both Scotland and Ireland, the American term Scotch-Irish has a racist origin.  It is one that only came into vogue in the North (of the USA) in the 1840s when the old timer Irish-Americans, largely descended from Irish Protestants and Dissenters, wanted to separate themselves from the pathetic, desparate, starving huddled masses yearning to break free who were coming over from Famine Ireland.  Much later in the 19th century, as Jim Crow began to rise in the American South, whites there began to use the term Scotch-Irish as a euphemism for white. 

In truth, the only Scots-Irish, the more proper form of the term, are descendants of Scots in Ireland.  Like Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster.  Or Gerry Adams and Bobby Sands.  In Ireland, the racist ethnic term corresponding is Ulster Scots.  Because those who call themselves such are Scots-Irish.  The only thing that can validly carry the name Ulster Scots is the dialect of the Scots language spoken there.

As for the origin of my King great-grandpa, true, circumstanial evidence indicates that he was probably Irish-American, but he could well have been Scottish-American.  Hell, he could even be descended from Lithuanian Jews originally named Koenigsburg.

Not were I meant to go when I started writing this, but fuck it, there it is.