This piece includes some of the research bits relating to
the previous piece on my blog that described Handsome James Jackson. There is more about his ancestry – the Jacksons
of Drogheda on my website. SEE: Jacksons of Drogheda.
I have recently updated this page, so I won’t repeat myself here (or at least not
too much).
The earliest known ancestor of handsome James Jackson was Richard
Jackson of Drogheda (carpenter, sheriff and merchant) a man who seems to have
been quite successful. His son, another Richard Jackson, became an Alderman of
Drogheda and was also a successful merchant, although a number of pension
requests in 1713-1715 lead me to wonder how well he was doing near the end of
his life.
One of these two Richard Jacksons, probably Richard sr. had
coins made to use in his business which included trade in both Ireland and
England. It carried the image of an angel. One of them can be seen in the
British Museum, not that I have seen it yet. One of his coins, or tokens, featured a
praying angel, and was sold by Christies auctions for £345 in 2000. That is out
of my price range. Too bad. I’d love to see what it looks like.
The second Richard, Alderman Richard Jackson, not only was
father to the handsome James, but also had a son George Jackson who was clearly
down on his luck. Dunton’s book, The
Dublin Scuffle, published in 1699, does not mention that James had a
brother. What we do know is that by 1727, this luckless George was frequently pleading
for money in order to place his two sons as apprentices. It is possible that
one of these sons could have been my ancestor, the George Jackson (1718-1782) who
was punted off to be a schoolmaster in Creggan Parish.
Looking
sideways for clues in a scattershot manner to track down more about this James
Jackson, there isn’t much to see so far. There are some deeds to a James
Jackson, Gent, of Dublin in 1710 who may or may not have been Handsome
James Jackson.
I suspect that he might have been the same JACKSON who leased lands in
Oxmanowne in 1711 & 1722 and also land at Stephens Green in 1716. I would
have to order the deeds and compare the signatures in order to find out. Curiously,
in the same time frame there was also a James Jackson, Gent, of Dublin who
leased some land in Londonderry in 1716 and as well there was also a James
Jackson, merchant of Bandon, Co. Cork in 1720. Either there are a slew of James
Jacksons in the same social class, or else there was one who really made the
rounds. It may be a mix of both.
The
Co. Cork connection may turn out to be significant because of another family
story:
... eldest son David [of George 1718-1782], married Margaret Bradford, a violent tempered red- haired woman, who,
disgusted at the money being spent to get back the Mt. Leinster property, burnt
all the Title Deeds.
The Leinster property was in County Carlow and had been
granted to some long-dead JACKSON ancestor in Elizabethan times. A particularly galling part of this story is that
apparently, the deeds that Margaret burnt turned out to be only part of the jigsaw,
but a significant part. One month after Margaret fed them to the fire, a man
from Cork showed up with the other
half of the deeds. I haven’t a clue who he was, but the family story is that
taken together, the cumulative documentation would have won the case for David. The family would have regained
the lands at Mt. Leinster.
So
the next question is: Was the man from Cork related to handsome James
Jackson?
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