...from a potential future book on the Russell’s Family History.
The aim of this extract is to very briefly trace why a family like
the Russells ended up in America as they did.
Comments welcome on whether it all makes sense (or not) and
whether the narrative –as far as it goes – accurately describes the passage of
history.
Leave a comment here or send back-channel.
THE ROAD TO PITTSBURGH
To be
Presbyterian and Scottish-Irish in 19th century America meant that
your family would have followed a certain well-trodden (and somewhat nomadic) path
in history.
We will start in
Ireland – specifically what is now known as Northern Ireland.
Historically,
Russell – whether as a forename or a surname – goes back to the Norman Conquest
and may be linked to a place in Calvados, Normandy, called Rosel or Rozel. It
also may be derived from an Anglo-Norman nickname from Old French for
red-haired. As we will see later, in Irish history it is recognised as a
Protestant name. There were many Russells in what is today known as Northern
Ireland at the start of the 19th century. Other common names in the
region at the time were Lytle (sometimes spelled as Lytel and which is thought
to comes originally from Little) and Tay or Tays (possibly named after the
Scottish River Tay). As an alternative explanation the Ulster Historical
Foundation has suggested that the surname “Tease” which was common in the area (perhaps
from the River Tees in England’s Durham and Yorkshire region) could sound like
“Tays” when said with a strong Ulster accent.
It was common for
surnames, perhaps of mothers, to be preserved as the middle name for a new
generation. This helps explain names like Joseph Lytle Russell and Charles Tays
Russell with its variant spelling Charles Taze. This can also assist in tracing
a family tree backwards. It was also common, as it is today, for forenames to
be repeated in families down the generations. Of course, when people had large
families, they soon ran out of repeatable forenames.
As noted above,
the Russell family were of Scots or Scottish-Irish ancestry; early records using
the term Scotch-Irish ancestry. We will try and standardise our usage hereafter
with the older expression Scotch-Irish, simply because that was the term in
general use during CTR’s lifetime.
This links this
Irish population with Scotland if you go further back in history. It also links
them with the Presbyterian Church.
The Reformation
was never a clear-cut affair. While England broke away from the Catholic Church
in the time of Henry VIII and the Church of England formed in 1534, in places
like Scotland their reformation began in 1560 with the influence of John Calvin
and the local John Knox.
The Scottish
model became Presbyterian, referring particularly to how the church was controlled
and how much the civil authorities were involved in governance. In the Church
of England the State was involved with church appointments, but at one point
the Scottish church abolished the position of bishop and threw out the Church
of England’s prayer book.
As events played
out, there was a lot of pressure on Presbyterians to join the Church of
England, and this caused some from the Scottish Lowlands and also Northern
England to emigrate from the 17th century onward. In addition, the
Highland Clearances of the 18th century forced many others in
Scotland to leave their homes. The British Government was keen to encourage
these people to move to Ireland with land grants like the Plantations of Ulster
from the early 17th century onward. Of course, land grants for an incoming
population would result in the displacing of some of the existing population.
Short-term it met
two objectives. On the one hand it damped down tensions and poverty in Scotland
and the Borders, and on the other a Protestant and English speaking settler
community would help dilute both the language and Catholic faith of the native
Irish in the area. Other events would shape the intervening years, but long-term
it would contribute to a civil war and the country partitioned. Today we have the
north loyal to the British Crown and the south independent. The political
consequences of those 17th and 18th century decisions
still rumble on today.
The Protestant
communities that subsequently developed in the north of Ireland were Presbyterian
for the most part from their Scottish roots. As economic conditions became
difficult in this new homeland a number decided to move on again. For many, the
“promised land” was America. The term Scotch-Irish eventually came to be used
in America to identify this wave of Protestant immigrants. It distinguished
them from the large numbers who came from Ireland a little later because of the
potato famine. The latter were predominantly Roman Catholic.
It is very easy
to merge all those who emigrated into one group, but that would be wrong. Zydek’s
book Charles Taze Russell, The Man and
His Message, paints a vivid picture of the coffin ships that brought
hundreds of thousands of starving Irish to America. It is well written, but
Zydek assumes that this is how Charles TAYS Russell reached America as the
first of his clan to make the journey, and gives the date as 1838.
However, both the
timing and the geography are wrong. We will see in due course that the first
known wave of Russells to hit American shores came around 1822, and the really
vast crowd of starving Irish refugees arrived over twenty years later. Although
there would be overlap, generally they were from different parts of Ireland. As
already noted, the Russells were from the north of the country. The potato
famine that overwhelmed the country started in 1845 and was particularly
disastrous for the rural poor who were mainly in the west and south – and Catholic.
Population
growth, absentee landlords, tenant farmers having to split their land into thousands
of smallholdings, all meant that subsistence farming had to rely on potatoes.
It was the only crop that could just about feed a family off the land. It was a
disaster waiting to happen. When the crop failed due to potato blight, it is
estimated that a million died from starvation. Over a ten-year period more than
two million left the country, many going to America.
Those who were
part of the earlier diaspora like the Russells may have come originally from
Scotland, or they may simply have been lumped into that catch-all Scotch-Irish
title. Either way, they were Protestants – Presbyterians – who lived in the
region of County Donegal (from Charles Tays Russell’s grave marker) and
Londonderry (from Joseph Lytle Russell’s newspaper obituary). Donegal and
Londonderry border on each other. Today Donegal is the northernmost county in
the Republic of Ireland, and Londonderry (often shortened to Derry) is one of
the six counties of Northern Ireland.
A key industry in what we now call Northern Ireland was the production of Irish linen. The climate and soil were suitable for the growing of flax, and French Huguenot refugees brought their weaving skills to the country in the late 17th century. It became a huge cottage industry, especially when the British opposed the Irish woollen industry as a commercial threat. But in the early part of the 19th century hand-spinning production faced severe competition from factory machine-spinning as the industrial revolution trampled all before it. Even so, prior to the First World War, Belfast in the north was still the largest linen-producing area in the whole world, and had the nickname, “Linenopolis.” But changing times and uncertainties of the 19th century would cause some in the industry to look to America, both for markets and a home. So we have Charles Tays Russell, who reportedly came to America to work with Irish-born Alexander Turney Stewart. Stewart founded a dry goods empire which included importing Irish fabrics, before later cleaning up making uniforms for the Union side in the American Civil War. There will be more about Charles Tays later. One step further on from importing and selling linen we have Charles Tays’ one-time business partner – his brother Joseph Lytle Russell, establishing a dry goods store – a business that was expanded in due course with his son, CTR. The location of Pittsburgh, with its grime and industry, made the selling of shirts a reasonable commercial prospect.
