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Many, many Armstrongs from Northern Ireland have emigrated over the years to Pennsylvania. However, in exploring one particular batch of Armstrong DNA relationships I have, I noted that one particular set of matches had known Armstrong ancestors but it was largely unknown as to how they got to the US. I figured that they likely came as part of other more well-documented Armstrong migrations, such as the ones to New York or to Chester, Pennsylvania.
The discovery, within Ancestry, of the Clogher, Tyrone marriage license list going back to as early as 1702, however, put a broader context onto my missing DNA relatives. Clogher is a short distance away from Five Mile Town, County Fermanagh, where my Armstrong ancestor (John Joseph Armstrong) is likely to have lived. It's a little further away from Brooksborough, where his stated father John of Brooksborough lived, but not very much further. Therefore, many of the Armstrong marriages found at Clogher could well apply to my closest Armstrong relatives. I undertook a project to transcribe the earliest such marriages (from the beginning until 1735 or so) into GENI. It was then that I discovered a marriage between Matthew Armstrong, of Mecklenburg County and Easter Armstrong, dated 1722. Matthew was not a name I'd seen before among the Armstrongs at all - save for one of the mystery ancestors to a DNA match - Matthew Armstrong, of Pendleton .
This led me to gather together the Armstrong/Johnston marriages, tentatively as descendants of John of Brooksboro in one way or another. The Johnston side of these marriages easily formed a natural family. The Armstrong side clearly came from more than one family, because of repeated names, but they did all fit naturally into John of Brooksboro's early children - if a new one was added. The second son of John of Brooksboro was likely the father of most of the Armstrongs that married Johnstons from the Clogher record. He was also completely unknown. John's first son, William, emigrated to America with his wife Jane Gaffney, his son William, William's wife Mary Jane Caldwell, elder William's brother James, and brother James's wife Janey, and brother James's children Jeanette and William, all on the same boat in 1734. The Jeanette name was extremely important to note because it meant these Armstrong sons were likely attached to the right family: John of Brookesboro had married Jeanette Corry, and the second daughter of a family was traditionally named after her paternal grandmother. So from this one immigration description, I learned quite a lot about John of Brooksborough's early family.
The second son would have been named after Jeanette Corry's father. I adopted a working hypothesis that he was named Matthew, and that the second son as well was named Matthew. The second son had had a third son named Matthew (from the marriage records). The second son would almost certainly have named his first son "John" too, so I had the shell of a family already, headed by Matthew (b.c. 1671) and including John, then William Armstrong, of Bedminster (b.c. 1695), who married Mary Armstrong in 1721, then Matthew, who married Easter Johnston, as already stated.
It turns out, however, that William and Mary both died in Bedminster, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Looking further into that, they brought at least a half-dozen children with them, many of whom stayed in Bedminster and the surrounding area. Also associated with the same town was James Hughes, Bedminster founder his wife Rebecca Hughes. A noted son of theirs, Christopher Armstrong Hughes fought in the American Revolution, and his children and wife were well known. Grave markers from Bedminster document Andrew Armstrong, a Pvt. Samuel Armstrong, of Bedminster b. 1739 (who married Mary Jane Gibson). Another Bucks County Armstrong was Mary Wilson, b. 1742, who married Francis Wilson.
Samuel, too, was a name not previously seen among Armstrongs, and it was interesting because that was the name of one of the mystery ancestors of my DNA matches. But it was clearly a different Samuel Armstrong than the one buried in Bedminster.
I cam to realize that the reason Samuel was coming up was because it was probably the name of the father of the Johnston girls. I also realized that the Samuel Armstrongs that emigrated around that time likely had Samuel Johnston as their maternal grandfather, and they were all second sons. Not one, but two Samuel Armstrongs had likely emigrated to Bedminster. One stayed, the other went south to Abbeville SC. The Matthew that went to Pendleton, SC also likely came from this family group. Rebecca Hughes was likely the eldest daughter of John of Brooksborough's second son Matthew.
This project is about putting together the list of people involved in that emigration to Bedminster, and trying to determine what happened to them. The emigration happened, near as I can tell, around 1755.
Please note: While there are gravestones in Bedminster and some burial records to back up the death of these Armstrongs and related family there, I have not located a shipboard manifest or the equivalent for this migration. This will therefore be much harder to work out than the County Monaghan migration of 1798, which could be assessed trivially by seeing who had arrived around early February of that year. I am still looking for a good way of identifying persons aboard the 1755 ship. Right now, the only "test" I have is being in some way related to Bedminster, PA and born before 1755 and being an Armstrong.
So far, the families that emigrated at that time with that destination were:
- James Hughes, Bedminster founder and Rebecca Hughes and children, spouses, and grandchildren
- William Armstrong, of Bedminster and Mary Armstrong and four of seven known children, including two wives and one grandchild
- James Armstrong and perhaps Prudence Armstrong; no known children or grandchildren
- One of George Armstrong or Elizabeth Armstrong, or both, and all seven known children
Why Bedminster?
It turns out that Bedminster, PA, was founded by (among others) Joseph Armstrong, Bedminster founder . Joseph was born too early to have been a son of Matthew Armstrong, but he could well have been a son of John of Brookeborough himself. He was certainly the lynchpin emigrant to Bedminster, and the relationship with the other Bedminster Armstrongs is proven as well, since one of his sons married a daughter of William and Mary (marriage duly recorded). There is a hint that Joseph or members of his family joined the Quakers as well; the recorded Armstrong-Armstrong marriage so mentioned was circulated in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting [reference needed].