Turtle Bunbury

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HISTORY

IRISH HISTORY - GENEALOGY ROADSHOW

THE PALATINES

The Palatines were a group of German Protestants who arrived in Ireland as refugees during the second decade of the 18th century. Their homeland lies along the banks of the River Rhine in south-west Germany where they were famed for their skills as farmers and winegrowers. However, during the wars which raged across Europe at that time, the sun-drenched land of the Palatines became a stomping ground for armies, specifically those of Louis XIV’s Catholic France during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The Palatine farmsteads were repeatedly burned, their vineyards and crops destroyed. Combined with a series of appalling winters (in which birds reputedly froze in mid-air), the Palatines had reached a desperate situation by the time the British Government (then controlled by the Whigs), eager to increase the Protestant workforce in Britain, issued an invitation for 13,000 Palatines to resettle in Britain and her colonies.

The Palatines arrived, via Amsterdam, between May and November 1709. But they weren’t quite the new citizens the Whigs had been looking for. Unlike the entrepreneurial Huguenots or the Dutch émigrés of the previous century, these exhausted Palatines were, by and large, unskilled and war-weary peasant workers - husbandmen, vinedressers and general laborers. Yes, they were industrious and worked hard, but they did not have the education. Moreover, their expertise in winegrowing was utterly wasted in the British Isles at that time.

Opposition to the arrival of the Palatines in England was strong, particularly amongst the Tories who labelled them as ‘disease-ridden, Catholic bandits’ whose sole purpose was ‘to eat the Bread out of the Mouths of our People’.

Some 2,800 Palatines were shipped across the Atlantic to New York; a further 300 went to the Carolinas. Many died en route and many would later make their way home to Germany. But others stayed and so contributed their unusual bloodline to that of the USA.

A further 3,000 went to Ireland where they were settled in a variety of schemes around the country. The programme was not a success and reputedly many Palatines had returned to London within a few months in a state of increasing destitution. Nonetheless, they did settle in pockets around Counties Wexford, Carlow, Tipperary and Limerick. In 1837, for instance, Samuel Lewis noted 88 inhabitants of an area called ‘Palatine’ in the parish of Urglin, County Carlow, where the Rev. Joseph Bunbury would have been Rector at the time of their arrival in the 1710s. This was presumably connected to the banker Benjamin Burton, Lord Mayor (1706) and Member of Parliament (1703-1723) who purchased lands in 1712 at Burton Hall (formerly called Ballynakelly) and elsewhere in Carlow from the Trustees for the Sale of Forfeited Estates. (1)

Amongst the better-known Palatine names to have made it through from this age are those of Keppel, Wyse (as in the Irish estate agent, originally spelled Weiss and pronounced Vice) and Switzer (originally Schweitzer, and best known for the Grafton Street department store that became Brown Thomas).

But the vast majority of the Palatines who came to Ireland arrived in County Limerick where Sir Thomas Southwell settled 130 families on his estate at Castle Matrix. Amongst these was Henrig Harbener (or Heavenor), a vinedresser, who arrived in Ireland with his wife Apolonia and four children. His descendent Noel Hayes appeared on the Genealogy Roadshow but we were unable to establish the direct connection. Unfortunately, many of the records relating to the Palatines were amongst those burned when the Public Record Office was set on fire in 1922 so it is difficult for 21st century Palatine descendents to prove the links. However, if you think you are of Palatine origin, then the Irish Palatine Museum and Heritage Centre (www.irishpalatines.org) in Rathkeale is an excellent place to start.

FOOTNOTES