Crossing the Atlantic, landing Oblong

By all accounts, my 5x great grandfather William Prendergast bravely crossed the Atlantic Ocean by himself at the age of 21 in 1748. Certainly there were others with him on the ship crossing from Ireland to America. Apparently there were no family or friends accompanying him, however. There are no references to any Irish-born family or acquaintances living near him or engaged in his activities in America.

Interestingly, William did have an enigmatic brother named John who is referenced in Irish genealogical records but without dates of birth or death. Could he have come over with William and disappeared into the wilderness of the west or south? That's possible, based on letters mailed in the 1960s to my great Aunt Ruth Prendergast Wightman by other Prendergasts in America.

From information in those letters, Ruth wrote the following:

"If we descend from William of Wexford, he must have had a son not named who went south (Jobe?); or William could have come from Ireland with a brother (Luke?) who lived a while in  Connecticut (just outside Pawling, NY?) and then moved south before the Revolution. Descendants of Dr. William Allen Prendergraft say we descend from Jobe Prendergraft, killed at the battle of Camden, S.C., in 1780."

Ruth also wrote, in reference to William Prendergast's Rent War of 1766 (Hudson Valley sites that my sister and I will visit this week), that "Part of William's revolt was over land grants in the Wyoming Valley of Northeast Pa. on the Susquehanna, granted by the Delaware Indians October 1755. These lands might have been held by a brother or son who drifted south after the revolt, perhaps with a price on his head. Note also that [years later William's son] James touched at New Madrid [Mo.] where a Jesse Prendergast held land in 1806."

That, however, is the extent of any documentation of William traveling with a family companion.

Wexford, Ireland's Crescent Quay. Ken Prendergast photo

It is likely that William departed from one of the principal ports near his home of Wexford and in a region populated with Prendergasts and their castles and manors more than 500 years old. The largest of these ports was the Crescent Quay of Wexford at the mouth of the River Slaney on the Irish Sea, which I visited in May 2014 and again last week.

Other ports nearby are New Ross and Waterford, but are far upriver from the sea and have less ideal soundings for larger transatlantic ships. Although a hunger ship from the late 1840s is docked at New Ross as part of a museum -- across the street from the Prendergast Pub. The Prendergasts remain ever-present here.

William's crossing came 256 years after Christopher Columbus' inaugural voyage across the Atlantic. By the time of William's departure, transatlantic crossings were commonplace -- a half-dozen ships a day departed European ports for American ones by the mid-1700s. But that didn't make the journey any less dangerous or unpleasant.

In fact, William's two- to three-month journey came only a few years before a Scottish mariner discovered that eating oranges and lemons during the months-long voyage would combat scurvy, a deficiency of vitamin C. Symptoms of scurvy include anemia, bleeding gums and bumps under the skin near muscles. Other ship-borne conditions and ailments included wretched food and water, overcrowding, smallpox, seasickness, fevers and dysentery. Violent storms often struck the North Atlantic.

This blog is too constrained to share how difficult conditions were aboard transatlantic ships. But suffice it to say that regardless of a passenger's income, no one had it easy. Certainly, some had it easier than others. Read travelers' accounts here, some of which are truly heart-wrenching (ie: the German's story). Some ships were delayed for weeks by an ill wind causing the exhaustion of food and water supplies or worse. Sometimes sick and dying family members were thrown overboard to prevent the spread of disease.

Contrary to popular myths in the United States, most who immigrated to America didn't do so by their own free will in search of liberty. From 1700 to 1775, 250,000 people emigrated from Europe to the mainland British colonies. Many of whom traveled for free as indentured servants in exchange for the ship's captain to sell his passengers to employers upon arrival in America. Plus, 250,000 African slaves were brought to and sold on the mainland colonies in the 18th century.

There is no evidence William Prendergast traveled against his will. The Prendergasts in Ireland were landed gentry and could afford to buy William passage to America. The possible reasons why William left Ireland for America were discussed in the prior installment of this blog.

William probably paused in Newfoundland after a month or two and 2,000 miles of crossing the open sea to resupply and enjoy the benefits of solid ground. Soon after departing the port of St. John, he would have passed Louisbourg, a French fort so elaborate that when King Louis XV was presented with its construction bill of 30 million livres, he said should be able to see the peaks of the fortress from his Palace in Versaille.

It would soon become even more costly -- for New Englanders. They provided the ground assault troops for a British sea-born siege and bombardment of Louisbourg in 1745. Perhaps 8 percent of Massachusetts' adult male population was killed in the assault.

Boston, MA as seen in the 18th century.

William may have landed at Boston, America's second-largest city (after Philadelphia) located another 1,000 miles southward from St. John. Only three years after the assault on Louisbourg, William would have found a wrecked economy in New England as the 1740s and 50s were the only decades in Boston's first 300 years in which it lost population. Also, no land was available for purchase in New England anymore. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was one of America's oldest and most developed.

Many growing Quaker families who settled in Massachusetts 100 years before, like the Wing family, were moving west to an opportunity to own land created by a compromise to resolve a border dispute between New York and Connecticut. In 1731 Connecticut received its unique panhandle along Long Island Sound, while the province of New York got the "Oblong" -- a narrow pencil of land extending some 60 miles northward. The transfer of the Oblong from one province to another gave Massachusetts Quakers a chance to own land.

Upon landing in America, Prendergast likely heard about this opportunity too. If I were him (and part of me is!), I would have headed to the Oblong in search of land. But William would have been disappointed to learn all the land was quickly snapped up long before he arrived in America.

It was still possible to lease land from the Wappinger Indians along the Hudson River valley or rent it from the powerful Phillipse family who dominated the Highlands between the Hudson and the Oblong for nine decades after arriving from the Netherlands. Frederick Phillipse I was a self-made man, although not all of his riches were obtained legally. Phillipse fenced stolen goods for pirates, supplied their illicit acts, and traded for slaves from Africa.

Frederick Philipse, first Lord of Philipsburg Manor

By the time William Prendergast arrived in the Hudson Highlands and settled in Pawling, NY, he dealt with Frederick Phillipse's descendants. And he also met the Wing family, orthodox Quakers who relocated from Plymouth and Barnstable counties in southeast Massachusetts five years earlier and settled in Beekman, NY, between Pawling and Poughkeepsie. All these communities were in Dutchess County.

A new Religious Society of Friends upset (or caused the establishment to quake) the Anglican church. John, Daniel and Stephen Wing arrived Boston from Scotland in 1632 in search of religious freedom and built the Wing Fort House in Sandwich in 1641. The house still stands today.

Stephen Wing (born circa 1621 to the Bachiler family espousing separation of church and state, died 1710) had 11 children from two marriages. His second marriage to Sarah Briggs produced Elisha Wing (1668-1752). By his wife Mehitable Butler they had seven children, among them was Jedediah Wing (1697-1763). Jedediah married Elizabeth Gifford and had 10 children, among them Mehitable, their third-oldest, born 1738.

Mehitable was only 10 years old when William Prendergast arrived in America. Family lore has it she was quite taken by the elder William and his dark-red, wavy hair. But the Protestant Prendergast was probably more interested in working and making some money in the strange new land considering he didn't marry for another seven years. Besides, Mehitable's father was a strict Quaker; it was forbidden for Quakers to marry outside the religion. Or for a woman to exert incredible fortitude. Or to own slaves. Or to wage war.

All of those prohibitions would be violated in due course.

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