A ONE NAME STUDY --- ORR , ORE, OR,
ORRE
My route to a One Name Study began some
25 years ago when I had the good fortune to be able to
talk to many relatives, including several elderly great
aunts and a great grandmother who gave me access to a
quantity of old wills, and insurance policies. But these
were my wife‘s relatives from Lincolnshire and
Staffordshire, my own family residing in Australia. Thus
at an early date I came up against the hurdle of
researching my paternal line in Ireland. I resorted to
using a local researcher which was moderately successful
back to 1845 or so when registration was introduced, but
tailed off when research was needed through the many
subsidiary records such as Parish Registers, Griffiths
Valuation; Tithe Applotments; Muster Rolls and the like.
At this juncture, I took to researching
an old family story - told to my father in 1932 by an
elderly great aunt of his (she was in her 80‘s and father
18 at the time) of an alleged connection with the family
of William Orr of Farranshane. Family stories, as we all
know, tend to be gilded in the re telling but may
occasionally contain a grain of truth. William Orr (1766 -
1797 ) was a farmer in the townland of Farranshane, Co.
Antrim and a member of the ‘United Irishmen‘ whose
original aims sought equality for all under the law,
regardless of religious persuasion. In the turmoil of
those times and fear of war with France an Insurrection
Act was passed and it was deemed a treasonable act to
administer the oath of membership for the United Irishman.
William was alleged to have done so, was arrested and
tried.
There was great sympathy for William
and many considered it a trumped up charge. Indeed the
jury was locked in a room and were copiously supplied with
food and whiskey until they reached a decision. A ‘guilty‘
verdict was followed by attempts to have it overturned -
the foreman was an elderly man who was so confused he did
not know what he was doing and one of the two soldiers who
were witnesses was of unsound mind. The judge himself
cried when passing down the mandatory sentence of death.
Appeals were made to the powers that be but it is clear
that the government wanted to make an example of William
and he was executed at Carrickfergus, Co Antrim on 14
October 1797, and the cry “Remember Orr” was a watchword
in the Rebellion that broke out in 1798. His speech from
the dock is a humbling address:
“ My friends and fellow-countrymen-In
the thirty first year of my life I have been sentenced to
die upon the gallows and this sentence has been in
pursuance of a verdict of twelve men who should have been
indifferently and impartially chosen. How far they have
been so, I leave to that country from which they have been
chosen to determine ; and how far they have discharged
their duty, I leave to their God and to themselves. They
have, in pronouncing their verdict, thought proper to
recommend me as an object of humane mercy. In return, I
pray to God, if they have erred, to have mercy upon them.
The judge who condemned me humanely shed tears in
uttering, my sentence. But whether he did wisely in so
highly commending the wretched informer, who swore away my
life, I leave to his own cool reflection, solemnly him and
all the world, with my dying breath, that that informer
was foresworn.
The law under which I suffer is surely
a severe one-rnay the makers and promoters of it be
justified in the integrity of their motives, and the
purity of their own lives ! By that law I am stamped a
felon, but my heart disdains the imputation.
My comfortable lot, and industrious
course of life, best refute the charge of being an
adventurer for plunder; but if to have loved my countrv,
to have known its wrongs, to have felt the injuries of the
persecuted Catholics, and to have united with them and all
other religious persuasions in the most orderly and least
sanguinary means of procuring redress. If those be
felonies, I am a felon, but not otherwise. Had my counsel
(for whose honorable exertions I am indebted) prevailed in
their motions to have me tried for high treason, rather
than under the insurrection law, I should have been
entitled to a full defence, and my actions have been
better vindicated; but that was refused, and I must now
submit to what has passed.
To the generous protection of my
country I leave a beloved wife who has been constant and
true to me, and whose grief for my fate has already nearly
occasioned her death. I have five living children, who
have been my delight. May they love their country as I
have done, and die for it if needfull
[ Lastly, a false and ungenerous
publication having appeared in a newspaper, stating
certain alleged confessions of guilt on my part, and
striking at my reputation, which is dearer to me than
life. I take this solemn method of contradicting the
calumny. I was applied to by the high-sheriff, and the
Rev. William Bristow, sovereign of Belfast, to make a
confession of guilt; who used entreaties to that effect;
this I peremptorily refused. If I thought myself guilty, I
would freely confess it, but, on the contrary, I glory in
my innocence. ]
I trust that all my virtuous countrymen
will bear me in their kind remembrance, and continue true
and faithful to each other as I have been to all of them.
With this last wish of my heart-nothing doubting of the
success of that cause for which I suffer, and hoping for
God‘s merciful forgiveness of such offences as my frail
nature may have at any time betrayed me into - I die in
peace and charity with all mankind. “
The researching of William Orr‘s life
and times led to in depth reading and acquisition of works
about the 1798 Revolution, thence back to The Plantation
of Ireland ca 1610. I was fortunate to find a specialist
book seller John Gamble, of Emerald Isle Books, Belfast,
who kindly copied a manuscript ‘family tree‘ of William
Orr that he came across and he found for me a copy of“
Ulster Pedigrees. Descendants, in Many Lines,of James Orr
and Janet McClement who emigrated from Scotland to
Northern Ireland ca 1607 “ This latter work by Ray A Jones
builds on an earlier genealogy by Gawin Orr of Castlereigh
(1756 - 1830) that is in the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.
Ray Jones‘ book is in the Library of Congress , Catalog
Card 77-82468 and on film in the Library of the Latter Day
Saints, Utah.
This wealth of information did not,
however, take me forward in the research of my paternal
line but opened another area of interest - the Orr origins
in Scotland. From reading about the The Plantation and the
history of the Montgomery and Hamilton families who
settled the larger parts of Co Antrim and Co Down from ca
1606, there was a lead directly to the West coast and
Renfrewshire. In particular there have been Orrs around
the Parish of Lochwinnoch for some 700 years. The earliest
found is one Hew Orr who gave an oath of allegiance to
Edward I in 1296 (the Ragmans Rolls). There is a record of
four persons named Or being called before the Abbott of
Paisley in 1503. There is evidence too of the Orr family
being supporters of Clan Campbell - John Or was a follower
of Campbell of Cawdor in 1578. Orr is an acknowledged sept
of Clan Campbell and appears in a list of associated names
at Inveraray Castle,the home of His Grace the Duke of
Argyll and MacCailein Mor., Chief of Clan Campbell. The
name did not, as some may think, stem from a diminutive of
MacGregor nor from the French d‘or (gold). The family name
existed for at least 300 years before the MacGregor name
was proscribed by King James VI of Scotland , James.I of
England, in 1603.
Yet another knock on for me was the
extent of the emigration from both Ireland and Scotland to
the Colonies. We may think of North America, both Canada
and the United States, as the main destination but there
were other adventurers who went to the West Indies, South
America - Argentina, Chile, and literally up the Amazon.
Then of course, the deportation of prisoners to ‘the
Colonies ‘ and especially to Australia and New Zealand
which is said to have led to the nickname “Pommie” from
POHMIE - Prisoner of His Majesty in Exile.
Many of these emigrants and adventurers
were not only fleeing poverty, religious and social
persecution but were enticed by the thought of a better
life and free or exceedingly cheap land. To many anything
was better than the environment from which they came; they
were incredibly resolute and also remarkably mobile for
their time. They went to Canada and the wilds of Prince
Edward Island and Nova Scotia; to the humidity of Alabama,
South Carolina and Georgia; to New York, Pennsylvania; and
the Ohio valley. Some were in the Mormon trek to Utah. In
all these places they made their mark by fighting off the
native Indians, clearing land and establishing townships
some bearing the Orr name - Orrville, Wayne Co. Ohio is
such a place named after an early pioneer Judge Smith Orr,
son of Samuel Orr who went to America in 1801.Living a
hard ,frugal, life the family managed to buy small plots
of land and gradually accumulated some 300 acres.Some of
this land was used to found the township that bears the
family name.
The Orrs also made their contribution
to the emerging United States . They were undoubtedly
involved in the slave trade and were slave owners. Indeed
this is clearly evidenced in several hundred Black
American families in the Southern USA bearing the surname
Orr. A Hugh Orr (1717-1788) from Lochwinnoch was a
manufacturer of edge tools - ploughshares, and invented
agricultural machinery. He was also a gun maker who
supplied the Revolutionary Army, and later a Senator who
represented Plymouth, Massachusetts. His son Col. Robert
Orr was the armourer of the arsenal at Springfield.
Alexander Ector Orr from Strabane, Co Tyrone was a pioneer
of the subways in New York City. James Laurence Orr (1822
- 1873) was governor of South Carolina and Speaker of the
House of Representatives. A later Orr - Andrew, was also
Speaker.
In my rambles through history I had
accumulated a substantial amount of individual Orr data
which was not of direct relevance to my blood line and I
wondered what to do with it. I knew that it represented
some 20 years of dabbling and would probably be of
interest to other Orr researchers. How then could I
continue my wider interests (as they had become) and build
on what information I had ?. Fate, or maybe it was good
fortune, directed me to the GOONS. I felt some trepidation
in joining the ‘professionals‘ but my aims and objectives
were consistent with the Society‘s and so I joined.
When I look around at the extent of
some One Name Studies with perhaps only a couple of
hundred individuals and their researcher burrowing away in
a narrow geographical area I sometimes feel a fraud. My
catchment area is the world and the Orr population far
greater than I anticipated - 90,000 in the USA (1990
Census statistics); 9730 in the UK (1997 Electoral Rolls)
and several thousands more in Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. I have now passed 100,000 entries in my Orr
databases. . Some may regard a study of this kind as
‘stamp collecting‘ in another guise - perhaps it is , but
I‘m not proud, I will gladly accept Orr information from
anyone anywhere, any time. Who knows, a future Orr
researcher just might be glad of my efforts.
On the up side I have acquired a number
of Orr family trees from Scotland, Ireland, Iowa, Ohio,
Alabama, Australia and New Zealand and made contact with
very many ‘cousins‘ around the world. I enjoy it and wish
I had started sooner. So if there is a message in my tale,
it is for those who ‘hit the brick wall‘ - don`t give up,
look around you, there are other ways of pursuing your
genealogical interests, why not a One Name Study ?
