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My e-mail is still the same. I got your e-mail. I will find you something interesting I found on a website that is an undocumented letter from the early 1900s from a man in England to an American woman researching a family named White. Remember, this is "undocumented," but I did a little research, and it makes a great deal of sense, all fits, and no reason to perpetrate a senseless hoax.
In short, it tells about a Patrick and a Robert White, brothers, who were the only members of their family to survive after a massacre in 1648. The family was seated at a place called Clongill Castle in County Meath, Ireland, which was besieged for 3 weeks by Oliver Cromwell's forces. This would have been about the time of the massacre at Drogheda, and Clongill (I tracked the place down) is not too very far from Drogheda. The two brothers only survived because they were on the Continent with the French army. Robert stayed in England, and this fellow who wrote the letter said he was his descendant.
Nothing was said about Patrick, and we know that a Patrick showed up in the Colonies not long afterwards. This is completely consistent with the history; Cromwell basically set out to annihilate the Irish. The Whites were an old Anglo-Irish family, among those who came with Strongbow and "became more Irish than the Irish." Cromwell confiscated the lands of the Anglo-Irish gentry (they were really Norman-Irish), and hundreds of thousands of Irish were transported to "Barbados" (including the American colonies) or banished beyond the Connaught.
Doesn't fit at all with I thought of my own history, huh? There is no real proof or evidence at this point that this is the same Patrick White, but I have been puzzled about how this guy seems to have landed so solidly on his feet in Virginia and North Carolina. He was a principle in Culpepper's Rebellion, a prelude to the American Revolution. I have info on that, as well. He appears to have been very well connected.
The letter says the Whites intermarried for generations with the Plunketts, who produced St. Oliver Plunkett at about the same time. The seat of the Plunketts, where the saint was born, was not 20 miles from Clongill, and he would have been born shortly after this Patrick and/or our Patrick. He was in Rome studying at the time of the massacres, but chose to return and became Archbishop. He was told to leave and refused, knowing full well the consequences. He was imprisoned in the Tower, drug behind a cart, drawn and quartered, etc.
Just an interesting sidebar. This was not a pretty time in history. I can't remember the name of the book, but it says this Patrick White who was roaming around Virginia and North Carolina was Irish.
Does your family have a stubborn streak? Mine certainly does. Maybe we've got some of that Plunkett blood!
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