Castle Dobbs: the American Connection (1)

Arthur Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, Kilroot, is seen in this portrait as holding a map of North Carolina. He was appointed 'Royal' Governor of North Carolina in 1753, one year after he finished rebuilding Castle Dobbs at home in Kilroot.

His American adventure came to an end in 1795 at another 'Castle Dobbs', his new home at Cape Fear, Brunswick, North Carolina. He died just as he was preparing to return home to Carrickfergus at the age of 75.

He had been the most prominent organiser of Scotch-Irish migration to pre-revolutionary America after he purchased a part interest in 400,000 acres of land in North Carolina in 1745 from the McCulloch estate there. Then, along with McCulloch, Arthur Dobbs was granted another 60,000 acres in New Hanover County.

The first tenants that Dobbs brought over from Ireland sailed in 1751. He described them in a letter as, "my tenants and their neighbours and friends", for they were from Kilroot, Ballycarry and Carrickfergus - and many more were to follow. In 1766 yet another batch of Scotch-Irish settlers from the shadow of Castle Dobbs set sail from Belfast. This contingent bound for North and South Carolina from east Antrim included Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson from Bellahill (Dalway's Bawn). They were the parents of Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States. These Jacksons had moved from their family farm beside Dalway's Bawn to Boneybefore near Carrickfergus in preparation for their departure. So, both these 'ancestral homesteads' of 'Old Hickory' will be re-visited at a later date.


Arthur Dobbs, before taking up his office in North Carolina, had been High Sheriff for County Antrim, a member of the Irish Parliament for Carrickfergus, and Surveyor-General of Ireland. His "Essay on the trade and improvement of Ireland" demonstrated his reputation as an economist, but from 1730 he took an increasing interest in colonial affairs, as well as engaging himself in the attempt to discover the North-West passage. In 1752 Arthur Dobbs finished building his fine Palladian mansion of Castle Dobbs just yards away from the ruins of the old castle built by his great-grandfather (and only a few hundred yards south of Dalway's Bawn).

But by 1747 he had completed his land purchases in North Carolina, and wrote to Mathew Rowan, the Surveyor-General of North Carolina, to ask his advice about,

"which type of artificers or servants I should take with me as most wanted there, such as carpenters, smiths, masons and coopers - and what number would be proper at first or could be accommodated with provisions and necessaries to form a settlement ... upon what terms I should agree with each family, the number of acres, term rent or produce, that I may know how to conduct myself in any bargains I may make."

The landscaped garden or demesne of Castle Dobbs was laid out by Arthur Dobbs in the early 1700s, and its wooded glen along the Kilroot River was known to the young explorers from Boneybefore as 'Dobbs's Plantin'. It was our Sherwood Forest when we were being Robin Hood, and our woods of Tennessee when we were being Davy Crockett (or Daniel Boone). The townland is 'Dobbsland', which is 'East of Eden' and separated from the old County of Carrickfergus by the Copeland Water.

A short walk up the Tongue Loanen and the road turns sharply to the right towards Dalway's Bawn, in the next townland north called 'Bellahill'. At this turn is where James Esler junior lived. His father, James Esler senior, was in a small house just across the townland boundary, in Bellahill. The Eslers and the Jacksons of Bellahill bring the connection right back to Dalway's Bawn and the old cattle trail from Ballynure.

The Big Picture: Eslers and the 'Scotch' Cattle Drove Roads of mid Antrim

The old cattle drove routes across county Antrim run east-west (across the grain to the north-south direction of most of the main lines of communication). This is because they were heading to the main ports (especially Larne) connecting them to the Scottish drove roads that have been so well documented already on the other side of the 'sheuch'. One Scottish drove road in south-west Scotland is described as 'starting in Portpatrick' where 20,000 cattle a year were being landed from Donaghadee in county Down in 1800. (The parallel story of the county Down drove roads is one I'll leave for another day!)

For Ulster-Scots, these routes were the main arterial connection between the Scottish mainland and the Ulster-Scots settlers of the 17th century and later. This on-going connection is what shaped the very core of the Ulster-Scots heartland in terms of language, culture and religion. Along these routes are the broadest Ulster-Scots speaking areas, and the most dominantly Presbyterian communities in Ireland.

But my efforts at retracing the main drove road from Portglenone to Larne came about as a spin-off from researching the family history of my mother's grandfather - James Esler - whose family came from the cluster of small Esler hill-farms on the 'Long Mountain' between Portglenone and Ahoghill in the 1860s.

Esler is a lowland Scots name (originally German, I understand, meaning 'donkey dealer', or 'hosteler'), and 95% of all Eslers in Ireland were living in County Antrim in the early 19th century. Family tradition has it that three brothers came over from Scotland in the 1600s and settled in three areas - Kilwaughter (on the mountain slopes behind Larne), Eslertown (at the Cross between the Glenwhirry and Braid valleys, east of Ballymena), and Ballynafie (between Portglenone and Ahoghill on the Long Mountain). The map shows these three clusters, and it seems the Eslers' control of the hill pastures was strategically placed at points on upland pasture between market towns where the drovers and their beasts could stop off for the night.

So, that's where I was with my 'historical exploration' when I discovered that two James Eslers (father and son) were also living in 1860 beside Dalway's Bawn, east of Eden in Carrickfergus.

Two things seemed to confirm that this was connected to a cattle trail from Ballynure to Whitehead and Islandmagee. In the first place, both James Esler and his son from Bellahill were 'Agricultural labourers' rather than full farmers, and James Esler Senior was a 'byresman' for Dalway's Bawn itself! (A 'byre' is a cattleshed). Secondly, there were other Esler farms in the immediate vicinity. A 90-acre farm right on the coast at Whitehead was shared in ownership between two Esler brothers in 1860. These brothers were also joint landlords for the newly-erected Coastguard Station and houses in Whitehead. What an opportunity to keep an eye on the Customs and Excise men! Yet another two Esler farms were located in the townland of Balloo, in Islandmagee. These were on the Gobbins Road from Whitehead to Portmuck, which had a small harbour where pigs were exported to Scotland and horses brought in. The Gobbins cliffs between Whitehead and Portmuck had a few hidden coves and 'smugglers caves' - and one of these was on the Esler farm at Balloo! A 'horse cave' at Portmuck was where horses smuggled in were supposed to have been hidden, and I like to think that the Eslers were not only bringing cattle and pigs from Ballynure to send to Scotland, but were bringing horses in the other direction - to Ballynure Fair Hill which was renowned for its annual horse fair.

Going back to the Elizabethan history of this part of the world, Portmuck Castle and Castle Chichester at Whitehead were important outposts of Chichester at Carrickfergus, but they were also linked in terms of strategic defense to Dalway's Bawn.

Castle Chichester was excluded from the Esler farm land which surrounded it at Whitehead, as it was owned by the Chichester family, but the adjacent port was where regular postal packages from Scotland were landed in the 18th century. Of course, as I observed before, 'muc' in Irish is 'pig' - so 'Portmuck' means 'swine port' (nothing to do with the cleanliness of the harbour!)