This article was kindly sent to me by James Lynn who wrote it for the "Lynn/Linn Lineage Quarterly", Vol. XII, No. 3 (Fall, 1998) pp. 70-79 and has kindly given me permission to republish it here.

The Quarterly was published by Phyllis J. Bauer of McHenry, Illinois from 1987 to 2004 and is referred to in the article as LL/L.

James has done some wonderful research, pulling together all of the early records from Antrim mentioning the Lynns and, given the extreme difficulty in finding information in Ireland, it is the definitive piece of work on the Lynn origins.

A number of contributors to LL/L are able to indicate that their immigrant ancestor came from Ireland or northern Ireland and a few are able to note that he or she came from County Antrim. Some of the stories of the early Lynns in America indicate that they were Presbyterians located along the well-documented migration route of the Scotch-Irish and in the company of relatives and neighbours with Ulster-Scot surnames. County Antrim would therefore appear to be one of the primary old country locations from which Lynns emigrated to colonial America.

However, very few researchers are able to identify precisely where their Irish or Antrim Lynn ancestor came from. The basic problem is that just as no systematic records were kept of immigrants arriving in America in the 18^thcentury, no systematic records were kept of emigrants leaving Ireland. Further, there was little systematic record-keeping of any kind in Ireland prior to 1800 and many records that were created were destroyed, particularly in the explosion and fire in the Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922. It is therefore very difficult to trace one's ancestry in Ireland back before 1800, and in general the migration of interest to many LL/L readers would likely have occurred during the period from 1715 to 1785.¹

I have attempted to identify persons with the surname Lynn/Linn in the more comprehensive genealogical records available for County Antrim prior to the 20th century and to display them on a comparable basis by region of the County. At a minimum this can provide some idea of the movement of Lynns within Antrim over time. Further, it is not impossible that a surname could be found even to this day in the same area of the County from where relatives emigrated to America during the 18^th century. Each individual is identified with his/her parish and townland and the urban area within whose sphere the townland would lie based on the Poor Law Unions established in the 1840s. To be successful, a researcher must determine at least the civil parish and ultimately the townland of his/her ancestors.²

Recent studies of emigration from Ireland emphasize the chain effect, that is, the fact that families emigrated with relatives and friends, and subsequent migrants moved to where they had friends or relatives who had emigrated earlier.³ There is also evidence that such groups often stayed together during subsequent migrations in America.⁴ Researchers should therefore note the names of in-laws and neighbours of their immigrant ancestor as the association of a common cluster of surnames in a specific location in America with a similar cluster in Antrim may provide a clue as to the origin of the individuals in the group. Relatives and neighbours of emigrants may have remained in Ireland, possibly in the same area, and their descendants might be identified in records created many years after the migration.

The earliest set of records available to researchers into family history in Ireland is the hearth money rolls of the 1660s when a tax was imposed on every hearth in the country. Most of these records were destroyed, but fortunately the rolls for County Antrim for two years have survived. Occurrences of the surname Lynn and its variations in the County Antrim hearth money rolls are found in Panel 1.⁵

The parishes in the Ballycastle and Ballymoney areas are generally close to the port of Londonderry, although Killagan and Kilraghts are creeping towards central Antrim. Parishes in the Belfast and Larne areas are obviously very close to the ports of Belfast, Larne and Carrickfergus. Parishes near Antrim and Lisburn up the Lagan River are more inland. The distribution of names by civil parish suggests that Lynns had not yet penetrated into the central area of Antrim around the town of Ballymena where the name became most common in later years, possibly in the 1700s and certainly in the 1800s. The individuals closest to Ballymena, which is in the civil parish of Kirkinriola, would be Dan Linn in Ballycor and the two Mathew Linns in Kilbride and Rashee. These parishes are at the eastern end of what became the Poor Law Union of Antrim. This pattern suggests that early Lynns who were Scottish (or English) settlers were generally still close to the ports at which they arrived.

Lynns were well established on the east side of Lough Neagh in the parish of Killead (in the Barony of Massereene). These could be descendants of the old sept of O'Lynns or settlers, possibly from England. With respect to the surname Flynn, Robert Bell states:

One of the most detailed descriptions of the movement of Scottish and English settlers into Antrim in the 17^th century states:

In 1740 lists of Protestant householders in some parts of the country were drawn up. Lists for some 23 of the 79 civil parishes in Antrim survive. They are simply lists of names in a given parish with no other information. Because the lists cover only about 25% of the parishes in Antrim and exclude Roman Catholics they cannot be used to gauge the distribution of Lynns over the whole of County Antrim. The parishes for which lists exist are clustered in the northwest corner of the County close to Londonderry. Panel 2, which lists the Lynns found in these lists, indicates that by the middle of the 18^th century at least, Protestant Lynns, likely from Scotland, but possibly from England, were now settled as far west as the parish of Drummaul. The northern half of Drummaul is in the Ballymena cachement area, perhaps the heart of the Scots Irish settlements in Antrim.

A fairly complete list of the occupiers of land in rural Ireland in the 1820s and 1830s is available in the Tithe Applotment Books. These are lists of all those required to pay tithes to the established church, The Church of Ireland (the Episcopal Church in the United States or the Anglican Church in Canada). The 1830s are some decades after the 18^th century migration from Ulster to America, but it is possible that some surnames could still be found in the same townlands and parishes. The Tithe Applotment Books are readily available through the Family History Library. Panel 3 presents the Lynns found in County Antrim in the Tithe Applotment Books.⁸ By the 1830s there is evidence of some dispersal of Lynns within County Antrim and some concentration in the Ballymena area.

By the 1860s all the land in Ireland had been valued for purposes of calculating taxes to support the poor. The Poor Law Unions centered on the major urban areas were established as a part of this process. The valuation of land, popularly known as Griffith's Primary Valuation after the Commissioner of the survey, was printed and made widely available so that land occupiers could appeal their valuations.⁹ Panel 4 presents the Lynns in County Antrim found in Griffith's Primary Valuation.

It is evident that by the 1860s Lynns had become concentrated in townlands around the town of Ballymena where the workhouse for the Ballymena Poor Law Union was located. There was also a considerable number of Lynns in the City of Belfast and this reflects the population growth of the major city in northern Ireland in the mid-1800s.

The name of one of the occupiers in the town of Ballymena, Crawford Linn, will remind readers of the interesting article in the Summer 1991 issue of LL/L.¹⁰ Researchers in the Chester County area of South Carolina will no doubt notice the name of at least one of the immediate lessors, David Gaston, in Killycreen in the parish of Rasharkin.¹¹

Tracing one's ancestors back to County Antrim (or any other county of Ireland) through publicly available records is obviously a difficult task. It is particularly unfortunate that there are so few records from the 18^th century when the migration from the north of Ireland of interest to many LL/L readers took place. The fact that there was considerable movement within Antrim over time further complicates the task. However these glimpses of Lynns in County Antrim at certain times in past centuries may be of some value to Lynn family history researchers.

This map shows the total number of Lynns in each Parish totalling the 4 panels above. While the numbers (given in the key at the top right) are too low to be certain that the distribution matches reality, there are some patterns of note:

1. Apart from Belfast, there are two main concentrations, one in the north-west along the Bann and the other in the south.
2. The first is in Portglenone, Ahoghill, Drummaul, Skerry and Craigs extending along the Bann through Rasharkin, Finvoy and Ballymoney and across to Culfeightrin through Loughguile and Grange of Layd.
3. The second is in the south around Ballinderry and Magheragall .

The O'Floinns of Ui Tuirtre (the current Loughinsholin area of Derry) were pushed into Antrim in the 12th C by the O'Cathains or O'Kanes and settled in:

• Lower Antrim
• Lower Glenarm
• Kilconway
• Lower Massereene, where the O'Lynns (O'Floinn) were noted as chiefs of Lough Neagh centered here at the time of the Norman invasion.
• Lower Toome

See the Barony Map of Ireland

Apart from Lower Massereene (which may be the source of the later Lynn concentration in Upper Masserene), this closely matches the distribution of Lynns shown above.