dsocarroll on Family Tree Circles

Family tradition is that our ancestor was Robert Duke of Newpark, Sligo, Ireland who died about 1677 but there is a gap in the family tree which I am trying to fill. There was another Duke in that location, John Duke, and it is equally possible we are descended from him.

These Dukes arrived in Sligo in the 17th century from Scotland as Cromwellian settlers (he paid off his army by giving them land in Ireland. The earliest mentions of the title I have found were in the commission of January 1655 which gave land to John Duke and Robert Duke in the barony of Corran and in the 1659 census of Sligo).

I have found links with the Parke family in Ireland. There is a letter dated 1802 from John Parke to Jemmett Duke and families were joined through marriage. Robert Duke married Lucinda Parke in 1756 and their son Robert King Duke married Anne Parke in 1797.

Mansergh Pace Duke married Emily Wilkin(1869-1932) in 1893.
Their children were: (1) Elmina, (2) Manserge Val (Vanty), (3) Oriel (Konks), (4) Sybil (m. Rev Bolton), (5)Ina Aileen (m. Gall), (6) William, (7) Ismay (m. Winter), (8) Rawson, (9) Sarah (m.Hardy), (10) Manserge Pace (Toony), (11) Basil.

The O'Carrolls are an ancient family that can trace their roots in the early history of Ireland. But in less ancient times(!) Teige O'Carroll defeated the forces of King Richard II which had invaded the Kingdom of Ely O'Carroll in 1395. The O'Carrolls had withstood the most powerful of armies of the time and repelled them. But by 1590 the O'Carrolls had lost most of their power and by the Cromwellian confiscations, most of their territory. So by 1690 the O'Carrolls fought at the Battle of the Boyne in a desparate bid to regain independence for Ireland.

My website includes information about the descendants of Col.Thomas O'Carroll. He fought and died at the Battle of the Boyne leaving two young sons. He was the brother of Charles Carroll who emigrated to Maryland in 1688, the grandfather of Charles Carroll of Carrollton who signed the American Declaration of Independence. The orphaned boys were removed from their hearth to families far away. One was to become a farmer in Moira the other we know not where. This boy prospered, married and had many children. By the end of the eighteenth century some of his 10 grandchildren had moved to Cork and in 1800 Edward, who had inherited the homestead sold up to a neighbour and emigrated to the USA settling in East Liverpool, in what is now Ohio in 1801. The family in Cork moved to England at the end of the nineteenth century.