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Suzan,
I have not been doing much with the Coans lately. The information that I have comes from an aunt and a cousin.
My aunt Kathleen Coan thinks that the Coans came from County Sligo, Ultser Ireland, on the northwest corner of Northern Ireland, which probably means that the Coans are Scotts Irish....many of whom came to the colonies in the 1750s.
Between 1610 and 1700, the highland Scotts were enticed by protestant English kings and queens to transplant to Northern Ireland to establish a Protestant population in the Irish Catholic land. The Scotts Protestants pushed the Irish Catholics out of their homeland into southern Ireland and into the highlands of Ireland. (Now, I better understand the current Northern Ireland conflict. It has been going on since 1610. We have to fight over something, so why not religion.)
The typical land lease in Scotland was 3 years. When the English offered a 31-year lease in the Ulster Plantation, they jumped at the chance to live on the same piece of land for a life time.
When the mid 1700s round of strong English catholic kings and queens wanted Ireland to be totally catholic again, they made it impossible for the protestant Scotts to live in Ireland, making their children bastards and taking away their ability to own a business if they did not swear that they were loyal Catholics, all of which coincided with a 7 year drought. 250,000 of them took the boat to America in between 1730 and 1770. By the 1790 census, they were 25% of the white population in American and 75% of the population in NC, SC and GA.
This was also true for the protestant French Heugonots, many of whom had transplanted to Northern Ireland from catholic France. Ulster Ireland was a haven for protestants in the early 1700s. The French brought they linen making skills, which is why Northern Ireland is known for its linen industry.
The history sources that I have say that the Irish catholics were reluctant to leave their parishes; and if you think that you are going to get your land back, why move and risk dying on the ocean or in a new land, but the Scotts were more independent and took the chance on America……particularly since all of their children would be bastards and they could not earn a living. The same source says that most of the actual Irish Catholics immigrants to America did not leave Ireland until the potatoe famine in the 1850s.
All of that to say that if we can not find any Coans before 1850, then they are probably catholic Irish rather than protestant Scott Irish. But since all of my Coans and the ancestors that we can find are protestant, we probably had Coans in Ameria prior to 1850.....but I do not know who they are either. County Sligo is in the Ulster Irish highlands, so our Coans may have been happy there until the potatoe famine drove them to America.
How are you related to the Coans. My mom is a Coan, descended (in ascending order) from Andrew Jackson, Leander Andrew, James Percival (all born Tallapoosa Cty., AL starting in 1853 and buried in DeLeon, TX), John Alexander (born NC, buried in Tallapoosa Cty., AL) and we think Alexander ...for whom we have very little information. Since John Alexander was born in NC in 1824, I believe that the Coans were Scotts Irish who may have been here since the mid 1700s or came after the American Revolutionary war.
During the American Revolution, immigration from Scotland and everywhere else came to a standstill; however, what is very interesting is that the Scotts Irish had no love for the English (see history above) and almost to a man fought for the American Revolution, instead of being Tories who were sympathetic to England....their bread and butter. We should be able to find our grandpas in the Patriot records.
Another problem with our Scotts Irish grandparents is that they never owned land in Scotland or Ireland. They were nearly always tenants. So when they came to American, they were usually the first to move to the frontier in order to get their own land. But they were not always very religious about filing the papers. Since they were first to run the Indians out, there was no infrastructure for keeping records, and another reason that we have so much Indian blood and no record of it. The bad news is that the records are iffy. The good news is that they values education and their church....so that church records and family bibles are sometimes the best place to look. The churches also served at the schools. The Protestant churches were relatively organized and actually keep records.
Who knows maybe we actually come from one of the Coans that you found.....I need to work on this more….but have lately have been working on other lines that are easier.
I have only been investigating since Oct 2001 and have been collecting what I can from cousins. I then plan to start getting documents when I know who, where and when I am looking for them. My information has been generously gifted from relatives who have been looking for a long time.
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