Cope Family Name

[Llan]

Hello Again aNonnyMoose,
Wow, I like these lyrics. I wish that I had a tune for them. Thank you very much.

[Llan]

Good Hearing From You Again Polwarth,
I am still in the process of tracing down many of the things in Mr. Monroe's book. I must admit, however, that many of his sources that I did trace back checked out. This one area, however, about William being a Highlander and a Jacobite fighting against the Church of England is not documented. This is one of the reasons that I started searching these threads. While Mr. Monroe is an American, I have heard different stories about William and his exploits in Canada. One is that he was German, not Scottish. Another was that he was an Irish because there was another Irish Cope family there in Ontario. To complicate matters even more is that there was an English Cope family who migrated from London to Ontario but this was after the American Revolution.
So it may very well be that my William was lowland and not highland Scot. The possibility exists, also, that he is not Scottish at all! The things that I have on him that is documented is that he was given a land grant in the New York Colony; that he married a Pheobe Ellsworth (allededly Scottish) in the Colony of New York; and that he and his older sons indeed fought for the Queens Rangers under Lieut. Col. John Simcoe. William was assigned to the Command Unit and appears on the muster roles of Lieut. Allan MacNab's Queen Rangers. Notes indicate that William was a Provost Guard.
I also have the documentation from a variety of sources regarding William's son Thomas (also a Loyalist) and the rest of my ancestors. I know that documantation is very important in doing this work on our families.
Thanks Again,

[aNonnyMoose]

Llan,

Corries member Roy Williamson and a lad called Davie Paton wrote the song entitled "The Bonnie Blue Bonnets". You should be able to find it (suggest maybe trying Amazon) - it is on at least one Corries album (can't remember which one I'm afraid) and also on Davie Paton's "Fragments", and it's quite a good version. My own favourite is on a limited edition CD which includes the version by Davie Morrison of Clann An Drumma, using only drone and bodhran as backing. It's a powerful piece, but unfortunately not released on album so far, though I think Clann An Drumma may do a live version of it.

For further information on the Jacobites, there is a site with some useful information at: http://www.jacobite.ca/index.htm

And there is a current 'claimant' to the throne - especially for Polwarth, who spits at the very name: Prince Michael of Albany... No images can be displayed here but this link will take you to an interesting picture, taken on the Law at Dundee on 10th April, where a commemoration was held to remember Graham of Claverhouse's Raising of the Standard on 13th April 1689, which signalled the start of the First Rising. Michael is second on the left.

http://www.siol-nan-gaidheal.com/dealbh/law1.jpg

No doubt Polwarth can direct you to several sites which rebut Mr Albany's claims! Some of these are mentioned in the first link I quoted.

[Polwarth]

Llan
You wrote that your ancestor fought on the side of the British (loyalist?) during the American War of Independence? This fact alone makes it highly unlikely that he was a Jacobite. The loyalists supported the British Crown - ie the opponents of the Jacobites during the Uprising.. A lot of Jacobites were sent to the USA as prisoners, so I think it highly unlikely that a Jacobite would fight for the Crown!

Nonny - zachoo trying to get me gaun again re the wee Belgian? . But, if you are interested in reading about the pretender to the Scots throne, Llan... here is the website of an Irish genealogy/heraldry expert who has made it a study to expose pretenders to Scots and Irish titles. Mr Lafosse's birth certificate, which 'proves' his ancestry from BPC has been exposed, by the Belgian authorities, as a fake... Mr Murphy's site makes fascinating reading! He was also instrumental in exposing the eejit, aka Stephen Akins of that Ilk, an Alabama native who proclaimed himself chief of a clan that never existed. The full story is also on Sean Murphy's site - and very entertaining reading it is, too...
http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmur...iefs/index.htm

[Llan]

Polwarth,
I thought that I had mentioned that in the beginning. Was their "conscription" going on then? I read somewhere that many highleanders and others who had fought against the Crown were "conscripted" into the Brittish Army. This would explain why he would have first been sent to Wurtemberg, Germany first and then the the New World to fight in the French & Indain War. Is this assumption also a bad one? It is apart of that information that I have from the Canadian part of the family.
It is a matter of record, however, that William Cope, as well as five of his sons, including Thomas Cope, my 5th Gt. Greandfather were all United Empire Loyalists.
A family story goes that William and two of his Scottish brothers were captured by the British Army and sent to fight in Germany, and later in the New World.

[Polwarth]

Llan
I do not have the answer to the question you pose about a specific 'Scotsman', who may or may not be from the Highlands, and who in fact may or may not even be a Scot! I know that a type of conscription was taking place, but it was usually landowners 'conscripting' their own men into their own regiments - but I do not have any sources that I can readily quote to you, I'm afraid.

Scotland at that time had many mecernaries who were fighting in Europe. Most foreign wars had Scotsmen fighting in the armies of one or both sides! This was a recognised way of earning money in those days!

You really need to read background on the final Jacobite rising of 1745 and the Battle of Culloden (1746). Here are some quotes from John Prebble's book - Culloden.. I think it would take a serious leap of faith to believe that someone who was supposed to be a Jacobite would fight on the side of the victor of the Risings, and furthermore to serve successfully in 'Loyalist' regiments in the USA....


'Tis mine and everybody's opinion,' said Enoch Bradshaw, 'no history can brag of so singular a victory."' This was an ordinary soldier's judgement, and ordinary soldiers, who are asked to do most of the dying, count great victories in terms of loss to themselves. Of nearly nine thousand Horse and Foot who had advanced from Nairn, fifty only were dead, and two hundred and fifty-nine wounded, or such were the figures published by the Government. Since an army defeated and routed is in no position to determine its casualties, and since an army victorious may be inclined to exaggerate those it inflicts, the Rebel losses are hard to assess. Some reports put the dead at two thousand, which would be nearly half the numbers engaged. The figure was certainly not less than twelve hundred, which is the most modest figure. A Presbyterian minister, living close to the moor, was told later by one of the Duke (of Cumberland)'s surgeons, 'a very sedate, grave man', that he had counted all the bodies that lay on the field of battle as exactly as he could, and had made the number about seven hundred and fifty. These were bodies lying where the fight had been fiercest, and did not include those who crawled away to die in the hills, the fugitives ridden down on the roads, the wounded who were slaughtered on the moor during the next two or three days. Even while the surgeon counted, the infantry were stabbing and thrusting at any movement in the bodies before their stationary line. (p. 112)

... Some of the skulls of the hanged, spiked above the gates of the cities in which they were executed, were still grinning down on the streets thirty years later when another King George faced another rebellion, this time in the Colonies.

The laws under which the prisoners were arrested, gaoled, hanged, banished or transported, were many and confused. There were also Cumberland's frequent drum-head proclamations by which he promised that if he did not get exact obedience the guilty would be 'pusued with the utmost severity as rebels and traitors by due process of law or military execution'. But the simple meaning of all the laws and proclamations was this: any man, woman or child found in arms against the King, or helping such people in arms, or expressing sympathy with the Rebellion, was thereby guilty of treason. It was a wide net of small mesh, and it caught many fish. Their disposal was not so easily decided. Cumberland's solution, in May (1746), was a soldier's solution, and was ridiculously impracticable, like most of the proposals made by victorious generals. He believed it to be 'the only sure remedy for establishing Quiet in this country', and he urged its acceptance upon Newcastle.

"I mean, (he said) the transporting of particular Clans, such as the entire Clan of the Camerons and almost all the Tribes of the McDonalds (excepting some of those of the Isles) and several other lesser Clans, of which an exact list may easily be made."

He believed that prisons and mountains should be flushed clean of all Jacobites. (p. 232)



The only way for sure to learn where your ancestor came from is to find his entry point to the USA (or Canada). From there, it might be possible to find out via passenger lists etc where he came from. If it WAS Scotland via Germany and Canada - then you have a painstaking task ahead of you, I'm afraid.

In my opinion, if the loyalty of your family was to the Hanoverian crown, it would point to the fact that they were never Jacobites in the first place - but that is only my opinion.

Good luck with your research.