By The Rev Benjamin B. Smith (published here by his kind permission)

JOHN AND EDWARD RUTLEDGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, A book by Professor James Haw, whetted the appetites of my wife and myself for a trip to Ireland. Dr. John Rutledge, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, was a native of Ireland. He was the father of two South Carolina governors, John Rutledge, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and his younger brother, Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The elder John Rutledge had followed his older brother, Andrew Rutledge, from Ireland to South Carolina. Andrew, an attorney, arrived around 1730, and John, a physician, a few years later. In South Carolina, they married well: Andrew married Sarah Boone, the daughter of Capt. John Boone of Boone Hall Plantation, the widow of planter Hugh Hext. Dr. John married Andrew's fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, Sarah Boone Hext. Both marriages gave the young Rutledges considerable property.

The first sentence in Dr. Haw's book states "Little is known of John and Edward Rutledges European ancestry." Dr. Haw wrote "The are said" to have owned land in County Cavan, "in Ballymagied, near Baronlog," Ireland. His footnotes cite "Notes from Anna Wells Rutledge, Aug. 4, 1977" in the Rutledge File, South Carolina Historical Society. That gave us a target. Go to Ireland and find information about the Irish background of the Rutledge family.

We discovered an opportunity when we received in the mail an International Elderhostel catalogue, which listed a late summer 1999 offering of a two-week course in Irish genealogy in Ireland. The time was right and, as both my wife and myself had Irish ancestors, we signed up.

The Internet is a rich source for genealogical information, and is one of the main reasons for the current boom in amateur genealogical research. The web page for the Irish Tourist Board lists a number of sites for genealogical information, including the County Cavan Heritage and Genealogy Centre. I wrote them requesting information on the Rutledges prior to 1730. They e-mailed back that they had no records that early.

But in another e-mail, they mentioned that a couple of years before, a retired senator named Simpson, from Cody, Wyoming, had visited Cavan to research the same family; his wife had Rutledge ancestors. I found the Cody Chamber of Commerce web page, and e-mailed them for information on this Senator Simpson. They responded promptly, with the name and address of retired U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson. I wrote him requesting any information he may have found in County Cavan.

The evening before we were to leave for Ireland, I received a telephone call. The female voice said, "Ben, this is your cousin, Ann Simpson." She said she would send me a fax with information, but insisted that I telephone a relative of hers in Los Angeles who had a wealth of Rutledge information from his visit to County Cavan. Her relative's wife answered the phone, and when I mentioned the name "Rutledge," she told me he was visiting his parents in Cape Cod, and there was a Rutledge cousin from Ireland visiting them. I tried calling Cape Cod, but there was no answer.

The next morning, an hour before driving to the airport, I tried once more, spoke to the person from Los Angeles, who then put Noelle Rutledge on the telephone. She was the last of the Rutledges born on the Rutledge farm in County Cavan. She gave me her daughter's telephone number in a suburb of Belfast, and I promised to call her when we arrived. I was elated; she sounded charming, and we made connections. Our target seemed within reach.

Our first week in Ireland was spent in Galway on Ireland's west coast, walking streets that still follow their ancient medieval courses, and where parts of the ancient walls and towers still survive. We viewed the Lynch and Blake Castles, and wondered if they belonged to forebears of South Carolina families of the same names. We spent most of our time in lectures, on Irish history economics, the Potato Famine and the resulting mass exodus from Ireland, the keys to genealogical research, and the complex subject of Irish names. "Rutledge," we learned, was definitely an English surname perhaps originating in the English County Rutland, in the Midlands - the smallest county in England. We made side trips to castles and manor houses and ancient monasteries, and went by ferry to spend a beautiful sunny day in the bleak Aran Islands.

From Galway I phoned the County Cavan Heritage and Genealogy Centre, and learned that there was no such place as "Ballymagied" in County Cavan, but there was a "Ballymagirril"; perhaps someone had corrupted the spelling from an old hand-written record. The Rutledges in Ballymagirril had attended the Templeport Church, and the Killyran School; Ann Simpson had faxed me that information. But she was descended from a William Rutledge, who had emigrated to Australia in the 1820s. Were we really cousins?

I also learned from the Cavan Centre that a retired Roman Catholic bishop in the town of Cavan was researching the Rutledges from Ballymagirril. I called him, and was told that there were no Rutledges in Ballymagirril prior to 1801, but that land in County Cavan, in the Parish of Dubally, had been granted to Rutledges in 1610, but they had never occupied it.

Our second week was spent in Dublin, in the Irish National Library and the Irish National Archives. Most of the old Irish records, church registers, deeds, wills, had been destroyed by fire when the General Post Office in Dublin was burned in the Easter Uprising of 1916, and the Four Courts (including the Public Records Office) in Dublin was shelled and burned in 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

We found a microfiche of an 1849 large scale Ordnance Map, and learned that Ballymagirril was a Townland of about 155 acres. We considered hiring a car and driving to County Cavan, but our genealogy consultant suggested that would be a waste of time, because the records were in Dublin. We hit a dead end; try as hard as we could, we found no information on the Rutledges of County Cavan.

Our genealogy consultant suggested one last hope. Since Andrew Rutledge had studied law at the Inns of Court in London, we could seek from the National Library a book of records of admission to the Inns. The four Inns of Court, dating back to the fourteenth century, have exclusive right of admission of candidates to the English bar, where young men serve a four year apprenticeship to study law. The National Library had records of two of the four Inns, Grays Inn and the Inner Temple. They were interesting, because for each student admitted his Townland and his father's name was listed. We found no South Carolina names listed in either record.

We knew that both John and Edward Rutledge, the governors, had been members of the Middle Temple in London, and thought it likely they would have followed the footsteps of their Uncle Andrew. But there was no record of admissions to the Middle Temple (so named because the buildings originally belonged to the Knights Templars), in either the National Library or the Trinity College Library in Dublin. We had hit another dead end.

But the Elderhostel was well run, and we had learned a great deal. Ireland was lovely and the weather was good; we had not met our target, but would continue our work from home.

Back home in South Carolina, again on the Internet, I found the web page for the Middle Temple Library, and wrote to the librarian seeking possible information on Andrew Rutledge, who might have

Studied there. And on October 13, 1999, I received a reply from the librarian. Yes, Andrew Rutledge was admitted to the Middle Temple on February 1st, 1726. Yes, his home was in Ireland, and his father's name was listed. Not from Ballymagirril, County Cavan. His admission record reads:

"Andrew Rutledge, son and heir of Thomas R [utledge], late of Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland, esq., decd."

Callan, County Kilkenny is in the South of Ireland, about 65 miles Southwest of Dublin. It is an area settled by the English beginning with the Norman Conquest of Ireland in the eleventh century. The name of the father of Andrew Rutledge and his brother Dr. John Rutledge was Thomas Rutledge, the grandfather of the distinguished John and Edward Rutledge, founders and governors of the State of South Carolina and significant founders of the American Republic.

Andrew Rutledge was perhaps the first of the South Carolina members of the Middle Temple. His nephews, John, Edward, and Hugh, and others sons of South Carolina - including Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Lynch, Jr., and Thomas Heyward, Jr. - followed him to the Middle Temple for their legal education in London. Four of these South Carolina Middle Templars signed the Declaration of Independence.

The record of the admission of Andrew Rutledge, with his father's name and his birthplace, has been kept in the Library of the Middle Temple for 273 years. The riddle of the Rutledge Irish origins had finally been resolved.

Now we have reason to return to lovely Ireland to see what more we can uncover about the history of this fascinating and distinguished American patriot family. The County Cavan suggestion led us to the North, rather than the South, of Ireland. As many genealogists know, we learn by trial and error. ·

Carologue, spring 2000 page 21