boxwell

Boxwell

family

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Number of people in the Boxwell Family in my tree:

202 male

182 female

Total 384

In former times, the name Boxwell may also have been written as Boxall or Boxold.

My branch of the Boxwell family starts with John Boxwell, born 1639 who moved from
Wootton Bassett in England where he was a merchant, to Wexford, Ireland. He married
Mary Ouseley and had a son John who married into the Harvey family of Co Wexford of
which probably Beauchamp Bagnall Harvey in the most notorious as being a founder and
leader (with Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward FitzGerald etc) of The Society of United Irishmen.

For a number of years, the Boxwells were tenants of the Saltee Islands, where, reputedly,
they used to smuggle wines and spirits into Ireland. However, the Saltees seemingly were
raided almost every week, the privateers carrying off cattle for fresh meat. There is a
tradition in the Boxwell family that one John Boxwell of Lingstown was drowned off the
Saltees while trying to recover a keg of rum which had gone adrift. Once, John Boxwell's
brother had been carried off by French Privateers who raided the islands and that he was
never heard of again.

Another John Boxwell, born 1769, was a leader of the Rebellion of 1798 in Co Wexford.
He escaped to the Saltee Islands (which the Boxwell family rented) but was captured there.
He was brought to Wexford town, tried, found guilty and hung off Wexford Bridge. He
was subsequently drawn and quartered and his head was impaled on the railings outside the
court-house to show what happened to rebellion leaders.

On the other side of the same rebellion the records show another Boxwell as who was so
injured by the rebels, had himself tied to a cannon in order to be able to give instruction to
his men.

Born in Lingstown Castle, the family home, in 1770, Francis Boxwell married Mary
Jameson on 18 May 1802. Their daughter Elizabeth married John Malone and had a
daughter Susan Boxwell Malone who in turn married as her second husband, Henry
Thompson of Northern Ireland, born 10 July 1837 in Cumberland, England.