The Bishop Stboy’s Hawaiianprincess and the Strabane woman’s lunar crater

Or the second-generation Lifford woman whose story inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write ‘The Last of the Mohicans?’

What about the woman from Strabane who has a crater of the moon named in her honour? The Ramelton native who founded the Seaboard National Bank? It’s now part of JP Morgan Chase.

If not, you likely missed a fascinating lecture on ‘Notable Ulster-Scots Women and Men’ and their legacy, which was recently delivered by Frank Carey in the Tower Museum, as part of Derry City Council’s Autumn Lecture series.

All of the above were bolshie Ulster Scots who made their mark on the world after their characters were cast in Londonderry or the Laggan.

Teddy Roosevelt - quoted by Mr Carey during his informative presentation - perhaps summed this quality up best: “A grim, stern people, strong and powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their very hearts’ core. They suffered terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged terrible warfare in return.

“They were also upright, resolute, fearless, and loyal to their friends, devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers.”

Mr Carey took us right up to the now in terms of the huge and continuing influence of the ‘Scotch Irish’ on North America but he started at the start with that unique Irish Sea world of Dalriada, which significantly blurs the distinction between Ireland and Scotland.

Contemplating the medieval kingdom he asked: “So when did these people become Irish and when did they become Scottish? It’s all woven in together. That whole kingdom stretched up as far as the isles. And there was an awful lot of movement. Of course, if you go up to Ballycastle you can see across to Scotland straight away.”

He went on to discuss how the Scottish/Irish dualism and exchange became complicated when the Welsh Tudors, who had ascended to the throne of England and the Lordship of Ireland in the 15th century, and later the Scottish Stuarts, became increasingly interested in Ulster.

Whilst the Tudors had impinged heavily on the southern provinces of Ireland the Scots and Gaelic Irish had pretty much been given a free rein in Ulster until the reign of the last Tudor, Elizabeth I.

By the time James I ascended to the throne the Plantation of Ulster had begun in earnest.

Said Mr Carey: “He produced the Bible, he wrote the Common Prayer in Irish, he made new coins for Ireland with the crown and harp on it.

“He already had plantations in Scotland where he moved people about in Scotland. And this now became the start of the British Empire more or less out of accident. It wasn’t really designed but it sort of evolved.”

He explained that the Londonderry area was actually supposed to be a largely English settlement but became a largely Scottish one.

“The arrival of these Scots, the best laid plans of men and mice sometimes go wrong. This city was to be an English settlement. The English didn’t arrive for a variety of reasons. The Scots came in.”

By the time of the English Civil War the Scots were - as Mr Carey described it - beginning to “flex their muscles.”

In 1649 - not for the last time - they let the English parliament know their feelings. The Belfast Presbytery wrote to Oliver Cromwell’s friends complaining about the execution of Charles I.

No less than the author of ‘Paradise Lost,’ John Milton, commented: “’We must know who the Belfast Presbytery is that they take upon themselves the magistral to examine and condemn the proceedings of England.”

Mr Carey raced on to speak of the shallow roots of many of the settlers here - specifically those of more recent Scottish origin.

Many were no more than 100 to 150 years here but with pressures on rents, the volatility of the linen industry and religious persecution at the hands of the Anglican ascendancy they were on their way again.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries they became the new colonists of white settler colonies across the globe.

And a colourful and eclectic bunch they were. Rev James McCrea emigrated from near Lifford in the 18th century.

His daughter Jane became a heroine in Pennsylvania as a result of her martyrdom during the Seven Years War - a conflict involving the indigenous Algonquian peoples and the French and British colonists.

Mr Carey said: “She was moved with the British forces going from one fort to another and the Army was ambushed by a Native American tribe. In the conflict of that battle she was killed...a horrible thing was done to her. She was scalped.”

Her story was later immortalised by James Fenimore Cooper in his classic novel ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ which has been adapted for film many times.

Most recently Michael Mann cast Madeleine Stowe as the character corresponding most closely to Jane even though she survives in the film.

Mr Carey also enlightened the lecture audience about how the Presbytery of Stewartstown - in an apparent affront to the crown - wrote to George Washington congratulating him on a successful revolution. And he wrote back.

He also described how another Ulster Scot came up with the model for the American High School system; how the first ever state registered nurse in the world came from Londonderry; how the man who managed the final stages of the construction of the New York Underground was from Strabane; how a Castledawson man was amongst the first white settlers over the Rockies into California; and how Sam Gamble Bayne - from Ramelton - emigrated to New York before setting up the Seaboard National Bank (its now part of JP Morgan Chase).

Said Mr Carey: “The world of banking - Deutsche bank, JP Morgan Chase, HBOS, Canada Life - all those people were born in nine county Ulster.”

Oh, and the man who discovered Rudyard Kipling? He was from Ramelton too.

“Rudyard Kipling, I mentioned him earlier, famous author. He was discovered by a man from Ramelton, who went out and wrote in a local newspaper in New York and serialised his stories.”

Mr Carey saved perhaps his most exceptional characters for the finale. Annie Scott Dill Maunder, for example, was born in Strabane in 1868.

She became the first woman President of the Royal Astronomical Society and has a crater on the moon named in her honour.

From a very well-known family of local Presbyterians called the Dills she went to work in the Greenwich observatory in the 1890s.

“She became what was known as a ‘female computer’ in the solar department,” explained Mr Carey. “By stint of her knowledge. She became the first female Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society.” She became its President in 1916.

“There’s a crater on the moon named after her. I don’t think there’s many people in Strabane would know there’s a crater on the moon named after a lady who used to walk around Abercorn Square.”

Perhaps an even more amazing story is that of James Campbell, who was born the son of a cabinet maker in Bishop Street in 1826.

He left Ireland for Canada as a teenager and eventually found his way to New York. In his early twenties he boarded a whaler bound for the South Seas and ended up on an incredible adventure after being shipwrecked in Polynesia.

“Only two people survived the shipwreck. They managed to get over the barrier reef and on to the island but to their horror they realised the native people were there waiting for them - not a greeting party - but it was fresh food,” said Mr Carey.

But Campbell used all his Londonderry wiles to persuade the head of the islanders that as a cabinet maker he could repair a broken rifle he had spotted on one of the leaders.

He ended up staying for three months and participating in the local society before escaping on a Tahiti bound ship.

He ultimately settled in Hawaii where he married the daughter of an innkepper who sadly passed away at just 19.

Noticing the undercultivation of sugar on the islands despite their favourable climate he set about amassing a large fortune through cane plantations and was later dubbed ‘James the Millionaire’ by the locals.

He took a second wife happened to be Abigail Kuaihealani Maipinepine of the Kalanikini line of Maui chieftains - effectively a member of the Hawaiian royal family.

And the company he founded - Pioneer Mills - continued producing sugar right up until the late 20th century, when it diversified into real estate.

Mr Carey concluded: “Before the international crash they moved into property and they own property in something like 18 or 20 different states right across America.

“If you ever see a portrait of Washington DC and the White House, looking directly behind it you’ll see a line of houses and buildings. That’s owned by his company.

“They own that block. Just directly behind the White House. I wonder does that company realise that their founder, that they’re very proud of came, from Bishop Street.”

All these ear-popping stories were unburdened in the second lecture of Derry City Council’s Autumn Lecture series on October 24.

Dr Éamonn Ó Ciardha had earlier brought the Nine Years’ War, the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster to life in the opening ‘Island Voices’ series in the Tower Museum in September.

Don’t miss the third and final talk in the series entitled ‘The Plantation of Ulster: Process, People and Perspectives – The Background of a Narrative Art Quilt’ - on Thursday, November 21.

It will be delivered by Deborah J Stockdale, a textile artist living in south west Donegal. In this, the final talk in the series, the artist will describe how she researched and created the Plantation art quilt which features in the new Plantation of Ulster museum exhibition housed in Londonderry’s recently refurbished Guildhall.