Mary Wynne Dorrance’s Dorrance Family History
Mary Wynne Dorrance compiled an extraordinary history of the Dorrance family in North America. It must have been a life’s work. She published in 1947. It is hard to dispute her charts once they focus on this hemisphere, but her history of the Dorrances before the three brothers, John, George and Samuel, crossed the ocean is vague and often contradictory.
What happened to the family in France, Scotland or Ulster – and when – is a mystery waiting to be solved. Clearly these Dorrance ancestors were Protestants in a catholic France. Either in the 16th or 17th Century they emigrated to Scotland, subsequently to Ulster and then America. In France, Scotland and Ulster there were other members of the family who stayed behind. Of their history the American branch knows not enough.
Mary Wynne cites a 19th century French publication, Nobiliare Universal, authored by a man named DeMagny, for the French origins of the Dorrance family. She quotes him as saying the family originated in the Province of Maine (just east of Brittany) and divided into two branches (perhaps Catholic and Protestant) with one branch heading to the south of France near Marseilles, the other presumably staying in northwest France. She believes this happened at the time of the Edict (Treaty) of Nemours in 1585. This agreement between catholic and protestant forces in France severely restricted the rights of Protestants (Huguenots).
As she points out there is indeed a town and a river in Provence (south of France) named “Durance”. Perhaps there is a connection to the family although the name appears to have a Roman origin, derived from the same root as durable or strong. There is also a major city in the south of France named Orange which also dates to Roman times. It is certainly possible there are connections, but nothing is sure.
There was an exodus of Protestants from France all through the 16th Century but the Treaty of Nemours turned it into a rush. Other violence toward Protestants included the 1573 murder of Protestants in Paris, known as the St Bartholme Day Massacre, which killed an estimated 30,000 people.
A change of royal family in France, however, led to the Edict of Nantes in 1598. This law gave freedom to Protestants. The Edict of Nantes continued in force until the arrival of Louis XIV. He revoked it in 1685. Mary Wynne says that the revocation was the immediate cause of the Dorrance family’s emigration to Scotland. She says, “they left in a day”.
I have always found her emigration timeline confusing. An awful lot happened to the Dorrance family between 1685 and 1719 when the brothers shipped out for New England. They lived in Scotland. They lived in Ulster. The older brothers established themselves in business. The younger was a university graduate and a licensed minister.
Also there is a suggestion in Mary Wynnes’s charts that all three brothers were born in either Scotland or Ulster. John was born in 1671, George in (perhaps) 1680, Samuel in 1685. It seems almost impossible they could have left France in 1685 and not earlier.
My belief, unsubstantiated at this point, is that various Dorrances left France in the 1500’s, and earlier 1600’s to settle in Scotland. There is a suggestion in other records that they settled near Hamilton, Scotland, in Lanarkshire or perhaps in Sterling near Edinburgh.
My efforts to find church or town records to support this theory so far have not been successful. None the less I stand by the logic that they must have left France earlier than 1685, perhaps after the Treaty of Nemours first denying protestant freedoms in 1585.
Mary Wynne speaks of the French versions of the name, D’Orange, Dorange or Dorrance. She cites a coat of arms published in 1696 and the notion a Count D’Orrance went to England with William the Conqueror. For what it’s worth my search of the Domesday Book on line (William the Conqueror’s contact list) shows no Count D’orrance or similar name. Ms. Wynne says the Dorrance family, according to Nobiliare Universal, was granted a French coat of arms in 1696. If so this was certainly not the protestant Dorrances who had left France either ten or a hundred years earlier.
However there still is a well-known family in France named D’Orange. There are also a few Dorances. The D’Orange family is wealthy and has property in northwestern France east of Rennes. Through third party sources I learned a number of years ago that the D’Orange family has been contacted by American Dorrances and the D’Orange family believes there was a connection between the names, perhaps that their branch was catholic while the émigré Dorrances were protestant. When the separation took place is not clear.
Mary Wynne says that the Dorrance family, headed by a Presbyterian minister named James left Scotland between 1688 and 90 due to “persecutions” in Scotland and settled in Ballymena in Antrim County in Ulster. During the 16th and 17th Century a great many Protestants were settled by the British government in northern Ireland to dilute the control of Irish Catholicism.
It is not clear to me that the Dorrance emigration was caused by persecution in Scotland. Perhaps more likely it was economic opportunity. Presbyterians had greater troubles with British Anglicans than Catholic monarchs. And in Ulster English landlords created difficult times for both the Irish and the newly arrived Scottish immigrants, a major reason for large scale emigration of Scotch-Irish to all parts of North America.
In 1688 and 1690 (the Battle of Boyne) native Irish suffered major defeats. James II (James VII of Scotland) was the last Catholic king of England, Scotland and Ireland. He ruled from 1685 to 1701, succeeded in a very complicated history by his protestant nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange. There is nothing I have been able to find that links the Dorrances or the D’Oranges with William of Orange.
Mary Wynne specifies that George Dorrance, his wife, four sons and his brother, John, with wife and five children, emigrated from Antrim County northern Ireland in 1719 to Voluntown, CT. They, she says, sailed on a boat either built or ordered to be built by George. They landed in Mercersberg, PA, (Dorrances never ask for directions) but made their way north to New England where apparently they had a land grant.
In other history of New England I have read that the Voluntown land grant, more of a small county than a single village, had been created in the aftermath of King Phillip’s War, a bloody conflict between settlers and native Americans in the 1670’s. This grant was either sold or given to potential immigrants.
By 1723 George and John Dorrance built a meeting house and summoned their younger brother Samuel, a Presbyterian minister in Coleraine, Londonderry County. Samuel graduated from the University of Glascow in 1709 and was licensed to preach at Dumbarton (Sterling) Scotland in 1711.
Samuel’s appointment as minister in Voluntown came with controversy because local Congregationalists (the original settlers of New England) disapproved of so many Scotch Irish in their midst. Nonetheless Reverend Samuel preached at the Voluntown church for 50 years. On his death, however, the church reverted to congregationalism.
Mary Wynne notes that a land grant of 236 acres passed between the brothers and that this land became known as “The Dorrance Neighborhood”. On the land was built a sawmill and “imposing house”. Ultimately this acreage became part of Sterling, CT.
Many of these early Dorrances are buried in the “Old Burying Ground” at Oneco, CT, next door to Sterling. We (my wife and I) have been there and it is fascinating.
These early American Dorrances produced many children, the names of whom are in the charts. I wish all Dorrances
“happy hunting”.
Sturges Dorrance
Descended from Reverend Samuel
Seattle, 2011
