LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-L Archives

From: Karla K Shahan< >
Subject: Re: Wanted: Darby Shawhan
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 10:52:55 -0500

Dear Mary,
If you will look in a copy of Barbados Wills and Testaments...
There are listed these SHAHANS: Cornelius, Teague, Mary, John, and
their son Thomas.... living in Barbados in the last quarter of the l7th
century....
I have been intrigued by the story of the Barbados Irish ever since I
found our family name listed there....
I am surmising, that it is possible, that they were a step
'higher' than the unfortunate 12,000, who were 'Barbadosed' there by King
James for being undesirables, or dangerous to the Church of England....
somehow, they may have been in the military or in some sort of
controlling capacity...... or they wouldn't have been able to have been
listed in the church records, as Elizabeth Shahan has pointed out to
me....
Don Shahan, of Huntsville, Alabama, wrote to me indicating that his
Shahans were Loyalists... perhaps working for King James of England on
the East Coast in the Colonies?

There is no doubt that the Shahans, Sheehans, Shawhans, Sheen's, Shains,
Shanes, etc all came from the same part of Ireland.... Times were
difficult... and perhaps some that were not so loyal to the Catholic
Church anglicized, changed their names to look a bit more the part, and
slipped off to America in whatever capacity possible, even if it meant
heading a slave ship bound for Barbados?
What do you think?
Karla

This thread:

• Wanted: Darby Shawhan by Macago <>

  • Re: Wanted: Darby Shawhan by Karla K Shahan< >