We live in an age of identity politics. The wish to know who you are easily slides over into telling other people who they are. But who are we, really?
We are many things, just as we have many ancestors. You don't get to choose your ancestors, you have to accept them as they were, warts and all and, perhaps most importantly, try not to judge them by the moral standards of our time. We are no better than the prevailing social mores require, so why should they have been any different?
My sixth great-grandfather Francis Delap (1690-1766) was an Antiguan merchant and a slave owner. It's likely that one of the things he was trading in was slaves.
The Delaps were really Dunlops and in the sixteenth century were settled in Irvine, Ayrshire. In the reign of Elizabeth I, probably around 1600, Francis' great-grandfather Hugh Dunlop (1575-1641) upped sticks and moved to Ireland, settling in Sligo. The Scottish Presbyterian migrants to Sligo were predominantly merchants attracted by the commercial potential of the port.
We can learn something about this Hugh Dunlop/Delap from Thomas Witherow's Historical and Literary Memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland (1731-1800) where he relates the following story (pp 38-9).
"This Hugh Delap appears to have been the first of the family who settled in Ireland. He marries a Miss Aikin, and after his marriage he left Scotland, made his way across the Channel, and set up in business in the town of Sligo. In due time, when he had a home fit for her reception, his wife, who is described as a woman of very small stature, followed him to Ireland, but in making her way over the Donegal mountains was robbed in passing through the Gap of Barnesmore [below circa 1900]. The Delaps were among the first Protestants who settled in Sligo. For years their children remained unbaptized, there being no Protestant minister in the place; but at last one named Roecroft arrived, by whom the rite was administered. Two days before the Irish massacre of 1641, Lord Taffe sent for the family and brought them to Ballymote [below circa 1792] - an event which, in all probability, was the means if preserving their lives."
Hugh's son Robert (1610-1673) made his living as a merchant in Sligo, Manorhamilton and Ballyshannon, Donegal where this branch of the family seem to have settled. He married Jane Murray and had at least six children. One of whom, another Robert (1645-1713), seems to have been the first to style himself Delap, and was the father of the Antiguan Francis Delap.
Robert's life was not untroubled. His estates in Ballyshannon were confiscated by James II and there is evidence that the Delap family was intriguing for the party of William of Orange. Robert's prospects improved on the accession of William to the English throne. Francis, who was born in Ballyshannon in 1690 is described as coming from a prosperous merchant family established in the Dublin wine trade. This sounds credible and we know that the Ballyshannon Delaps had family connections with Bordeaux wine merchants.
Francis married Elizabeth Donaldson on 17th March 1714 and their daughter Elizabeth was born in 1721. At some point in the next decade the family emigrated to Antigua. Francis acquired a number of sugar plantations and in the process the Delaps became one of the most prominent Antiguan families. In 1823 William Clark produced a set of aquatints, two of which depict Delap's plantation, one is the scene in the boiling house, the other of slaves cutting cane.
On the 4th of September 1730 my 5th great-grandmother Rebecca Delap was born in Antigua. She went on to marry into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and despite it being a long way took up residence in Suir Castle, Tipperary. Her sister Elizabeth also made a good marriage in 1741 to a Scottish lad o' pairts from Galloway called John Halliday who began as a tax collector on Antigua and went on to inherit his father-in-law's estates.
The Hallidays became filthy rich and eventually returned to England, settling in Richmond, Surrey. Elizabeth died in 1781 and is buried in the church-yard of St Mary Magdalene, which means that my 6th great-aunt lies about a mile from my London apartment and 800 metres from a house I used to live in. I have seen reports that the headstone was still readable in the early 20th century and last Summer I went with my daughter to look for the grave but we could find nothing.
The Delap name though is important to me. I was able to make the connection between the Mills family and the Delaps due to a curious piece of sentimentality. My 3rd great-grandfather, born in Ireland in 1802 was christened St George William Delap Mills in honour of his grandmother a lady born in Antigua who died almost 20 years before he was born. It was reading this name on his son's marriage certificate that got me started on this journey. The writing was difficult to decipher. Was it Dunlop or was it Delap? As it turned out it was both.
