Before going further with this blog, I feel I must address two pivotal figures in the history of the Calhoun family, particularly for Americans. These men are very often referred to by researchers as “William Campbell Colhoun” (or Colquhoun) and “James Patrick Calhoun” (or Colhoun). The reason I am discussing them here is because—in all likelihood—these were not their names. Yes, they were real people, and important ones from a genealogical perspective, but according to all primary sources I have seen, their names were simply William Colhoun and Patrick Calhoun, respectively. If you have historical or genealogical interest in the Calhoun family, I hope to convince you that these misnomers should be corrected.
Based on the records I have seen, the use of middle names in Ireland did not begin until the second half of the 18th century, with their use increasing through the 19th century. The first to use middle names seem to have been the gentry, who would use an ancestral surname (such as a mother’s or grandmother’s maiden name) as the middle name for a child. A good example of this comes from the Colhoun family of Crosh, County Tyrone with Robert Hazlitt Colhoun (1785-1875), whose middle name was the maiden surname of his paternal grandmother, Margaret Hazlitt. Later, people of all classes began the practice of using two given names, like “Mary Ann”, “John Patrick”, etc. I have not found a good online reference to describe the timeline for use of middle names in Ireland, but I have seen my conclusions echoed on several online discussion forums about naming practices in Ireland, Britain, and the US, where the trends were similar.
William Colhoun was born about 1635, and Patrick Calhoun was born about 1680, both in Ireland and both well before 1750 when the first middle names began to appear. It therefore stands to reason that neither of them had a middle name, and any such names associated with these two men must have been mistakenly assigned to them by later researchers. (So, what’s wrong with continuing to call them by these spurious middle names, even if only for tradition’s sake? Well, a hundred years from now, would you want people referring to you by a name that wasn’t yours when you’re not around to correct them? Me neither.)
Because of their historical importance to the Calhoun family, there is a lot to say about both William and Patrick. I hope to discuss each of them in greater detail in future posts, but for now I will try my best to restrict discussion of them to the issue of their names.
William Colhoun
William Colhoun is the documented ancestor of the Colhoun family of Crosh, County Tyrone, Ireland and the stated ancestor of the many American Calhouns who, rightly or wrongly, claim descent from the Crosh family. He was most likely born in Ireland sometime in the 1630s or—less likely—the early 1640s, and he lived most of his adult life near Newtownstewart, County Tyrone. I know of only three references to him that were written during his lifetime: the Hearth Money Rolls for County Tyrone from 1666, the will of his father-in-law, Alexander McCausland, dated 11 June 1674, and the school records of his son Rev. Alexander Colhoun from Trinity College Dublin ca. 1680-84 (compiled as Alumni Dublinenses; 1935 edition, p. 163). In all three documents, he was referred to simply as “William” with no middle name or initial. The same is true of three significant secondary sources: Croslegh (who was himself William’s direct descendant) p. 191, McPherson p. 8 (taken from the research of Alan Taliaferro Calhoun, likely based on Croslegh), and the entry for Alexander M’Auslane on p. 59 of vol. II of Burke’s History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland from 1836 (probably derived from the will of Alexander McCausland mentioned above).
As far as I can tell, the first reference to William with the middle name “Campbell” is Orval Calhoun’s work from 1976 (Our Calhoun Family [OCF] vol. 1). Whether this insertion was made by Orval himself or by a correspondent who supplied him with information I cannot tell. Orval states (OCF vol. 1, p. 25), “They named their eldest son, William Campbell Colhoun, born 1643, after the family connections to the Campbell family in Scotland, which has been connected to the Colquhoun family for many generations, even to this day….” However, OCF repeats the same pedigree of William’s ancestry that was proposed by Croslegh. This pedigree, which runs through the Colquhoun of Luss family, shows no intermarriages between Colquhouns and Campbells among William’s direct ancestors, so Orval’s explanation regarding the “middle name” seems improbable.
There is precedent for the association of the name Campbell with other members of the Calhoun family in the middle name era (i.e., post-1750). In Ireland, there was a man truly named William Campbell Colhoun, son of Thomas Colhoun and Fanny McCandless, who was born on 22 October 1900 in Knockglass in Inishowen, Co. Donegal. In addition, there is an entire Scottish branch of the family called by the double surname “Campbell-Colquhoun”. They are descendants of a man born Archibald Campbell (1756-1820), son of John Campbell of Clathick, Perthshire and Agnes Colquhoun, only child of Laurence Colquhoun, 1st of Killermont. When Archibald succeeded his mother to the estate of Killermont, the terms of succession were that he adopt the name and arms of Colquhoun, and so he and his descendants became known as Colquhoun or Campbell-Colquhoun. (This arrangement was analogous to the Grant family adopting the name Colquhoun to continue the surname in the Luss family in 1718.) Finally, in the Colquhoun of Luss family itself were two cousins, both grandsons of Sir James Colquhoun, 23rd/25th of Luss, 8th baronet: Archibald Campbell Colquhoun (1811-1842), son of Ludovic Colquhoun, and John Campbell Colquhoun (1785-1854), advocate and sheriff of Dunbartonshire, son of Sir James Colquhoun, 24th/26th of Luss. Both men were probably named for their uncle General John Campbell of Barbreck, husband of their aunt Janet (Fraser vol. 1, p. 395).
There seems to be no discernible relationship between any of these Colquhouns with Campbell in their name and the William Colhoun of Newtownstewart under consideration here. I suggest that somewhere along the line during the compilation of Orval’s book, the name “Campbell” was attributed to William of Newtownstewart by mistake.
Has anyone run across any other primary sources, or even any secondary sources predating OCF, that would justify the continued use of the name “Campbell” in reference to this William?
Patrick Calhoun
Patrick Calhoun was the grandfather of US Vice President John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850) and the progenitor of a large family of Calhouns in America. Patrick brought his family (consisting of himself, his wife, Catherine, and five children) from Ireland to the American Colonies sometime around 1733. They settled first in Lancaster Co., PA, migrated south to Augusta Co. (now Wythe Co.), VA in 1746, and then from there to the Ninety-Six District (now Abbeville Co.), SC in 1756. The youngest of Patrick’s children, a son also named Patrick Calhoun (1727-1796), was the father of the Vice President. To distinguish the two Patricks, I will refer to the Vice President’s father as “Patrick Jr.” and his grandfather as “Patrick Sr.”
The story of Patrick Sr.’s name, particularly how the second name “James” became attached to him, is a complicated one. In short, it is uncertain whether anyone in the Calhoun family recalled the name of the immigrant grandfather by the early 19th century, since it is not stated in any surviving correspondence. However, in the 1880s, long after those who might have known better were deceased, a tradition was started—based on what evidence is not clear—that the grandfather was named “James.” This tradition gained credence when it was perpetuated by certain members of the family itself. It was not until 1936 that primary source documents mentioning the grandfather were discovered, revealing his name to be Patrick. However, by that time the erroneous name “James” had gained such wide acceptance, based on several decades of tradition, that researchers were reluctant to part with it entirely. Sometime between 1936 and 1957, seeing two possible given names before them—one correct and one incorrect—certain family historians began calling the grandfather by both names, as “James Patrick.” Unfortunately, when you mix good data with bad data, what you get is more bad data. Since we know from Irish naming tradition that Patrick would not have had a second given name, “James Patrick” is no more correct than “James” is. Now the details.
What the family knew. In surviving correspondence, Vice President Calhoun mentions a few details of genealogical interest, such as the birthplace of his father (as County Donegal, Ireland) and the birth order of his father’s brothers. However, nowhere does he mention the name of his immigrant grandfather. (His grandmother’s name, on the other hand, is known from the memorial tombstone erected to her by his father in 1760.) Worth noting is that John C. Calhoun was born in 1782, more than 40 years after the death of his grandfather Patrick Sr. and more than 20 years after the death of his grandmother Catherine. Three of his father’s four siblings and their spouses were also dead by the time he was born. When John C. was 14 (in 1796), his father (Patrick Jr.) and his father’s remaining brother (William) were likewise deceased, so there was no one from earlier generations left to ask about the family’s immigration from Ireland or anything else of genealogical significance. It is therefore not surprising that he would not have known much about his grandfather. In fact, no surviving correspondence from the first three generations of the Calhoun family or the family’s early 19th century biographers mentions the name of the immigrant grandfather, or at least not that I am aware of.
The emergence of the erroneous name “James”. The apparently erroneous idea that the grandfather’s name was “James” emerged in the 1880s based on two sources, both of uncertain origin. The first is a biographical sketch of the life of John C. Calhoun written by Col. William Pinkney Starke, an abridged version of which was published in 1900 by John Franklin Jameson as part of the book Correspondence of John C. Calhoun (1900), pp. 65-89. In 1883, Starke was invited to the Fort Hill, SC home of Vice President Calhoun’s son-in-law Thomas Green Clemson (1807-1888) to write Calhoun’s biography [see Jacobsen, John Gregory. “Historians and John C. Calhoun: One hundred and fifty years of historiography” (1999). Student Work. 468]. Starke died before he could finish the work, and to my knowledge, the abridged sketch in Jameson’s book is all that survives. Jameson notes that Starke prepared the biography “from the papers left by [John C. Calhoun]” and “from materials of neighborhood tradition” (Jameson, p. 18). It was written in shorthand, transcribed by Senator Benjamin R. Tillman (1847-1918), and then abridged for inclusion, presumably by Jameson himself. The sketch states,
Among the emigrants from Scotland to North Ireland who crossed the channel early in the eighteenth century was a family of Colquhouns and another of Caldwells…. The Calhouns, as we shall henceforth call them, settled near Donegal in the northwestern part of the island, in which country Patrick Calhoun, the father of John Caldwell Calhoun, was born in 1723…. In the year 1733 a family of Calhouns emigrated to America. One of the three brothers was James Calhoun, who with Catherine, his wife, and four sons, James, William, Patrick, and Ezekiel, had resided in Donegal. They landed in New York, but soon removed to the western part of Pennsylvania, where they settled not far from the Potomac River.
John Franklin Jameson. Correspondence of John C. Calhoun (1900), p. 65.
This level of detail about the migrations from Scotland to Ulster, and then from Ulster to America, is far beyond what John C. Calhoun himself seems to have known about, and it is hard to imagine any other surviving members of the family having recalled any of this by 1883. The source of Starke’s information, therefore, is not clear. As early as 1901, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine (vol. 2, no. 2, April 1901, p. 159) criticized Starke’s sketch, stating that it, “like all family histories founded upon family traditions instead of original research, is full of errors.” Writing in 1917, William Montgomery Meigs states, “There is no doubt at all as to the presence in America of this one member of the generation preceding that of the four brothers, but I know of no evidence tending to bear out Col. Starke’s statement that her husband’s name was James and that James emigrated, accompanied by two brothers, as well as by his own immediate family.” (The Life of John C. Calhoun, p. 32, footnote 6.)
The second source has been referred to as the “Memoirs of John Ewing Colhoun”. John Ewing Colhoun (ca. 1749-1802), son of Ezekiel, was a US Congressman and Senator, and both the father-in-law and older first cousin (by 33 years) of Vice President John C. Calhoun. Although papers from John Ewing Colhoun are preserved at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to my knowledge these memoirs are not among them. This, and the fact that this work was not cited or mentioned by anyone until 1890, nearly 90 years after its purported author’s death, casts some doubt on its validity. Nonetheless, a quotation purporting to come from these memoirs appeared in two influential sources. The first, from about 1890, is the application of the Vice President’s grandson and namesake, Capt. John Caldwell Calhoun (1843-1918), son of Andrew Pickens Calhoun, to the Sons of the American Revolution. The second, from 1917, is a biographical sketch of the Calhoun family in Notable Southern Families, compiled by Zella Armstrong. The two quotes are similar but not identical; the version from Armstrong reads,
In 1733 James Calhoun emigrated from the County of Donegal, Ireland, with his wife Catherine Montgomery. They brought over with them four sons, and one daughter, James, Ezekial [sic], William and Patrick and Catherine. Catherine was married to a Mr. Noble…. The father of James, the emigrant, was Patrick Calhoun, whose father was James, and so on alternating with these two names for several generations.
Zella Armstrong. Notable Southern Families, vol. I. Chattanooga, TN: Lookout Publishing Co., 1918, pp. 46-47.
This statement contains an obvious error: the daughter’s name was not Catherine but Mary (1714-1756), wife of John Noble (1712-1752) (as per the probate records of John Noble from Augusta Co., VA). Although Mary died when John Ewing Colhoun was about 7 years old, it seems reasonable that he should have recalled her name, and this error further calls into question the overall validity of this source. It is interesting that both the “Memoirs” and Starke’s work emerged at roughly the same time, and both make the claim that the grandfather was “James.” Was one derived from the other, or were both derived from a common source of unfounded tradition among the Vice President’s descendants? Unless other documents come to light, there is no way to know for sure. Regardless, Capt. John C. Calhoun sent information based on this account to Charles Croslegh, who included it in his own work (Croslegh, p. 217), further perpetuating the error that the grandfather’s name was James.
Based on naming patterns in the later generations of the Calhoun family, associating the name “James” with the grandfather was certainly a reasonable guess, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this guess might have stood. However, we do have other data that positively disproves it. As Mark Twain once said, “Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.”
The discovery of the true name “Patrick”. Not all historians of the family bought into the idea that the grandfather’s name was James. Among those who didn’t were the aforementioned William M. Meigs, and A. S. Salley, Jr., author of several articles on the family. Salley’s early holdout paid off, and after the discovery of primary source documents naming the grandfather as Patrick, he published an article in 1938 reporting the discovery and seemingly clearing up the misconception. [A. S. Salley. “The Grandfather of John C. Calhoun.” In The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 39, no. 1 (Jan., 1938), p. 50.] He states,
Although several earlier writers had stated that the husband of Mrs. Calhoun and the father of her five children was named James …, this writer was not able to find any record of the name of the husband and father…, so he avoided any reference to the uncertain claims theretofore presented and unsupported by any references to records. Time has vindicated the writer’s judgment in ignoring those unsupported claims. During the later part of 1936, Mr. George T. Edson of Beatrice, Nebraska, editor of The Stewart Clan Magazine, discovered in the probate court records of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, records of administration on the estate of one Patrick Calhoun which show that he was the husband of Mrs. Catherine and the father of her four sons who figured in Augusta County, Virginia, from 1746 to 1756. The inventory was made in 1741 by James Small and John Williams and presented in 1743 to the probate Court of Lancaster County. His plantation and crops in the ground were valued at £100; four horses, a goat, six cows, five young cattle, nineteen sheep, swine, wagon, gears, plows, irons, tools, and household goods were valued at £52.5s, making a total of £152.5s. The widow, Catherine, renounced the right of administration in favor of Ezekiel and William Calhoun. A bond of £200, for the administrators, signed by Ezekiel Calhoun, William Calhoun, John Noble and James Mitchell, all of Lancaster county, was accepted by the court May 4, 1743, and settlement was to be made by May 4, 1744.
A. S. Salley. “The Grandfather of John C. Calhoun.” In The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 39, no. 1 (Jan., 1938), p. 50.
The widow and children named in the probate records positively identify this Patrick as the grandfather of John C. Calhoun. This record is the only primary source document naming the grandfather, as it was written at the time of his death and corroborated by his widow and children. I need to stress that even if an original document written by John Ewing Colhoun were to surface that explicitly stated that the grandfather was named James, it still would not carry as much weight as this probate record, since John Ewing Colhoun was born some eight years after Patrick Sr.’s death and 400 miles to the south of where Patrick Sr. lived and died. In short, he was not an eyewitness to his grandfather.
Although it is not a primary source document, there is a second piece of evidence that corroborates the name Patrick for the grandfather. The South Carolina Historical Commission has in its collection a book of sermons preached in 1680-88 by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and published in 1728. This book was an heirloom from the Calhoun family first given to Vice President John C. Calhoun by his father, Patrick Jr. In 1836, Vice President Calhoun gave it to Col. M. O. Tollison for the Greenwood Library, who then gave it to Gen. James Gilliam, a cousin of Vice President Calhoun on the Caldwell side. Gilliam later gave it to Mary Gilliam Aiken, wife of A. M. Aiken, who gave it to the South Carolina Historical Commission. [Source: Leonardo Andrea’s Calhoun file (#128, p. 20; LDS film 954530), kindly related to me by William Lindsey.]
The book is inscribed, “Patk Colhoun’s book.” According to both Andrea and Lindsey, the signature in the inscription does not match that of the Vice President’s father, Patrick Jr., or of any Patrick Calhouns from later generations. Below are images of this inscription and of the signature of Patrick Calhoun Jr. for comparison, and I agree with their assessment. This difference, along with the date of publication of the book and the use of the Irish spelling of the surname (Colhoun) in the inscription suggests that the book originally belonged to Patrick Sr., perhaps acquired by him in Ireland and brought to the US when he and his family immigrated. If so, this may be the only remaining item from this particular Calhoun family’s time in Ireland, a precious heirloom indeed.
The “middle name”. The correct name of Patrick Calhoun Sr., and its discovery, was reiterated in 1957 by McPherson (pp. 8-9), who states,
… Calhoun Mays of Greenwood, S.C. has photostatic copies of [Patrick Calhoun Sr.’s probate records], which he exhibited at a reception meeting of his kin, other descendants of immigrant, Patrick in Columbia, South Carolina later signatures being checked against these earlier for convincing all.
Nonetheless, it seems that researchers were reluctant to give up the notion that the name “James” should be in some way connected with the grandfather. Perhaps as a compromise, or due to the genealogical equivalent of FoMO, people kept use of the name James, relegating “Patrick” to use as a middle name. This evidently had already occurred before McPherson’s publication, since on p. 80, in an accounting of the Colhoun family of Crosh that he clearly believed was dubious, McPherson mentions that others had included among the descendants of that Irish family a “James Patrick Calhoun, who went to the American Colonies.” He further states that this James Patrick, who married a Catherine Montgomery, was of the right age and circumstances to have been one and the same as the Patrick who was the grandfather of Vice President Calhoun.
Unfortunately, this compound name continues to be widely circulated. If you have read this far, I hope I have convinced you that the correct and only name of the Vice President’s grandfather was Patrick Calhoun. If so, it would be a great service to the genealogical community to correct the online record and remove any and all outdated references to “James” and “James Patrick.”
Has anyone run across any other primary sources, or even any secondary sources from before 1883, that explicitly refer to the Vice President’s grandfather by name? (Whatever the name.) Has anyone seen the original correspondence that is the source of the “Memoirs of John Ewing Colhoun”?
Update, November 29, 2023
When this article was originally published on August 29, 2023, I did not have an image of the inscription from Tillotson’s book of sermons, which was published in 1728 while the immigrant ancestor of the family, Patrick Calhoun Sr., was still living and when his son Patrick Calhoun Jr. was still an infant at most. That has changed, and I have now updated this article to include it. I also made a few minor modifications to the text in the paragraph discussing the signature. I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History for providing the image to Bill Lindsey, and to Bill for his tireless efforts to acquire it and for kindly providing it to me to share.
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Thanks yet again to Paul Calhoun for very helpful edits and comments. I am also grateful to Paul and to William Lindsey for extremely helpful discussions and sharing of information on the topic of Patrick Calhoun Sr. and his family, and I consider this post a collaborative effort. Be sure to check out William’s own genealogy blog site, entitled “Begats and Bequeathals”!
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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.
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Genealogy of the Calhoun Family 