Patrick James McKie

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Patrick James McKie (1620–1720), a 10× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his Scottish birth, marriage to Jane Gordon McKee, his son John (Laird of Larg), his removal to Ireland, and historical context. Notable: Scots-Irish lineage; lifespan spanning the turbulent 17th century, the Plantation of Ulster, and the Williamite wars.

Patrick James McKie was born in 1620 in Minnigaff, then situated within the bounds of Kincardineshire, Scotland, and died a full century later in 1720 at Londonderry, in the province of Ulster, Ireland. His remarkable lifespan, if accurately preserved in the family records, encompassed one of the most turbulent and consequential periods in the history of the British Isles, including the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Cromwellian interregnum, the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the Williamite war in Ireland that culminated in the siege of his eventual home city of Londonderry in 1689.

Patrick married Jane Gordon McKee, and through this union the McKie line was carried forward into succeeding generations. The Gordon and McKie surnames were both well established in the Galloway and southwestern Scottish lowlands, regions long associated with Border families of resilient and martial character. Their son, John McKay, also rendered Mckie, was born about 1640 and would later be styled Laird of Larg, a designation pointing to the family's standing as landed gentry in the Larg estate near Minnigaff.

Patrick's removal, or that of his descendants, from Scotland to Londonderry placed the family squarely within the great Scots-Irish migration that followed the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century. Lowland Scots Presbyterians settled the northern Irish counties in considerable numbers, bringing with them their reformed faith, their patronymics, and their distinctive cultural inheritance. Many of these Ulster-Scots families would, within a generation or two, undertake a second emigration across the Atlantic to the American colonies, where their descendants became prominent among the settlers of the Appalachian frontier.

Patrick James McKie was the compiler's 10× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line, standing among the earliest documented Scottish forebears in this branch of the Hyten family record.