Robert Tate

1725 - 1796  (71 years)

• Name	Robert Tate
  Born	1725
  	possibly Ulster, Ireland or Augusta Co. VA
  Gender	Male
  Died	1796	Russell Co. VA
  Notes	Excerpts from Tate Families of the Southern States, Volume II, by Laura Mentzel and Ethel Updike, 1984 There were several families of the name Tate in southwestern Virginia before the Revolution and some were not related. There was an early Robert Tate, in Washington County, VA, who was probably the ancestor of the Col. John Tate, Robert Tate, Jr. and William Tate who settled in Washington County, VA, in 1772. This Robert Tate estate was taxed in 1794, indicating that he had passed on prior to that date. Augusta County, VA was formed in 1738 and comprised a great part of Virginia. Botetourt County was formed in 1769 and Fincastle County was formed in 1772. Washington County was formed in 1776 and Russell County was formed in 1785, where they eventually found themselves living. Robert Tate Sr. died prior to 1794, however his son, Robert Tate, Jr., continued to be called "Jr." In November 1804, in Russell County, VA, a power of attorney was granted by Sarah Hanley to her friend Robert Tate, Jr. to "receive rent due me" on land in Orange County, NC; witnessed by Richard Davis, Robert Tate, Jr., and Aaron Tate. Robert Tate and Aaron were brothers, thus it seems there were several generations of Robert Tates in the area. This early Robert Tate was probably the father of Col. John, Robert Jr. and William Tate. UNSURE PARENTAGE Some researchers have his parents as John Tate and Sarah Beaty. Other researchers has his parents being Robert Tate born 27 FEB 1691 in New Kent Co. VA and died 1759 in St. Paul's Parish,Hanover Co. VA. Hopefully DNA testing will clarify some of these lines. ULSTER SCOTS/SCOTS-IRISH HISTORY AND HERITAGE Robert Tate is documented ancestor of this line. Based on my DNA results, he most likely is of Scots-Irish heritage. The terms Scots-Irish / Ulster-Scots refer to those Scots (mainly of Presbyterian stock) who settled in Ulster (the location of modern-day Northern Ireland) from the early seventeenth century. From these 200,000 original settlers, many are still in Ulster but over 2 million of their descendants eventually reached America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa among others. Many Ulster-Scots (Scots-Irish) are descended from Border Reivers, the lawless clans of the border between Scotland & England, where a lifestyle of raiding and marauding was the only way to survive. Tait/Tate/Teet is a Border Reiver name. However, Tates were also found in the area around Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland so it's unclear where our Tates originated in Scotland. Owing to their geographical position the Border Reivers were frequently harassed by passing armies who, at the very least, would require provisioning, often without payment, but who were more often hell bent on destroying everything before them and causing as much damage and misery as they could. Crops were destroyed, homesteads burnt and the people murdered or dispersed. It is no coincidence that these people, having their crops regularly destroyed and their livestock stolen, looked for other means of sustaining themselves and their families... They took to reiving. For over 400 years between the 13th & 17th centuries, warring families from both sides of the lawless border valleys would carry out deadly raids on each other. These skilled warrior horsemen would live a life of looting, arson, murder & rustling. The life of the Border Reiver was not necessarily ruled by his allegiance to the English or Scottish Crowns, but more likely by his allegiance to a family surname. The history of the Border Reivers has many similarities to that of the American Wild West. It produced its share of outlaws and broken men, corrupt officials, greed, misery and struggle for survival. In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. He immediately set about unifying the two countries and started by bringing the Reivers under control. Many Reiver families were faced with the choice of hanging or accept exile across the Irish sea to the wild badlands of Ulster as part of James' Plantation project to bring the Irish natives under control. For King James it presented him with a problem and an opportunity. As a man and a king he was no more sympathetic to Gaelic traditions and culture than his Tudor predecessors on the English throne. While still King of Scots he had been preoccupied with the problems posed by his own minorities in the Highlands and Islands, whom he once described as "utterly barbarous." The first large-scale migration of Scots into Ulster in written history was the Hamilton & Montgomery Settlement of May 1606. That saw the trickle become a flood, tens of thousands of Lowland Scots poured into Ulster. It was in Ulster that Celtic Ireland had made its last stand against a foreign invader, ending the Nine Years War. It had been a particularly bitter struggle, and Ulster had been devastated. Scottish lairds Hamilton & Montgomery aquired lands in Counties Antrim & Down from An Irish chieftain, Con O'Neill. James Hamilton was a university don and a spy; and Sir Hugh Montgomery, his partner, was an Ayrshire laird. Together they helped Conn O'Neill escape from Carrickfergus Castle, where he had been imprisoned for rioting, and offered to obtain a royal pardon for him in return for a share of his substantial estates in Antrim and Down. The northeastern counties of Antrim and Down, within sight of the coast of Scotland, are described by contemporary writers as "all waste and desolate." Hamilton & Montgomery set about encouraging a re-population on their new lands, which had been depopulated due to the English/Gaelic wars. The resulting large migration was not a plantation, not an invasion, nor a conquest but a settlement. Hamilton & Montgomery did not wrest a fertile, cultivated and prosperous region from Gaelic proprietors. They came instead to a country devastated by war and famine, they created the bridgehead through which the Scots were to come into Ulster for the rest of the century. Having seen the successful settlement of Scottish families in counties Antrim & Down by Hamilton & Montgomery, King James I was inspired to attempt another. He hoped the planting of loyal subjects would stop the threat of rebellion. The king was also worried that if a Spanish army invaded Ireland they would find support among the native Irish. The king was now in possession of vast underpopulated territories in six counties in Ireland when other Irish earls fled. Scottish and English families were encouraged to re-locate to Ulster. James now had a way of driving a Lowland, Protestant and English-speaking wedge into the heart of a Gaelic and Catholic world. To Scots the North of Ireland was only a three hour boat ride away. Many had heard about the success of the Hamilton and Montgomery settlement and had hopes they would find new and better lives. Some saw the opportunity to acquire their own estates. Farmers hoped to build new and bigger farms & landless laborers hoped to acquire their own small piece of land for farming. They were ordinary Scottish families, seeking a new life. They were mainly Presbyterian in faith and outlook, and overwhelmingly Scots-speaking in language. This was just the beginning as these first Ulster-Scots settlements were built upon over the following centuries, through constant fresh migrations which both increased the size of the Ulster-Scots community and enriched their heritage and traditions. Land hungry Scots crossed the North Channel in ever increasing numbers. What they found would have daunted all but the hardiest spirits: "for in all those three parishes [Glenabbey, Donaghadee and Newtonards] thirty cabins could not be found, nor any stone walls, but ruined roofless churches, and a few vaults at Grey Abbey, and a stump of an old castle in Newton, in each of which some gentlemen sheltered themselves at their first coming over." But the land was good and largely unfarmed, as the native Irish economy had been pastoral rather than arable. Land was granted to men known as "undertakers," who pledged themselves to bring over settlers from England and Scotland. Settlers were also encouraged by the promise of long leases, far better than the unfavorable terms in their native Scotland, where short leases acted as a disincentive to good husbandry and improvements. Plantation, the Scots were soon to show, could be made to work, especially when it was supported by adequate military force. Native Irish chieftains, deeply resentful of their changing circumstances, took to the wilds as outlaws, and as "woodkernes" represented a real threat to the more isolated settlers, many of whom were wiped out in midnight raids. The descendants of the Scots migrants were later to face a similar threat on the American frontier. While the Irish raiders were tough, the Scots were even tougher. Despite the woodkerns, and the wolves, the Plantation survived and prospered. In 1634 Sir William Brereton, in a journey through Ayrshire noted that: "Above the thousand persons have, within the last two years past, left the country wherein they lived and are gone for Ireland. They have come by one hundred in company through the town, and three hundred have gone on hence together, shipped for Ireland at one tide?" By 1640 it is estimated that as many as 100,000 Scots had settled in Ulster compared with some 20,000 migrants from England. The Scots brought a strict Calvinist doctrine, which by the late 1630s was taking a firmly Presbyterian shape, as opposed to the Anglican church favored by the king. Later in the century an Anglican opponent of the puritans had an impact of Scottish Presbyterianism on Ulster. Charles I, James' son and successor, attempted to force Scotland to accept the English forms of worship, took a path that led directly to the Civil Wars. This had a profound effect on the Protestant settlers in Ulster. Although the Scots had originally been made welcome by the English Lord Deputy in Dublin, their enthusiasm for Presbyterianism made them politically suspect. Confronted by official hostility they faced an even greater threat in 1641 when the native Irish rose in revolt, venting years of frustration on the bewildered and badly frightened settlers. During the wars the Ulster Scots had played a full part, assisting, among other things, in the famous siege of Londonderry. Among their rewards they could expect, at the very least, a measure of religious toleration: after all, the revolution settlement had at last conceded the right of Scotland to a Presbyterian church after years of Stewart persecution. But the Ulster Presbyterians were in caught in a paradox: though the reign of William of Orange brought a measure of calm, they were still subject to a religious establishment in Dublin, which remained strictly Anglican in outlook. During the reign of Queen Anne the Presbyterians, though part of the victorious Protestant party, were to find themselves just as outcast as their despised Catholic neighbors. The successive wars had the effect of once again depopulating the fields of Ulster as many of the original settlers had been killed or had returned to Scotland for their own safety. Adding to the troubles in Ulster was a series of terrible harvest failures in the 1690's in Scotland caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland resulted in hundreds of thousands of famine refugees fleeing their homeland. An appeal was made for fresh settlers, with twenty-year farm leases being held out as bait. Thus began the last great wave of Scots migration to Ulster. In the decade up to 1700 up to 70,000 of these refugees from all over Scotland migrated to Ulster. This was to be the biggest single influx of Scots into Ireland. The permanent Scots imprint on Ulster is crystal clear and this last wave was among the most significant, especially for the future of America and the creation of that unique outlook that was in time to be known as Scots-Irish. By 1707, the year that the Scottish parliament merged with its English cousin, the Protestant colony of Ulster was a hundred years old. The differences that had existed between the original settlers, whither Scots or English, had largely ceased to exist. It is now possible to discover a distinct Protestant Ulster identity. Religion provided the common bond, rather than race, uniting dissenters of differing faiths, though it is also true to say that the Scots settlers had acquired a cultural domination over their English counterparts. Though loyal to the crown, they were a people who, through decades of adversity, had become self reliant, and never quite lost the feeling that they were surrounded by a hostile world: "They learned from hard experience," one commentator noted "that one must fight for what he has; that turning the other cheek does not guarantee property rights; in short, that might is right, at least in the matter of life and land ownership." In the early years of the eighteenth century they found themselves once again under attack, though this time from a totally unexpected direction. In 1704 the government of Queen Anne, dominated by the Anglican High Church party, passed an act that had a direct bearing on the Ulster Scots. All office holders were obliged to take communion in the Established Church, a measure which at a single stroke virtually wiped out much of the civil administration in the north of Ireland. It was even seriously suggested that Presbyterian ministers could be brought before Anglican church courts, charged with fornicating with their own wives. The worst features of the new legislation was removed by the Toleration Act of 1719, but the damage had been done, and full discrimination against the Presbyterians was not finally ended until the middle of the nineteenth century. The Ulster Presbyterians had endured-and survived-past waves of religious discrimination, and would most likely have continued to thrive in the face of official hostility. But in the early years of the new century they were faced with an additional challenge, one that threatened the whole basis of their economic existence in Ireland. By 1710 most of the farm leases granted to the settlers in the 1690s had expired; new leases were withheld until the tenants agreed to pay greatly increased rents, which many could simply not afford to do. Rather than submit to these new conditions whole communities, led by their ministers, began to take ship for the Americas: a new exodus was about to begin. It looks like Robert Tate may have been in that first wave of Ulster Scots immigration. It's unclear if was born in Ulster Ireland or Augusta County, VA. More than likely he was born in Ulster. We don't know if his parents immigrated with him, stayed, or had already died before he left. Based on the history of the Ulster Settlement we know why he came. As the years passed thousands of people crossed the Atlantic from Ulster, just as their ancestors had crossed the North Channel from Scotland a century or more before. However, by 1750 the pace of migration began to slow, as relatively normal conditions returned to Ulster after years of economic dislocation. The period of calm was all too brief. In 1771 a fresh wave of migration began, once again induced by the greed of the landlords, which was arguably to have serious consequences for the security of the British Empire in North America. Faced with a fresh series of rent hikes, local people at first mounted some resistance, gathered together in an organization known as the Hearts of Steel; but the landlords had the law and the army on their side. In the short period left before the outbreak of the American Revolution a further 30,000 Ulstermen left for the colonies, joining some 200,000 who had already made their homes there earlier in the century. The contemporary image of the Ulster Protestant is most commonly that of the Orangeman, with all of his exaggerated loyalty to Britain and the Crown. For the dispossessed of the 1770s the opposite was true: they had lost everything, and came to America with an intense hostility towards all things British. For the original Quaker and Puritan settlers of the thirteen colonies, largely English in origin, the emigrants of Ulster, an increasingly common sight, were usually described as "Irish." To counter this misconception the newcomers adopted the older description of ?Scots?. It was in this semantic exchange that a new breed took shape: they were the "Scots-Irish." For many years these people had lived on a frontier in Ireland, and it seemed natural for them to push on to a new frontier, where land was both plentiful and cheap, introducing a new urgency and dynamism into a rather complacent colonial society. Before long these "backwoodsmen," distrustful of all authority and government, had established a hold on the western wilderness, fighting Indians and wolves in much the same way that they had once fought wolves and woodkern. The Ulster-Scots did make it to the America colonies via other ports through-out the 17th century. However it was in the early 18th century that the Scotch-Irish of Ulster really began arriving in the new world in massive numbers. There were five great waves of 18th century Ulster emigration to America: in 1717-18; 1725-29; 1740-41; 1754-55 and 1771-75. In 1717, the year ships were officially chartered for 5,000 men and women to head to Pennsylvania, a severe drought completely destroyed crops on the Ulster farmlands. The 18th century Scots-Irish emigrants sailed to America from the ports of Belfast, Londonderry, Larne, Newry and Portrush, the ships arriving on a regular basis at Philadelphia, New Castle (Delaware), New York and Charleston. It's estimated up to a quarter of a million Scots-Irish emigrated across the Atlantic from the north of Ireland through the 18th century. Most Scotch-Irish immigrants were educated, skilled workers. Even though many paid for their emigration by becoming indentured servants they were well equipped to lead successful, independent lives when their period of servitude ended. Many easily blended into American life. The Scotch-Irish settled in the middle colonies, especially in Pennsylvania where the city of Philadelphia was a major port of entry. Over subsequent decades, the Scotch-Irish migrated south following the Great Philadelphia Road, the main route used for settling the interior southern colonies. Traveling down Virginia?s Shenandoah Valley, then south into the North Carolina Piedmont region, they reached South Carolina by the 1760s. Settlers here often became frontiersmen and Indian fighters. These hardy resolute emigrants became first citizens of American frontier lands, opened up in the movement from the eastern seaboard regions of the New World. With the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775 the Scots-Irish, in interesting contrast to many of their Scottish cousins, were among the most determined adherents of the rebel cause. Their frontier skills were particularly useful in destroying Burgoyne?s army in the Saratoga campaign; and George Washington was even moved to say that if the cause was lost everywhere else he would take a last stand among the Scots-Irish of his native Virginia. Serving in the British Army, Captain Johann Henricks, one of the much despised "Hessians," wrote in frustration "Call it not an American rebellion, it is nothing more than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion." It was their toughness, virility and sense of divine mission that was to help give shape to a new nation. Twenty-five of the American generals were of Ulster descent as was up to half of the revolutionary army. One famous force of regular soldiers was the Pennsylvania Line and it was composed almost entirely of Ulstermen and the sons of Ulstermen. The turning point in the war was the Battle of King's Mountain in South Carolina on 7 October 1780. A body of American militiamen defeated a British force twice its size and took 1,000 prisoners. The five colonels in the American force were all Presbyterian elders of Ulster stock and their men were of the same race and faith. When the Scots-Irish emigrated to the colonies, they brought with them their tradition of making whiskey and fighting authority. By 1776, over 250,000 Ulstermen had come to the colonies. In 1791 the federal government imposed a tax excise on whiskey. The tax levvy was higher for small family run distillers than it was for bigger mass producers. This angered the mainly Scots-Irish farmers as it effectively eliminated any profit from the sale or barter of an important means of income and became the lightning rod for a wide variety of grievances against the new federal government. The settlers in Pennsylvania refused to pay and the uprising that followed was to be known as the Whiskey Rebellion. The settlers of Western Pennsylvania whom refused to pay broke out in armed rebellion. At some times, the rebellion had a force of seven thousand armed militia troops. To restore order to the ensuing Whiskey Rebellion, George Washington sent the Continental Army. The 13,000 federal troops sent to the western Pennsylvania area was the first test of the power of the new United States government. Although the army was successful in temporarily ending the rebellion the political problem remained. To avoid further troubles with the tough and stubborn Scotch-Irish settlers, and break up their center of resistance to taxation, Washington made a settlement with them, giving incentives for those who would move to western Virginia. Pioneers were offered sixty acres of land in Kentucky (at that time a western part of Virginia). To gain the land all the settler had to do was build a permanent structure and raise "native corn." No family could eat sixty acres worth of corn a year and it was too perishable and bulky to transport for sale. The Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania knew well how to make whiskey, and they used the rye of Pennsylvania to make the beverage. By switching the base of the beverage to corn, the problem of getting rid of a bulky grain that was too expensive to ship was solved. Bourbon County, Kentucky, became a primary shipping port for this new corn whiskey and distillers such as Reverend Elijah Craig began shipping their whiskey in charred oak barrels which gave it a mellow caramel colour. Soon all corn whiskey which was aged in charred oak barrels and shipped from this port became known as "Bourbon" whiskey. The Scotch-Irish character traits such as loyalty to kin, extreme mistrust of governmental authority and legal strictures, and a propensity to bear arms and to use them, helped shape the American identity.
  Person ID	I10069	Master File
  Last Modified	20 Sep 2016

  
  

  Father	John Tate,   b. 1670, Ulster, Ireland
  Mother	Sarah Beaty,   b. 1687, Ulster, Ireland
  Notes	These are not confirmed parents of Robert Tate. Other researchers has his parents being Robert Tate born 27 FEB 1691 in New Kent Co. VA and died 1759 in St. Paul's Parish,Hanover Co. VA. Hopefully DNA testing will clarify some of these lines.
  Family ID	F6526	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Children	1. Col. John TATE,   b. ca 1743, Augusta Co. VA ,   d. 15 Dec 1828, Russell Co. VA  (Age ~ 85 years)   2. Robert TATE, Sr.,   b. BETW 1745-1750, Augusta Co. VA ,   d. 24 Jul 1806, Moccasin Creek, Russell Co. VA  (Age ~ 56 years)   3. William TATE,   b. 20 Nov 1753, Augusta Co. VA ,   d. 15 Sep 1803, Russell Co. VA  (Age 49 years)
  Last Modified	31 Jul 2015
  Family ID	F12849	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart