GEORGE, Thomas 1
- Born: About 1755
- Marriage (1): ORR, Hannah
Research Notes:
BACKGROUND
In the 1790s in Ireland rebellion was about to burst into flame. The fire was fed by the injustices sustained by the people of Ireland, and the examples in the recent past of the American and French revolutions.
The Society of the United Irishmen nursed the fire, at first openly, then later as a secret organisation. They aspired to the kind of society we now take for granted: equality before the law, democratic control of government, and liberty enjoyed as a natural right of man.
A Thomas George can be placed at the Battle of Saintfield, a town in County Down lying about 12 miles south of Belfast. In the aftermath of the battle, during the afternoon of June 10 1798, James Runker was ordered, so he later claimed in his deposition, by Thomas George of the Ravara battalion, to drive away cattle from the property of local people called Price.
In another deposition Alexander Hill described how democratic was the command structure of the United Irishmen; how in the townland of Ravara or Ravarra, in the parish of Killinchy near Saintfield, for example, one member could put forward the name of another to become an officer. If this were seconded, then the individual's name was included in the ballot.
Ravara: Killinchy 21; 42/62 3km NNE of Saintfield on Comber road; 1246 acres 2
Thomas married Hannah ORR. (Hannah ORR was born about 1759.)
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