Notes |
- William Tennent was born in County Antrim and served as an apprentice with John Campbell, a Belfast merchant and banker. He joined the Belfast Chamber of Commerce in 1783, and was junior manager in the New Sugar House in Waring Street. He eventually became a partner in this business, and he held partnerships in the distilling firm of John Porter & Co. and the Belfast Insurance Co.. He was co-founder, in 1809, of the Commercial Bank, and he worked in the bank until it became Belfast Banking Co. in 1827. He was on the Board of the Spring Water Commissioners and the Belfast Banking Company, and was manager of the Belfast Academical Institution and Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce. After the rebellion of 1798, he was arrested on suspicion of belonging to the United Irishmen, and imprisoned in Scotland for two years. He returned to Belfast and in 1814, purchased the village and demesne of Tempo, County Fermanagh. He died in the cholera epidemic.
- http://www.ulsterbiography.co.uk/biogsT.htm
He had only one legitimate child, but was said that have had many nmore illegitimately.
The United Irishmen were a body of men of all creeds - although predominately Ulster Presbyterians - who came together in a political organisation in the early 1790s. Inspired by the success of the French Revolution, they were a radical group that demanded sweeping political change. Initially reformist in their intentions, government repression forced them underground and they became increasingly revolutionary. Many of the United Irish leaders even contemplated using French military assistance to achieve full independence for Ireland. Ultimately, their unsuccessful rebellion of 1798 was utopian and failed to gauge the extent of sectarian division in late-eighteenth-century Ireland: in some areas in the south, the banner of revolution became a guise for the settling of age-old religious resentments.
- http://209.85.135.104/search q=cache:dJ8Fk5rc8gcJ:www.historyandpolicy.org/archive/policy-paper-15.html+%22james+emerson+tennent%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=33
(from Adam Edwards -http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=juuledwards&id=I693 )
|