Rev. Patrick Adair

Patrick Adair (1625?–1694) was an Irish presbyterian minister, notable for his part in negotiations with government for religious liberty and settlement through his career.

Biography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Adair

Rev. Patrick Adair was of the family of Adair of Galloway, originally Irish (Fitzgeralds of Adare). He is usually treated as son of Rev. William Adair of Ayr (who administered the solemn league and covenant in Ulster 1644), but was probably the third son of Rev. John Adair of Genoch, Galloway. He was eyewitness, 'being a boy,' of the scene in Edinburgh High Church, 23 July 1637, when stools were flung at the dean and bishop on the introduction of the service-book. This places his birth about 1625.

On 13 October 1674 the Antrim meeting removed Adair to Belfast, in succession to Rev. William Keyes (an Englishman), not without opposition from the Donegal family, who favoured the English rather than the Scottish type of presbyterianism. After the defeat of the Scottish covenanters at Bothwell Brig (June 1679) fresh severities were inflicted on the Ulster presbyterians; their meeting-houses were closed and their presbytery meetings held secretly by night. James II's Declaration of Indulgence (1687) gave them renewed liberty, which was confirmed by the accession of William III, though there was no Irish toleration act till 1719. Adair and John Abernethy (the father of Rev John Abernethy (1680–1740)) headed the deputation from the general committee of Ulster presbyterians, who presented a congratulatory address to William III in London 1689, and obtained from the king a letter (9 November 1689) recommending their case to Duke Schomberg. William, when in Ulster in 1690, appointed Adair and his son William two of the trustees for distributing his regium donum.[2]

Late in life he drew up A True Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Presbyterian Government in the North of Ireland, extending from 1623 to 1670, which it is to be regretted that he did not finish. For the religious history of the period it is invaluable.

Adair died in 1694, probably at its close, as his will was proved 6 July 1695.

Family

He married:

• first, in 1650, if not slightly earlier, to Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Robert Cunningham of Holywood. The Rev. William Adair of Ballyeaston and later of Antrim, who was born in 1651 and whom we shall again have occasion to mention was a son of this marriage. William was in all probability born at Cairncastle.
• second, his cousin Jean (died 1675), second daughter of Sir Robert Adair of Ballymena;
• second, a widow, Elizabeth Anderson (née Martin).

He left four sons:

• William (ordained at Ballyeaston 1681, removed to Antrim 1690, and died 1698),
• Archibald,
• Alexander, and
• Patrick (minister at Carrickfergus, died June 1717

and a daughter

• Helen

By which wife Patrick Adair had his second, third and fourth sons, and his only daughter, we do not know. Possibly they were all born at Cairncastle, for Adair was fifty years of age when he relinquished his charge there.

His wife’s family

From “ William Adair (d.1626) m. Catherine Kirchart”

https://www.ancestry.com/boards/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=723&p=surname...

In a book on the County of Suffolk, England, vol. 1 by Suckling 1846 there appears a chart for the family of Adair (which may or may not be correct)

William Adair married Catherine KIRCHART. William and Catherine Kirchart had children :

1. Sir Robert Adair was made a denizen of Ireland with his father 1624, served heir to his father and grandfather in the Scottish Estates, Feb. 19 1629. Was made Knight c 1648. Had livery of his Irish estates Dec. 2 1628, made his will Feb 15 1655. Died March 1, 1625. Married Jane, dau. of Archibald Edmonstone of Duntreath.

Sir Robert and Jane had children :

• 1. William Adair d. Nov. 30, 1661 m. Anna Helena Scott.
• 2. Archibald Adair of Litter, Queen's co. had son William of Litter, Queens co, Ireland.
• 3. Alexander Adair, 3rd son.
• 4. Robert Adair, 4th son
• 5. Isabella, wife of Robert Macdowall of Logan in the shire of Wigton in Scotland
• 6. Joan, wife of (Rev.) Patrick Adair

  ---

Notes

Early Presbyterian Congregations in Ireland, list of ministers & congregations. from History of Congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland by W.D. Killen...from The Scotch-Irish Families of America; The Adair Manuscript, p. 374:

Cairncastel, county Antrim 1646-1674

"Mr. Adair was a Scotchman of highly respectable parentage. From boyhood he took an interest in ecclisiactical affairs; and on the 23rd July 1637, when the famous Janet Geddes threw the stool at the Dean of Ediburgh as he was proceeding to introduce the Service Book, and when the promoters of the Liturgy were balked by a mob of women, Patrick Adair was in the Scottish metropolis, and a witness of the uproar. When liscenced, he came over to Ireland as a preacher, and on the 7th of May 1646, he was ordained to the pastoral charge of the parish of Cairncastle, near Larne, in the county of Antrim. In 1674 he was renmoved from Cairncastle to Belfast, where he officiated about 20 years. For nearly half a century he was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland." ...from The Scotch-Irish Families of America; The Adair Manuscript, p. 346.

Origins and first marriage

https://antrimhistory.net/patrick-adair-of-cairncastle/

We are told that Patrick Adair was of the Adair family of Galloway. Classon Porter asserts, however, that the family was originally Irish, or, more correctly Norman Irish. This had already been stated by George Hill in the MacDonnells of Antrim.[6] reissued in facsimile by this Society in 1976, and the assertion is repeated by Alexander Gordon in D.N.B. Porter, Hill and Gordon were, as it happens, all Non-Subscribing Presbyterian ministers; they were also highly respected historical writers. I feel that Classon Porter’s remarks about the Adairs’ origin ought to be quoted in full:

The Adairs of the North of Ireland, of whom the eminent Presbyterian minister above named was one, and whose present head had been ennobled under the title of Lord Waveney, are commonly said to be of Scotch extraction. And they certainly did come from Scotland to Ireland in the seventeenth century. But it is equally certain, although not so well known, that, like most ‘Scots’ (so called), they had previously gone from Ireland to Scotland. Their family name originally was not Adair, but Fitzgerald, and their founder was a young man called Robert Fitzgerald, a son of the Earl of Desmond. This Robert Fitzgerald lived in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and was the owner of the lands of Adare, in the South of Ireland. Having, in a family feud, killed a person of distinction, he was obliged to leave his native country.

He took refuge in Galloway, in Scotland, where he assumed the name of Adare, or Adair, from his forfeited Milesian patrimony, and obtaining for himself, by means which were not uncommon in those days, a Scotch estate in place of the Irish one he had lost, he founded a family, which, for some time, was known as the Adairs of Portree, afterwards of Kinhilt, and, most recently (on their return to Ireland) , as the Adairs of Ballymena, in this country, where they have been for many generations respected and beloved.[7]

Patrick, who was born in 1624,[8] was third son of John Adair of Genoch, Galloway.[9] Of his boyhood years we know only that he was present in Edinburgh High Church (St. Gile’s) on 23 July 1637, when Janet Geddes, robust Presbyterian that she was, threw her stool at the Dean, who was introducing Archbishop Laud’s new Service-book.[10] He went to the University of St. Andrew’s in 1644[11] and following a two-year theological course was duly licensed to preach. Very soon after, on 7 May 1646, he was ordained for Cairncastle by the ‘Army Presbytery,’ constituted at Carrickfergus on 10 June 1642.[12] ‘But although Mr Adair was ordained by a presbytery,’ writes Porter, ‘there can be little doubt that his ordination took place in the parish church of Cairncastle, and also that he continued to occupy that edifice until his ejection therefrom in 1661’.[13]

On a tablet in the porch of the meeting-house, listing the ministers who served Cairncastle Old Congregation (Non-Subscribing), Patrick Adair is the first recorded pastor, and the years 1661-1674 are correctly assigned to his pastorate there, even though he had no meeting-house for several years after his ejection. The year of Adair’s arrival in Cairncastle was marked by the completion (26 November 1646) by the Westminster Assembly of the Confession of Faith, which is still the subordinate standard of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Porter, who had made himself well acquainted with the history of the area, tells us that Patrick Adair’s settlement in Cairncastle was brought about by James Shaw of Ballygally, ‘who then owned a considerable property in that parish where he resided, and who was himself, a few years previously, come over to Ireland from the west of Scotland, where he may possibly have known Mr Adair or his family. Mr Shaw at that time occupied a very prominent position among the Presbyterians of Ulster’[14] Richard Dobbs, in his account of County Antrim written exactly three hundred years ago, referred to the Shaw’s’ residence: ‘… hard by the shore stands the house of Ballygelly, belonging to Captain Shaw. A strong house, yet robbed lately by the Tories of Londonderry….’[15] When Dobbs wrote the people of the parish were ‘all Presbiterians’.[16]

In 1648, two years after his ordination, Patrick Adair and his patron, James Shaw, who was a Presbyterian elder, were, with others, appointed on a committee to treat with George Monck and Sir Charles Coote, the Parliamentary generals in Ulster, for the establishment of Presbyterianism in the province. But, on the beheading of Charles l on 30 January 1649, the Presbyterian ministers of Antrim and Down broke with the Parliament and in February held a meeting in Belfast, at which they vehemently protested against the King’s death and agreed to pray for Charles ll, who for his part promised to establish Presbyterianism in Ulster. The Parliamentary generals replaced the Presbyterian ministers with Independents and Baptists, and, as Gordon says, ‘Adair had to hide among the rocks near Cairncastle’.[17]

That he had his liberty in the following year is evident, for in 1650, if not slightly earlier, he married Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Robert Cunningham of Holywood. [18]The Rev. William Adair of Ballyeaston and later of Antrim, who was born in 1651 and whom we shall again have occasion to mention was a son of this marriage.[19] William was in all probability born at Cairncastle. In March 1652 Patrick Adair, who was then a young married man with an infant son, took part in a public discussion between Presbyterian and Independent ministers at Antrim Castle, the seat of Sir John Clotworthy, afterwards first Lord Massereene. ....

... Two events to which we are unable to assign dates occurred during Adair’s pastorate at Cairncastle; the death of his first wife and his remarriage to his cousin Jean, second daughter of Sir Robert Adair of Ballymena.[44]

His will was dated 26 January 1693, but probate was not taken out until 6 July 1695, more than a year after his death. ‘In his will’ says Classon Porter, ‘Mr Adair mentions a sum of four hundred pounds belonging to him which was in the hands of Lord Donegall, and the interest of which he leaves to his wife as a jointure.’[57] This was his third wife, Elizabeth Anderson, a widow whom he married while he was minister at Belfast. Her maiden name was Martin. He had four sons: William, Archibald, Alexander and Patrick, and a daughter, Helen. Gordon says that Patrick junior was a minister at Carrickfergus and that he died in June 1717.[58] William, his eldest son by Margaret Cunningham, was an executor of his father’s will, and his third son Alexander, a witness to it.

Rev Patrick Adair, son of John Adair (Rev) and Christine Dunbar. Patrick was born in 1625 in Genoch, IRELAND. He died in 1694 in Genoch, IRELAND.

Rev. Patrick Adair, born in 1625, Genoch, County Amtrim, Ireland. He was the son of Rev. John Adair. He married Jean Adair, his second cousin, daughter of Sir Robert Adair. His second marriage was to Elizabeth Anderson Martin. He died in 1694, in Genoch. He entered Divinity in 1644. He was ordained at Cairncastle, county Amtrim, Ireland, on May 7, 1646. He wrote "A True Government in North Ireland," in 1623-1670. His will was proved July 6, 1695.

He was Episcopalian until a religious revolution caused him to change to one of the founding fathers of the Presbyterian Church. Much is written of him in the records of the Presbyterian Church. On the first Tuesday of July, 1688, when, at the ordination of Mr. McCracken, at Lisburn, this text was taken by the Rev. Patrick Adair as the subject for his address, the recorded history of the congregation begins. It is interesting to note that the Rev. Patrick Adair, minister of Cairncastle, Co. Antrim, who delivered the address at the ordination, was an outstanding persona lity in the Church in the seventeenth century. In those days when Presbyterianism was considered "no religion for a gentleman," he opposed the army generals in Ulster by signing a representation against the execution of Charles I, which he and his friends described as " an act of horror without precedent in history." In 1650, a party of soldiers was sent to arrest him at his manse, but he managed to escape capture by hiding behind rocks and using, for a time, a variety of disguises. When the political situation became less tense, he was allowed safe conduct to attend a meeting at Antrim for a discussion on the question of Presbyterian rights. However, he still remained under strong suspicion and, some days later, sixteen soldiers and a sergeant, none of whom could read, removed every paper, book and letter from his house. While doing this, the maid managed to extract a bundle of papers from the bag in which the sergeant had placed them and by a stroke of fortune, they were the most important documents seized, being most likely part of his manuscripts on the history of the Presbyterian Church."

Patrick and Jean had the following children:

• + 69 M i Alexander Adair
• 70 M ii William Adair was born about 1654 in IRELAND. He died in 1698.
• 71 M iii Archibald Adair was born about 1656 in IRELAND.
• 72 M iv Patrick Adair Jr. was born about 1658 in IRELAND. He died in Jun 1717.
• 73 F v Helen Adair was born about 1660 in IRELAND.

References

• https://antrimhistory.net/patrick-adair-of-cairncastle/ cites
• Rev. James Kirkpatrick .An Historical essay upon the loyalty of Presbyterians.. (Belfast) 1713 p.166
• Rev. Patrick Adair, A true narrative of the rise and progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (1623-1670)… with an introduction and notes by W.D. Killen D.D.(Belfast etc; 1866) pp xiii-xiv
• Rev. Thomas Witherow Historical and literary memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland (Belfast 1879) I,34-45
• Rev. George Hill An historical account of the MacDonnells of Antrim…. (Belfast 1873; reprinted, with an introduction
• Rev. Classon Porter Ulster biographical sketches (Belfast 1884) p.11. For notices of Porter’s life see (Rev. James Kennedy) Historical sketch of the first Presbyterian congregation of Larne….(Belfast,1889) pp20-23; D.N.R., s.v. Porter, John Scott.
• Rev. James Mc Connell. et.al. Fasti of the Irish Presbyterian Church (Belfast, var.dd.), entry no.26.