is certain that all the Achesons found in Ulster 
(now Northern Ireland) were "planted" there in the "Great Plantation" of 1610, and subsequent years. This plantation, or resettlement, was part of the scheme of King James I to redistribute land previously held by defeated Ulster Chieftans and populate them with loyal Protestants from England and the lowlands of Scotland.
For in 1601, Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, attempted to oust the English from the land, raising an army of 4,000 men, with the help of King Philip III of Spain. Queen Elizabeth responded by sending an army of nearly 20,000 Englishmen against the O'Neill army and completely defeated them at Kinsale, then destroyed all of the homes, food and livestock.
The utter destruction of the native Irish farmsteads paved the way for Queen Elizabeth's successor, her nephew, King James I, to put into operation his personal scheme to establish an English resettlement in the north part of Ireland. As a result, Sir Archibald Acheson of Scotland came to possess a goodly portion of Ulster land in County Tyrone.
Over one hundred and seventy-five years after the first placement of Achesons into Ulster Ireland, our Great Great Great Great Grandfather Weir Acheson was born in Tyrone County, in 1781. Little is known about this ancestor, but his son, our Great Great Great Grandfather Joseph Acheson came to New York shortly after his marriage to Isabella McKennit in December of 1845. The Irish potato crop had failed that year and for the next five years, due to a blight. Ireland suffered severe losses of people through starvation and a mass exodus to the Americas.
Two boys were born in New York; our Great Great Grandfather Alexander Acheson in 1848 and Weir Acheson one year later. Then for reasons unknown, Joseph uprooted his family to return back to the old homestead in Lower Langfield in Tyrone County. While back in Ireland, the couple had three daughters and one more son. Once again, Joseph decides to cross the Atlantic, leaving two daughters (one had died) and arriving in Canada in 1863 with four of his six children. Great Great Grandfather Acheson at last settled on a 100 -acre farm near Donegal, Ontario to live out his remaining life.
The first son, Alexander, completed his teacher certificate and married our great grandmother Sarah Braden Miller in 1877. Restless as his father, Alexander headed west with Sarah and two new babies, plus his sister Arabella and her new husband, following the new Canadian Pacific Railway tracks to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
There, Great Great Grandpa Alexander buys a village. With the family in Winnipeg at seven children already, he must have needed growing space, since he purchased a whole section of land that included the little railside village of Rosenfeld, fifty miles south of Winnipeg. When the Acheson family acquired the Rosenfeld town site, it had just been surveyed by the C.P.R. There were only two elevators and a grain warehouse and a scattering of residents, then a population of about 70, so the arrival of nine Achesons was a real population explosion.
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Click on an Acheson name below to follow your lineage. A complete listing of names and dates can be found by clicking on the
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Descendancy Chart for
WeirAcheson1781
--
JimBenedict - 30 Mar 2006
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