Our Irish Exile from the Uprising of '98
by Jack Neely
Ballymoney is a small town in Northern Ireland. Said to mean 'the town in the bog,' Ballymoney is about 10 miles south of the famous Bushmills distillery. It's unlikely you would have ever heard of Ballymoney unless you heard news reports of sectarian violence there: just a couple of years ago, a fatal firebombing.
Ballymoney is, on its better days, a town proud of its heritage. In the Ballymoney Museum is a sword wielded by a local hero in the Uprising of 1798, and an unusual jug that commemorates the sword's owner, a bold revolutionary leader people still talk about in the pubs. The jug reads,
To the memory of John Nevin...who was by the Foes of Reform Banish'd from his Native home in June 1798. He lived in a state of Exile...and departed this life in Knoxfield Tennisee ye 19th of May 1806.
This Irish insurrectionist was, you might not guess, a Presbyterian. He was a member of the most radical nationalist faction of that era, the Society of United Irishmen, a mostly Protestant group led by the legendary Wolfe Tone. Inspired by the French Revolution, the United Irishmen demanded a democratic order without religious distinctions. They organized a middle-class militia for the purpose of overthrowing the crown.
John Nevin was one of its provincial leaders. Secretly Nevin recruited and drilled troops at the village of Derrykeighan; in 1797 he artfully avoided taking the mandatory oath of loyalty to George III.
Nevin's subversive activities made him a wanted man. Jailed at Carrickfergus Castle for concealing a British deserter, he was out just in time for the bloody Uprising of 1798.
Slaughtering hundreds, the British crushed the French-assisted rebellion with such viciousness that stories of it rival those of Bosnia or Afghanistan. The British burned the town of Kilmoyle, thinking it was Nevin's home. It was a tactical error; it was the wrong Kilmoyle.
Captured and condemned to die, Wolfe Tone cut his own throat with a pocketknife before he could be hanged. With a 50-guinea price on his own head, Nevin became a legend for his narrow escapes, once stabbed with a bayonet while hiding under a bed, once packing himself into a barrel, once passing himself off as a female cowherd.
He slipped across the River Bann, living in the forest for a time before making his way to the port town of Magilligan, where—disguised as a sailor, according to one story, he escaped by ship to America. Predictably, rumors persisted that he was still in Ireland, fighting with the Catholic Defenders. A popular ballad celebrated his exploits: Here's to Captain Nevin / God bless his lovely eyes....
For reasons unrecorded, the hero-fugitive came to America's newest state capital, Knoxville. Or, as that Ballymoney jug has it, Knoxfield.
"Here I enjoy equal rights and privileges with the Governor," he wrote his family, "while you must pour out your purse to Landlords...."
This Presbyterian was startled by some Tennessee religious services: "At their meeting you can see some dancing, some running, some jumping, some jerking and twitching like a person in a violent convulsive fit.... I cannot think that it is by the direction of Heaven for He is a God of order and not of confusion."
Nevin had business dealings in Charleston, S.C., which he reached partly by flatboat, trading with Indians along with way. (There's a startling reference to an 1803 murder charge against a John Nevin of Grainger County pertaining to a South Carolina slaying. If that's the same Nevin, he seems not to have been convicted.)
However, trouble seemed to follow him; in Knoxville on separate occasions in the fall of 1804, he pressed charges against two local men for trespassing.
By early 1806, Nevin was ill. His will is in storage in the Knox County Archives in the Custom House. Reading it, you can almost hear his accent: "I John Nevin, a native of Ireland now residing in the County of Knox...being weak in body but of sound and perfect mind and memory, blessed be almighty God for the same, do make and publish this, my last Will and testament...."
He mentions his personal history once, in a bequest to "my beloved sisters Elizabeth Nevin, Jane Nevin, and Peggy Nevin who suffered persecution with me in Ireland for my political Opinions...."
Documents go on to detail the bachelor's modest estate: a barrel of whiskey, a couple of pistols, a pocket Bible, some deer skins, and his clothing, down to his silk stockings, his pantaloons, his greatcoats, his flannel shirts, his handkerchiefs, and his suspenders.
It's a shame we don't have as thorough a description of the man. The newspapers that might have carried his obituary are lost.
He's buried here—"in a decent Christian-like manner," if his will was followed—but no one knows where. There are unmarked graves in the Presbyterian graveyards of that era. But one John McNeil, another Irish immigrant whom Nevin named as executor of his will, is buried by himself in West Knoxville, beneath a melancholy 1833 gravestone inscribed "A Native of Ireland." It's on a knoll visible from Gilbert Road, just off Lovell. Nevin may be buried alone somewhere, too.
Be careful where you step. Some soil in this city is sacred to Irish nationalists who, in a small town near Bushmills, still toast Captain Nevin.
March 14, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 11
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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