Patrick Colhoun of County Donegal, Ireland (Died 1740/1, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania): Immigrant Progenitor of the South Carolina Long Cane Calhoun Family

Close-up of Patrick Colhoun’s signature in John Tillotson, The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1727), held by South Carolina Department of Archives and History

About Patrick Colhoun, the immigrant ancestor and father of Ezekiel Calhoun and his siblings Mary (Noble), James, William, and Patrick Calhoun, not a great deal is known with certainty. What researchers have thought they’ve known over the years has often turned out to be wrong, as such scant documentary evidence as we now have about Patrick has emerged. A case in point is the longstanding tradition that this immigrant ancestor was named James Calhoun and not Patrick. As Brian Anton explains in an excellent must-read article at his Genealogy of the Calhoun Family site, for quite some time there was confusion due to a persistent tradition, including among some members of the Calhoun family itself, that the given name of the immigrant ancestor was James – when the sparse documentation that has survived for this immigrant progenitor now shows he was named Patrick.[1]


8 thoughts on “Patrick Colhoun of County Donegal, Ireland (Died 1740/1, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania): Immigrant Progenitor of the South Carolina Long Cane Calhoun Family

  1. Excellent article as always. One note: The Hugh from Fawney, Tyrone, Ireland and Charleston, SC makes his will in Nov. of 1792 and it’s probated in Nov 1792 according to the original will in the experiments section of Family Search. His children are James, John, William, Sarah and Elizabeth. The Hugh of Abbeville, has his will probated in 1799 and has some of the same names in his children but additional / differing ones also like Ezekial. I’d pass along the link for the 1792 will but that is the frustrating part of Family Search. One has to log in and then find the record for oneself at my last check on that. Thanks for your detailed work!

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    1. Thank you for your helpful comments and for the link to Hugh Colhoun’s 1792 will. You’re right that it was proved in 1798. I’m fairly confident that the Hugh Colhoun of this will is not the Hugh Calhoun who made his will in August 1794 in the Long Cane settlement. It seems to me very likely that that Hugh living in the Long Cane settlement was a close relative of the other Calhouns living there. I can’t say I’m certain that the Hugh Colhoun who made his will in 1792 is closely related to the Calhoun family in the Long Cane settlement. The problem here is that some researchers seem to have conflated two different Hughs — or so it appears to me.

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