A New Presbyterian Church for Kilmore

Kilmore Presbyterian Church from the Church website  
built on lands donated by Elizabeth Carson and Rose Nevin.

For the Hadzors of Downpatrick, members of a distinguished Anglo-Norman family that managed on a serial basis over the centuries to fall foul of the English establishment, the eighteenth century represented an attempt to regroup and prosper by conforming to English imperatives. 

Ironically, as their name faded away, the prosperity they sought came not through the English, but via a Scots-Irish entrepreneur with a taste for transatlantic smuggling, namely, John Potter, the son-in-law of Seneca Hadzor.

The Potters it would appear believed in rendering unto God what was God's but not necessarily rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar's. This would have been understandable. Religious taxation and tithes tended to be collected from all, but used only to fund the established church, in other words the Church of Ireland. Furthermore, Presbyterians as well as Catholics still as the eighteenth century drew to a close were deprived of rights, including the right to vote. To suggest therefore to a wealth-creator like John Potter that he might willingly submit his business accounts for the scrutiny of the official customs and excise officers of the day might just have provoked a fairly sharp response. 

The excerpt below is from a chronicle published in the 1830s by the non-subscribing Presbyterian community. It gives something of a flavour of the highly-charged theological disputes of the day, but beyond this tells of the building of a new Presbyterian church in the Parish of Kilmore.

Where did the land for this new church come from? 

From none other, it would appear than Elizabeth Carson, and Rose Nevin, the daughters of the smuggler, John Potter.