William and Jean (Hamilton) Rodgers and Their Orphans

William and Jean (Hamilton) Rodgers were a typical middle-class Scotch-Irish couple living in Rathmore, Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1728. They were enduring the depths of the so-called "mini-ice-age," the suppressive English Penal Laws against their Presbyterian religion, and the famine then in its third year. They joined 1000 of their friends and family who decided to leave for the brighter hopes of America. The Second Mass Migration of Ulster Presbyterians left Belfast harbor on at least 7 ships in June 1729 and arrived at New Castle, Delaware between August and October of that year. William and Jean and their son Hamilton were on one of those ships. In a short time Jean delivered son, Arthur, into the New World. Then both parents died. This is the story of that couple and those orphans, together with a listing of their descendants who would come to be born through their future; our history. This is the first volume of the story of The Descendants of William and Jean (Hamilton) Rodgers, covering the years before the American Revolution.