Kamala: the Antrim connection

A VOLLEY of eight rifle shots at a Trump rally near Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 blew the US election race wide open.

Thomas Crooks, the shooter, earned his place in the blood-spattered pages of American history - and he paid for it with his life.

He failed in his bid to assassinate the Republican candidate, but Trump’s defiance after his brush with death effectively killed off Joe Biden’s hopes of a second term in the White House.

Following a rambling performance in a disastrous TV debate, when ‘old Joe’ looked every one of his 81 years, there was a growing clamour for him to drop out of the race.

At the same time, Donald Trump was on the ascendancy, pulling ahead in the polls in the all-important swing states. His call for his supporters to ‘fight, fight, fight’ after the shooting only served to boost his standing and galvanise his base.

Something had to give and on July 22 Biden fell on his sword, freeing the way for his VP Kamala Harris to lead the charge in his place.

Quite a contrast to that day in 2021 when he became Commander in Chief after more than half a century of public service. That day Irish eyes were certainly smiling.

Joe Biden has spoken many times of his Irish ancestry. His great-great grandfather Patrick Blewitt was born in Ballina, County Mayo, in 1832. Patrick left Ireland in the autumn of 1850 to settle in America.

Less well known, however, was his running mate’s complicated links to the ‘old country’.

Local historian Stephen McCracken raised eyebrows three years ago when he uncovered Irish links to Ms Harris - and that path led right back to Antrim.

He had been researching the direct link between Randalstown and President Woodrow Wilson and between Ezekiel Vance - the saviour of Antrim during the 1798 rebellion - and President Andrew Johnston.

But he did not expect to find a connection between Kamala Harris and County Antrim.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Democratic contender has thus far declined to comment on the link.

The reason? It has been reported that her four times great grandfather was a man called Hamilton Brown, who was born in County Antrim in 1776.

According to the VP’s father Donald Harris, a retired Stanford University economics professor who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961, the Harris family descends directly from Brown, who was a 19th-century slave owner.

“My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown (Antrim) who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Antrim Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me).

“The Harris name comes from my paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, land-owner and agricultural ‘produce’ exporter…”

Hamilton Brown, who died in 1843 following a carriage accident, was a sugar planter and slave owner in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica.

He represented Saint Ann Parish in the House of Assembly of Jamaica for 22 years.

A man of considerable means, he gave his name to Hamilton Town in Saint Ann Parish, now Brown’s Town.

He even named one of his sugar plantations ‘Antrim’.

He started his career in Jamaica from humble roots as an Irish emigrant book keeper but he soon realised that the plantations were the best route to personal wealth.

It was difficult, back-breaking work - but the burden was lessened considerably if the labour was carried out by slaves.

And the Antrim man had no moral objection to that. A religious man - he built the original St Mark’s Anglican Church where he worshipped - he was nevertheless unapologetic about the subjugation of others.

In later life he would argue that slaves in Jamaica were better off than the poor in England, and therefore the British Government should not interfere.

Arbitrary whipping of slaves was witnessed at his plantations.

Some girls as young as 12-years-old were flogged between 40 and 50 times with a horse whip, for supposed misconduct as trivial as over-sleeping or not meeting their assigned work targets.

In one case, a man was whipped 39 times despite not having committed any discernible ‘offense’ — rather, one planter had him flogged as a method of petty revenge against the slave’s owner, for some unspecified sleight.

These findings about the conditions of life for slaves in Jamaica could not have been further from the outlandish claims made by Brown and his fellow colonial settlers.

After the abolition in 1833 Hamilton recruited workers from across County Antrim. Scores of them set sail for Jamaica in one of Brown’s ships.

They eventually settled in Saint Ann Parish and worked the Brown estates.

In 1836 he brought a further 185 people from Antrim.

In 1840 he embarked on a further failed mission to try and bring more people from the ‘old country’, however his efforts were widely condemned for ‘making slaves of the migrants’.

Hamilton Brown is buried at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Brown’s Town.

The memorial to him reads: ‘Sacred to the memory of HAMILTON BROWN Esq. Native of the County Antrim, Ireland who departed this life on the 18th Sept 1843 in the 68th year of his age. He was the FOUNDER OF THIS TOWN. Was 22 years one of the Representatives for this parish in the Honourable. House of Assembly. His name will long be cherished’.

The Harris campaign has certainly hit the ground running - but will the question of her heritage play a role?

Respected fact checking website Snopes certainly thinks so.

While her father is an impeccable source, they have followed the paper trail to investigate his claims - and at present the file has been marked ‘unproven’.

“There is no doubt that Hamilton Brown was a prominent plantation owner in Jamaica during the first half of the 19th century, owned slaves, and also advocated against the abolition of slavery and sought to downplay the difficult working and living conditions of slaves in Jamaica,” they say.

“However, we have been unable to verify that a line of descent exists between the modern-day Harris family and the 19th-century slave owner.

“As such, the claim that an ancestor of Senator Harris owned slaves in Jamaica remains unproven. If evidence emerges that verifies that line of descent, we will update this fact check accordingly.”

They do not rule out that possibility, but have warned against using the link for political gain.

“Even if it is the case that the Harris family, by way of Christiana Brown, are descendants of Hamilton Brown, those who seek to attack or undermine Senator Harris for the wrongdoing of a man who died almost 200 years ago should first gain a better understanding of the often complicated, traumatic histories of black families in the United States — and tread much more carefully,” they say.

Reuters fact checkers, however, have said that Kamala is ‘likely’ to be a descendant of both slaves and slave owners.

Stephen McCracken said that the slave owner was a deeply troubling character.

“Hamilton Brown was a notorious figure and not a nice fellow,” said the local man.

“He had numerous slaves. In fact, Hamilton Brown routinely traveled back and forth to London to protest the abolishment of slavery.”

Brown owned at least 124 slaves in 1817 and 121 in 1826.

The United Kingdom abolished slavery in 1833, but former slaves were bound to their owners until 1838.

Brown later received £24,144, the equivalent of over £3 million today, under the Slave Compensation Act of 1837, which paid off former slave owners as a compromise to secure abolition.