2. Immigrant Father Blackard was born estimated 1710 in England, Ireland or Scotland. [Parents]
The Blackard name originates in England and is found in church christening and marriage records in England dating from John Blackard in 1560 until to the early nineteenth century. The name may originate from a soldier
of William the Conqueror who was recorded as Aldrich the Blackheart in the Domesday Book of 1086 as receiving land and settling in the lowlands where England borders Scotland.The last Blackards recorded in the UK were mostly found in Ireland. No Blackard family have ever been recorded living in Scotland although one marriage in Fife, Scotland was recorded in 1753.. The Blackard family had completely disappeared from England by the UK-wide census of 1850.
Earlier, the Blackards were probably among the English settlers who went to colonize northern Ireland. Such
settlers were called the Scot-Irish, though they were not necessarily of either Scottish or Irish ancestry. This may have caused confusion and lead to the belief that the Blackard family was from Scotland.I have contacted a John Blachard of the Northeast Scotland Family History Society in Aberdeen, Scotland who searched nearly 11,000 ancestries that they have for me and did not find a single Blackard. He concluded that the name is not Scottish (at least not from Aberdeen or the Highlands).
The Blackard family may have relocated from England to northern Ireland (Ulster) to avoid religious persecution of the protestants and could have been in a government program to colonize northern Ireland sometime after 1700. These English and Welsh settlers of Ulster, Ireland were called the Scotch-Irish although many were nether Scottish nor Irish.
The family may have left northern Ireland, as many others did, during bad times around 1720 to relocate in Glasgow, Scotland where one family story says they worked as cabinet-makers.
It is most likely that they caught a ship from Glasgow to Pennsylvania around 1720. At least two separate family stories from different branches of the family say that we arrived in America in 1720.
I believe that there is any truth in the family legend about a man and his two sons immigrating, then Charles (b.1728) and William (b.abt 1720) may have been the "two sons" of family legend who arrived in Pennsylvania a little later around 1735 with a, yet-unknown, Blackard father. This agrees with other family stories that say we arrive shortly before the Revolutionary War.
After the obligatory 7 year bond period to pay for their transportation in Pennsylvania, the Blackards probably relocated into Virginia and finally into North Carolina around 1751. A massive movement of settlers from Pennsylvania occurred in the years following 1751 down the Great Wagon Road through Virginia and into Rowan and Orange counties in North Carolina. Charles is first documented in NC in July 1755 as a chain carrier overseeing a land survey for Samuel Williams who must have been a friend of Charles. Charles settled in Bute County.
Andrew Blackart is first documented in Bedford County, Pennsylvanian in 1759. His descendents in Bedford County may possibly represent another branch of the family that had a permanent spelling change from Blackard to Blackart and then Blackheart and finally Blackhart. Similar spelling variations occurred with the Blackard name in colonial America.
A French family named Blanchard is frequently confused with the English Blackard family. One group of Blachards relocated in England from France and then came to America in 1638 into Massachusetts. Another group of Blanchards moved later from France to Aberdeen, Scotland to catch ships to America and arrived in great numbers into Charleston, South Carolina. I believe that both groups of Blanchards have been mistaken for the Blackards by family historians in the past.
-Andy Blackard