The Nugents: Origins

For now we will leave Mary Ophelia Nugent and Baker White Armstrong in September, 1887, at which time Baker professed his love for Mary. Yes, they eventually married, and Mary followed Baker from Virginia to Texas, where one consequence of their union is the existence of my husband, Thomas Alexander Greene, born 1958. I will return to the details of the Nugent-Armstrong alliance, but I am now going to pick up threads of Mary Ophelia Nugent's family background. Mary's father was Perry Nugent, still living in 1887; Mary's mother, Amanda Maria Keep Cook Nugent had died months earlier, on January 3, 1887. I will provide details that we have of the other threads of family history (Cook, Lewis, Hardeman), but first I will concentrate on what we know about the Nugents.

Perform a Google web search on the phrase "Nugent origins," and you will find web sites devoted to the Nugent family. The "Old World" Nugents, according to those websites as well as from information copied by my husband's relatives, describe the Nugents' traveling from France to England with William the Conqueror. They assisted William of Normandy in the Battle of Hastings of 1066. According to one website, the Nugent

surname is of Norman origin, and was introduced into Britain and Ireland after the Conquest of 1066. It is a locational name from any of the several places in Northern France, such as Nogent-sur-Oise, named with the Latin "Novientum", apparently an altered form of a Gaulish name meaning "new settlement". The Anglo-Norman family of this name are descended from Fulke de Bellesme, lord of Nogent in Normandy, who was granted large estates around Winchester after the Conquest. His great-grandson was Hugh de Nugent (died 1213), who went to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy, and was granted lands in Bracklyn in Westmeath. The family formed themselves into a clan in the Irish model, of which the chief bore the hereditary title of Uinsheadun, from their original seat at Winchester. They have been Earls of Westmeath since 1621, and the name is now widespread in Ireland. The surname dates back to the early 13th Century.

This information coincides with information from other sources, so it seems to be fairly accurate. My husband's family, through Mary Ophelia Nugent, is descended from those Nugents who went to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy. Mary's grandfather, John Pratt Nugent (born 1792; died 1873), emigrated from Ireland to the United States, where he eventually married (1827) Anne Lewis (born 1807; died Aug. 23, 1873). In the papers of Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong ("Mimi"), daughter of Mary Ophelia Nugent and Baker White Armstrong, are papers about the Nugent family. Included among those papers are hand-written notes titled "Nugent Family: From notes--Mrs. Anne Nugent Edmonds." Anne was one of the children of John Pratt Nugent and Anne Lewis--and sister to Perry Nugent. Here are the words from that document:

John Pratt Nugent came of Anglo-Norman ancestry, the descendent of one of the knights who were associated with Hugo de Lacy in a grant of land made by Henry II in what is now known as Queens Co., Ireland. James Nugent, his father, was in the British Army at the time he ran away and married Aphra Pratt, who was attending boarding school in Dublin. After his marriage with Aphra Pratt, whose father seems to have been a wealthy man, he left the soldiers (sic) life and went to live on an estate in Queens County near the town of Rothdowny (sic)  where all his children were born. They were members of the Church of England in which communion, John, was confirmed before coming to America. Aphra Pratt's (Nugent) brothers held office under the British government but nature of positions is not known. James Nugent's family suffered severely in the Catholic riots, during one of which the home was burned to the ground, the baby in the family having made a narrow escape with his life.

Notes from John Pratt Nugent
"I arrived from Philadelphia, Nov. 16, 1816. Sailed from Dublin. I was in the employ of Thos. P. & Sons while there. They were tobacco commission merchants. Thos. Kirkman of the house of Kirkman and Jackman, sent me to Natchez in the fall of 1818. They had a branch at Nashville and one at Natchez."

James E. Edmonds (Maj. Gen. N. G. U S.-Retired), Anne Nugent Edmond's grandson, most probably, corresponded with Mary ("Mimi") Ophelia Nugent Armstrong and provided her with a lot of information on the Nugents. In a letter dated March 25, 1957, and addressed from 29 Colonial Place, Asheville, N. C., cousin James wrote the following:

Dear Mary Nugent Armstrong
Cousin Mary
Years ago I picked up in a Washington second hand book store, a biography of one ROBERT LORD NUGENT; a brilliant, fortune-hunting, politician and place-hunter of the 18th Century. I did so, more or less to tease my straight-laced mother. I only glanced at the book, by a man named Claude Nugent.

But the other day, re-ordering my older books, I found in the volume--unread by me hitherto--an account of the Nugent tribe from the first comer from England in the long ago, down to the mid-18th century; and, a singularly interesting lot of chronic rebels, adventurers, and turbulent country gentlemen.

The names Richard, Robert, William recur and recur...

Of course, over more than 700 years there were many split-offs and there are Nugents of all sorts and kinds in Ireland and here in the United States, of other lines than ours.

But, I feel sure that the 18th Century gap between our known ancestor, James Nugent of the 19th Regiment of Foot, who married Aphra Pratt and settled down at Rathdowney in the 1770s or '80s--and the Nugents of the senior line of Westmeath, could be filled in by any competent genealogist in Dublin.

If you like, I'll send you a copy of the material in the old book

By the way: Have you any trace of any Nugent descendents (sic) of Judge Thomas H. Nugent, your-great-uncle who flourished in Texas about 60 years ago and lived (I believe) in Palestine?

Cordially, James

Cousin James Edmonds evidently followed through with his promise to send some of that material from the book by Claude Nugent, for in Mimi's papers are several typed pages of information on the Nugents. I will not reproduce all the information James Edmonds includes about the Nugents (beginning with Hugh de Lacy and his Nugent companions in Ireland). Instead, I will pick up here:

All these Nugents plainly shifted from the Royalist Catholic Nugents of Westmeath when William and Mary won the Irish wars in the 1690s and Queen Anne succeeded, and the Stuarts went into final eclipse. So;;;;: we come to:

Lieutenant JAMES NUGENT, who served in His Majesty's 19th Regiment of Foot, during the Seven Years War and was captured by the French at the fighting over some channel (Belle Isle) islands. By family legend, he persuaded schoolgirl Aphra Pratt, daughter of a well-to-do Protestant landowner of near Rathdowney, to elope with him from her boarding school in Dublin. He quit the army in 1771 after serving since 1775, and went to the family estate, in what is Queen's County. The Pratts were office-holders under the English government and Rathdowney was the site of a considerable Protestant community. By family legend, the Nugent-Pratt family suffered severely during the Catholic riots in the late 1700s; one of the homes was burned, and a baby in that family was saved by his nurse who climbed out of a window with him.

James Nugent, the ex-soldier, sired:

• James Nugent, the eldest, date of birth not noted, married 1804, and "lived and died in Ireland." His emigrant younger brother long later wrote, "my last letter from him in 1852." Probably born circa 1773 or 5. (When Cynthia and I visited Rathdowney in 1936, no Nugent trace remained nor could we, on our brief visit, locate the site of the Pratt-Nugent homestead in the country)...
• Robert Nugent, born 1777, "came to America when old"...
• George Nugent, about whom no statistic or word...
• Perry Nugent, who came to the United States, married, left a son who never married... and then...
• John Pratt Nugent, youngest and son of his father's later years, born 1792, and the ancestor of the Nugents who were my maternal uncles, aunts, and cousins in my boyhood and young manhood... and some of the cousins my dearest kin into my maturity and middle and old age... He sailed from Dublin in 1816, spent seven weeks at sea, arrived in Philadelphia, November 16, 1816. Two years later he was sent, as he relates, by "Thomas Kirkman of the house of Kirkman and Jackson" to their branch at Natchez, Mississippi. There, the young Irishman seems to have prospered. He removed to the then territorial capital of Washington, married a Miss Forman, fathered a daughter, Katherine. This wife died young and soon. Eight years after his arrival... the lovely Anne Lavinia Lewis, daughter of Judge Seth Lewis of Opelousas, Louisiana, was attending the Elizabeth Academy for Young Ladies--the first chartered institution of higher learning for women in the United States!---She saw the handsome young widower riding by on his handsome horse, and he saw the lovely girl, fifteen years his junior. They met...and in 1827 they married...Later, probably with the encouragement of Judge Seth Lewis...the couple re[settled in] St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, became planters instead of merchants and reared the family there until the tragedy of the Civil War."

And so we have the history of the Nugents from whom Mary Ophelia Nugent was descended, and from her, my husband and his sister. We have in the family papers letters written by John Pratt Nugent to his sons and a few letters written by Anne Lavinia Lewis Nugent. With those, I will pick up the story of the Nugents in Louisiana.