Emigration has shaped Newry for centuries. From seventeenth‑century upheavals to twentieth‑century economic downturns, generations have left the town in search of opportunity. The motives rarely change: political instability, failing industry, and the hope of something better elsewhere. In the early 1770s, as tensions rose between Britain and its American colonies, a young Newry man named James “Jemmy” Blair joined that long tradition. His story, preserved in the remarkable letters of his mother and sister, offers an intimate portrait of family, commerce and Atlantic migration at a turning point in world history.
Born into a thriving linen‑merchant family on Canal Street, Jemmy grew up in a Newry that was becoming a major international port. The Inland Canal (1741) and the Ship Canal (1767) had transformed the town’s fortunes, connecting it more efficiently to the Irish Sea and the Atlantic trade routes. By the time Jemmy prepared to emigrate, Newry ranked as the fourth busiest port in Ireland, with merchants maintaining wide‑reaching commercial networks to Britain, Europe, the Caribbean and the American colonies. His father’s death in 1769 left his widowed mother, Elizabeth Blair, managing a small shop and several rental properties. Though respectable, the family’s finances were fragile. Elizabeth’s letters reveal her struggles to collect overdue rents, pursue legal disputes, and keep her business afloat. Her children were central to her hopes for stability. One son, Jack, worked for a sugar merchant in Dublin. Her daughters, Betty and Ann, lived at home until early deaths cut their lives short. Young Lambert, still a boy when Jemmy left, would later follow him overseas.
In 1773, about twenty years old, Jemmy boarded the Nedham for New York to work for merchant William Neilson. The voyage took six weeks, and letters travelled no faster. Mrs Blair’s first surviving letter describes standing at Warrenpoint, watching the Nedham sail and worrying about its crew, wishing she could call her son back.
Despite the distance, a surprisingly regular correspondence emerged. Newry’s merchants and sailors moved constantly between the town and ports such as New York, Cork, Dublin, St Thomas, and various Caribbean islands. Ships like the Newry Packet, Newry Assistance and Britannia carried passengers, goods and, crucially, letters. Mrs Blair sent correspondence with acquaintances, travellers and whoever might cross Jemmy’s path. The resulting archive forms one of the most vivid collections of eighteenth‑century Newry voices.
Through these letters, daily life comes sharply into focus. Elizabeth describes struggling to collect rent from tenants in Carnbane and Bavan, worrying that failed fisheries would wipe out income, and lamenting that shop customers “promise much but pay little.” Yet she and Ann still participated in Newry’s transatlantic trade, selling flaxseed, making shirts and stockings for export, and sending goods for Jemmy to sell on commission. Even a widow with a modest shop was part of the Atlantic economy. New York, however, proved unsettled. Jemmy arrived only months after the Boston Tea Party. Sanctions imposed by Britain were crippling commerce, and Irish merchants largely sympathised with the American cause, having long felt the burden of restrictive economic legislation. Mrs Blair herself refers to “the brave Americans striving for their liberties.”
Within a year, Jemmy made an unexpected move. Leaving Neilson’s company, he relocated to St Eustatia, a small but globally important Dutch island. Known as “the golden rock,” St Eustatia was a vast free‑trade port where ships of every nation exchanged sugar, textiles, weaponry, manufactured goods and enslaved people. It played a crucial role in smuggling gunpowder and supplies to American revolutionaries. Jemmy went to work for merchant Isaac Van Dam, a key figure in this shadow economy. To an anxious mother, such a destination seemed dangerous, but St Eustatia was familiar territory for Newry merchants. Ships from Newry frequently called at Caribbean ports, and several local men lived or worked there. Letters from home show that Jemmy quickly integrated into these networks.
The tone of the correspondence shifts during his Caribbean years. His mother writes with a blend of business instruction and maternal anxiety, worrying about his health, his lameness, and the island’s political volatility. His sister Ann provides lively snapshots of Newry life: electioneering parties, dances, marriages and sharp observations on the wealth of suitors. Her warm wit gives the letters a distinctive voice. Tragically, she died in 1776, her final letters giving no sense of her illness.
Meanwhile, Newry felt the full force of the American Revolutionary War. Trade with the rebellious colonies was prohibited; British naval patrols restricted Caribbean links; sailors were press‑ganged, leaving commercial ships without crews. In 1778, Mrs Blair writes of “bad times,” hungry neighbours and a shop nearly empty of goods. The family’s future increasingly depended on Jemmy’s success abroad. His entrepreneurial instincts sharpened; he sent home goods for sale and made the most of St Eustatia’s chaotic trade. But life remained precarious. In 1779, during Britain’s war with the Dutch, Admiral Rodney seized merchants’ property on the island, including Jemmy’s, forcing him to relocate to the Danish island of St Thomas.
By the early 1790s, Jemmy had recovered, building capital and expanding into land acquisition in Demerara, the Dutch‑controlled territory in South America that would shape his later career. His brother Lambert and nephew John McCamon joined him there, beginning the Blair family’s deeper involvement in the plantation system.
Unknowingly, the widow on Canal Street had set in motion a journey that would carry her son from modest merchant to wealthy slave owner.
The conclusion of Jemmy’s story, and the darker legacy of the Blair family, follows next week.
Geraldine is researching Newry’s connection to the Caribbean in the 18th century and would be keen to hear from any reader who might have further information.
Discover more about the lives of residents in the port of Newry in the new exhibition Making Waves: Newry’s rise as a global trade centre which continues at Newry & Mourne Museum until September 2026.
New exhibition at Newry and Mourne Museum
