Introduction by Barry

The Flax Growers Bounty List is also known as The Spinning Wheel Survey of Ireland. The list was compiled in 1796 by the Irish Linen Board, and consisted of about 60,000 growers who were given incentives for growing flax. Flax was a very important crop in Ireland.

The Board decided on a scheme of incentives to get people to grow the crop. Individuals were rewarded with 4 spinning wheels for planting one acre of flax. Three quarters of an acre entitled the grower to 3 spinning wheels. One-half acre of flax brought the grower two spinning wheels. A grower of one-quarter acre of flax got one spinning wheel. Flax growers who cultivated five or more acres got a loom or spinning wheels to the value of five shillings.

“To the person who should sow between the 10th day of March and the 1st day of June 1796 with a sufficient quantity of good sound flax-seed, any quantity of land, well prepared and fit for the purpose not less than 1 Acre — 4 Spinning Wheels, 3 Roods — 3 ditto, 2 Roods –2 ditto and 1 Rood — 1 ditto. And to the person who should sow in like manner any quantity of like land, not less than 5 Acres, a loom or wheels, reels or hatchells to the value of 50 shillings, and for every 5 Acres over and above the first 5, a like premium”

Deb has found a copy of this 1796 list of Flax growers in County Donegal; I have copied that list of 6,800 families into this webpage in our Irish Section.

In this list, there are 7 M’Kee families growing flax in Donegal Parish and two neighboring Parishes (Drumhome and Killymard). The first names of these 7 M’Kee families are David, George, James, Robert (2) and William (2) which we recognize as common names from the McKie families a century earlier in Galloway (see Table 2, McKie First Names  in Parish Lists Wigtonshire – 1684).

Searching through this list of for our “Allied Families”, we find family names which were often the same through many generations in Galloway, Donegal, Ohio and Australia. These families were neighbors who intermarried and even migrated together.

The full list of 6,800 Donegal flax-growing families follows: use your web browser search to find names of interest to you.