The Greenlee Family Origins

The Greenlee Genealogy Book through family tradition, bible and town records establishes that the family came from ancient Anglo-Saxon extraction in the Midland Counties of England. During the time of King Alfred the Great (866- 899), two Knights of the Greenlee family, named Harold and Athel Greenlee settled in the Green Chase of Northumberland. Due to their feats of heroic gallantry in the Norfolk Campaign against the Danes, King Alfred the Great gifted them a Demesne (land attached to a manor and retained for the owner’s own use) in County Warwick called Balsal Chase, Warwickshire, which is now called Balsall Heath in present day Birmingham, England. From this point, at least two Greenlee family lines exist, the original one from Green Chase (Northumberland) and the other in Balsal Chase (Warwickshire), both in England.

Between the time of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms through the establishment of England in 927 (which unified the Angles, Saxons, and Danes) and to the reign of King Henry V (1386-1422) , the Greenlee family diaspora must have reached into Ireland, as the Greenlee Genealogy Book mentions that the Irish branch of the Greenlee family as well as the Greenlee family from Edgbaston, Warwickshire were entitled by ordinance of King Henry V for distinguished quality, to have their Armorial bearings topped by a green mound and plant of Oak, such for glorious memorial to the Knight of the Royal Guards, “Guilliaume Greenlee”. Records of the Greenlee family name appear as far back as 1461 during the reign of King Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483). The Greenlee family lived in opulence and with high respect in Balsal Chase in England up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603).

During Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Greenlee’s were granted additional estates near the City of Limerick, Ireland to establish an armory and factory for small arms and Culverin Cannon. With the death of Queen Elizabeth on March 24th, 1603, James became King of England (as King James I) and Ireland (as King James VI). King James’ Plantation of Ulster which began in 1609, sought to colonize Ireland with Scottish immigrants to dilute the Irish Catholic and native Gaelic populations with English Protestants and Scottish Presbyterians more loyal to the English crown.

There appears a line of the family that originates from Scotland with the Greenlees surname according to the Greenlee Genealogy Book. I assume that the Scottish Greenlees (surname in the plural form) family spawned from the original footprint of Anglo-Saxon Greenlees who migrated to the region of Scotland before the 9th Century and the establishment of Scotland as a nation state in 843 AD. While family tradition indicates that the Greenlee (surname in singular form) family settled around and about the parishes of Lochwinnoch, Beith during The Killing Times in Scotland (1680-1688) and then fled into Argyllshire scotland and later to Ireland.

In Limerick, Ireland the family lived in high repute until the reign of King James II (1633-1701) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that brought King William III, also known as William of Orange (1650-1702), to power. During the Williamite War in Ireland (1688-1691) between the Jacobites and the supporters of William of Orange, the Greenlee family fortunes took a turn for the worse with the sacking and burning of their hall and works and they received protection from the Marquis of Downshire. The Marquess (sic) of Downshire is a title in the Peerage of Ireland created in 1789 (Wikipedia: Marquess of Downshire), which places the time when the Greenlees sought protection from the Marquis around the end of the 18th century, if “The Greenlee Genealogy Book” is accurate, indicating this event occurred nearly a century after the Williamite War, not immediately afterwards. If the Greenlees sought protection from the Marquis immediately after the Williamite War, then The Greenlee Genealogy Book possibly refers to an ancestor of the first Marquess of Downshire, which might be this person Michael Hill. The Greenlee Genealogy Book further states that having their fortune greatly reduced, the patriarch at the time, James Greenlee from the Irish line of Greenlees, sought a new beginning in Marlboro Port, Maryland, first settled by English colonists in 1695 and later founded as Marlborough Town in 1706.