CITY OF LONDONDERRY. 
BURGESSES. 
Andrew Knox. 
Andrew Ferguson. 
William Mackey. 
Alexander Major. 
John Ferguson. 
Conolly Lecky. 
John Murray. 
Sir Robert Bateson, Bart. 
Harvey ISicholson. 
Richard Harvey. 
James Major. 
William H. Ashe. 
Thomas Bateson. 
Alexander Curry. 
Adam Schoales. 
I. T. Macky. 
Pitt Skipton. 
William Kerr M'Clintock. 
Joseph E. Miller. 
Samuel John Crookshank. 
Frederick Hamilton. 
2 vacant. 
Miscellaneous. 
George Farquhar, the celebrated dramatist, is on all hands stated to have been a native of this 
city, although there is some variation as to the circumstances of his birth. According to one 
account, he was the son of an officer, and born while his father was quartered in Derry. Of 
another, furnished by the Rev. John Graham of Magilligan, which is more detailed, the following 
is the substance : After the battle of Worcester, three brothers, who had been employed in the 
king’s cause, fled to the north of Ireland, where they settled in the county of Fermanagh. 
Being' compelled to abandon the service, they all took orders. On the Restoration, they were all 
presented with benefices. One became rector of Cleenish, near Enniskillen, another of Bally- 
shannon, in the county of Donegal, and the third, of Lissan, in that of Tyrone. The last was 
the father of the dramatist, who was born in Derry, to which city his mother had removed for 
the sake of superior medical assistance, as was then usual with the ladies of the neighbouring 
country on the approach of their confinement. The eldest of the three brothers possessed a large 
estate at Gellmelscroft, or Gelmire’s Croft, in Ayrshire, which, in 1824, had descended to Colonel 
Farquhar, of the Ayrshire militia. George Farquhar is said to have been born either in 1674, or 
1678. In 1694 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, which, however, he quitted prematurely. 
He then beg'an a short but inglorious career on the stage. About 1696 he accompanied his friend 
Wilks, the actor, to London, where h<j devoted himself to dramatic composition, and with great 
success, as the libertinism of thought and language which tarnishes the merit of his productions, 
was but too much in accordance with the taste of that day. About 1698, and shortly after the 
appearance of his first comedy, he was presented with a lieutenancy in Lord Orrery’s regiment. 
About 1703, he was wheedled into marriage with a pretended heiress, and in 1707 he died, 
during the run of the last and best of his comedies. 
Farquhar is not known to have left any lineal descendants ; but a few traces of the posterity of 
his uncle, the rector of Cleenish, were obtained from the late Mr. James Farquhar of Strabane, 
attorney, and are thus given by Mr. G. :— 
“ James Farquhar, son of Thomas Farquhar of Dublin, cabinet-maaker, married Jane 
Murray. 
“ He was the son of George Farquhar, surveyor of excise at Augher and Clogher. He, this 
George, was the son of the Rev. Mr. Farquhar, rector of Cleenish, in the county of Fermanagh. 
During his incumbency some of the parishioners were drowned, going to the place in which the 
church was situated, which induced him to get a church built at Ballinalack, near Enniskillen. 
The Rev. William Hamilton, D.D., the author of “ Letters concerning the Northern Coast 
of the County of Antrim,” was descended from an ancient Scotch family, and his grandfather held 
an honorable station among the defenders of Londonderry, during the siege of that city. His 
father, Mr. John Hamilton, had the command of a vessel connected with the port, and was more 
than once captured by the enemy’s cruisers. He afterwards settled at Londonderry, as a mer¬ 
chant, where he died in 1780, in the 55th year of his age. From a notice in the hand-writing of 
Dr. Hamilton’s grandmother, the date of his birth was the 16th of December 1755 ; but from his 
epitaph, and other authorities, his natal year was 1757. (See Cathedral.) 
Dr. Hamilton was educated by Mr. Torrens, probably at the diocesan school of London¬ 
derry, from which he was sent to the Dublin University, which he entered on the 1st of Novem¬ 
ber, *1771. On the 30th of May, 1774, he was elected a scholar; on the 20th of February, 1776, 
he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts ; and on the 31st of May, 1779, he crowned a brilliant 
collegiate career by the attainment of a fellowship. He now made a transition from his scholastic 
