Gaston from North America

Many Gaston families in the United States claim Jean Gaston of France as their earliest know ancestor. While there is no physical proof of the legendary information surrounding Jean Gaston, in both the U.S. and Ulster the legends are incredibly similar. Jean Gaston is said to have been a Huguenot who immigrated first to Scotland in the early 1600s. Jean Gaston’s sons are supposed to have immigrated to Ulster before 1669. No mention is made if Jean also emigrated or not. The earliest known record of a Gaston in Ulster is from a Hearth Rate tax list from Magheragall Townlands, C. Antrim, Ulster in 1669.

Searches in both Scotland and Ulster reveal next to nothing regarding Jean Gaston or his sons. Historically congruent with the legends, Gastons apparently didn’t stay long in Scotland as most Scottish Gastons claim their grandparents and great grandparents came from Ulster to work in Scottish shipyards around 1900. Records in Ulster prior to 1700 are rare and many were lost in a fire in the 1800s. Research confirming the generations between Jean Gaston and the Gaston emigrated of the early 1700s seems to be impossible but Gastons were apparently fairly numerous in Ulster by 1700 and several branches of the family began immigrating to the English colonies, now the United States.

The Ulster Gastons coming to the U.S. seem to have made one migration starting in the northern U.S. and another that headed south. The southern migration is made up of the children of William Gaston, born 1680. In the U.S., he is sometimes referred to as William of Antrim. His ancestors include many famous figures in the Carolinas. There seems to be a lot of documentation of these Gastons and their descendants. Among these Gaston families.

Max Perry tells the story of a John Gaston born 1819 in Kentucky “Defender of the Alamo” who was killed on March 6, 1836 in the battle of the Alamo by the Mexican army in San Antonio Texas, at the age of 16.

The northern US migration centers of the descendants of Hugh Gaston (b.1687) and his brother Joseph are the families emigrate to New Jersey and later to Pennsylvania before going on farther west.

Another northern migration occurred with John and Alexander Gaston to Connecticut. One of John Gaston’s descendants, the Hon. William Gaston, was governor of Massachusetts in 1874.

One of Hugh Gaston’s sons, William (b. 1720) was killed by Indians in Pennsylvania in December 1755- likely in the Walking Treaty War, a sub-plot within the French and Indian Wars.

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