launch of ulster-scots surname map and history book
The Ulster-Scots Agency and the Ulster Historical Foundation
have produced a surname map and pocket history about the Scots
in Ulster. The publication was recently distributed at the
Stone Mountains Scottish Highland Games in Atlanta and will
appeal to the specialist or to those with a general interest
in the 17th century Scottish Plantation and 18th century migration
to America. For further information log on to ancestryireland.com/scotsinulster
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We take the view that it is good for people to stay close to where
their ancestors came from.
We had people stay with at Tory Bush Cottages who discovered that
their mother used a Right of Way across the fields in front of the
Cottages to get from her home on Clonachullion hill to get to Tullaree
School. They were shown stones that she must have placed her feet
and hands on as she climbed a Stile out of a field, back on to the
road and walk past the site of the cottages to the school on the
hill to the West.
It is possible to see from Tory Bush the parallel lines of the 'Lazy
Beds' of potato crops that where abandoned during the famine high
up on Clonachullion Hill either after the family died out or emigrated,
the land has not been tilled since. This Lazy Beds were anything
but lazy as they were extremely hard work and were used on land
that could not be worked by horse drawn implements either because
too steep or too stony. A Lazy bed is created were the seed potatoes
are laid on top of the ground, 'the lazy bit', and then about a
foot wide of turf on either side of the line of seed potatoes was
cut free and folded over the seed potatoes to give the ridges that
can still be seen today. The potatoes would then grow up through
the weed free ridges to form the potato plant and in the autumn
the ridges could be unfolded to reveal a crop of new potatoes.
Obviously the people who created the ridges still visible today
either emigrated or died out (possibly not the case in Co. Down
as the landlords were quite good to their tenants) or just realised
that because of the potato Blight that it was not worth going back
to open the Beds as the potatoes were rotten because of the Blight.
The reason the Beds were so high up the hill and that they are visible
on other hills in the area, such as Ballymagreeghan Hill is possibly
for two reasons. Firstly it must be recalled that the population
of Ireland was 8 million prior to the Famine and consequently every
inch of workable land would have been used to sustain that population.
The population declined to 4 million post famine and a lot less
arable land was required given the higher reliance on imports and
the bigger yields of land with modern tillage methods, fertilisers
and pesticides.
But the main reason undoubtedly was that the farmers at that time
thought that the blight disease of the potato crop was in the soil,
so they thought that if they grew next years crop in new untouched
land it would be disease free, hence the move to more and more inaccessible
bits of workable land. They tried this for three years and each
time the crop failed. Little did the farmers realise or indeed did
anyone realise including the Landlords and the Government, that
the disease was a fungus that was spread in the wind and rain. The
disease could have been contained to an extend by burning the previous
years potato plant stems sometime over the winter so that the fungus
could not survive and produce spores to be spread next season, but
this was many years before the Science of Plant Pathology.
We have created this Genealogy page on our Websites to direct people
to other Websites that will assist them in their search for ancestors
in the County Down area.
Useful sites include,
www.askaboutireland.ie/show_homepage.do
and www.ulsterancestry.com/
etc. www.proni.gov.uk/
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