Gordon,
Thank you for sharing those memories with us! They bring to life the work we
do in tracing our ancestors!
Slainte!
Jim Rodgers
On Monday, June 8, 2026 at 10:25:32 PM CDT, Gordon Wilkinson via
CoTyroneList <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks Joseph for a lovely remembrance.
My paternal family came from south of Dungannon in Blackwater country. During
the war my parents and I lived with my grandparents in Belfast (we had to flee
Kent during the Battle of Britain) and I can still see my grandparents saying
'goodbye' and g'ma crying as she acknowledged she would not see her son and
family again. We left on the ferry to Liverpool, then train to Southampton and
ship to Australia. I fondly recall the soda bread that my aunt in Australia
made, and the coke and peat fires that we shared on Robinson's farm in
Hillsborough, NI. Those word pictures by Joseph are a vivid memory to me. I am
now 86 and if it wasn't for COVID we'd have revisited the places of my
childhood and my ancestors patch. Sadly I can't travel now, so won't be seen
under the great marquee.
That is my father's line. On my mother's side, her great uncle left Derry for
NY, in the period covered, where he soon joined the Union army, then later
became a pioneer settler of Nebraska (growing potatoes of course). The comment
of mis-spelling names occurred just like that. His family was McBeath, which
became McBeth in US. I have traced his US descendants and followed their drift
west to Colorado. Yet most of my mother's side came to Australia from the 1920s
on. Both mother's and father's sides are now well established in Australia from
Queensland to Tasmania and all in-between. I do recall the smell of the peat
fires and the sulphurous coal & coke. Is that why I have a fondness for
single-malt peat-flavoured whisky? The old ones have passed and soda bread is
now a fading memory, yet my sister does recall the warm flat loaves from the
wood fire range in the country kitchen in western Victoria, where we stayed
during summer school holidays. The Irish and Scottish influence in Geelong,
Victoria is still apparent, and the family name is well known in the district.
Oh those memories. As I wait to join my ancestors, those memories come flooding
back on so many occasions. Compiling the family history book and pouring over
old photos brings tears to my eyes as I relive their journeys. But this is not
the time or place to get maudlin.
A lovely picture of life then, and the anguish in families when young adults
left on precarious journeys for far flung countries, half a globe away.
Gordon Wilkinson
On 8/06/2026 6:34 am, James McKane via CoTyroneList wrote:
From Tyrone to the Globe: The 19th-Century Diaspora
Thanks again to Joseph Mullin for a great addition to CTI!
Jim McKane Kitchener, Ontario [email protected]
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