On Thursday we went out to Omagh and the Ulster American Folk Park. This outdoor/indoor museum is run for the Center for Migration Studies and their director is Dr. Brian Lambkin. The Center is a great place for people to go who wish to research their ancestors that may have come from Ulster. Their database isn't available to the public yet but they're in the process of developing it further and will be launching it and oral histories to the Internet sometime soon.
The park starts off with an indoor museum that discusses pressing topics of the day, i.e. food, housing, sickness, work. They also have a temporary exhibition there from the Ulster Museum (which is undergoing renovation at the moment) that focuses on clothing. From the indoor museum the visitor is lead to an outdoor museum that is divided into 3 parts, Old World, New World and the Streets and Ship Gallery.
The old world is mainly different types of housing, schools, and churches. It shows the difference between how Catholics and Protestants lived, what their lives were like. The key to the park is the Mellon Estate. Most of you know who Andrew Mellon is, but Thomas Mellon was the first immigrant from the family to go to the US. Their house and lands were the first pieces acquired by the Center and the original start to the park.
We got a little turned around at this point and went directly from the Old World to the New World and into PA. The New World focuses mostly on what life was like in rural PA when the immigrants got there because it is where the Mellon Family immigrated. They chose to show what a middle class farmland would look like (including pigs), the land layout and housing (which was a vast improvement).
We then walked backwards through the streets and too the ship. I guess you could say we didn't like America and chose to go back to Ireland. I never realized how small steerage was. Granted the people were shorter and smaller then, but I hit my head at every turn.
While at the park they provided lunch, which was edible though not very good at all. At the end we were given time to research our ancestors and talk to the staff about the different projects they are working on at the time.
The park starts off with an indoor museum that discusses pressing topics of the day, i.e. food, housing, sickness, work. They also have a temporary exhibition there from the Ulster Museum (which is undergoing renovation at the moment) that focuses on clothing. From the indoor museum the visitor is lead to an outdoor museum that is divided into 3 parts, Old World, New World and the Streets and Ship Gallery.
The old world is mainly different types of housing, schools, and churches. It shows the difference between how Catholics and Protestants lived, what their lives were like. The key to the park is the Mellon Estate. Most of you know who Andrew Mellon is, but Thomas Mellon was the first immigrant from the family to go to the US. Their house and lands were the first pieces acquired by the Center and the original start to the park.
We got a little turned around at this point and went directly from the Old World to the New World and into PA. The New World focuses mostly on what life was like in rural PA when the immigrants got there because it is where the Mellon Family immigrated. They chose to show what a middle class farmland would look like (including pigs), the land layout and housing (which was a vast improvement).
We then walked backwards through the streets and too the ship. I guess you could say we didn't like America and chose to go back to Ireland. I never realized how small steerage was. Granted the people were shorter and smaller then, but I hit my head at every turn.
While at the park they provided lunch, which was edible though not very good at all. At the end we were given time to research our ancestors and talk to the staff about the different projects they are working on at the time.
On the way back to QUB we stopped in Omagh at the memorial to the people killed in a bombing in the late 70s. I don't have pictures of this yet, but the story goes that the police got a phone call that a bomb had been planted at the courthouse. So the police evacuated everyone down high street to the bottom of the area. What the caller didn't know was that the bombers had not made it up high street and had left the bomb at the bottom. The police had inadvertently moved everyone into the path of the bomb. It was one of the worst losses of lives and serious injuries as part of the troubles.
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