I attended the 1718 Scots Irish Reunion on Wednesday August 15th for just one day of this three day conference held at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. It had been organized by the Maine Ulster Scots Project in honor of the arrival of the first Scots Irish settlers from Northern Ireland, who had arrived in Boston in August of 1718 and headed up to Merrymeeting Bay in the lower Kenebec River region.
I missed the first day of the conference, when many participants took a guided tour of historic Portland. There was a reception and a dinner with speakers from the Maine Ulster Scots Project, Northern Ireland and the special speaker was Colin Woodward, author of several books about Maine history.
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| Baker, Lunney and McReynolds |
Wednesday was a full day of presentations and round-table discussions. The first panel discussion featured Tad Baker, dean and professor at Salem State University; Linde Lunney, professor from Ireland and author for the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography; and Alister McReynolds, author of Legacy, the Scots Irish in America. With two Irish guests on the panel, I was struck by how much interest the Irish people have in this anniversary of the diaspora. Linde Lunney said "Emigration over the centuries has been a major loss to Ireland" and "The world is made smaller when we realize we all share wee little bits of DNA".
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| This many paneled display of the 1718 migration was sponsored by Irish bureaus indicative of the European interest in the 300th anniversary |
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| The Gov. Shute Petition, signed by many members of the Presbyterian congregation in Northern Ireland asking permission to emigrate to New England |
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| Colin Brooks |
The first presentation I watched was by Colin Brooks, the genealogist behind the 1718 Project website https://1718project.com This website is underconstruction, and will be a place for research to be disseminated about the Scots Irish families who arrived with those first five ships in Boston harbor in 1718. I spent part of my lunch break with Colin and a few of these descendants, and we continued our discussion.
There was another round-table after lunch with Norman, Houston, OBE, from the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington, DC; Rory Hedderly, from Scotland; John Mann of the Maine Ulster Scots Project; and Chip Griffin, a Maine history author. They discussed the 1718 diaspora and the Scots Irish folkways that still survived in Maine and parts of New England. After this I watched a slide presentation by Dr. Carol Gardner, the lead archaeologist of the Merrymeeting Bay excavation site of the McFadden family homestead. There will be a tour of this site today from 1 - 5 pm for conference participants.
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| I found a photo from the Nutfield Genealogy blog on one of the display panels at the conference! (This is really a detail from the tombstone of Rev. David MacGregor, son of founder Rev. James MacGregor) |
The conference continued on Thursday, August 16th, and today with tours. Tomorrow will be the 40th annual Maine Highland Games and Scots Festival hosted by the St. Andrews Society of Maine, open to the public and free to the five day conference ticket holders. Tickets may be purchased at the gate.
Several people have emailed me about this conference wanting to know more. No syllabus was printed, no sessions recorded or videoed, and there are no podcasts. However, some of the papers presented this week will be published in a book, and some of the presentations will be repeated at other conferences and workshops. If you want to know more, please contact the Maine Ulster Scots Project, the sponsors of this conference, for more information.
Maine Ulster Scots Project: https://www.maineulsterscots.com/
Maine Highland Games and Scots Festival: http://mainehighlandgames.org/
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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "1718 Scots Irish Reunion: Bring the Ulster Diaspora to Life August 14 - 16", Nutfield Genealogy, posted August 17, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/08/1718-scots-irish-reunion-bringing.html: accessed [access date]).
Thanks for reporting on this for those of us who can't make it. Coincidentally, one of my cousins is visiting Northern Ireland this week, so I gave her a crash course on our family history and--of course--referred her to this blog!
ReplyDeleteThank you for referring your cousin to Nutfield Genealogy!
DeleteThank you for the kind words Heather. It's nice to see face-to-face an internet blogging legend! I'm looking forward to April 2019 in Londonderry/Derry, New Hampshire to meet many more families of 1718. "Some one with knowledge" whispered that he had 40 families already state their intent to attend the events. That is huge!! As usual, if I can help promote or research just give me a call. Thank again
ReplyDeleteHello, I attended the Ulster Scots celebration at Bowdoin College in Brunswick in August and had a wonderful informative time. Several of my ancestral families came from Ulster and settled in that area but I am also finding out some may have come through Londonderry, but I am still looking for more information. There was a rumor of James or a William Campbell but I still can't make a definitive connection, my Campbells came to Georgetown, Maine. We also are looking at Aikins and trying to make some links there. Just visited Londonderry this weekend as we were headed to the NH Highland Games.
ReplyDeleteThank you for having this site!