USA Lecture Tour, 09–25 March 2023 Want to discover your Irish and Scots-Irish ancestors? Many people believe that researching Irish ancestors is impossible because of the destruction of the Public Record Office in 1922. While many records were destroyed, others survived and large collections have come online in recent years. Join Fintan Mullan and Gillian … More Ulster Historical Foundation
This online conference will review migrations of Scots-Irish to the U.S. and Canada and address the challenges of researching your Ulster Scots ancestors. … More Researching Ulster Scots Ancestors
This event is not affiliated with the Worcester Historical Museum, We are attending the conference and promoting it on our Blog. … More American Ancestors Online Conference Researching Northern Irish Ancestors
Interview with researcher Bob Starratt about the Five Ships … More Further Details on the Five Ships – Interview with Bob Starratt
We are including here a biography of Samuel Shute taken from The Dictionary of National Biography (editors Sir Leslie Stephen, Sir Sidney Lee, Oxford University Press). It was Samuel Shute for whom the so-called Shute Petition was named, the document on which “three hundred and nineteen people either signed or ‘made their mark’ … seeking … More Samuel Shute – The Governor Who Said Yes
The following is a chapter excerpt from Charles Knowles Bolton’s Scotch Irish Pioneers: Cotton Mather had in mind very early that the emigrants from Ulster would be useful settlers on the frontier. In 1718 the village of Worcester could claim a position on the Massachusetts frontier, although it lay only forty miles from Boston. First settled … More The Winter of 1718-19 in Worcester
In the summer of 1718, the first organized company of this class (Presbyterians), of which we have any knowledge, left the shores of Ireland in 5 vessels, containing 120 families, for the new world, and arrived safely in Boston, August 4, 1718. Here all was new, the wilderness and the world before them. Imagine this little … More Five Ships from Ulster, and What They Left Behind
What’s the story behind 830 Pleasant Street, and what is its relationship the the Scotch-Irish emigration of 1718? … More The House at 830 Pleasant Street
Another account of what happened to the first Presbyterian Ulster Scots in Massachusetts … More The Rev. Elam Smalley Tells the Story of the Burnt Church
Who were the first to arrive in Worcester from Ulster? Are your ancestors on the list? … More First Scotch-Irish Families in Worcester 1718
Worcester Historical Museum Library and Archives 