Day 3 – visit to Ulster American Folk Park
Yesterday we drove to Northern Ireland and visited an open air museum about emigration to America from Ireland. There was about forty buildings showing the houses,schools and shops of the time with some places having great volunteers dressed up in period costume and telling about life back in the day.
The museum started off by talking about the potato famine and why people immigrated to America. These were the houses they would have lived in in Ireland. The first house was quite small and would be for a poorer family.
A house with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls.
A wealthier family’s home.
This was the inside of a Catholic Church with the confessional in the corner.
Here was an one room schoolhouse with sixty students. The children would bring a cold, baked potato for lunch as well as two pieces of dried sod for the fireplaces at either end of the school. The kids would have slate and a board or ink pens.
To use the bathroom you had to walk outside the school into the attached room and do your business. We never figured out how they emptied the outhouse.
This was inside the printing shop.
This was a shopping street with many ‘stores’ open to walk through.
Then we boarded the ship to America to see what life was like there.
We decided we would not like to spend weeks in these bunks.
Home sweet home in the new world.
