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 The Blue Ridge Mountain Project
(This is what we call it in Carnaun for the moment!)
Since the beginning of this School Year (01.09.99) 
Carnaun School has been involved with Glade Creek Elementary School, Ennice, North Carolina, USA 
in what turned out to be a very exciting history project.
Together we are researching families who emigrated from Ireland and especially the Galway area during the Great Famine and settled in this area of North Carolina, 3,000ft. up in the Blue Ridge part of the Appalachian Mts.
The pupils and their families, with names such as Higgins, Murphy, King, Edwards are interested in their roots and are very anxious to succeed in this project.
In the initial stages of getting to know one another: the project teams consist of the Carnaun 6th. class of nine children and a corresponding number from GCS we used a private web site, put up by the teachers in the two schools to communicate with one another and so far the there has been over 60 letters between us in a "threaded discussion".
We now have published our findings on a joint website specially designed for the project by the children of the two schools.
This is not, however, just a school children's project.
We invite interested  people to join with us in our work!
An overall study of Irish to America includes:
    A: 1650s – Cromwellian period - slaves / endentured servants to the Barbados - and from there to the southern states of America especially the Carolinas. We have some work done on this phase which turned out to be very interesting.
    B: 1700s – Emigration to North America for economic and religious reasons. Many were Protestant and sons of landowners. (We have some study done on this for our Lambert Project last year)
    C: The Scots Irish emigration to America 1717 to 1776 
    D: the Irish soldiers who fought on both sides of the American Civil War.
    E: 1850s – Famine victims -mostly Catholic Over 1.5 million Irish are said to have gone to America then. Many of our locals - Athenry, Craughwell, Loughrea people - settled in Waltham near Boston, Mass. In our school area there was a population reduction of over 50% during the Famine.
    F: Later and up to 1960s emigration for economic reasons.
To help us with our research we planned a trip, for 6th class, to The Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh in County Tyrone for the 21 - 23 of March.  We booked in to the Residential Centre there and had a great holiday and learned a lot especially about emigration from Ulster to America.

We were lucky to have such good friends in the Lambert Project Society who sponsored our trip!
Click here for a picture of Aideen Rynne and Treasa Evers presenting a cheque to our teacher Finbarr.


Report on our visit to The Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh! Click here!

View their Website at:  http://www.folkpark.com 

Did you know that there is a townland, an "Athenry" near Omagh? Well we found out about this also!

On the new website we hope to have facilities people to post messages etc. about their emigrant /immigrant relations. 
For this project we had hoped to introduce Video Conferencing as a communication aid between the different parties. Well this didn't happen yet but will if we can find a way of acquiring the necessary funds.

View our new website at: http://www.alleghany.k12.nc.us/gcs/ireland  

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