THE three-year Emigration Digitisation Programme at Seallam! Visitor Centre in Northton in Harris has now identified 17,000 emigrants from the Hebrides going to all corners of the globe.
An exhibition, Na h-Eilthirich – The Emigrants, was officially opened this week by Alex MacDonald, Convener of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.
The exhibition is based on information gathered by Bill Lawson over 40 years.
Mr MacDonald, who was born i
n Argentina, spoke in his address to those who gathered in Northton about his background. He came back to Lewis as a child with Spanish his first language and Gaelic his second, with English coming later.
The exhibition has a centrepiece of a map of the world showing people going not just to Canada, USA and Australia but to places like Freetown, Sierra Leone, to St Helena with ex-Emperor Napoleon, to Curacao with the Army, to Jamaica and South Korea and to Iceland in Viking times.
The illustrated exhibition follows the trail from the Carolinas to Hudson's Bay with the fur trade, Cape Breton to Quebec and then Ontario and the Prairies of Canada.
One of the illustrations shows the cover of the book, Machraichean Mora Chanada – the Great Prairies of Canada – published in Ottawa in Gaelic by the government of Canada in 1907, listing the attractions of western Canada for emigrant Scots.
On the cover is the verse that starts with the lines written by an emigrant: A Geodh-nam-Faochag thainig mise,
O thaobh siar an Eilean Fhada…………..
I came from the Geo of the winkles
From the west side of the Long Island…………..
John Murdo Morrison, Chairman of Northton Heritage Trust, thanked the funding bodies, Heritage Lottery Fund, HIE, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and Hugh Fraser Foundation, Gannochy Trust, North Harris Trust, Cardrona Trust and the Russell Trust.
He spoke of the vast resource on island emigrants available in Seallam! and how schools as well as ancestry researchers benefit from it. Shortly before the exhibition opening, a descendant of an emigrant from Coll in Lewis called in at the centre and she was set on her way to see the village her grandfather left from to go to Winnipeg.
Bill Lawson gave an account of statistics from the project, with some surprising results coming to light. He said that more people left Lewis in 1772 than left in 1851.
The afternoon finished with extracts from tapes collected and recorded by Chris Lawson in Prince Edward Island, British Columbia and Quebec and featured some of the last Gaelic speakers in those areas. The exhibition is open Monday to Saturday and will run until the summer of 2010.
