Strokestown Gathering Celebration
HE TYE FAMILY REUNITED WITH STROKESTOWN
AFTER 167 YEARS
During what was the most catastrophic event in 19th Europe – The Great Irish Famine – the Tighe Family watched helplessly as their Father died. In a desperate attempt to save herself and her 5 Children from the edge of extinction, Mary Tighe decided to cross the Atlantic to Quebec. The price was to be her own life and that of 3 of her sons.
It was in these circumstances that a desolate Daniel 12 and Catherine 9 disembarked the Famine Ship ‘Naomi’ at Grosse Ile on the 8th August 1847.
Soon they found themselves, in the company of a Parish Priest an loaded onto a cart with 14 other Children in a foreign land with a foreign language and with only each other left in the world - a couple of months had seen their lives turned upside down and landed them far from home.
‘.. the voyage was a long nightmare of eight weeks. Drinking water ran low and food was reduced to one meal a day. Comfort and hygiene were non-existent. Typhus broke out on board, and the ship was ordered to stop at Grosse Ile….. When my Grandfather left the ship, he never saw his other family members again.’
Leo Tye 2001, Grandson of Daniel Tighe recounting what his Grandfather had told him.
Meanwhile, the Coulombe’s, a childless elderly couple who had a farm on the outskirts of Quebec, arranged to meet the Priest hoping to find a strong young lad to help them on their Farm. They choose Daniel Tighe. But Catherine, watching as the only remaining person she knew in the world was about to be separated from her, went hysterical, clinging out of Daniel’s leg sobbing. On observing this, the Coulombe’s stopped and pondered and said ‘We’ll take them both’ and they did and left them their name believing they had lost enough already without losing that also.
Mary Kelly’s desperate attempt at fleeing was not totally in vain. Within a couple of months Daniel's life had flipped again - the adopted son of the Coulombe’s was a lifetime away from the 2 acres his father had desperately tried to provide for his wife and 5 children on in Strokestown, now found himself Master and only heir to of .., acres
The Tye / Tighe family in Quebec have never forgotten their origins and the desperate circumstances that took them to Canada. While Catherine died childless in her 30's, Daniel lived into his 90's and the Tye Family still live on that same Farm outside Quebec today.
But the story had been lost in Strokestown until Jim Callery of Strokestown Park Hse and the Irish National Famine Museum came across the story while visiting Grosse Ile Quarantine Station outside Quebec.
And now in 2013 the people of Strokestown have come together and offered two tickets to the Tye Family to close the circle and return home for the first time in 167 years.
