“‘My forefathers were … the men who had followed Cromwell and who shared in the defence of Derry, and in the victories of Aughrim and the Boyne.’ – President Theodore Roosevelt, 20th US president, 1901-1904.” The “shutting of the gates” of Derry is represented in the bottom left.

The quote is derived from Volume 1, Chapter 5 of Roosevelt’s The Winning Of The West (available at Project Gutenberg), though he is describing the forefathers of the Scotch-Irish, rather than his own forefathers (who, as the name suggests, were Dutch).

He writes, “The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a mixed people. Though mainly descended from Scotch ancestors—who came originally from both lowlands and highlands, from among both the Scotch Saxons and the Scotch Celts—many of them were of English, a few of French Huguenot, and quite a number of true old Milesian Irish extraction. They were the Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and despised the Catholics, whom their ancestors had conquered, and regarded the Episcopalians by whom they themselves had been oppressed, with a more sullen, but scarcely less intense, hatred. They were a truculent and obstinate people, and gloried in the warlike renown of their forefathers, the men who had followed Cromwell, and who had shared in the defence of Derry and in the victories of the Boyne and Aughrim.”

Some sources claim that an ancestor(s) on his mother’s side emigrated from Gleno, Co Antrim in 1729, but this seems to be her great-great-grandfather James, who was Scots (WP) but appears to have emigrated directly from Scotland, specifically Baldernock, in 1728 or 1729 (WikiTree | Friends Of Bulloch). The search for a connection continues, according to Irish Central.

This mural is one (and perhaps the first to be painted) in the series “From pioneers to presidents”. For more such murals, see the Visual History page about Ulster-Scots murals.

Replaces the King Billy mural in Wapping Lane, the Fountain, Londonderry.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2001 Peter Moloney
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