Ulster-American Folk Park

Ulster-American Folk Park Review

Several miles north of Omagh is the big attraction of the region: the excellent Ulster-American Folk Park re-creates a Tyrone village of two centuries ago, a log-built American settlement of the same period, and the docks and ships that the emigrants to America would have used. The centerpiece of the park is an old whitewashed cottage, now a museum, which is the ancestral home of Thomas Mellon (1855-1937), the U.S. banker and philanthropist. Another thatch cottage is a reconstruction of the boyhood home of Archbishop John Hughes, founder of New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. There are also full-scale replicas of Irish peasant cottages, Pennsylvania farmhouses, a New York tenement room, immigrant transport ship holders, plus a 19th-century Ulster village, complete with staff dressed in 19th-century costumes. Other exhibitions trace the contribution of the Northern Irish people to American history, and there is a center for migration studies with an excellent research library containing 12,000 books and periodicals, and an Irish emigration database including passenger lists from 1800 to 1860 and emigrant letters. The park also has a currency exchange, crafts shop, and café, as well as a 38-bed residential center.