The Moores are family on my mother’s side. Ernest Moore was my grandfather and he came from County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Tracing the family has been hard for a number of reasons: Irish records are not as easy to find and many have been lost and Moore is a very common name. However, a DNA test I took suggests that my Irish roots aren’t deep and that the Moores may in fact have come from Scotland. Many protestant Scots moved to what’s now Northern Ireland as part of the English government’s Plantation of Ulster, which aimed to reduce the influence of native Irish people, take over their lands and impose protestantism on a catholic nation.
- Ernest Moore and Olive Mary Wheatland – my grandparents.
- Ernest was from Northern Ireland and served with the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards in the Second World War. He married Olive Mary Wheatland and settled in her home town of Croydon in Surrey, England.
- John Moore and Joanna Rainey – my great-grandparents.
- John was a labourer from County Tyrone and he married Joanna Rainey, who was born in the USA. They had four children but John died young and Joanna remarried.
More to come…