A New Frontier

After Hugh O'Neill and his followers fled to the Continent in the Flight of the Earls, thousands of Scottish families began to come to Ulster. They came in search of land and in the hope of a new and better life. Among them was the family of Alexander McIlveen. Alexander himself, his wife Ellen, his son David and Mary his daughter. They brought corn and half a dozen sheep with them across the narrow seas that divide Scotland from Ireland.