🍀 The McGill Homeland in Ireland: A Journey Through County Antrim and Belfast Lough
A heritage journey through the landscapes of our Irish beginnings
Walk this land in your mind, if not yet with your feet.
📍 Stop 1: Belfast Lough — Where the Story Begins
Here, along the quiet shores of Belfast Bay, stood the McGill homestead described by Augustus in 1910.
The exact house may be lost to time, but the land remains—the same waters, the same gentle slopes, the same horizon our ancestors looked upon. Somewhere along this northern shore, between farm and sea, the McGill story took root.
👉 Stay here a moment. This is as close as we can come to “home.”
This map highlights key locations in County Antrim connected to the early McGill family story, based on descriptions recorded in Augustus McGill’s 1910 history. While the exact homestead cannot be pinpointed, these places represent the landscape in which our ancestors lived, worked, and ultimately began their journey to America.
📍 Stop 2: Carrickfergus was already ancient when our family lived nearby—a stronghold, a port, and a center of life in County Antrim.
Our McGill ancestors likely:
traded here
traveled this road
and measured distance from this very town
👉 If the homestead had a “nearest town,” this was it.
📍 Stop 3: Belfast — The City They Knew (Before It Was a City)
In our ancestors’ time, Belfast was not yet the bustling city we know today—it was a growing town tied to trade, land, and opportunity.
This is where:
leases were managed
goods were bought and sold
and the wider world began to open
👉 From here, the road eventually led to emigration.
📍 Stop 4: County Antrim Countryside — The Land of Lease and Legacy
This is the landscape Augustus described so lovingly:
hedged lanes
spring-fed brooks
fruit trees and stone dwellings
Under the Plantation system, families like the McGills held long leases, often passed from father to son for generations.
👉 This wasn’t just land—it was continuity, identity, and survival.
📍 Stop 5: Belfast Port — The Leaving Place
Patrick and Arthur McGill made the hardest journey of all—leaving.
Whether from Larne, Belfast, or another nearby port, they stepped onto the ship Good Intent, captained by brother Henry, and crossed the Atlantic, carrying with them:
their name
their memories
and the imprint of that home by the bay
Every American chapter of our story begins here.
From the shores of Belfast Lough to the roads of Carrickfergus, from leased fields in County Antrim to ships bound for America, the McGill story is not tied to a single house—but to a landscape.
Though the exact homestead may no longer stand, the land remains. The water still meets the shore. The roads still wind where they always have.
And if you stand there long enough, you may begin to understand what it meant to leave… and what it meant to remember.
