Galway City

One of the western ports in Ireland is at Galway City and is quite an old one. The French and the Spanish trade came mostly through Galway due to its location and the fact that the temperatures are rarely extreme. The wind can be quite strong although the city is sheltered as it is located near the eastern end of Galway Bay on the north side of the bay.

When visiting Galway, a walking tour can be arranged. You should let the company or the tour guide know the major interests of the group as they can adjust the route accordingly. Once our tour guide realized that he had mostly family historians in the group, he took us to see a couple of spots that we would otherwise not have seen.

I found that Galway was a colourful city, with bright colours for shops and, where there was stone, doors. Several times throughout our tour of Ireland, we saw houses and buildings all with different colours. We didn’t really question it, but the tour guides gave us the explanation anyway. In the past, when men went to the local pub and imbibed too much alcohol, they could stumble home by themselves as they knew the colour of their door and the approximation of the location of their homes. When Queen Victoria made it law that all the doors had to be black in mourning for Prince Albert, many men stumbled into the wrong house. It didn’t take long for the coloured doors to come back.

I mentioned earlier that the Spanish came to Ireland for trade. During this time period, Galway was a walled city as were many cities in Great Britain and Europe. And, as time goes on, if walls are not necessary, they don’t usually get any upkeep done on them. When this happens, the walls usually grow weak and disintegrate. This happened with the London Wall in the area where some of my ancestors live (yes, I did have an ancestor who lived in the Wall of London). It also happened in Galway. However, there are remnants of the wall still standing. The remaining parts of the wall are the most famous remembrance of the time when the Spanish sailed to Ireland and is now called the Spanish Arch and was built in 1519 to 1520.

Galway was also one of the western ports that emigrants came through to travel to Canada and the United States during colonial times and since. I believe that some of my ancestors came through here. They were a family and could have been travelling with other family members or friends. They left Ireland and was in Quebec City in 1830 according to a notice in a newspaper posted by William Sanderson, the brother of John Robert Sanderson. William was looking for his brother in the 1840s because he had heard nothing from him since 1830. The wealthy merchants of Galway suffered a severe loss during the Great Famine. Many people made the decision to leave Ireland to build a new life elsewhere. Otherwise, these people were facing death by starvation. The economic loss was so great that it was felt by the city, and, I believe, the country, until the economic bubble at the end of the twentieth century.

As you can see with the photographs, the majority of the streets are narrow. There is also an archaeological excavation in process. We were there at a time that the workers were taking a break.

I enjoyed our time in Galway. As with other places, I could have spent more time there for both research and for wandering, getting to know the place better. A tour is a good idea for the first trip to a new area, but you need to go back so that you can learn more about the community and the environment that your ancestors lived in.