I have no connection to the Ewings, but I love the wonderfully rich contributions people make to the research of others. Well done, Karen.
If anyone knows useful information about the McCormacks of Gorticashel Upper, I am ready & waiting ! Katherine Nolan (Canberra, Australia) From: karenamiller--- via CoTyroneList <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, 27 April 2026 4:02 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: [CoTyroneMailingList] Re: Ewings in Strabane Hi Greg! As a fellow County Tyrone researcher of missing Ewing men, I am utterly sympathetic. You have already gotten what I think are excellent suggestions from the “listers”, and I would like to offer a few others. 1. The first is to question how certain you are about the family’s origin in Strabane? I know as a Chicago suburbanite that I often tell strangers that I’m from Chicago rather than 15 miles away in Wilmette. It would help greatly in looking for clues to know EXACTLY where they lived in or near Strabane. I’d focus my attention on that. 2. Someone suggested trying Ancestry. I think Ancestry is a very good idea! That is where I discovered the name of the church James Ewing (1803-1837) attended before emigrating in 1826. Ancestry had copies of the session minutes of the church he joined in New York City. The minutes mentioned that he had presented a letter of transfer from the Upper Clonaneese Presbyterian Church in south eastern County Tyrone. James Ewing must have lived within 5 miles of the Church as most people traveled on foot in the early 1800s or if lucky, on horseback. 3. Colleen mentioned that details of a family member may have been deliberately obscured because of scandal or trauma. I’ve heard Aussies are very proud of their “criminals” as founding fathers even though transported against their will. A lot of information has been collected about them. Have you considered checking criminal records in the prison museum in Tasmania? 4. I also suggest reading through digitized copies of the local Strabane newspapers for mention of local Ewing families. Quite ordinary people get mentioned if they got into trouble or even had arguments with their neighbors that ended up in the Petty Sessions court. If nothing else, some of those court cases are highly entertaining. I read a recent transcription on the County Tyrone website about a man arrested for throwing a hedgehog, and for a woman named “Kate the Man” because of her mannish appearance. Those are precious details about our ancestors! 5. Consider the prevalence of people with the same name in the Strabane area. You will have to consider them all. Like you, I have a Joseph B. Ewing to deal with. My great-grandfather, Joseph Bell Ewing, was a son of the emigrant James. I found a newspaper article from the area where he lived in south-central Pennsylvania claiming that Joseph B. Ewing was summoned to court on a charge of bastardy! In trying to follow up this lead I discovered THREE men named Joseph B. Ewing in the same compact area. I finally sorted the men out on the basis of occupation and a will. The Joseph B. Ewing I sought in this instance was NOT my great-grandfather. Joseph B. Ewing was a married man from a neighboring county and couldn’t satisfy the charge by marrying the mother of the baby. The child, named Sarah after her mother, was “adopted” by her paternal grandfather Ewing who made provision for the child in his will. “Daddy” Ewing and his official family lived very nearby. 6. I think another lister mentioned that not all family members emigrated to the same place or in the same way. Might your Joseph B. Ewing have gone somewhere other than Australia first? As an example, a different Ewing man I’m puzzling over, William Ewing, and his wife Marjorie Hopper [Happer?] emigrated to Pennsylvania and lived very near my emigrant James in the village of Newton Hamilton in Mifflin County. Marjorie was from a Church of Ireland family living near Ballygawley. All of her other siblings who left Ireland went to Canada! I’ve been corresponding with a Hopper researcher in Canada who was astonished to learn that Marjorie and her husband had gone to Pennsylvania and that Marjorie’s husband was a founding member of the Presbyterian Church in Newton Hamilton. He’d assumed the couple had stayed in Ireland since they weren’t with the rest of the family, and that Marjorie remained Church of Ireland or Anglican. 7. My very best wishes for continued excitement for the ancestor hunt. PRONI is a wonderful archive, but so complex that anybody could get discouraged. I’ve found most of my best leads close to home. By the way…I’m STILL LOOKING! Karen Miller Wilmette, Illinois, USA
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