I have decided to trace some of the families who left the camp, and find out how life has treated them many miles away from the city of their birth. When families left the camp for one reason or another, they would normally leave via the Train from Waterside station on their way to Belfast to catch the Boat to England. Others would leave from Derry Quay on the Laird Loch aka as the 'Scots Boat', which took them to Glasgow.

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I will be adding new Family Journeys regularly to this page

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One family who decided to leave on the Scots Boat was the family of Margaret Donnelly's. They left their hut in the camp and sailed to Glasgow in 1956. Here is her daughter Margaret's story.

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Mrs. Margaret Donnelly [ Mother ]                                                                  Margaret Donnelly Elderton

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Margaret was born in Mullaney, Burt, County Donegal, in the same townland as her mother, also called Margaret, in 1943. Her Dad, Ambrose, was from Nelson Street in Derry, he unfortunately passed away on 9 July 1949, at the young age of 36, just three years after he returned home from the war.

It was just a couple of months after my Dad died, that we moved to Springtown Camp. We were happy enough in the camp, as all the children were. But one day when we came home from school, my mother informed us all that we were leaving the camp and we were going to live in Glasgow. To say it was a shock  would be an understatement, we asked when , and she said tomorrow! that was in 1956. We were told to pack whatever clothes we had. We duly did as we were told. The natural questions one would expect to seek answers to, like 'where would we be living.' 'what school would we be attending in Glasgow' we dared not to ask.  

The reason being we were too excited, as it seemed a great adventure to us. Another reason was because we were well aware of the consequences, if we didn't obey mothers instructions, without question. The next day we caught the bus from the camp to Derry where we boarded the Scots Boat at the quay.

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The 'Scot's Boat'  Laird Loch

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The crossing on the boat was just ok, not much comfort for sure. On arrival in Glasgow we were housed in an old large tenement build in Abbotsford Place in the Gorbals area. I took an instant dislike to the place, in fact it was a downright horrible place. Lots of families were in the same tenement building and many young children were also living there. As I was very close to school leaving age, it was the end of my schooling days. The following day I went looking for a job and was happy to take up a offer of employment, as a chambermaid in the Queens Hotel. I started work the next day and it wasn't too bad as the other girls there were friendly enough. After work going 'home' to that horrible old tenement building full of families, depressed me.

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                                          Tenement Building in Abbotsford Place in the Gorbals Glasgow

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Our Uncle Michael who was living in Lancaster and had property there, got in contact with us and offered us a house to rent in Lancaster and we jumped at the chance and accepted his kind offer immediately.  Now we were on the move again to Lancaster in England. The house was certainly a massive improvement, to that old tenement building in the Gorbals, as we had our own front door. 

I got a job in the Cotton Mill there and I stayed in that job until I got married in 1961, at the ripe old age of 18. My name changed from Donnelly to Elderton, I had six children in quick succession, and we stayed in Lancaster for over ten years.

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Cotton Mill in Lancaster England

We then decide to move to Preston where my husband found better employment and worked there for many years. It was no picnic bringing up six children but we were happy there and enjoying life. Then it all turned sour when my husband took ill and he sadly passed away. All my children finished their schooling and found decent jobs and once again we were all happy. But as life has it, one by one they found their partners and married. Now they have families of their own, some did stayed in England and some moved to different countries. Gladly, all have decent jobs and they have a happy family life, which pleases me no end. I am long retired now and with plenty of time on my hands, I joined the social media craze which enables me to make new friends online and keep in touch with some Derry people and folk who like me use to live in Springtown Camp.

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The rest of my family live here in England and though we don't live in each other's pocket we do manage to keep in touch now and again. 

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My Mother passed away in 2008 she was  91 years old, my sister Bernadette died aged 54 and Myra died in her 62nd year.

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My brother Ambrose joined the army and while there he met a lovely Maltese girl. When he left the army they decided to marry and settle in her native country Malta. They are now happily married for 46 years and still live in sunny Malta. Ambrose loved the place and its people so much he decided to apply for Maltese citizenship and his request was granted, so now he is a Maltese citizen.We do talk on the internet often and Springtown Camp crops up in conversation frequently. He has a very happy life and enjoys it to the full. There are five of the family left now, Ambrose, Joe, Alan are all well and doing ok, as is my only sister left Kathleen.

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Reflecting on my life, I still can't fathom why my mother uprooted the family and move to Scotland, it was a bad move for sure. No offence to Scot's people, but I truly hated the Gorbals area where we lived in.

I just always wonder how life would have turned out, if we had of stayed in Springtown Camp. No matter where you travel to or end up in if you came from the camp, it will always be in your thoughts as it was that kind of place. 

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The Clingains 284 Springtown Camp

Until we moved to Springtown Camp when I was fifteen. We lived at 89 Bogside in a room rented from Lizzie McDermott. Our family, the Clingains was one of the first squatters to move there. We walked in a solemn procession up the Bog, past Francis Street and out the Northland Road. The family, Mammy, Granny, Ruby, Ben and me walked beside our neighbour Hughie McIntyre, who flitted us in his donkey and cart. I was not at all happy to leave the place I had known and liked.

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On the day after we moved to the camp, I came home from work to find granny cooking mince, potatoes and gravy on a brazier outside our hut. I began to cry. I don't think they understood or  knew why or, if they did, they  didn't say. But we all adjusted quickly. The camp filled from the Northland Road end first then as it filled up they moved to the middle. When the huts were renovated we were moved to the Buncrana Road end. 228 Springtown Camp was my address until I was Twenty. Our neighbour to the right was the McCourt family. Mrs McCourt was a beautiful woman with red hair. They were a very large but quiet family. On the north side and slightly elevated were the Sheehan's hut. To the west lived the Boyle family. We knew Bridget Boyle before we moved to the camp. In 1954 we got housed in Creggan  where we lived until we left for a 'new life' in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1964.

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Sadie Clingain, Aunt Agness Rabbitts, Mrs Rebecca Clingain, (Mother) Ruby Clingain, Ben Clingain

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I have searched for words, elevated, beautiful words adequate to the solemn task of restarting a conversation severed in 1964. Somewhere over the Atlantic, between Derry and the statue of Liberty, I entered the silent realm that emigrants know well: the no-mans land where time and distance merge and the sense of belonging dissolves setting  the exile adrift. I understood, for the first time, why, I wept when I was young, at the retelling of the story of Colmcille and his lonely, cold windswept journey to Iona. Now I was weeping myself for myself and all the others who had gone before.

The ghost of old Mrs. Kennedy floated into my consciousness, a tiny figure, with snow white hair covered with a black bonnet. She waited outside her door for mammy coming home from work to ask her to read a letter from her son. I gripped mammy's hand tighter as she read the letter from Boston and buried my head deeper into her brown jacket so I could breathe in the smell of cotton and starch that clung to her after a long day in Tillies laundry. After mammy had finished reading the letter, Mrs Kennedy blessed us all and mammy told her she would go to her house and write her reply after she got us our tea.

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Words do not emerge out of thin air. They are excavated, one by one from the depths of the human heart.Words tell us who we are and where we came from. Willie Deery and John McLaughlin who wrote the Springtown Camp play have built a bridge between between the past, the present, and the future and all I have to ask: "How are youse all doing, come on in" We're doing grand ourselves. We live in a nice quiet neighbourhood in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Ben my brother, Ruby my sister live with their families a few doors away and we see each other almost every day. The kettle seldom gets cold. On Easter Sunday we all had dinner in my house. On these occasions, Ben brings his guitar and we sing. Ruby sings It's just three mile from Derry to the Bridge of Drumahoe. My party piece is the Little Beggar Man. Sometimes we are joined by people from Mayo, Pennsylvania and Donegal. We don't make distinctions. When the noise gets too much , the cats take of for the basement. 

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There used to be a lot of singing down the Bog.When we lived at 89 Bogside in that room rented from Lizzie McDermott. Lizzie wasn't married herself but she loved wains and, at every opportunity, gathered up anyone around for a great bear's hug. These hugs were accompanied by the invocation: "God's blissin' on ye and may ye live ta the skin of a gooseberry makes ye a night cap".

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We were very lucky to have lived among such lovely humble, kind, sincere neighbours in the city of our birth. The Bogside and Springtown Camp, are places, entwined in the hearts of Derry emigrants  around the globe. 

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                                     Downtown Cleveland, Ohio                                                    Sadie (Clingain) Puri

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