Introductory words of the article — July 29, 2005
In July, 2005 I began researching my ancestors’ involvement in the Peter Robinson
emigration experiment which brought 2024 impoverished Irish from Ireland to Canada in 1825. It was a sunny afternoon when I first visited the Peterborough Museum and Archives to investigate the topic. The staff were extremely helpful and obliging of my request to look at documents. I began by searching for information about my father’s paternal ancestors, surname English, but after spending time exploring that avenue discovered that it was his mother’s grandparents, Patrick and Margaret Heffernan, who had been participants and not his father’s. During my second trip to the Archives, a young man carrying a camera entered the room where I was busy reading and informed me that the holiday at the end of the following week was called Peter Robinson Day. He asked if Marie O’Connor, who worked at the Archives and who is another descendent of the Peter Robinson settlers, and I were willing to be interviewed for a piece that he was writing about the holiday for the Peterborough This Week newspaper. We both were willing to do so and that is how this article (see excerpt above) came to be. In the interview, I stated that I was interested in not only the facts but in how the participants must have been feeling and about what they must have been thinking while completing this monumental uprooting and life-changing journey. On that day, little did I know that my journey into years of researching and writing which would result in a book entitled ‘The Peter Robinson Experiment!’ had begun.
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