About

BreadyAncestry.com

Bready Ancestry is a website created by the Bready & District Ulster-Scots Development Association and is devoted to the history and genealogy of the Bready area in County Tyrone. Explore this site and find out more about the heritage of the area. You may then want to visit Bready for yourself and discover its fascinating history at first hand.

Graveyard

Explore Genealogy Records

…and discover your family history

Explore our free searchable database which has over 30,000 records relating to individuals and families from the early seventeenth century onwards.

Explore History

Archaeology & Early History

The Bready area is not rich in prehistoric remains. Two reasons account for this. Firstly, the low-lying area along the River Foyle would have been covered in dense forest in earlier times, militating against significant human settlement. Secondly, this area has been intensively farmed in the last three hundred years and, consequently, many monuments have been lost.

Bready & Surrounding Area

Almost all of the townlands in the Bready area originated in the pre-Plantation period even if their boundaries were not firmly established until after this. The one exception is the small townland of Dunnalong.

Rural Industries

Rural industry has all but disappeared from the Bready area, but it was not always so. The rivers Dennett and Glenmornan, together with a number of smaller waterways once powered numerous mills of varying descriptions.

Farming

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the farmers in the Bready area, as elsewhere, took advantage of a series of acts of parliament to buy their holdings and thus own their farms outright.

Churches

In the early seventeenth century a Scottish colony was established in the Bready area under the patronage of the Abercorns, owners of the manor of Dunnalong. When the settlers arrived the nearest church was at Old Donagheady.

Graveyards

Grange graveyard is a small and overcrowded burial ground close to the village of Bready, about 6 miles north of Strabane. It is located in the townland of Grangefoyle.

Schools

Little is known about early educational provision in the Bready area. Some of the churches in Donagheady parish provided some basic schooling, but convenience and cost limited the number of children able to avail to these facilities.

"We are passionate about promoting the culture and heritage of the Ulster-Scots of Bready and the surrounding areas."

Contact Bready & District Ulster-Scots Development Association to find out more