Walking the goosebump trail

We're standing in the rain, trying to make out the words on the grave.We're in the cemetery next to the Killiter Presbyterian Church outside the village of Killeter in County Tyrone.
But yes the writing becomes clearer as we wipe the raindrops away - it is our great-great grandfather's final resting place - as well as that of our great-great grandmother and great-great uncle.
G g grandpa Joseph Love was minister at this church most of his life and was followed by one
of his sons, George Clarke Love, my great grandfather.
But in 1889 George for health reasons sought a more favourable climate in Australia and
set off for southern climes with his wife, Georgina Beattie, and their five-month-old baby Bob.
There's a convoy of us that have driven along the muddy narrow roads to get here - the church's clerk of sessions, our guide, and one of our possible distant relatives.
They're huddling in the shelter of the church door as my sister and I crouching under
her small purple umbrella pronounce that the grave is indeed that of our
forebears.
This crazy expedition all started with my idea to walk the ground of my ancestors or the "goosebump trail", which is how a genealogist I met in Dublin describes being able to return to the exact place
they came from.
I knew my mother's father's side of the family came from Northern Ireland, and I wanted to return there after a trip to Belfast two years ago - a city that despite its grim history - and perhaps because of
this edginess - I fell in love with.
My main piece of information was that my great uncle, anthropologist and linguist JRB Love (the
baby Bob), was born in Killeter - in the manse known as Lislaird. This county
borders Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland and is mainly rural with sheep and
dairy farms.
About 65 families still use the Killeter Presbyterian Church at Maghernageeragh (which means the playing of the sheep). They have to share a minister these days with another church and farmer and
congregation member Will Andrews has been left to look after the books.
After driving past the former manse, we go to his farm
house and sit down at his kitchen table as he and his wife bring out a roneoed
sheet "about a minister who is long dead" - which tells a bit about Joseph
Love.
Then out comes the Register of Marriages and we are
thrilled to see there are many that contain both Joseph's and George Clarke's
signatures.
They also have stipend lists - which include
donations from members of the family - and the roll of people who had attended
Communion - held then as now twice a year.
Now that Andrews has
the church key we head back to see the inside of the church.

It's then that the story of this ancient and beautiful valley emerges.
Killeter's closest town Castlederg was one of the "most bombed out" towns in the
province during the Troubles, the quaint name for the undeclared war between
Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists, supported by the British
Army.
It's now 11 years since the leading antagonists,
republican Gerry Adams and Ulster loyalist the Reverend Ian Paisley, agreed to
power sharing in what became known as the 1998 Good Friday Peace
Agreement.
But for 30 years before that Castlederg and surrounds
like much of Northern Ireland had been the scene of bombings, razor wire and
gun-running.
Although it's a long and complicated story that
goes back three centuries, the most recent conflict began in 1969 after
predominantly Catholic marches inspired by the American civil rights movement
and counter-protests by Protestant loyalists turned violent.

It's not a history from the deep dark past. That morning we had driven into
Coalisland in the eastern part of the county. Huge orange and green graffiti
covered a wall on the way into town - Colin Duffy Framed!! Terry McCafferty
Interned. British Injustice 1969-2009.
At the church, I ask
Andrews how the peace settlement had affected him and others in the
village.
While he says "peace is great" there is still some
mistrust and tension.
"Things are getting better but it'll take
a long time before we forget," he says.
He takes us over to a
plaque on the wall dedicated to two young men, in their twenties, from the
congregation who had been killed while serving with the Ulster Defence
Regiment.
"All for nothing," he says shaking his head. "All for
nothing."
The next morning we have a cup of tea at Gordon
Speer's house in the village.
Asked to be our guide, he works
for an organisation, Border Arts 2000, which for the past 10 years as well as
doing arts projects has been working with Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians
to overcome their differences - helped by funding from the EU Programme for
Peace and Reconciliation.
He tells a little of the "bad old
days" of the 70s and 80s. Being right on the border, the army would blow up the
"unapproved" roads to stop the arms coming in and also block the escape routes
(also affecting smugglers). Never mind, the gun-runners would come in at night
and fill up the holes with gravel.
Castlederg's streets were
blocked by cement boulders and you had to pass the army checkpoints to get into
town.
Speer, a musician, tells how he used to play in a band in
the town's pubs, and would have to make complicated arrangements with the police
every time he had a gig.
People would hardly speak to their
neighbours because of fear and intimidation.
"Now it's much more
mixed," he says. "Ten years ago you wouldn't have seen a Protestant in a
Catholic bar. There's been a big change in the last three
years."
"It will all get down to money at the end of the day,"
he says when asked what he thinks of the future of the fragile
peace.
It's marching season and we're there for Black Saturday -
when the march of the Black Perceptory, a fraternal/religious lodge linked
to the Orange Order, is held and towns we drive through are covered in Union
Jack flags.
The vast majority of the parades in Northern Ireland
are Unionist but since the peace agreement marchers have to get permission
from the Parades Commission - and many marches have been cancelled when it
looked like they might lead to violence.
Speer has been getting
both sides round the table to discuss how to ensure the marches are peaceful;
he'd found solutions were simpler than he expected.
"Both sides
were amazed they both didn't want to have a heavy police presence," he
says.
Speer explains there's been a push by both Protestants and
Catholics to embrace their own cultures, music and language - and to change
cultural perceptions.
"A lot of people are more interested in
their culture and are now more comfortable about it," he says.

The Plantation of Ulster began in 1609 when the British brought over loyal
Presbyterian Scots - taking the most fertile land off the locals and
giving it to them, where they built their castles.
Even though
it was eight or nine generations ago it has still got a bearing on the landscape
today, Speer says, as it created two distinct cultures in Ulster and led to huge
resentment and discrimination.
Before I left home I'd been in
touch with my mother's first cousin, John Love, from Adelaide, the son of JRB
Love, the baby Bob who had come on that first long journey.
He'd
written that while some relatives had found records of people named Love and
Beattie who moved from Scotland to Ireland at the time of the Scottish
settlement nobody had traced an unbroken line of descent from those people to
us.
According to his family tree though Joseph's father was
James Love, a farmer from Bready, a town a little further north, where we
visited the next day. In pride of place is the new Bready Sollus Centre, built
by the Bready and District Ulster-Scots Development Association to promote an
interest in the area's culture and heritage.
My grandfather, George Love, was born in January 1892 in Dimboola, Victoria, the same year the
growing family moved to Strathalbyn in South Australia, where George Clarke Love
ministered until his death in 1929.
Moving to Australia and the
dry climate of SA must have worked, because "he lived to a ripe old age", John
Love says.
For me - a lapsed Presbyterian/Anglican - the
goosebump trail had led right back home again, with a stronger feeling of
connection and a desire to know more about my ancestors.

My great grandfather's signature