Town in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Strabane
A Strabane boy printed the Declaration of Independence, and a Strabane apprentice's grandson went on to become US President.
Key information
- County
- County Tyrone
- Nation
- Northern Ireland
- Population
- About 13,500 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- John Dunlap, Gray's Printing Press, Woodrow Wilson's roots, a river border with Lifford
- What locals are called
- Strabane people
- Famous people
- John Dunlap, James Wilson, George Sigerson
- Football clubs
- Strabane Athletic
About Strabane
The Strabane boy who printed America's big announcement
On the night of 4 July 1776, a printer in Philadelphia ran off the first copies of the Declaration of Independence. His name was John Dunlap, and he was born in Strabane in 1747. Dunlap crossed the Atlantic as a boy to join his uncle William, a printer, and took over the business when he was still in his twenties. The sheets that came off his press are known as the Dunlap broadsides. Only 26 are known to survive, which makes each one among the most valuable pieces of paper in American history. So the next time someone tells you the Declaration was an American affair, remember it went to press courtesy of a lad from the banks of the Mourne.
A printing press with a presidential grandson
Gray's Printing Press on Strabane's Main Street dates from the 1790s and is now run by the National Trust. Inside is a working press of the kind that shaped the town's trade in books, handbills and newspapers. The shop has its own American link. James Wilson learned printing here before emigrating to Philadelphia in 1807. He went on to run newspapers in the United States, and he was the grandfather of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th US President. The Wilson family farm at Dergalt, just outside town, is still known as the Woodrow Wilson Ancestral Home. Strabane is one of the few small towns to have a printing link to two American founding-era stories.
Where two rivers marry and a border takes the middle
Strabane sits on the River Mourne, which joins the River Finn just across the water at Lifford, County Donegal. Together they become the River Foyle, which flows on to Derry and the sea. The bridge between Strabane and Lifford is the everyday link between two towns that share shops, schools, sports clubs and family connections. Locals cross it without a second thought. The name An Srath Bán is usually explained as 'the white river-meadow', a fair description of the flat, floodable land around the town.
The canal that turned a market town into a port
In 1796 the Strabane Canal opened, running about four miles from the town to the Foyle. Barges carried coal, grain, flour and other goods in and out, and the canal made Strabane a busy inland harbour. The town was already a trading centre for linen and farm produce, and it grew in the 1600s as part of the Plantation of Ulster under the Hamilton family, later the Earls of Abercorn. Printing, milling and markets all followed. The railway arrived in the 1800s and closed in 1965, but traces of the canal can still be walked.
A doctor, a cup and a lot of Gaelic football
George Sigerson was born near Strabane in 1836. He was a physician, poet and scholar of Irish literature, and his name lives on in the Sigerson Cup, the major trophy in Gaelic football for universities and colleges. The local GAA club, Strabane Sigerson's, is named in his honour. Football of another kind is played by Strabane Athletic, the town's soccer club. A few miles away, Sion Mills grew up around the Herdman family's linen mill and was built as a model village, with housing, a church and a cricket ground for the workforce. It is an easy day out from town.