Seeking the Primrose Girls, 50 Irish immigrants to Canada from a Small Galway Town
b'The Mountbellew Orphan Girls Project\\u2014the Primrose Girls, which is research on a group of workhouse orphan girls who were sent to Canada from Mountbellew, Co. Galway, as part of an assisted emigration scheme. On 16 July 1853, they sailed on the Primrose from Limerick, Ireland to Quebec, Canada, arriving on the 6th of September. The girls\\u2019 passage was paid for by the Workhouse Board of Guardians as part of the same scheme which earlier had sent girls to Australia. In Quebec they were taken in charge by the Emigration Agent at the port, A.C. Buchanan, and sent to Toronto and Hamilton, where immediate employment opportunities were available. Through DNA and research the researchers are hoping to reconnect the girls to their families with whom contact was lost 170 years ago.'