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SIR WALTER Raleigh brought the humble potato to these shores but it may have been Presbyterian settlers from Londonderry who were the first people to plant spuds in the new colonies of North America.

A local historian based in New Hampshire postulated the theory on a blog mapping the history of the New England state where many Ulster Scots from this area emigrated from the 17th century onwards.

The blogger known just as “Mike in New Hampshire” made the observation on a post describing a historic road marker that was erected on the East Derry Road near Beaver Lake in 1969.

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The marker celebrates, what it terms, one of the first “Scotch-Irish Settlement’s” in the area.

The signpost reads: “In April 1719, sixteen Presbyterian Scotch-Irish families settled here in two rows of cabins along West Running Brook easterly of Beaver Brook. Initially known as Nutfield, the settlement became Londonderry in 1723.”

It makes the grand claim that these same settlers planted the first spuds in North America there just four years later.

“The first year, a field was planted, known as the Common Field, where the potato was first grown in North America,” it reads.

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Mike in New Hampshire notes: “The Scotch-Irish - also known as the Ulster-Scots - have a pretty interesting history. Back in the days of King James I and through the 1600s, there were settlers sent from Scotland to Catholic Ireland. One of the first was in what came to be known as Ulster County. The major town was...Londonderry!”

Not long after a wave of emigration by the Presbyterian population of Londonderry took place.

Mike notes the testimony of Edward Parker writing in his History of Londonderry (1851) on the fractious relations between Protestants and Catholics in Ulster around the time of the first New Hampshire potato plantation.

Mr Parker, cited a historian of the early 17th century’s view of the original Londonderry: "On the same soil dwelt two populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered.

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“The difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They sprang from different stocks.

“They spoke different languages. They had different national characters, as strongly opposed as any two national characters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of civilization.

“There could, therefore, be little sympathy between them ; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong antipathy. “The relation in which the minority stood to the majority, resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortez stood to the Indians of Mexico."

Mike blogs that the promise of freedom and land in the new world were thus a powerful incentive for the Presbyterians of North West Ulster.

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“Four Presbyterian clergymen gathered all the interested families from their churches,” he explains. “Two hundred and seventeen signed the request that was sent to Boston in the hands of Reverend Boyd. The colony said ‘sure, come on over!’ and they did. They arrived in Boston in August of 1718.”

The New England history enthusiast adds: “In the fall of that year a gentleman named MacGregor took 16 of these families to Casco Bay to find a place to settle, but arrived late in the fall. They spent a miserable winter aboard ship, sick and hungry, iced into the bay. Boston sent enough food to see them to the spring.”

The new arrivals eventually arrived on the banks of Beaver Lake, New Hampshire and settled there.

“They communicated the selection of the land to Boston - making their claim - and proceeded to build some crude huts before returning to gather up their families and few possessions for the trip to their new home,” states Mike.

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“As the marker notes, 5 years later they renamed the town after their old home in Ireland, Londonderry.”

The blogger also thinks the plaque’s claim that the Londonderry folk brought the first spuds to the States is correct.

“It seems that a few people brought some potatoes in the 1600s, but no one really established a potato plantation,” he writes.

“All of the most reliable Potato Historians do indeed place the first legitimate Potato farms in Londonderry, 1719. Take that Maine!”

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