SHALIMAR passengers John and Susan (née Savage) Dromgool were my maternal grandfather’s paternal grandparents. They were both born on Ireland in 1823 – John in County Louth. Susan’s birthplace is unknown but suffice to say they were married in County Louth in August 1841 and were living in Dundalk prior to departing for Liverpool where they boarded the ship.
By September 1859, when the SHALIMAR sailed for Auckland, John and Susan had eight children, ranging in age from 16-year-old James to little Bridget Frances who was barely 18 months old. A ninth child, Annie, had died as an infant in 1852. Susan was four months pregnant when the family embarked – Elizabeth was the first of John and Susan’s three children born in New Zealand, in February 1860.
Although family history buffs over the generations that the Dromgools have been in New Zealand have kept the story of John and Susan’s descendants well documented, we have no tangible proof of why they decided to leave Ireland.
The Dromgools had been flax millers for the Irish linen industry for many generations. In 1821 Michael Dromgool, John’s father, was a miller near Dromgoolestown, and Christopher, one of John’s brothers, owned a mill which his family continued to work until the mid-1940s. However, if John had heard that there was flax in New Zealand and had emigrated with a view to producing fine linens here, he would have been dismayed to discover that our flax - harakeke (phormium tenax) – is completely unrelated to the plant that linen is produced from.


photo of old Dundalk from the Dromgool Family Reunion booklet, 1986 from a map by Forster and C(illegible)th Dublin 

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