BY HELEN RIDDELL
A LIVE broadcast took place on Bere Island last Saturday morning for leading Argentine news channel, America TV, with correspondent Guillermo Murphy.
Guillermo was on his first visit to the island where his great-grandfather, Patrick Murphy, was born in 1854.
Following last year’s World Cup win by Argentina, Guillermo and his family were featured on the front page of The Southern Star, which received widespread coverage back home.
Guillermo, who was visiting with his son Leyton, said he knew that with a surname like Murphy he had to have an Irish connection. Through extensive research in Buenos Aires, where he lives with his family, he discovered that Patrick Murphy and his brother John had left Bere Island in the late 1800s for a new life in Argentina.
John and Patrick settled in Cordoba, a city in central Argentina about 700km northwest of Buenos Aires, where the brothers started working on the railroads.
After working in Argentina for some time, John decided to head north to the USA before eventually returning home to Bere Island.
Patrick stayed in Argentina and married Mary Sullivan, who had been a neighbour of his in Bere Island, and had also emigrated to Argentina.
In a twist of fate, Guillermo’s live broadcast took place from a stretch of road on the island known locally as ‘Murphy’s Hill.’
Guillermo said he was delighted to finally be able to visit the island. ‘This means so much to me and my family to finally be able to visit the homeplace of Patrick Murphy, and see where he lived, went to school, and (to) meet my cousins who still live on the island.’
Bere Island has strong links with Argentina, with large numbers of islanders emigrating to the country over the years, many leaving their mark on their new homeland.
A Bere Island man founded the Cattleman’s Bank of Argentina, while another became an engineer responsible for setting up the public water system in Buenos Aires.
One island man, John D O’Sullivan, was so determined to get there, that when he was shipwrecked off the coast of Chile, he walked over the Andes to reach Argentina. Today, Argentina is the home of the fifth largest Irish community in the world, with an estimated 700,000 people of Irish ancestry.
The earliest record of the Irish in Argentina is of two brothers, Juan and Thomas Farrell who had travelled there in 1535 in an expedition to River Plate.
