The walk that changed everything: Family behind US construction giant retrace roots to Leitrim

One day in 1847, with the famine raging around him and a young wife and three children, Thomas Gilbane made a gamble.

In search of a better life, he walked a mile from his home in Kiltoghert to catch a horse and buggy headed for the port — and a ship bound for America. The next year, his wife joined him; unfortunately, their children didn’t survive. 

They were just two of the two million Irish to board coffin ships headed for America during the famine. This October, 178 years later, 33 members of their family made the trip back to Leitrim to find out their story.

“We knew a sentence,” said William Gilbane. “They came over in the Irish famine which was horrible but that is all we knew.”

They were young, Thomas in his early thirties and Bridget in her mid twenties and they would go on to have two more sons in America, Thomas and William, who started a small carpentry company in 1870. 

America

There would be ups and downs, a near collapse during the depression, bearing the Irish need not apply era, but today, seven generations later, Gilbane construction is one of America’s largest construction companies.

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The now Billion dollar company has completed major projects all over the states and abroad including the Irish famine memorial in Rhode Island and the Kerry group factory in Naas.

“It makes us all feel so lucky and fortunate that they had the courage to do what they did or we wouldn’t have this big family or this great company over in America, and that company has been the nucleus to keep us as a big family together”

Gilbane cousins followed to America, and today there are 227 members of the family scattered across the United States from Utah to Providence but are still a tight knit group, and hold family reunions every three years. 

Irishness

The family members were always proud of their Irishness. William remembers his father and Uncle carrying it with them as they went, suffering discrimination duringthe rta of Irish need not apply, adamantly supporting Irish American president John F Kennedy.

“They never dwelled about being Irish, they were always ‘This is America, this is our chance’. I think they knew so much about how difficult it was over here and why the immigration occurred. 

Retracing

William and his wife, whose family are originally from Ballinamore, are frequent visitors to Ireland with a holiday home in Connemara; however, for most of the family on this trip, it was their first time visiting Ireland.

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The family spent the week in Ireland getting to know their family history with historian and Genealogist, Fiona Slevin, visiting the famine museum in Strokestown, seeing the sites in Leitrim, meeting distant Gilbanes and having mass at the Church where Thomas and Bridget were baptised and married.

For William, there was “very much a sense” of the area during the trip. “We are going to have that mass in the church where all that happened in, you can't walk in there and not feel it,” said William.

They ended their time in Leitrim by making the same walk Thomas Gilbane made on his trip to America, “There is a real knowledge coming out of this, and an understanding of the two people,” said William.

William feels the values that define the family and their success in America are proud began with Thomas and Bridget, whether it being the focus on family and hard work or the strength of the woman in the family. 

He wanted the younger generation to understand where they came from and what it means. “We want this fifth and sixth generation to appreciate it, and they all do. I think it is very emotional for them to see it,” he said.

The trip has been “a milestone in our family’s history,” said William, reflecting before the family retraced Thomas’s mile-long walk from Kiltoghert to the road that led him to America.

“I’d thank him for what he’s done for so many lives,” he said. “Maybe none of us would have been up to what he did — but because of his courage, there have been so many rich lives lived. I hope we made him proud.”