Were the Irish welcomed in the United States when they emigrated?
Beginning in 1845, the fortunes of the Irish began to sag with festering potatoes. Nearly 2 million refugees from Ireland crossed the Atlantic to the United States in the wake of the Great Hunger. Survival in Ireland was more dependent on potatoes for life. The blight struck across Europe but hit Ireland the worst of all.
The potato was packed with nutrition, it was easy to grow, and they were a practical crop that could flourish on tiny land plots given by wealthy British Protestant landowners. The Irish ate potatoes at every meal, 7 millions tons per year. A grown man ate 14 pounds per day; adult woman ate 11.2 pounds per day. The potato was hit with a blight that destroyed the crop several years in a row, rotting in the ground. Seven terrible years of famine wreaked havoc on the island. Barefoot mothers with dead infants in their arms begging for food, wild dogs searching for food fed on human corpses. Starving people had green stained lips from eating grass trying to survive. Farmers so desperate they sprinkled holy water on their fields; digging with their hands for one healthy potato. Dysentery, tuberculosis and typhus were rampant.
The political system ruled by London and the economic system ruled by absentee British landowners were all to blame for a part in the Great Hunger. British law for centuries forbid Irish Catholics to worship, vote, speak their language, own land, horses and guns. With the famine spreading, the Irish were denied food. Food convoys under armed guard continued to export wheat, oats and barley from Ireland to England while the Irish starved. British lawmakers were reluctant to give government aid. Charles Trevlyan, British civil servant in charge of poor relief efforts, viewed famine as a divine solution to Irish overpopulation, stating “The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated.”
The population of Ireland was nearly halved by the time the blight slowed down in 1852. Approximately 1 million died, another 2 million abandoned the land in the largest single population movement of the 19th century. Nearly a quarter of the Irish nation came to the United States.
Five thousand ships transported the castaways. Most ships were converted cargo ships (some had been used to transport African slaves), and hungry, sick passengers spent their last pennies for tickets. The 3,000 mile journey lasted at least 4 weeks. They were crammed into dark, dank quarters with insufficient food and clean water, choking on bad air. They were given 18 inches of bed space for an adult, 9 inches for a child. Death and disease spread. Nearly ¼ of the 85,000 passengers in 1847 never made the end of the journey. Bodies were wrapped in cloth, weighted with stones and thrown overboard.
The Irish arrived not only yearning to breathe free, they hungered to eat. Some barely made it off the docks, they were so destitute. Some British landowners found it a cheaper solution to send them to another continent than to pay for charity at home.
So in the opinion of many Americans, the Irish were not the best people. The Irish were not like the industrious, Protestant Scots-Irish who came to America in large numbers during the colonial era and fought in the Revolutionary War and tamed the frontier. The refugees were seeking haven in America and viewed as poor and disease ridden, threatening to take jobs away from Americans and strain the welfare budgets. They practiced an alien religion and pledged allegiance to a foreign leader. They brought crime and they were accused of being rapists. The Irish were viewed as unskilled, living in rickety tenements. Worse yet, they were Catholic.
To be continued in next blog posting…. For more information on genealogy, see our previous blog posts and information from FamilySearch and Ancestry.
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