Hey Clan!
Today we have a very special guest who has come to share about a topic occurring later in Irish history, but no less important: The Great Hunger and Irish Immigration to America.
I’ve the privilege of introducing to you, fellow author, and lover of stories and history, Janalyn Voigt.
Janalyn is a multi-genre novelist and motivational speaker. Her nonfiction publications have featured in Focus on the Family, Scripture Press (now David C. Cook), and Pentecostal Evangel. She is also a regular blogger on one of my favorite sites: Heroes, Heroines, and History.
An Irish Family: An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store by Daniel MacDonald, (ca. 1847). Public domain image
The Irish in America
by Janalyn Voigt
On St. Patrick’s Day, Americans are all a little Irish, or so the saying goes. Hailing from the Green Isle has a certain glamour these days. Wind back the clock, and you’ll find attitudes toward the Irish quite different, as I learned when I researched the Montana Gold series, which features an Irish family in the American West.
An epic catastrophe brought Ireland to its knees after a blight rotted the potato crop. Beginning in 1845, the Great Hunger dragged on for six miserable years and killed a million men, women, and children. Droves of refugees fled the country, most for America. Passage to Canada was cheaper, so others aimed to enter America by land from the north.
Although a dietary mainstay for the population, only a single variety of potato was grown in Ireland. The Irish did grow other crops, like barley, oats, and wheat on land they rented from wealthy owners. Livestock fattened in the fields, but they were fattening for market. Everything edible besides potatoes went to pay the rent. The poor lived on potatoes. During the famine, the starving populace watched wagons of food headed for export roll past, safeguarded by armed guards.
Irish Potato Famine: A starving family during the Great Hunger; Unknown author / Public domain image
Passage on “Coffin Ships”
In Britain, the Irish were painted as sub-human ‘bog-trotters’ who shouldn’t be allowed to become dependent on the government. The Poor Man’s Extension Act of 1847 shifted the burden for their basic human needs to their landlords. The lucky ones had their fares paid to America or Canada. Others were simply evicted.
Ships of dubious seaworthiness departed Ireland with emigrants crammed into dark steerage compartments. An adult received 18 inches of bed space, and a child seven. Spoiled food rations, inadequate toilet facilities, and fetid air propagated typhus, cholera, and other sicknesses. ‘Ship fever’ claimed many lives. During Black ’47, the worst year of the famine, 17,467 Irish emigrants died aboard these ‘coffin ships.’ Sixty of the rickety vessels vanished somewhere in the Atlantic or sank within sight of land. Immigrants who survived the voyage were quarantined on Grosse Isle in Canada’s St. Lawrence River and Deer Isle off the coast of Boston. On Grosse Isle, emigrants crowded fever sheds, tents, even the aisles of the local church. Over 3,000 are thought to have died on Grosse Isle, but the figure may be higher. Its cemetery contains more than 5,000 graves.
Passengers who landed in Boston Harbor fared little better. A famine ship deemed “foul and infected with any malignant or contagious disease” by Boston port authorities was required to carry its passengers to nearby Deer Island. The port physician quarantined the suffering. From 1847 to 1849. about 4,186 Irish immigrants were quarantined on Deer Island. Between 800 and 1,200 of them perished.
Ships carrying Irish immigrants anchored off New York Harbor. The sick and those suspected of carrying disease were quarantined in Marine Hospital on Staten Island. Thousands died.
Five Points Slum: Five Points slum in lower Manhattan. Unknown Artist; Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public domain image
Five Points Slum
Arriving in America proved confusing to the new arrivals. Some fell prey to Gaelic-speaking ‘runners’ who met them on the dock, con artists who extorted them through various schemes. Some purchased bogus tickets to locations where they hoped to settle. Others made it onto boats, where the crew threatened to throw them overboard unless they parted with more money. Others were lured by promises of good food, comfortable lodging at affordable rates, and free storage for their luggage. Weary and disoriented, the new arrivals were often happy to follow their fellow countrymen. These trusting souls were packed into vermin-infested hell-holes in lower Manhattan and charged exorbitant rent. Housing and jobs were in short supply, overwhelmed by the sheer number of immigrants arriving from Ireland and other countries. Forced to remain, they received no mercy. When their money ran out, their landlords confiscated their luggage and evicted them.
Many Irish families wound up living in Manhattan’s Five Points Slum. They crowded into sub-par housing built on a landfill over a polluted Collect Pond and swamp. The landfill released methane gas as the buried plants decomposed. In a natural depression, the area lacked adequate drainage. This situation resulted in disease, child mortality, prostitution, gang activity, and violent crime.
Creating a better life in the land of opportunity proved daunting. Native-born Americans resented the intrusion of so many immigrants from poor nations overseas. British stereotypes followed the Irish to America. Popular opinion characterized an Irishman as an apelike lout named ‘Paddy.’ The female caricature was ‘Bridget.’
The Montana Gold series follows members of an Irish immigrant family who escape the slums of Manhattan to seek a better life in the American West. To succeed and find peace with God, they must overcome physical peril, the prejudice leveled against them, and their own mindsets.
The Montana Gold Books
- Hills of Nevermore pairs a circuit preacher and a woman with a shameful secret.
- Cheyenne Sunrise tells the story of a half-Cheyenne trail guide and an Irish widow intent on never marrying again.
- Stagecoach to Liberty features a man seeking his identity and a woman who falls prey to a couple ready to exploit her.
- In The Forever Sky, a man who left town with something to prove hopes to rekindle the flame with the widow he abandoned.
To learn more about Montana Gold, go to http://janalynvoigt.com/montana-gold.
Janalyn Voigt fell in love with literature at an early age when her father read chapters from classics as bedtime stories. When Janalyn grew older, she put herself to sleep with tales “written” in her head.
Today Janalyn is a storyteller who writes in multiple genres. The same elements–romance, mystery, adventure, history, and whimsy–appear in all her novels in proportions dictated by their genre.
Learn more about Janalyn Voigt and the books she writes at http://janalynvoigt.com
Website for authors: http://livewritebreathe.com
Sign up for Janalyn’s mailing list: http://janalynvoigt.com/join-e-letter
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Janalyn-Voigt/e/B008CEX4P4
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/JanalynVoigt
Goodreads Author Page: http://janalynvoigt.com/goodreads
Bookbub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/janalyn-voigt
Thanks for the chance to guest post. I love your website!
Thank you, Janalyn! It was a pleasure having join us. You’re always welcome to come back and share again.