In a random browse through the online version of Bruce Elliott's Irish Migrants in the Canada's[1] (see my article about this fantastic book), I came across a short reference to a migration of Irish people from
north Tipperary to Rutland County, Vermont. Peter Patten, who is from that part
of Vermont, is an expert on this migration and has researched it extensively.
He outlines that, "In the 1800s the Portroe Slate Quarries were one of the largest employers in North
Tipperary. However, the onset of the Great Famine in the 1840s saw a significant
decline in the numbers employed in Portroe. Many of those who lost their jobs
decided to emigrate and...they pretty much reformed their community [in] Castleton, Vermont, in a strikingly similar landscape."[2]
The density of numbers who made this Tipperary to Rutland
County, VT migration is illustrated in this transcribed list of men who naturalized in Rutland County, VT from 1859 to 1873.
[1]
Elliot, Bruce S. Irish Migrants in the Canada's: A New Approach. Belfast.
McGill-Queens Press. 2004. p251.
[2]
Ormond Historical Society. Portroe to
Castleton - The Slate Quarry Emigrants; Rebuilding a Tipperary Community in
Rural Vermont. 2013. www.ormondhistory.ie:
accessed 27 March 2014.
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