The unveiling of a memorial wall
by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD at
the Irish National Famine Museum at Strokestown in May 2014, to mark the
National Famine Commemoration, highlighted the ongoing efforts to locate Irish
Famine emigrants from county Roscommon. The
research is led by Dr Ciarán Reilly of the Centre for the Study of Historic
Irish Houses & Estates, NUI Maynooth. Much of the information on emigrants
is gleaned from the voluminous Strokestown archive, a collection of more than
50,000 documents, the vast majority of which pertain to the Great Irish Famine.
In total, Dr Reilly estimates that almost 5,000 people emigrated from around
the Mahon estate at Strokestown during the Famine, with 1,490 part of an
ill-fated assisted emigration scheme in 1847.
Upon the death of Rev. Maurice
Mahon, third baron Hartland, in November 1845, Major Denis Mahon inherited the
11,000 acre Strokestown estate in county Roscommon. Years of neglect and
mismanagement meant that the estate was now almost £30,000 in debt. In an effort
to radically overhaul the problems of gross overcrowding, subdivision of the
land and mounting arrears, John Ross Mahon, the land agent, devised a scheme of
assisted emigration. For the estate administration this made economic sense; to
keep the people in Roscommon workhouse would cost over £11,000 annually whereas
a once off emigration scheme would cost £5,800. In
May 1847 1,490 tenants left from the Strokestown estate for Quebec in British
North America (Canada). They were accompanied on their walk to Dublin, via the
Royal Canal footway, by the bailiff, John Robinson who was instructed to stay
with them all the way to Liverpool and ensure that they boarded the ships.
Leaving Liverpool on four ships
the Virginius, Naomi, John Munn and
the Erin’s Queen, the Mahon tenants
were amongst the first to be characterised as sailing on coffin ships during
the Famine. With Cholera and typhus
rampant the emigrants were exposed to the ravages of disease. The Toronto Globe newspaper was
amongst the first to highlight the problems encountered by the passengers on
board the Virginius and thus reported
its arrival at Grosse Île:
The
Virginius from Liverpool, with 496 passengers, had lost 158 by death, nearly
one third of the whole, and
she had 180 sick; above one half the whole will never see their home in the new world.
Those who managed to emerge from
the ship were described as ‘ghastly, yellow-looking spectres, unshaven and
hollow cheeked.’ Dr. George Douglas who treated and spoke with the Mahon
tenants at Grosse Île noted that
some had even died at the River Mersey in Liverpool. It was also claimed that on arrival at Grosse Île, the ship’s master had to
bribe his crew at the rate of a sovereign per corpse, to remove the dead from
the hold. On the ship Erin's Queen,
the situation was no better, 78 passengers had died and a further 104 were
sick. Again, according to the Globe ‘the
filth and dirt in these vessels hold creates such an effluvium as to make it
difficult to breathe.’ While in harbour the ship was abandoned by the crew and
captain who feared for their lives. On the ship John Munn more than 100 were sick and 59 were dead, while on the Naomi 78 were dead.
Some of the names featured on the
memorial wall at Strokestown also feature in an exhibition Emigrant Faces from county Roscommon which Dr Reilly designed for
the National Famine Commemoration Week. They include the Tighes and the Quinns,
orphaned by the voyage. A number of other emigrants also feature including
Michael Dufficy, Edwin O'Beirne, Elijah Impey, Pat Hanly and Pat Kelly. Most of
the 1,490 cohort who arrived in Quebec in 1847 made their way over the ensuing
months and years into American cities and towns. Relatively, few actually
stayed in Canada. The search for the 1,490 assisted emigrants and other
Strokestown natives who emigrated during the Famine continues. Thankfully, it is proving fruitful and the
destination and subsequent details of as many as 300 of these has been
ascertained. These details will soon been collated by Dr Reilly and made
available in a number of formats. Visitors to the Irish National Famine Museum
at Strokestown can now see the list of 275 families who were part of the
scheme, their townland of origin and the number of family members who
travelled.
The following snippets might be
of interest:
* In 1876 Mary Tarpey had the unique distinction of
being the oldest person in Long Island, New York. Having left Strokestown in
1853, incredibly when she was then 84 years old, Tarpey attributed her
longevity to a daily glass of whiskey!
* A
number of women and children who remained on the Strokestown estate in the
aftermath of the Famine had been abandoned. They included Catherine Connor whose mother left for England; Maria
Hanly abandoned by her father Peter who went to England and Margaret Kearns
whose father went to Scotland.
* Michael
Hayden (1842-1917) of Strokestown emigrated to America in the wake of the
Famine, settling in Washington D.C. in 1854. During the American Civil War he
was a member of the home guard for the defence of Washington D.C. Later he
worked in Gauster's French Restaurant in the city where he claims John Wilkes
Booth and his companions hatched their plan to murder President Abraham Lincoln.
* Daniel Tighe, one of the 1847
emigrants to Canada, appears on various Canadian census returns as Tay, Tyre, Thy and Tye. It is little wonder
then that the search for Irish Famine emigrants often proves difficult.
