If you have Irish ancestors, chances are good that they came during the Potato Famine, also known as the Great Hunger. Between 1846 and 1851, one and a half million Irish left their country for homes in America and England.

The potato blight began in southern England during the wet summer of 1845. By September, it arrived in county Wexford, Ireland. Acres upon acres of potatoes blackened and rotted in the ground and in the cellars. Irish farmers depended upon potatoes for their sustenance. It was their main food. The small family plots were used to grow grain that was sold to the landholders who exported it to England. The farmers could not spare land to grow food other than potatoes. During the hungry winter of 1845, the government provided employment projects to assist the farmers. In 1846, another round of potato blight occurred, and the harshest winter in memory struck. This time, the government did not provide assistance. Starvation was seen in the land as approximately one million people died from hunger and disease.

British law did not require passenger lists to be kept from any British port.

The lists generated upon arrival in the U.S. are vital to our genealogical quest for information about our ancestors. The ship manifests contain the bare minimum of information: name, age, and occupation. This is not much, but still we seek out this link from the United States to the immigrant home.

About 700,000 of the immigrants went to the Port of New York. Unfortunately, the Port of New York passenger lists are not indexed from 1846 to 1897. A series of seven volumes has been prepared to fill this gap. It is The Famine Immigrants Lists of Irish Immigrants Arriving at the Port of New York, 1846-1851. Copies are at the Multnomah County Library and the Genealogical Forum of Oregon Library, both in Portland.

The Port of Boston was used by a great number of Irish immigrants. Fortunately, most of the ship lists are indexed. The Pacific Alaska Region of the National Archives (in Seattle) has microfilm copies of the index and the passenger lists for Boston.

Grosse Île in Quebec, Canada, was known as the "Canadian Ellis Island." Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants used this port and then walked over the U.S. border. Unfortunately, there are no passenger indexes for Grosse Île. The website for information on Grosse Île is at http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/grosseile/.

Further information on the Irish and genealogy can be found online at http://globalgenealogy.com/globalgazette/irish.htm.

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© 2000–2009

Connie Lenzen, CG^SM

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation, and the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.