What Drove Many Irish Women to Immigrate to America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century?

 By Donna Wichelman

I saw the Dingle Peninsula for the first time in 2009. Its untamed beauty inspired me even then. Only in 2018, on my second trip to the Dingle Peninsula, did the extraordinary landscape, its place in the history of the Great Hunger, and the people who lived there spark a story about a poor Irish woman in the Gilded Age who left it all behind to live in the Colorado Rockies.

But what did women like Anna leave behind and why?

Dingle Peninsula Looking from Connor Pass--Donna's Gallery 2009

Dingle Peninsula at Connor Pass--Donna's Gallery 2009

The Dingle Peninsula is located in southwest County Kerry, its remote mountainous finger jutting into the Atlantic Ocean being the western-most point of mainland Ireland. Anna would have walked the undulating hills of her homeland carpeted in emerald grasses and watched the roaring ocean crash against her rugged Irish shoreline. Sheep would have also grazed in the fields, while rainbows often painted the skies.

Town of Dingle, Ireland Across the Harbor--Donna's Gallery 2018

Rugged Irish Shoreline, Dingle Peninsula--Donna's Gallery 2009

Typical Sheep Grazing in the Fields--Donna's Gallery 2018

Image by Kang-Rui LENG from Pixabay

Yet, Anna would have also experienced a land that twenty years before had been ravished by the Great Hunger of 1845 – 1851--a time when the potato blight tragically killed more than one million people in Ireland by disease and starvation. County Kerry was the hardest hit. (Click on Famine Cottages to find out more about the site at Slea Head and read a real-life story of a family who lived during that era.)

Slea Head Famine Cottage Slea Head, Ireland

ID 137293521 © Miroslav Liska | Dreamstime.com

The social crisis that ensued from the Great Hunger changed Irish history. From the twelfth century, the British had occupied Irish soil. For six centuries, the British population grew in Ireland, many buying land and making money off the produce. Some became wealthy landlords. In the meantime, Britain played fast and loose with the Irish, passing laws but giving the Irish Parliament a small role.

But when the Irish Rebellion of 1798 failed, Britain enacted the 1800 Act of Union, bringing Ireland under full rule by combining the United Kingdom of Great Britain with Ireland. This set the stage for what occurred during the Great Hunger and continued to affect the course of Irish history into the twentieth century.

When the Great Hunger struck between 1845 - 1852, one million Irish died, and another million emigrated, mostly to the United States or Australia. Though the potato blight, a fungus-like mold called Phytophthora infestans, affected much of Europe in the 1840s, the Irish situation was made so much more devastating, because the British Parliament put undo pressure on the Irish food supply. 

Initially, Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister of Britain, attempted to alleviate the famine by buying £100,000 of sweet corn from the United States and having it shipped to Cork. He believed that by selling it cheaply, the cost would remain low. He also initiated a roads project to keep people employed and a relief commission to raise funds to keep the price of food low.

Though Sir Peel tried to repeal the Corn Laws that kept the price of grain artificially high, he was met with much controversy and resigned. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, failed to help the situation. Worse yet, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the relief effort, limited government aid on the basis of laissez-faire principles and a belief that God's judgment was on the immoral Irish who needed to be taught a lesson.

Moreover, Britain refused to give aid to the Irish unless they worked in the deadly diseased workhouses or renounced their Catholic faith. In the meantime, Britain exported the bulk of Irish dairy products and wheat harvests to feed Britain and its territories and legislated a financial tax burden on Irish landowners, who evicted their tenants to save money.

Famine Memorial in Dublin
ID 255062074 | Ireland © Piotr Koscielniak | Dreamstime.com

Famine Memorial in County Mayo of a Coffin Ship Emigrant Ship
ID 126979057 | Ireland © Debra Reschoff Ahearn | Dreamstime.com

By the end of the famine, most of the small farmers had disappeared. Landlords also lost their properties having seen their incomes fall during the famine and going bankrupt from empty rentals. Most of the estates were sold and the strong framer became the beneficiary of the famine--those farmers who acquired large acreages of land and added it to their holdings. These farmers converted from an agrarian to a grazing culture, raising sheep and cattle, and growing in prosperity. 

But not everyone prospered. Only sons could inherit property, and only the eldest son was eligible. Their siblings had to find work as laborers or become tenants of other landowners. Thus, though the system of landholding favored the wealthy class, it also unfairly rewarded some and not others. 

Women, in particular, were vulnerable. It had long been a tradition in Ireland for parents to arrange a marriage based on their ability to provide a dowry. If a woman came from a wealthy family, she could add to the other family's holdings and gain security for life. Some of these women chose to emigrate, unwilling to partake in a loveless marriage.

In addition, not all women were so fortunate as to enjoy the rewards of a wealthy family, and many of them emigrated with the hope of finding employment in the United States to earn a living. Most worked as domestics for a wealthy family. Some came with skills like tailoring and could make a considerable wage sewing clothes for those who could afford it. It was a lucky woman indeed who could also find a husband to marry.

The famine would have enduring results. As the nineteenth century drew to a close and the twentieth century began, the collective memories of those who had survived the famine affected the economic and political culture of Ireland and Irish-Americans. It would also play a contributing role in the anti-British sentiment that would lead to the Irish War of Independence, which began in January 1919 and ended on July 11, 1921. 

The Irish Free State was established on December 6, 1922, but on December 29, 1937, the constitutional name declared the nation to be known as "Ireland." The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 described the nature of the state.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will be released by Scrivenings Press in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. The love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.