From the Potato Famine to Hollywood – How Irish Actors Won Over America

By Kathy Kovach

The 19th Century was not kind to the Irish. After suffering under British rule in their own country, they were plagued with bad crops that destroyed their staple nutrition, the potato. As a result, thousands fled their beloved homeland for America. After filtering through Ellis Island, they unfortunately found that the new country wasn’t any more hospitable than the one they had left. A fact made more volatile as the population of New York City became roughly a quarter Irish.

Many getting off the boat were emaciated, diseased, and worse yet, spoke funny. They brought their religion with them, and the Protestant versus Catholic battle continued on this side of the pond, just as it had in Ireland. “No Irish Need Apply” signs popped up faster than shamrocks, and the immigrants fought a new battle that felt hauntingly familiar to their old one.

With no more choices left, they soldiered on, carving their place in American culture. Few jobs were offered, but they took them gladly. One such career path was in the entertainment industry. Broadway offered backstage work and a smattering of menial onstage acting roles.

Eventually, Irish American actors, musicians, and others in the field made their way to Hollywood. However, the stigma was still there to some extent, even in the early 20th Century.

The Bells of St. Mary's, 1945, Ingrid Bergman and Bing Crosby

In a conscious effort to glamorize the Irish lifestyle, movies were produced depicting lovely, smiling, and often singing and dancing characters, many in stalwart yet carefree tableaus. Charismatic actors such as Pat O’Brien, known as “Hollywood’s Irishman in residence” by the press, Spencer Tracy, and Bing Crosby played amiable priests in order to destigmatize the Catholic lifestyle. Gene Kelly took us to Brigadoon, a delightful movie about an Irish village that only appears once every one hundred years. John Wayne, showing off his Northern Irish roots, let us see what customs were like in 1920s Ireland in The Quiet Man.

The Quiet Man, 1952, John Wayne

Hollywood would go on to show the seedier side of the Irish in movies such as the 2002 offering Gangs of New York, but thanks to the groundwork laid early on, Irish American no longer harbors the stigma it once had—for which the drop of Blarney in my blood is thankful.

To see the long list of actors born since the mid-1850s, check out this article on the Irish American Journey site.

Titanic: Legacy of Betrayal

A TIME-SLIP NOVEL

A secret. A key. Much was buried on the Titanic, but now it's time for resurrection.

Follow two intertwining stories a century apart. 1912 - Matriarch Olive Stanford protects a secret after boarding the Titanic that must go to her grave. 2012 - Portland real estate agent Ember Keaton-Jones receives the key that will unlock the mystery of her past... and her distrusting heart.

To buy: Amazon

Kathleen E. Kovach is a Christian romance author published traditionally through Barbour Publishing, Inc. as well as indie. Kathleen and her husband, Jim, raised two sons while living the nomadic lifestyle for over twenty years in the Air Force. Now planted in northeast Colorado, she's a grandmother and a great-grandmother—though much too young for either. Kathleen has been a longstanding member of American Christian Fiction Writers. An award-winning author, she presents spiritual truths with a giggle, proving herself as one of God's peculiar people.

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Famine in Ireland, and a Wee Bit o' Irish Trivia

by Kathleen L. Maher

The potato. A pivotal figure to the history of Ireland. But not quite the way you might think. First of all, it is not a native plant to the Old World, but originated in South America, and only made its way to Europe during the Sixteenth Century. Secondly, it is not that the Irish were born with a natural and insatiable love for the taste of potatoes, forsaking all other culinary fare, as lore or bad jokes would suggest. Potatoes simply fit into a system of subsistence tenant farmers who needed a food crop that would grow abundantly in the harshest conditions and poorest plots. Any good land in Ireland, where barley and oats grew, or where cattle might graze, would have been farmed for cash crops to enable a tenant to pay exorbitant rent to wealthy landowners. Potatoes, as it turned out, would grow in Ireland in such abundance that half an acre could produce enough to feed a family of two adults and four children for a year. Easily stored and preserved over winter, the starchy wonder offered sustenance long after harvest. And so it would seem that the potato was sent as a miraculous provision into this time and place. 

one of the many four-leaf clovers I find

The population of Ireland increased markedly with the cultivation of the tuber, along with dependence upon it as a staple. Intertwined among the social classes, from the very poor who ate potatoes almost exclusively, to the upper classes who filled out their menu of pork or mutton and fresh vegetables with daily portions of potato, the crop became ubiquitous to Irish life. Variety was the spice of the potato life, with different ways of preparing it such as colcannon--boiled/mashed cabbage and potato, boxty--a fried mixture of potato pancake and hash brown, Irish stew--the poorer cuts of meat mixed with potatoes and vegetables, and finally, champ mash--a spud mashed and served with spring onion, butter and/or milk. Milk typically would be skimmed for making butter or curds, and the remaining and less nutritious whey used by the peasant farmers to "make do".

So with a plentiful source of nutrition so easily adapted to their climate and needs, what could possibly go wrong?

Exhibit A) Britain's complex political climate leading up to and including the Victorian Age. Landowners held great influence, even if they were absentee landlords with holdings in Ireland. The poor held little power to influence law or policy. Irish tenant farmers had about as much political voice as the stones they tilled out of their rented fields. 

Exhibit B) English Corn Laws
A system of protecting the financial interests of these wealthy landowners evolved into high tariffs on imported grains into the British Isles. British corn and grain sold at an artificially high price because the more plentiful foreign grain was taxed too heavily to be profitable. The poor simply could not afford to pay for the luxury of eating grain.

Exhibit C) A blight of fungi on the potato crop in Europe
All of Europe began to experience a blight of dry brown rot on potatoes, but nowhere was it more keenly felt than in Ireland, where roughly half the population was utterly dependent upon the food source. From 1845-1852 the blight led to a failed crop which led to famine and death and mass emigration. One million would die of starvation, and two million would emigrate, ravaging Ireland's population to lows that have never fully recovered even to modern day.

Exhibit D) Protestant versus Catholic, and other prejudices alive and well at the time
History does indeed repeat itself. In every society where one group subjugates another, it can only do so if the common belief regarding the subjugated is one of inferiority, or even dehumanization. The Third Reich did this to Jews, Slavic peoples, Russians, and any of non-Aryan genetics. The American settlers regarded the indigenous people as savages. They sold Africans as slaves and decided by law they were only three-fifths of a human. The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites and enacted extermination policies when their number exceeded Egyptian ability to control them. Age-old sins of greed and pride cloud the vision of entire people groups at such sad times in history. And so it was for the Irish Catholic peasants. They were regarded as lazy, ignorant papists, somehow responsible or deserving of the disaster which had befallen them. And so relief efforts were virtually non-existent.

For a brief time, Queen Victoria and the British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel worked to repeal the Corn Laws in order to alleviate some of the suffering and starvation, but Peel's success in subsidizing grain for Irish consumption had limited effect at best. His successor overturned much of what he accomplished, and what began as a crop failure became a politically engineered famine. 

Some good came out of the ashes of this fiery trial for the Irish people. For one, Ireland has always led the world in famine relief efforts ever since. In addition, Irish culture has spread far and abroad because of the mass emigration during this time. And of note, the exact blight which caused the potato crop ravages is now widely considered to be extinct. 

If you have Irish ancestry, I would love to hear any stories you have of great (great) grandparents who escaped the Potato Famine. Share in the comments below any thoughts or stories or remarks for a random chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card. I will draw the winner with the help of random.org and post one week from today on the sidebar. The luck of the Irish go with ye!

mom and Grandpa Cronin

I'll start by sharing of my great grandfather, John Cronin. He was born in Ireland, I believe in County Cork, in 1849. I'm not certain exactly what year he and his family emigrated to America, but it was during the Great Famine. He grew up in New York City, and enlisted at the age of fifteen in the NY Fighting Irish 69th regiment in the Civil War. He served in the Color Guard, and saw action at the Siege of St. Petersburg, and was present at Appomattox and at the Grand Review in Washington D.C. after the war. He helped organize the St Patrick's Day parade in later years in Manhattan. Family legend has it that it was during his last participation in that parade that he contracted pneumonia and subsequently died. My grandfather, Vincent Cronin, was his seventh son. Vincent's youngest child was my mother, Alicia Cronin (Talvi). I am her youngest. So that is how I have only four generations separating me from that tumultuous time in Irish and American history.

I am roughly half Irish. I married a good Irishman, as my married surname says. And I have to admit, I not only love Irish history, but I actually love potatoes, too. As a kiss from heaven, our only daughter was born on Saint Patrick's Day. Katie Megan Maher, in fifth grade, dressing up to present her biographical report on on Saint Patrick.

Slainte! (Good Health)

 Post Script from last month's post about dogs: Meet the Maher's newest addition, "Bailey", AKC Bailey's Irish Cream. She is a brown and white Landseer Newfoundland. 

Kathleen L. Maher’s first literary crush was Peter Rabbit, and she’s had an infatuation with books and fictional heroes ever since. She has a novella releasing with Barbour in the 2018 Victorian Christmas Brides collection, featuring her hometown of Elmira, NY. Her debut historical “Bachelor Buttons” was released in 2013, and incorporates her Irish heritage and love of the American Civil War. She won the American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest for unpublished writers, historical category, in 2012.

Kathleen and her husband raised their three children in an old farmhouse in upstate NY, along with a small zoo of rescued dogs, cats, and birds. They run an art business in their spare time and enjoy spoiling their grandchildren on the weekends.

Find Kathleen on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mahereenie
And on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/kathleenlmaher

I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen--Revisiting my Irish Family History by Kathleen L. Maher

Map of Ireland

If you're Irish, come into the parlor! And if you're not, you get a pass anyway, since it is estimated that more Americans identify themselves as having Irish heritage than any other ancestry, with the exception of German Americans. But we're a generous lot. You can all be honorary Irish this month!

Irish Immigrants facing NYC skyline

Being a lover of history and proud of all the Irish blood that's in me, naturally I wanted to learn about my family's beginnings in this country. I uncovered some great moments in the life of one of my mother's people, John Francis Cronin.

My mother's father's father came over to escape the Potato Famine in 1849. I am the youngest of the youngest of the youngest, so there is only four generations between me and the boat that brought my ancestor John Cronin to America. He landed and settled in New York City with his family. At the age of 15 he enlisted to fight in the Civil War, telling the recruiting officer he was eighteen years old. John mustered with the famous NY "Fighting 69th" regiment, and saw action at the Fall of Petersburg, was present at Appomattox Courthouse, and marched in the Grand Review in Washington on May 23, 1865.

Grand Review at Washington

My great grandfather went on after the war to make his living as a hatter. The expression "mad as a hatter" came about from exposure to mercury used in shaping the felt to make the hats. Since the element acts as a neurotoxin, it can and did deteriorate a hatter's brain. From family stories it is hard to say which affected my great grandfather more, that or the drink, since he was the proprietor of a tavern later in life.

John Cronin and his saintly wife Elizabeth Cropp Cronin lived in and around New York City and went on to have 11 children, four of whom never lived past the age of five. My grandfather Vincent Cronin was his seventh son.

NY 69th Memorial at Gettysburg

Involved with the planning of the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City during his life, he marched with the veterans of his regiment every year up to his old age. In fact, his last St. Paddy's Day parade he contracted pneumonia and died shortly thereafter.

The Irish in America have a long and colorful history. The early immigrants  fought our wars, built our bridges and railroads, and worked mines and farms and factories. Their hard work and diligence paved the way for future generations to gain acceptance and contribute in every facet of society.

rural farmhouse print giveaway

In the words of Gerald O'Hara, Scarlett's father, "It's proud I am that I'm Irish. And don't you be forgetting, missy, that you're half Irish, too. And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them why, the land they live in is like their mother."
In the spirit of that love of the land, I am giving away a print of a rural farmhouse today to one lucky commenter. This reminds me of my own farmhouse here in upstate NY, as we wait for spring to take hold.

Kathleen L. Maher writes historical romance set in the 19th Century, and is represented by Terry Burns of Hartline Literary Agency. She won ACFW's 2012 Genesis contest, and has a novella coming out May 1st through Helping Hands Press titled Bachelor Buttons, about the Irish Draft riots in Manhattan during the Civil War.

And don't forget that Christian Fiction Historical Society is running a giveaway for the month of March. For every comment you leave in the month of March you are entered for a Kindle drawing as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. Winner of farmhouse print will be announced tonight at midnight. Good luck!