SNIPPET: Although Irish migration to North America peaked in the mid-to-late 19th century, the Irish had been coming to the New World in substantial numbers since the colonial era of the 18th century. The first immigrants included farmers and laborers, landless peasants, military and political prisoners deported by their government, and religious dissenters. The vast majority were poor and surprisingly, tended not to be Catholic. They belonged instead to an altogether different category called Scotch-Irish. Today's Scotch-Irish Americans are descendants of people removed from Scotland in the 17th century by the English, who sent them to Ulster, where they were expected to establish Protestantism. They had a bad time of it in Northern Ireland, however, often suffering discrimination, and in the 18th century an estimated 250,000 departed for America, settling at first in New England. Many of these immigrants paid for their passage by contracting out as indentured servants, that is, as hirelings required to repay the costs of their transatlantic journey by working for a specified length of time, usually as menial farmhands. It was a condition scarcely better than enslavement, and some indentured servants reacted by running away, vanishing into the frontier wilds where their masters had little hope of tracking them down. Newspapers such as Benjamin FRANKLIN's "Pennsylvania Gazette" were filled with advertisements offering rewards for the return of runaways, many of whom bore Irish names. Those who stuck out their term of servitude, normally about seven years, often fled the New England colonies. A popular destination was the Appalachian Mountains, where they became subsistence farmers, rather like the majority of Irish who remained in Ireland. Others went farther south, to Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. These immigrants belonged to the Irish Protestant - or Presbyterian - church, and brought to the New World a form of piety that still bore the imprint of Martin LUTHER. They attended Sabbath services that were long, severe, and strictly observed. The somber tone of those services echoed in the home, where such frivolities as theater, dancing, and card playing were frowned upon. Presbyterian beliefs influenced other denominations of American Protestants. One feature of Presbyterianism was an English legacy - extreme antipathy toward Catholics - that through the 18th century overrode the democratic principles of the colonies, some of which denied Catholics the vote. In addition, Catholics were castigated in propaganda routinely spread by ministers, teachers, and newspaper publishers. In most colonies - even Maryland, designted as a Catholic haven by its founder, LORD BALTIMORE - the minority religion could be observed only with great discretion. As late as the Revolutionary War, only about 25,000 Catholics lived in America, compared with 3.5 million Protestants. Nonetheless, prejudice in America was less severe than in Ireland, and some prominent Irish Catholics figured in early American history. One example was Charles CARROLL III of Carrollton, Maryland, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Another was Thomas FITZSIMMONS, the only Catholic whose signature graces the Constitution. FITZSIMMONS lived in Philadelphia, one of the first American cities to attract a sizable Irish Catholic population; by 1880 the city had 6,000 Irish Catholics, making it the largest such community in North America. At this time, many Irish immigrated to Canada, which had even more unclaimed land than the American colonies. The government of Canada (British North America) was eager to send new arrivals to out-of-the-way areas, so Irish immigrants joined other newcomers from the British Isles on the pioneer trek north and west. They were aided in this adventure by land companies, which received large grants of territory from the governoment with the stipulation that they attract settlers whom they assisted by building roads and providing services. The biggest of these land companies, the Canada Company, had obtained 2.4 million acres by 1830. A steady flow of pioneers staked claims in New Brunswick and farther north, following waterways such as the Saint John and Ottawa rivers, then fanning out along the shore. The northern shores of the Great Lakes, especially Ontario, Erie, and Huron, became major settlement areas. It was not only land companies that arranged for immigrant settlements in Canada. In the Maritime Provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) modest communities were often set up by individual entrepreneurs. One of the best known was Colonel Thomas TALBOT, who between 1812 and 1837 had populated the shore of Lake Erie with 50,000 pioneers. Another agent, Peter ROBINSON, a native Canadian, brought 2,000 immigrants over from Ireland in 1825 and established them in five communities north of Lake Ontario. Once they arrived, these settlers faced a difficult task. They had to cut down trees, build cabins, scrounged up farm animals, and provide for immediate needs such as food and clothing. It took three years, on average, to clear 30 acres, which meant that towns grew slowly. Between 1815 and 1850, however, hundreds of small communities - each with several mills, a few stores, and a school that oftened doubled as a church - had sprung up, enough to usher in a new era of commerce and transportation. In that same period, Canada's population more than tripled, reaching 2.3 million in 1851. The first of the Irish Catholics immigrants actually landed in Canada, some of them as early as the 17th century because of ties between southern Ireland and France, a Catholic nation which ruled much of Canada. In fact five percent of "New France" was Irish, as was the large portion of Newfoundland, the island province off the mainland coast. These newcomers had a rough time; most worked as fishermen, faring no better than they had as laboreres or tenant farmers in Ireland. Even after Canada's economy exoopanded in the 19th century, offering new opportunites to immigrants, few of those from Ireland could afford to travel across the enormous country. Most clung to the eastern provinces. Meanwhile, Irish Catholics had begun to arrive in the United States in large numbers. Some 300,000 had already immigrated in the years between 1800 and 1830, and in the following decade, when the failure of the potato crop devastated Ireland, the numbers swelled dramatically. - Excerpts, "The Peoples of North America/Irish Americans," J. F. Watts (1988).

SNIPPET: The March-April 2003 issue of Dublin's "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine carried a several-page article by Jo KERRIGAN (photographs by Richard T. MILLS) that included the history behind the ship "Dunbrody," a replica of which is moored at New Ross quays and, I believe, open throughout the year. Visitors cross the gangplank with tickets that replicate those issued to the passengers of 150 years ago. History is recreated by individuals in period costume. It has full disabled access. "Not all ships were coffin ships, and not all captains were unscrupulous. There were at least some sturdy, clean, seagoing vessels, reasonably fit for the task they took on, and captains who did their best to see that their piteous human cargo got at least the rations they had paid for with their last resources. Such was the "Dunbrody," out of New Ross, Co. Wexford, which between 1845 and 1869 carried many thousands of emigrants across the Atlantic. A three-masted barque, she was built in Quebec for the GRAVES family of New Ross, by Thomas Hamilton OLIVER, an Irish emigrant from Co. Derry, under the careful supervision of John BALDWIN, who captained her from 1845 to 1848. "Dunbrody" was primarily a cargo vessel and carried timber from Canada, cotton from the southern states of the USA and guano from Peru. Since there was rarely much to transport on the return journeys, and as the demand for passage was rising steadily due to the terrible conditions in Ireland, the ship was fitted out with bunks and facilities for passengers. And so, between April and September each year, she carried passengers on her outward journeys to Canada and the USA. The usual complement was 176, but on one crossing, at the height of the Famine in 1847, she carried 313. In the winter months "Dunbrody" plied between the West Indies and Europe, rounding Cape Horn on at least one occasion. Many of the passengers on "Dunbrody" would have been evicted tenants, at times helped on their way by landlords anxious to be rid of them, while others borrowed the passage money from relatives left at home, on the understanding that funds would be sent back as soon as possible to assist the others out. Such passengers would have travelled steerage, paid between three and four pounds for the journey (the equivalent of two months' income for a tenant farmer), including food, though not its cooking. Those who could afford - usually Protestant gentry - went as cabin passengers, paying between five and eight pounds for rather better accommodation and services. Dunbrody had an excellent record throughout the period it took emigrants to the New World. Many will have heard of Grosse 'Ile, Quebec and its quarantine station. In the spring of 1847, conditions here were dreadful, with more than 1,100 sick and dying people crowded together awaiting assessment. When Captain BALDWIN finally landed his passengers at Grosse 'Ile, after a very long passage, he reported back to his employer, William GRAVES, 'the "Dunbrody" was detained in quarantine for five days because there were too many ships queing in the St. Lawrence River. Doctor DOUGLAS is nearly single-handed everyday ... dozens of corpses are thrown overboard from many ships ... I have heard that some of them have no fresh water left and the passengers and crew have to drink water from the river. God help them!' Although the "Dunbrody was detained at Grosse Isle on a number of occasions, her onboard mortality rate was practically non-existent, thanks to her conscientious and humane captains, John BALDWIN and his successor, John WILLIAMS. Emigrants writing back home to Ireland praised their dedication to their crew and passengers more than once. "Dunbrody" remained in the GRAVES family ownership for 24 years. She was sold in 1869 and became a British registered ship. In 1874, en route from Cardiff to Quebec, her captain chose not to wait for a pilot to assist him in navigating the St. Lawrence and paid for this when he ran aground. Bought by a salvage company, she was repaired and sold on. In 1875, sailing home to Liverpool with a full timber cargo worth 12,500 pounds, a fierce gale blew up and drove her dangerously off her usual route towards the shores of Labrador, "Dunbrody" had sailed her last voyage and was lost." .... More information: www.Dunbrody.com

SNIPPET: Richard E. DEVLIN from Kingston, NH, has written about his search for his family's roots in Ireland in 1999 in Cork's "Irish Roots" magazine. He shared that the DEVLINs were gone now from Altaglushin, that for 16 centuries the glens of South Tyrone had been the ancestral shelter for the O'Devlins (O Doibhilin in Irish) but only the high crosses in the Galbally churchyard and the memories of a dwindling number of local people who knew them remain as evidence of their existence. Lost in the mists of the past was the time in 1854 when, following some unknown family calamity, 1-year-old Edward Devlin was sent off to England to be raised by relatives unknown and 8-year-old George Devlin was sent off to America by way of Liverpool and New York, also with persons unknown. Both ended up in the Boston area and produced large families whose descendants are many in number today. Both branches of the Devlin family, one from Ireland, and the other from America lived out their lives as did succeeding generations, unknown to each other. Historical background -- Per Mr. Devlin, "In 1607, on a grey and sombre day, fifty people boarded a vessel at the quay in Rathmullen and sailed out into Lough Swilley in Donegal, leaving Ireland forever. At the railing looking back with bitterness and anguish was an older man in his 60s, Hugh O'NEILL, chieftain of the Tyrone clans, known as the Red Hand of Ulster, and next to him was young Rory O'DONNELL chief of the Donegal clans. After years of fierce fighting against the English, these were the last two Irish chieftains in possession of their hereditary lands, now fleeing into exile on a legendary voyage known as the Flight of the Earls, one of the darkest moments in the long history of Irish resistance to English domination Left behind to face the fury of the English were the smaller clans that were allied with the O'Neills and one of the most prominent of these were the O'Devlins. Without the military skill of the O'Neills to oppose them, the English crown poured Scot settlers and land agents into the hereditary lands of the Tyrone clans in a furious flood of seizure and confiscation known as the Great Plantation Period. Swept aside in the harshest manner, the native Irish were pushed off the lands and forced to find survival or death in the wilds of the surrounding hills. The hills were called the Heather Edge Hills and the ragged and battered remnants of the Tyrone clans who somehow managed to survive and endure during the next 400 years, came to be known as the People of the Heather Edge. The people of the Heather Edge were made up of the descendants of Tyrone's noblest families -- O'NEILL, QUIN, DONNELLY, HAGAN, HAMILL, MULGREW, McSHANE, McCOWELL, DALY, DEVLIN, and others. In the upper reaches of the rugged hill country, they formed communities separate from the Charter Towns of the Plantar English, like Dungannon and Newtownstewart, a pattern that persists to this very day. It was here where only the heather would grow on the barren stony soil of the uplands that the old clans of Tyrone began their lives anew. In these little communities "up the glen," as the Irish say, life reverted to the old Gaelic ways. They had their own fairs and market days and every house had a woolen or linen loom and flax was grown to pay the rent to the planter landlords. The women of the Heather Edge exchanged woolens and yarns with their more fortunate neighbors around Galbally and Dernaseer for oatmeal and potatoes. The men cut turf and sold it to the bleach works in Dungannon and Stewartstown. Tradition had it that the Heath Edge People had their own burying ground in Altaglushin on a hilltop called Crocknavarc, the Hill of Tombs. The first houses in the Heather Edge was built of sods or simply consisted of an excavation hollowed out of the bog banks and roofed over with fir saplings and thatched with heather. One can only imagine the difficulties of sustaining life in those wet and primitive structures. The ordinary food of the day was potatoes and oatmeal but on special days such as the Eve of Lent, a potato pudding was made, a loaf of bread procured, tea was poured and a bottle of poteen, locally called "Bobbilisty" was never hard to get. A pint of legal whiskey in those days only cost ten pence but in Heather Edge, the local men considered it a slight of their skills to have to buy whiskey. Life was harsh but livened up by simple ceilis at the houses at night where the local fiddler and accordion player and storyteller were always up the call. And so the old clans persisted in their way."

SNIPPET: Per author Bryan HODGSON, "National Geographic" magazine senior staff member, in an article on Ireland in the April 1981 issue: "Time was when Ulster Presbyterianism found it difficult to live with England. Chafing under British trade restrictions and bitterly resentful of the special privileges and powers of the British-ruled Church of Ireland, more than 200,000 of them sailed to the United States between 1718 and 1775. Entire congregations took ship, and many of them wound up on the Appalachian frontier, where they battled Indians instead of Irish rebels. Later, they and their Scotch-Irish descendants played a prominent part in the American Revolution. At least four signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Ulster stock. The declaration itself was first printed by John DUNLAP, who learned his trade in a printshop in Strabane, 12 miles south of Londonderry. The American Revolution, and the French Revolution that followed, inspired many Protestants who stayed behind. They helped foment (incite) the abortive anti-British uprising of 1798. Its failure destroyed the liberal movement in the north, and destroyed Protestant and Catholic unity as well. In 1914, when Britain's Parliament passed a home-rule bill that gave self-government to Ireland, thousands of members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, armed with smuggled rifles, were ready to fight the British to remain under British rule. And British troops mutinied when ordered to disband the UVF. Only the beginning of World War I averted a constitutional crisis. In 1916 more than 5,000 Ulster Volunteers were killed at the Battle of the Somme (northern France) -- an enduring testimony that Ulster Protestants took loyalism seriously indeed. After the Irish revolution of 1919-21, Belfast's ghettos became bloody battlefields. And when the civil-rights movement was born on a wave of 1960s idealism, it ignited the passions of a recent past. In Londonderry - or Derry, as Irishmen prefer to call it, I met a Catholic named Pat DEVINE, who in 1979 also happened to be the mayor - a combination inconceivable in the years when a Protestant minority ruled the city by ruthlessly gerrymandering the majority Catholic vote. A decade ago Northern Ireland abolished the existing town council and ordered a voting system that assured proportional representation. Thus the Catholic majority can automatically retain the mayoralty. 'But we don't,' Mayor DEVINE said, 'We alternate with the protestant parties. They've got to have a part in decision making. We know what it's like to be powerless.' Nothing in Londonderry's history made it a likely testing ground for reconciliation. Its fortress walls were built in 1619 to resist rebellious Irishmen, and in 1689 the Protestant inhabitants withstood a 105-day siege by the Catholic army of James II - a feat that earned the title of Maiden City for the handsome little town on the River Foyle's banks. On marshy ground beneath the walls, a Catholic community called Bogside became a ready target for Protestant jeers each year during parades commemorating the siege. In August 1969 the Bogsiders reacted to the insults, triggering violence that set off the massive riots in Belfast. In 1972 the city won a different sort of fame when Catholic crowds demonstrate against the internment without trial of hundreds of terrorist suspects. British paratroopers opened fire, killing 13 men and youths. That Bloody Sunday caused more rioting throughout the north. Bombs shattered the Guildhall, seat of city government, and military roadblocks made Londonderry once again a city under siege. New changes, new hopes -- When I meet him, Mayor DEVINE - a joiner by trade - was surveying with satisfaction the results of a seven-million-dollar restoration of the Guildhall. Under a Catholic working majority, the city's tensions have eased. Many of the roadblocks are gone. new housing estates financed by Britain have liberated most Catholics from the Bogside slums. Equal employment opportunities in new textile mills have helped reduce the discrimination that for decades forced Catholic workers to emigrate. And IRA violence has diminished. 'We hope we've drawn support away from the terrorists by giving people something they CAN support, ' Mayor DEVINE said. 'And we're proving that the people of Ireland - Protestant and Catholic - can learn to live together.' ... The editor of the Washington D. C. magazine, Wilbur E. GARRETT, however, pointed out that as they were preparing to go to press new violence had broken out. "For 12 years the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland has been like a black hole, drawing in and devouring every material hope of ending it. It seems immune to the normal processes of negotiation, arbitration, and political compromise. Hatred and the urge for vengeance are passed along, lives are staked upon loyalities, and a web of economic and religious differences ensnares all participants. To the rest of the world it is also a strange struggle, for it takes place in enlightened and prosperous northwest Europe ... Yet there is wide interest in the world for the end of this agony. The Irish emigrants who went out to the United States, Canada, Australia, and other parts of the world have had an impact upon their adopted lands. Their descendants do not want to look back upon Ireland in sorrow and shame. .. The question now is whether murderous events will again outflank this movement, as it seems they are calculated to do. We join the hopes of others that it will not be so."

SNIPPET: Per Ian HILL, in "Irish Counties," J. J. LEE, Salamander Books Lmt, London -- "Just as the old men, pipe smoking dark tobacco in public houses in County Down, oblige with the fiction that there is one island in Strangford Lough for every day of the year, those in County Cavan will proffer you the obverse. Cavan, a lakeland labyrinth, has, they boast, a lake in the county for each and every day of the 365. A 'disappearing' one, over a limestone sump, takes a curtain call each leap year. Fanciful or not, it is a description which will suffice for the county's fortunes, precarious enough at times, and its principal legends have water at their fount. At its centre, is a scatter of lakes linked by waterways natural and unnatural. The 250 mile-long (402 km) Shannon, Ireland's greatest river, and major provider both of the country's indigenous hydro-electric power, and its water-based tourism, has its source in the moistness of the western slopes of Cuilcagh Mountain. Here, water sparkles down in the deep pool under the lichen-covered trees and the river, which takes its name from 'Sionna,' grand-daughter of 'Lir,' the god of the seas, begins its journey to the Atlantic. Meanwhile its neighbour, the River Erne, rises near Crosskeys and flows first south, then, in Lough Gowna, turns north towards Fermanagh's two broad lakes, upper and Lower Lough Erne. In the mid-19th century the proximity of these two rivers, the Shannon and the Erne, inspired the construction of the ill-planned Ballinamore-Ballyconnell Canal which it was hoped would complete the circuit of commercial canals that was to link Dublin to Belfast. However, this was never to be. As the budget overran, as canal budgets always seemed to, several economies of scale were made: depth was reduced to just over 3 feet (1 m), while canal towpaths, which were expensive to construct, were maintained despite the patent impossibility of operating a horse-tow across the wider lakes. By the time the canal was completed in 1860, having taken 14 years to build, a sad catalogue of penny-pinching, mismanagement, and general ineptitude had rendered it virtually unusable and certainly no match for the increasingly commercial railway companies. From the minute it was officially opened, water leaked from locks, banks caved and when what would be the last boat to do so passed through its locks in 1936, it took three weeks. Official records show that only eight boats had paid tolls on the 36 mile (58 km) journey, in either direction, in the 76 years since construction had been completed. Today, in a period of post-industrial nostalgia and increasing leisure time, there is a burgeoning desire to observe (gin and tonic in hand) the manicured outdoors and the remnants of that once labour-intensive environment. The European Commission has funded much of the reopening of the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell Canal, now promoted - logically, but with little eye for the nuances of nostalgia with which its attractions are imbued - as the Shannon-Erne Waterway. The massive, hand-chiselled locks tower over the boats as always, but a credit card-like device allows captains-for-the-week, piloting their shallow, plastic-skinned hire-cruisers, to operate the huge wooden lock gates by sweatless and silent electric power. Bankside alder, willow, hazel, flat iris, watchful heron and dipping grebe accustom themselves to the habits of these new invaders of their once-silent water world." ....

SNIPPET: In the 1830s, unskilled laborers in America received about a dollar per working day, but a decade later wages had dropped to less than 75 cents, although business boomed. The situation erupted in 1844, when a bitter feud divided Philadelphia's weavers, most of whom toiled at home on commission from merchants. Irish Catholics objected to what they felt were exploitative conditions and went on strike, without the support of Protestant weavers, who continued to work as before. When angry Catholics attacked the home of a Protestant nonstriker, destroying his work and equipment, the struggle took on denominational overtones. In Charlestown, MA, "nativists," believers in the intrinsic inferiority of all immigrants, burned a Catholic convent to the ground. Eventually, the violence cooled, and the strike ended. A similar fate befell Irish immigrants to Canada, of whom there were 90,000 in 1847. Their numbers rose so dramatically that by 1871 Irish Canadians were the most populous ethnic group in every city and major town except French Montreal and Quebec City. This situation was short-lived, however. Prospects were so limited that most of the immigrants migrated again - to the United States. By the 1860s thousands had made this second journey, and the trend continued into the 20th century. (By 1988, only Saint John, the capital of Newfoundland, and Protestant Ontario, known as the "Belfast of America" had large Irish-Canadian communities.) Those who joined the Irish in America found that cities there were bigger, jobs more numerous, and that the U. S was an independent nation, free of British rule. Even so, conditions were grim. Because there were no unions in those days, laborers had no leverage to combat exploitative employers, and the sudden influx of foreigners willing to accept any wage panicked native workers who were already underpaid. In NYC, the main port of entry for newcomers, Irish immigrants took the blame for lowering wages, which declined during these years despite an enormous leap in merchants' profits. The nation at that time was overwhelmingly Protestant, and anti-Catholicism inevitably became the battle cry of political factions. The 1840s and 1850s saw the rise of the American party, whose bland title disguised a policy of discrimination against anyone who was not white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Popularly called the Know-Nothing party - because its members, when asked about their secret intentions, invariably replied, "I know nothing" - this group singled out Catholics, especially those from Ireland. Less radical Americans also found Catholicism suspect. One reason was that Protestants thought that the church hierarchy, still centered in Rome and presided over by the pope, smacked of the same corruption that had inspired LUTHER's revolt. Just as importantly, the church required that religious loyalty precede national patriotism in the thinking of its members, a priority that intensified the suspicions directed at immigrants who were already perceived as aliens. At first these suspicions were justified. The staunch Irish Catholics who arrived in North America in the 1840s and 1850s believed that governments should be subordinate to the church, that Catholicism was the only true faith, and that all others were sinners if they failed to convert. So narrow a view, at odds with the freethinking principles at the core of American democracy, alarmed a Protestant majority already walled in by distrust. Gradually, however, Irish Americans molded their religious outlook into conformity with the prevailing values of the New World. Without lessening its spiritual loyalty to Rome, the American Catholic church began to adapt to the new moral climate, less out of a desire to placate Protestants than out of necessity. As the rallying point for nearly all Irish Catholics, the churches had no choice but to become all-purpose community centers for immigrants. For Irish Americans, the local church not only offered sanctuary from prejudice; it also helped immigrants ease into the larger society by mediating between Irish traditions and American customs. The parish priest, in particular, became an important symbol. In urban slums and the frontier towns where a few bold immigrants ventured, priests served as educators, healers, and counselors, and also supervised hospitals, asylums, and orphanages, often staffed by Irish nuns. In Europe the ideal priest had been a monastic figure devoted to the spiritual side of his calling, someone to be revered because he had renounced the temptations that brought about the downfall of lesser men. But in America a new kind of priest was emerging, equally chaste but more worldly, even activist, someone who could fend for himself on a dangerous street corner or a rough western outpost, who could stand up to a bully and also invoke the lessons of Christian brotherhood. -- Excerpts, "The Irish Americans," J. F. Watts/1988

Philip LARKIN, born in Coventry, England, in 1922, worked at numerous libraries including the University at Hull and Queen's University at Belfast. Larkin died in 1985. "DAYS" What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields. -- Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

LOAD Today we carted home the last brown sheaf and hookt the scythe agenst the dry barn wall: the yellow border's on the chestnut leaf, the beech leaf's yellow all. Tomorrow we must bring the apples in, they are as big as they shall ever be: already starlings eager to begin have tasted many a tree. And in the garden, all the roses done, the light lies gently, faint and almost cold, on wither'd goldenrod and snapdragon and tarnisht marigold. -- John Hewitt

Clergy Relief Fund and the Tithe Defaulters, 1831: A clergyman of the Established Church who was in financial difficulties due to nonpayment of tithes could apply for funds to the Lord Lieutenant. With the refusal of many to pay tithes, many Church of Ireland rectors and vicars found themselves in financial difficulty. In order to alleviate this, the Government created a "Clergy Relief Fund, 1831." Each document is on a standardized form but varies slightly in the amount of information provided; generally speaking, the tithe defaulter's name, his occupation, his address, the amount of tithe due, the amount of arrears, the name of the land for which tithes were due, the address of this tithe land and the barony in which the land lies was recorded, as well as the name of the Rector or Vicar. These and other documents that pertain to defaulters and the "Clergy Relief Fund" can be found at the National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin. These records were "discovered" a few years ago in boxes of "miscellany," and were being indexed in 1997. They are a valuable resource for researchers and often contain more detailed information than the earlier Tithe Applotment books. Information from fifty-four parishes in Co. Tipperary has been located, (per article, "Irish Roots" periodical), as well as much data for Co. Kilkenny, some for Cos. Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Limerick, Laois, and Carlow; there is also a small amount of data pertaining to Co. Offaly. Extraction below of some information for The Parish of Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Diocese of Killaloe includes the names of the occupiers of land and/or their representatives for whom the arrears of composition for the year 1831 are due: 1, John Hanly, Surveyor, Pound St. Nenagh, one year, Drummin, 8 shillings, Drummin, Lower Ormond. 2. Dennis Brien, Schoolmaster, Batchelors Walk, one year, Drummin, 8 shillings, Drummin, Lower Ormond. 3. Mr. John Egan Grace, Gent. Atty., Pound St. Nenagh, one year, Drummin, 17 shillings, Drummin, Lower Ormond. 4. James Firth, Farmer, Burrisokane Rd., one year, Burriskokane Rd., 17 shillings, Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 5. James Firth (the same), for a garden, Burrisokane Rd., one year, old Turnpike Birr Road, less than a shilling, Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 6. Dennis O'Brien, Gentleman, or his undertenants, Michael White, and Dennis Harmery (sp.?), Castle St. Nenagh, half year, Ballyvelane, 2 pounds 16 shillings, Ballyvelane, Lower Ormond. 7. Wm. Cleary, Publican, Old Turnpike Nenagh, one year, Burrisokane Rd., 4 shillings, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 8. Wm. Cleary (the same), Old Turnpike Nenagh, one year, Birr Road, 19 shillings, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 9. Wm. Cleary (the same), Old Turnpike Nenagh, one year, Birr Road, 2 shillings, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 10. Wm. Cleary (the same), Old Turnpike Nenagh, for 2 gardens, one year, Birr Road, less than one shilling, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 11. Wm. Cleary (the same), Old Turnpike Nenagh, for 1 garden, one year, Birr Road, less than one shilling, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 12. Patrick Hough, Publican, address Castle St. Nenagh, one year, Birr Road, 5 shillings, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 13. Patrick Hough (the same), Castle St. Nenagh, one year, Castle St. Nenagh, less than one shilling, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 14. Patrick Houragan, Mason, Chapel Lane Nenagh, one year, Birr Road, 8 shillings, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 16. William Houragan, Mason, Old Turnpike Nenagh, one year, Birr road, 8 shillings, Towland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 17. John Clancy, Farmer, Birr Road, one year, Birr Road, 1 shilling, Townland of Nenagh, Lower Ormond. 18. Darby Moloughry, Farmer, Coolholloga, balance of half year, Cooloholloga, 16 shillings, Coolholloga, Lower Ormond. 19. Michael Moloughry, Farmer, Coolholloga, one year, Cooloholloga, 2 pounds 2 shillings, Coolholloga, Lower Ormond. 20. Patrick Gleeson, Farmer, Cooloholloga, balance of half year, Cooloholloga, 1 pound 8 shillings, Cooloholloga, Lower Ormond. 21. Michael Corbin, Quit Rent Driver, Barrack St., one year, Tyone, 13 shillings, Tyone, Upper Ormond. 22. John Cunningham, Farmer, (place of abode not given), one year, Tyone, 9 shillings, Upper Ormond. 23. James Poe, Labourer, Birr Rd. Nenagh, one year, Garden on the Birr Road, 2 shillings, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 24. John Kennedy, Gardiner (sp? gardener), Birr Road Nenagh, one year, Garden on the Birr Rd., 2 shillings, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 25. Michael Andrews, Pensioner, Birr Rd. Nenagh, Garden on the Birr Road, 1 shilling, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 26. Timothy Murnane, Labourer, Birr Rd. Nenangh, one year, Garden on the Birr Road, 1 shilling, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 27. Widow Thaddock, Butcher, Birr Rd. Nenagh, one year, Garden on the Birr Road, 3 shillings, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 28. James Flaherty, Clerk, Birr Road, one year, Garden on the Birr Road, 8 shillings, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 29. James Flaherty, Clerk, Birr Road, one year, Birr Road, 5 shillings, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 30. Timothy Magrath, Labourer, Birr Road, one year, Birr Road, less than one shilling, Nenagh, Upper Ormond. 31. Timothy Magrath (the same) for a 2nd garden, Birr Road, one year, Birr Road, less than one shilling, Nenagh, Upper Ormond

RESOURCE: "The Search for Missing Friends" - An essential resource for Irish-American Research volumes covering the years circa 1831-1905. Eight volumes recently published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA, individually indexed by surname and by place-name. Thousands of 19th-century Irish immigrants advertised for missing relatives in the "Boston Pilot." About 85 precent of the Irish and North American place origins of both seeker and sought are identified. Each volume of "Missing Friends" is alphabetically indexed by names and towns and an overall eight-volume index was to be prepared at some future time. Editors include Ruth-Ann HARRIS, Donald M. JACOBS, and B. Emer O'KEEFFE. Volume 1, 1831-1850 covers beginning of famine decade; Volumes 2 & 3 conclude the famine decade; Volume 4. continues Irish immigration to the eve of the Civil War; Volume 5, 1860-1865 includes ads of Civil War soldiers, immigrants, seekers, and the 100-page introduction is an account of Irish participation in the war, both Union and Confederate; Volume 6, 1866-1870; Volume 7, 1871-1876, Irish begin to establish themselves in post-ACW industrial boom, female immigrants from Ireland outnumber males. Volume 8, 1877-1910, serious post-boom recession in America, during which Irish immigration declined significantly. Per article by Ron WILD in the Jan-Feb 2000 issue of "Family History" magazine, published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, newspaper classifieds are a valuable research tool. The decades of 1840-1860 were turbulent ones for Ireland and saw two million Irish emigrants leave for England, NZ, Australia, Canada and the U.S. The departure from Ireland was not always orderly. Families and friends were separated both from the point of view of those leaving for a new country and by those who stayed behind being dislocated from ancestral towns to places in Ireland where life could at least be sustained. The natural result was that immigrants lost touch with family and friends. This, combined with lost and destroyed Irish record difficulties, makes any new record source welcomed. A brief search by the author of newspaper archives for NY, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal, Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington, London, Liverpool and Birmingham for the same period of time has indicated that newspaper classifieds for lost Irish emigrants also exist in these cities. Although these listings are not as well organized as those that appeared in the "Boston Pilot," an opportunity exists for genealogy and FH societies to follow the example of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and extract classifieds from local newspapers. Classifieds represent an extraordinary Irish resource that could go a long way for making up for destroyed Irish records, including those lost in the 1922 fire at the Dublin Public Records Office. In the "Boston Pilot" the columns had the bold type heading INFORMATION WANTED and then continued in the following manner, as in these three examples: 13 April 1872 OF JAMES O'CONNELL, son of Denis and Mary O'CONNELL, of the townland of Ballyconlon, parish of Killanerin, county Wexford, who came to this country about 22 years ago; he wrote from Jerseyville, Jersey County, Illinois, about three years ago; since then he has not been heard from. If this should meet the eye, or anyone knowing his whereabouts, they will convey a favor on his anxious sister, Mary SWEENEY (maiden name Mary O'CONNELL) by communicating with same. Please address Bernard SWEENEY, Albion, Erie County, Pa. 21 December 1872 OF DENIS KIELY, son of Denis and Elizabeth KIELY, Castletownroche, county Cork, he worked for the Suffolk Company, 10 Eastern Avenue, Boston, Mass., about three years ago; supposed to be now in the vicinity of New York. Should this meet his eye he will hear of his sister Katie, by addressing a letter to Katie KIELY, 41 Fair Street, Newburyport, Mass., or to his uncle Bartholomew HORRIGAN, West Newbury, Massachusetts. 22 November 1873 OF MARY COULTER, who left the city of Montreal, about 19 years ago, for the New England States; father's name was Samuel COULTER, and mother's maiden name was Mary McCLORAIN; also, of her two uncles, William and Alexander COULTER; when last heard from were in Ellicotte's Mills, Md., and are supposed to be there still. Her brother John COULTER, care of Gray Brothers, Syracuse, N. Y. or Ontario St., Rochester, N.Y. dead or alive, will receive information of her. 3 April 1875 OF JOHN LOYDEN, Conemara, parish of Ross, county Galway, aged about 50 years; about 45 years ago he went on board of a man-of-war, twenty-three years ago he wrote a letter home to his brother, Michael LOYDEN, who had left there: at that time he was in Archiel, England: his father's name was Michael LOYDEN, and his mother's name was Bridget WALSH, both of the same parish and county; about a year ago his brother was told by a man that a man of that name kept a hotel in Liverpool, and described about his age and size and complexion, and said the same man spent most of his time at sea. Information of him will be received by his brother, Michael LOYDEN, Victory Mills, Saratoga county N.Y. or by P. O'REGAN.

MY WISHES Oh! Could I acquire my fullest desire. To mould my own life, were it given; I would be like the sage, who in happy old age, Disowns every link -- but with heaven. An acre or two, as my wants would be few, Could supply quite enough for my welfare; In that scope I would deem my power supreme, And acknowledge no king but -- myself there. The soil of this spot, the best to be got, Should furnish me fruit -- and a choice store; Be sheltered and warm from rain and from storm, And favoured with sunshine and moisture. My home should abound, and my table be crowned With comfort, but not ostentation; The music of mirth should hum round my hearth, And books be my night's recreation: Delightful retreat, in simplicity sweet! A wood and a streamlet should bound it; And the birds when I wake, from each bower and brake, Should pour their wild melodies round it. This streamlet midst flowers, and murmuring bowers, In the shade of rich fruits should meander; While the brisk finny race, o'er its sunshiny face, Should leap -- flit -- and sportively wander. These joys -- yet one more might enliven my store, Redouble each comfort and pleasure; A wife, of such truth, such virtue and youth, That her smiles would be more than a treasure. Let nineteen, and no more, to my twenty-four, Be the scale of her years to the letter; Then a babe every Easter, I think won't molest her, No -- I warrant she'll like me the better. -- Patrick Healy (18th c.), trans. John D'Alton.

SNIPPET: When WWI broke out in the summer of 1914, Irish Americans joined the rest of America in opposing U. S. involvement. For most Americans, this was simply an expression of traditional American isolationism. For Irish Americans, however, there were additional reasons, most especially the long-standing belief that whatever was bad for England had to be good for Ireland. At the very least they balked at the idea of Irish American soldiers being sent to die on behalf of His Majesty's empire. They rejected John REDMOND's decision to pledge Irish support to the British war effort as a means to gain home rule after the war. Irish American opposition reached its apex in the months following the 1916 Easter Rising and summary executions of the leaders. Still, when the U. S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, Irish Americans set aside their nationalist ideals and cast their support for the American cause. On April 7, 1917, as soon as he heard that America had declared war on Germany, famed songwriter George Michael COHAN set about writing a patriotic song that would soon become the WWI anthem, "Over There." Finished in a single day, the song proved wildly popular, selling millions of copies of sheet music and records. President Woodrow WILSON declared that it inspired American manhood. In 1940, COHAN received a Congressional Medal of Honor for "Over There" and "You're a Grand Ole Flag." COHAN was born July 3, 1878, in Providence, RI, but all his life he considered July 4th to be his birthday. A multitalented actor, dancer, lyricist, playwright, and producer, COHAN was once called "the best thing the Irish ever gave America." A descendant of Co. Cork emigrants, he began his stage career as an infant in the family vaudeville act, the Four Cohans, which became a Broadway success at the turn of the century. Before he was 40, he was a leading producer and had created a popular form of musical plays and starred in many of his own productions. COHAN played a large role in helping to elevate vaudeville with its crude Irish stereotyping into a more respectable Broadway entertainment, and in a career spanning nearly 40 years, he had a hand in 80 Broadway shows, for which he acted, wrote, composed, or otherwise contributed. Popular songs include "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "Yankee Doodle Boy." He was also highly successful in his role as the father in Eugene O'NEILL's play, "Ah, Wilderness," and as Franklin D. Roosevelt in the musical, "I'd Rather Be Right." Actor James CAGNEY portrayed COHAN's life in the 1942 Academy Award-winning motion picture, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and he was also the subject of the 1968 Broadway musical "George M."

SNIPPET: The coast of Co. Antrim is the only place in Ireland where chalk outcrops are found, creating steep white cliffs that are reflected in the local place-names -- i.e., Larrybane ("bane" means "white" in Gaelic) and the White Rocks. Ireland's only World Heritage site is the Giant's Causeway on the Co. Antrim coast, one of nature's truly great wonders. It is a honeycomb of thousands of columns with between three to nine sides that came into being when basalt flows began to cool into these curious shapes some 60 million years ago. Legend holds that it was built by the great folk her Fionn MacCumhail (or Finn McCool), his name also associated with the other striking occurrence of this phenomenon - the Hebridean island of Staffa, where Fingal's Cave provided the title and the inspiration for Mendelssohn's famous overture. Geographically impressive in a different way are the Cliffs of Moher on the Atlantic face of Co. Clare, where they rise to a height of almost 700 feet and create a series of headlands receding one behind the other along an eight-mile stretch of coast. Limestone forms the base for the superimposed flat beds of sandstone and shale above, the former recognisable through the tortuous worm casts of the Liscannor flags used on many an Irish floor, both inside and out. Here, too, legend has played its role in the stories told about Maire Rua, Red Mary O'Brien of Leamaneagh, sought after by so many suitors that she resorted to sending each off on a horse to be tamed. Speeding across the Cliffs of Moher, the horse would then toss its rider into the Atlantic waves below.

CARRICKFERGUS I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams: Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams The little boats beneath the Norman castle, The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt; The Scotch Quarter was a line of residential houses But the Irish Quarter was a slum for the blind and halt. The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine, The yarn-mill called its funeral cry at noon; Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon. The Norman walled this town against the country To stop his ears to the yelping of the slave And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave. I was the rector's son, born to the anglican order, Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor; The Chicesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure. The war came and a huge camp of soldiers Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long; A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront: Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front. The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England -- Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train; I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar Be always rationed and that never again Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags And my governess not make bandages from moss And people not have maps above the fireplace With flags on pins moving across and across -- Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles, Flares across the night, Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans, A cage across their sight. I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents Contracted into a puppet world of sons Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines And the soldiers with their guns. -- Louis MacNeice's father was rector in Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. MacNeice was born in Belfast, educated in England, and settled in London, where he was part of the great poetic group of the thirties with W. H. Auden.

ANTRIM No spot on earth where men have so fiercely for ages of time Fought and survived and cancelled each other, Pict and Gael and Dane, McQuillan, Clandonnel, O'Neill, Savages, the Scot, the Norman, the English, Here in the narrow passage and the pitiless north, perpetual Betrayals, relentless resultless fighting. A random fury of dirks in the dark; a struggle for survival Of hungry blind cells of life in the womb. But now the womb has grown old, her strength has gone forth; a few red carts in a fog creak flax to the dubs, And sheep in the high heather cry hungrily that life is hard; a plaintive peace; shepherds and peasants. We have felt the blades meet in the flesh in a hundred ambushes And the groaning blood bubble in the throat; In a hundred battles the heavy axes bite the deep bone, The mountain suddenly stagger and be darkened. Generation on generation we have seen the blood of boys And heard the moaning of women massacred, The passionate flesh and nerves have flamed like pitchpine and fallen And lain in the earth softly dissolving. I have lain and been humbled in all these graves, and mixed new flesh with the old and filled the hollow of my mouth With maggots and rotten dust and ages of repose, I lie here and plot the agony of resurrection. -- Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

SNIPPET: Georgia O'KEEFE once commented - "Singing always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression ... and after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint." An admirer of Ms. O'KEEFE's work - Pretty, blond Eva CASSIDY's heart was stilled in 1996 at the age of 33 from melanoma - but the distinctive voice of this painfully shy, private young woman with Scotch-Irish-German roots rings out loud for an ever-growing audience today. Locally known in the Washington, D.C. area at the time of her diagnosis, content with her simple life of bicycling, her love of the water, and with dreams of someday traveling and seeing the world - Ms. CASSIDY has been honored in the USA and abroad following her death for her clear voice, wide vocal range and masterful interpretation of lyrics from songs such as "Yesterday," "Fever," "Over the Rainbow," "Imagine," "Blue Skies, "Tennessee Waltz," "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" and "Danny Boy," etc., which she accompanied on her guitar. . Her music was posthumously championed by a BBC disk jockey and the anthology "Songbird" was a number #1 smash in the UK. .

SNIPPET: The "Erin Go Bragh," (Ireland Forever), was a fully-rigged, three-masted ship owned in Cork by Joshua and Abraham HARGREAVES, built of oak and tamarack, beech and elm. During the 19th century, a total of nine million emigrants spilled out of Europe, sailing from Liverpool to America. Many immigrants from Europe were brought from Hull by rail to Liverpool 100 miles away. It was logical for Irish to aim for Liverpool as their launching pad into the New World as it was a familiar site of work for thousands of Irish farmhands who regularly crossed to Liverpool, seeking work at the end of summer on English farms. Too few opportunities existed at home and the wages in England were better. Many more ships were available in Liverpool with its big, fast vessels and speedy American packet ships. The day of departure, each emigrant had to appear before a medical officer who was paid by the ship owner or charterer one pound for every hundred passengers he gave a very rudimentary examination to, and he would stamp each ticket as proof of inspection. Passengers were entitled to board the ship 24 hours before departure. Leaving Liverpool on March 22, 1851, bound for America (on what proved to be an uneventful trip) was the HARGREAVES' ship, "Erin Go Bragh" and 273 Irish passengers, including several large families, a few spinsters and 50 young, unattached men ready for work. Since the records do not give county of of origin, it is nearly impossible to sort out where the passengers originated from, but I note a 18-year-old laborer with the unusual name of Rose KILFEATHER. Captain Jeremiah CASEY and his crew of 15, plus four teenage apprentices, set a good pace across the Atlantic and reached New York after 32 days at sea on April 23, 1851. Of course many, many voyages of other ships during this time period and earlier were hideous ordeals for the passengers depending on factors such as weather, number of passengers and crew, experience of the crew, condition of the ship, food supplies, time of year, illness on board, etc. By report, a bustling, colorful scene greeted the passengers of the "Erin Go Bragh" on arrival at the South Street Seaport. Captain CASEY used the current to force the ship over to the Manhattan side of the East River. As the ship passed by a cluster of barges, some laboring dock hands looked up and greeted the few passengers on deck who called down below with details of quays turned into market places as fishing smacks disgorged their catches and schooners unloaded fresh fruit onto roughly-made stalls. Women clasped their bonnets against the wind. It was noted that no one was seen fighting over food, there were no beggars but signs of plenty all round. They saw sacks of grain being off-loaded onto barges which disappeared into the city on a network of canals. The steep sloping roofs of tall, square warehouses three stories high looked down on all the activity and many flags of the Stars and Stripes fluttered their welcome to new Americans. Suddenly America, the Land of the Free, lay at the end of the mooring line which was spinning through the air from the hands of the second mate, Eddie McDONNELL. Per reports, a preacher on a box was exalting a small crowd to resist evil and a knot of ships' captains were seen exchanging their news. While some faced their new life alone and unprepared, the lucky ones met families waiting for them on arrival. For aspiring farmers, there had been news of enticing land offers which had been published in emigrant circulars. The official "Colonization Circular," for instance, published each spring in Britain, gave details of farmland for sale in Canada. The circular in 1851 listed several areas where cleared land was available at 5 shillings (US $1.25) an acre stating that "one-fourth of the purchase money will be payable in five years from the date of purchase, the remaining in three equal installments at intervals of two years between each, all with interest". The limit was set at 100 acres but the reasonable terms of such offers indicated the eagerness of the Canadian and American governments at that time to hang onto the Irish emigrants to work the land. In Nova Scotia, land was sold at half that in Canada; if the full amount were paid on purchase, a 100-acre farm could be bought for eight pounds 15 shillings, (US $43.75). Although it had no official backing, a booklet entitled "Nine Years in America," was in great demand in Ireland during that time. It was compiled from a series of letters sent from Thomas MOONEY, who had traveled all through America and Canada to his cousin Patrick MOONEY, a farmer in Ireland. The opening words were bound to have appealed to the hard-pressed Irish peasant. "The American farmer never pays any rent, when he takes a farm he buys it forever...two, three or possibly seven years may pass over before he is called upon by the government to pay the purchase money." MOONEY also noted that food in America was only two-thirds of the price in Ireland and public taxes about a quarter; while clothing, fuel and house rent were about equal. He noted that the facility for acquiring housing, lands, and education for children was "a hundred to one greater," and that emigrant passengers had much to look forward to.

sorry ends new not net J.P.G.

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