Thank you, Margaret. I have a book entitled "Irish: The Remarkable Saga of a Nation and a City," by John Burrowes, in which he details the massive numbers of Irish who inundated Glasgow at the time of the famine, and the difficulties they and the city endured. Such descriptiveness. I believe the author dedicated the book to his grandfather, Thomas William Burrowes, born Sligo 1868, died Glasgow 1918. It was an horrendously tragedy, at the root of which were politicians who couldn't relate to the sufferings of the peasant class and believed in what drove the market! Sounds fmailiar with those excusing the current finanical disaster that is turning this country on its ear! If there is a God! 'The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." 'There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.' Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (Note, I don't think I agree with the first statement...it's almost like the "blame game" as we same nowadays!) Maisie ----- Original Message ----- From: "conaught2" <conaught2@charter.net> To: <irelandgenweb@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 12:11 PM Subject: Re: [Irish Genealogy] Great Famine: British Government1845-46-PrimeMinister Robert PEEL's Response - Corn Laws Dear Maisie There are several excellent sources that tell the facts of the Great Famine. Just two among many are: The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith This Great Calamity The Irish Famine 1845-52 by Christine Kinealy Irish Famine by Peter Gray (has a lot of statistics) - this can be accessed through the website listed below. An excellent website is: http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/ILN/ This website has copies of the Illustrated London News, articles from the time of the Famine.It also has links to another book about the Famine and many more excellent sources from the time of the Famine. Sir Walter Raleigh brought the potato to Ireland. One of the reasons it became popular was it produced large volumes in a small are and it was cheap. During the Great Famine it is a common fact that other food sources, among them corn and grain were stored in warehouses by the landlords for shippment for export. Soldiers stood guard at these warehouses to prevent the starving Irish from taking the much needed food. To clarify the religious question you mentioned - the majority of those of the Protestant faith resided in Counties Armagh Antrim, Down,Tyrone and Derry. These counties were the least impacted by the Famine, so there was not the necessity to flee Ireland to the same degree as in the rest of Ireland to avoid starvation. Although disease claimed the lives of many in County Down, County Down was still one of the counties least affected in Ireland by the Great Famine. I don't want to diminish the suffering in these counties because it was horrific for those affected. The grave in Antrim of the clergyman and his family represents how many suffered. Doctors and clergy died in large numbers because they were fearless in their efforts to help their people. With starvation came disease and many of the doctors and clergy and their families died as a result of these diseases. My Great Great Grandparents Edward and Bridget (nee Brannigan) Rice of Islandmoyle, Clonduff Parish, County Down died from TB during the Famine, leaving two small daughters orphaned one which was my Great Grandmother Elizabeth Rice Flanagan of Kinghill, Cabra, County Down. As you said Maisie starvation and famine affects all people, it doesn't single out a particular religion. The areas hardest hit were the rural areas outside of the northeast and those areas were mostly Catholic so possibly that is why this was mentioned. The Quakers and many more tried to help the desperate situation. "in light of the fact that I read somewhere that the majority of people in the U.S.A with "Irish" names happen to be Protestant. By extension would not this lead one to assume that many Protestants left as a result of the famine?" Most of Ireland suffered horrifically from during the Great Famine (An Gorta Mor- Great Hunger). The areas affected to a lesser degree were those in the northeast which had the majority of Protestants. This area was more industralized and had the shipping trade in Belfast and other sources of income. No place in Ireland escaped the horrors of the Famine. During the Penal Code days the Irish Catholics were the most harshly treated by the English government, but the Dissenters were also abused by the government. The Dissenters were primarily those of Scottish Presbysterian ancestry. The majority of the Protestant population in the U.S. that you refer to, immigrated in the 1700s and early 1800s. I can't remember the percentage of Washington's Army but it was overwhelming filled with Irish surnames. The wave of Irish immigration during the Great Famine (1845-52 and the aftermath) were mostly poor Irish Catholics escaping starvation and disease caused by the Great Famine. The Protestant population you referred to wished to stay aloof from the new wave of poor Irish immigrants and to separate themselves from these new arrivals from their homeland they referred to themselves as Scotch - Irish (now more popularly spelled Scotts). The term Scotch-Irish came into being during the massive Famine immigration period and it meant Irish Protestant as opposed to the new comer Irish who were mostly Catholic. Ireland had many potato crop failures dating back to the 1700s and another one in the 1870s which saw another round of Irish immigration.What separated Ireland from other areas controlled by England is that the landlords wanted higher profit from their lands. It was not advantageous for the landlords (mostly absentee) to have their land inhabited by Irishmen. It was more profitable to clear the land and use it for something that had a higher income yield. Lord Palmerson had more than 2,000 tenants in County Sligo. He wanted his lands cleared of the Irish and most of them were evicted and sent to Canada on what became known as the "Coffin Ships". Many Irish were sent to Canada because it was part of the Bristish Empire and the strict health standards required in New York were not required by the Canadians. Many were still quarantined at Gross Ill (an island off Quebec). The story of Gross Ill is infamous where thousands from the "Coffin Ships" died. Many landlords did not allow their tenants to fish in the lakes or rivers on their land. This prevented the poor tenant from a source of food. I know first had from our family history what happened regarding fishing off Malin Head, County Donegal. My four grandparents were from Ireland. My grandmother Catherine Doherty Smith from County Donegal was born in 1870 and immigrated to Braddock, Pennsylvania in 1889. When she was growing up the coast guard would patrol the coast off Malin Head and conficate any fish caught by the locals because the fish belonged to the landlord. The records of those transported to Van Dieman's Land and Australia tell a black side of the Famine story. When a tenant (remember most of the land was confiscated from the Irish during the Cromwellian period and after the Battle of the Boyne), killed a rabbit or any animal on the land it was not his to use for food because the landlord owned it. When you read a record of someone transported for theft of an animal, stop and think of the year ( was it the Great Famine or a minor blight year?) and what was stolen. It gives you a very different view of the majority of those transported. There is more to be said on this subject but this post is already too long. The set of circumstances in Ireland were not duplicated in England or Scotland even though other areas suffered. The story of An Gorta Mor is one of heart ache and tragedy. There are a lot of factual history books regarding the tragedy, if these are read instead of revisionist historian accounts, we can gain knowledge of what our ancestors experienced. It is important to remember those who suffered and died during An Gorta Mor. It is an interesing side note that Ireland even today is one of the first countries in the world to respond generously with aid for famine torn areas of the world. Beannachtai, Margaret (Máiread) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Maisie Egger" <campsiehills@sbcglobal.net> To: <irelandgenweb@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 1:20 PM Subject: Re: [Irish Genealogy] Great Famine: British Government 1845-46-PrimeMinister Robert PEEL's Response - Corn Laws Let's not forget, too, that the Quakers, after the first potato failure, tried to educate and convince the native Irish to switch to other crops, but they were so entrenched in growing potatoes that they could not, would not, change their dependence on the it. Not wishing to interject religion here, it is a glittering generality to state, as one lister wrote, that Catholics suffered more than Protestants during the famine, in light of the fact that I read somewhere that the majority of people in the U.S.A with "Irish" names happen to be Protestant. By extension would not this lead one to assume that many Protestants left as a result of the famine? On a more personal note, a little Anglican church near where my girlfriend lives in Cullybackey, Co. Antrim, has graves of a whole family, the father who was the parish priest, his wife and all their children, who perished from starvation as a result of the famine. We have to be very careful in saying that one religious group suffered more than the other. No doubt the Catholics outnumbered the Protestants and this is the reason why their numbers seem to be higher, and not because they were being singled out to be starved more than those of the opposite persuasion. I can't recall the author or title of the book I read many years ago in which of the Quaker efforts were "treated" to try to assuage the horrors of the famine, but the Google article will further shed some light on the times. Please note: the Quakers offered their help to all. Trevelyan is the "baddie" in this whole scheme of things, and not necessarily Queen Victoria, as some "researchers" state. The Highland Clearances (Scottish Gaelic: Fuadaich nan Gàidheal, the expulsion of the Gael), not on the scale of the Irish Famine of the 1840s period, have their "baddies," too, namely the Duke (English) and Countess of Sutherland (Scottish) and their factor Peter Sellar (Scottish) who was acquitted of homicide. Check out the Ireland GenWeb website at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ It is a good place to get help with your family research. Help wanted: County Coordinators ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELANDGENWEB-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message --------------------------------------------------------------------------------