Final Note -- Mrs. Asenath(Hatch) NICHOLSON traveled to Ireland from New York, recording her experiences on those visits during the 1840s and leaving behind her husband to run their boarding house. Her diaries were subsequently published. Per resources - She must have been a remarkable figure on her travels, wearing, what she referred to as her Polka coat, a velvet bonnet and shoes made of India rubber. She carried a parasol, a basket containing a change of linen and a huge black bear skin muff. Two bags that were slung from a strong cord round her waist held copies of the New Testament in English and Irish for distribution, and as she walked along she sang hymns or read the scriptures to her fellow travellers. A book that she wrote ("Ireland's Welcome to a Stranger") is a unique description of the poverty in Ireland before the famine, where she had "surveyed the beautiful domains and seen walking rags that by hedge and by ditch, in bog and field, are covering the length and breadth of the land." She ended her book with the prophetic words, "I have stayed in Ireland to witness that which, though so heartrending and painful, had given me but the proof of what common observation told me in the beginning - that there must needs be an explosion of some kind or other." When she returned to Dublin at the beginning of 1847 the "explosion" had taken place, the country was in the throes of famine. As practical as always, she took a room in a tall house overlooking the Liffey; her bed a short sofa surrounded by barrels of meal. She rose at four every morning and wrote or corrected proofs until eight, and then went over the river to Cook Street; there she dispensed Indian corn to about twenty destitute families "always cooking it myself in their cabins, till they could and do it prudently themselves." The turf was provided and the rent paid weekly (by her) - she lived off 23 pence a week, or less when she cut out her luxuries of cocoa, milk and sugar and only bought bread so that she could give more support to the needy. In the winter of 1847-48 she took a box of clothing and a little money to distribute in the West. There, as she wrote, she saw "misery without a mask." The appalling tales of suffering and desolation that she witnessed she recounted in her book, "Annals of the Famine in Ireland" which was published after she left Ireland. In "The Bible in Ireland" (1852) she wrote: "Mr. BURKE told me that the Methodists now number in Ireland about 29,000 members and 100 preachers. Certainly these indefatigable labourers have done no small business to make their way through Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism and Independency. They are instant in season and out of season." "Went to Arklow (Wicklow) at seven. I found a plain man in the pulpit, and heard a plain sermon preached to a plain people." Mrs. NICHOLSON died in New Jersey of typhoid in 1855, a woman of "the most self-sacrificing benevolence, with great independence of mind and force of character." ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> To: <irelandgenweb@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:22 PM Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Pt. 3 -- Bibles in a Bearskin - Mrs. Asenath(Hatch) NICHOLSON's Travels in Ireland (1844) > Pt.3: Mrs. Asenath (Hatch)NICHOLSON came from NY to Ireland to "learn the > true condition of the poor Irish at home" in 1844. <snip>