In 1844, the year before the failure of the potato crop that caused the famine, Mrs. Asenath Nicholson had come on a lone mission to Ireland from New York "to learn the true condition of the poor Irish at home and ascertain why so many moneyless, half-clad illiterate emigrants are daily landed on our shores." In NY she had run a temperance boarding house and the servants she had employed were girls from Kilkenny. To visit their families, she took the fly boat to Athy going second class in order to learn more of the Irish character and then by car to Urlingford. News of the arrival spread fast and she was followed by men, women and children each one proffering the hand say, "Welcome, welcome to Ireland." Raspberry cordial was presented to her and a man who called himself a doctor begged the privilege of removing a wart from her face with a spell, but she deferred the miracle and accepted instead a lift in his wheel-less dray to visit the widowed mother of one of her girls! . The cabin where the widow lived with her two grown-up sons and a grandson "was cleanly, although two comely pigs fattening for the fair and a goodly number of turkeys and ducks, took their repast in the cabin on the remains of supper." Referring to their guest - "What will she ate, the crature? It's not the potato that raired her," the well-wishers asked each other, but Asenath, who was a strict vegetarian soon convinced them that a potato would be a great relish. That night she was put to sleep in her hostess's soft feather-bed in a narrow box which was impossibly hot on an August night. -- Excerpt from her diary.

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