Irish emigrant story is one of homesickness and hope
On a day when we honour our Irishness in all its forms, it’s fitting that we remember those who first marched in honour of Saint Patrick: our ancestors who left these shores in search of a better life. It was the heavy burden of homesickness and a determination to stake their claim in a new land that led Irish emigrants to hold the first parades in the US in the 1840s. And these same men and women, sundered from their kin by an endless ocean, were often the ones who made life more bearable for their loved ones by sending back some money with their letters home.
Last week, a digital repository of emigrant letters was made available to view online as a result of a major initiative by the University of Galway. The material, gathered by American historian Kerby Miller, spans a period of almost 400 years, bringing the pain, the trials and the concerns of the Irish emigrant into focus in painstaking detail.
In a letter dated March 1884, Owen O’Callaghan from Waterford tells his mother that on St Patrick’s Day he had worked all day in his new home in Philadelphia and found himself “anxious for a shamrock” but got a bunch from a friend, which was“heartily welcome”.
To read through the letters is like taking a voyage into the past where you get lost in the lives that appear on the digitised page. They are the stories of many of our families brought to life once again by words on a screen.
They speak of loneliness and the distance between those who left and their loved ones. Writing to her mother from Chicago in 1890, Maggie Hall Black chides herself, saying: “Fretting won’t put a plank across the Atlantic.”
In another letter dated August 16, 1889, Mary Malone McHenry, a mother of 11, asks for forgiveness for not writing to her family sooner. She says she was waiting to see if she could send anything from her new home in New York before writing. “I did not like to send an empty letter. I thought I could do better. I will send ye one pound at present,” she writes.
Some of the letters are absolutely heartbreaking. In 1848, in his last letter to his two children, Kerryman James Prendergast spoke of his illness and how he was essentially penniless.
“If I die, as I am sure I will before many days, there is not a shilling in the house to defray my funeral expenses and your mother must have recourse to the neighbours until ye relieve her,” he writes. Further correspondence between the children and their mother after the death of their father reveals that they sent generous sums of money home in the post.
According to Professor Breandán Mac Suibhne, of the University of Galway, it was calculated in the 1950s that in the period 1848 to 1900, the Irish sent home the equivalent of $260m – or $5m a year. Over 90pc of those remittances came from the United States, with 40pc in the form of prepaid tickets, accounting for some 75pc of all emigrant passages.
Prof Mac Suibhne says that these remittances allowed others to leave but they also made it possible for those who did not leave to live better at home
– to raise their heads. “Greenbacks paid for new shoes, put food on the table, settled the doctor’s bill, and allowed a kid to stay at school. And there were also yellow parcels, packed with clothes, photographs of the emigrants and their own children, adornments – little things, perhaps, but things that made life here more liveable,” he says.
The life of the Irish emigrant looks different now. While once the letter was the only means of communication with home, WhatsApp and Zoom allow families to keep in touch – the pain of distance eased by technological advances.
Regular flights zipping across the oceans mean the distances which once separated loved ones for a lifetime are more easily navigable. These don’t mean the pangs of homesickness are not keenly felt but they may ease the heavy burden of longing felt by emigrants of previous generations somewhat. We have come a long way from a time when our forebears would gather at the post office to watch the postmaster sort the mail to see if there were many “Americans” – the distinctivelooking letters from America in the bag.
In attics, boxes, drawers and cupboards around the country, some of these letters from America still lie undisturbed. The University of Galway hopes that its repository will act as a magnet for these others still waiting to be discovered. In their pages is a story of trial, of hope and love. It’s our story and one worth celebrating this weekend.
‘Regular flights zipping across the oceans mean the distances which once separated loved ones for a lifetime are more easily navigable’