Wexford’s strong historical Connection with Argentina

COUNTY Wexford, particularly the south of the county, has strong and enduring connections with Argentina.

In fact, The Ballad of the Kilrane Boys, which tells the story of ‘12 matchless youths’ leaving their native parish in 1844, carries the refrain:

‘ They are bound for Buenos Aires, and the land of liberty.’

In his writings about the ballad and emigration to Argentina from the Model County, Paddy Berry says it had its origins in the 1830s, when a local man, James Pettitt, of Hayesland, with his wife (nee Murphy) emigrated at the behest of Patrick Brown, a Wexford banker then doing business in Buenos Aires.

‘ They began to recruit men and women from the Kilrane area.

‘It was the start of a period of emigration that would continue for the next 70 years when some 250 people sailed out of Wexford town to start a new life in the plains and cities of Argentina,’ says Paddy Berry in an article published in the Journal of the Wexford Historical Society.

‘Emigrants from County Wexford made up approximately 15 per cent of all Irish emigrants to Argentina during this period.’

The 12 made famous in the ballad, written by Walter McCormack, Bing, Kilrane, set sail from Wexford on a schooner called ‘ The Town of Wexford’ on April 13, 1844.

‘ They were all local lads. One was married. They all knew each other. Many were next door neighbours; many were related,’ says Berry.

They were: William Whitty, John Murphy and John O’Connor, from Ballygeary; William Lambert, John

Donnelly, Nicholas Kavanagh and Tom Saunders, from Ballygilliane; Nick Leary, from Ballyhire; James Pender, Patrick Howlin, and John James Murphy, from Hayesland.

John Murphy went on to achieve notable fame and success in his adoptive country with the town of Murphy named after him.

Berry says hundreds of Murphy’s letters written to his friends in the Kilrane area over 35 years from 1844 to 1878 remain in existence.

By 1885 such was his fortune that he owned 46,000 acres of land and 17,000 sheep.

Not eveyone was so fortunate, and local historian Hillary Murphy recounts the story of a James Boyle who murdered his wife, Mary Boyle, of Kilmore, formerly Tomhaggard, in 1888,

When Boyle was put on trial, the court returned a verdict of ‘insane from drink’.

Argentine law held that a man was not accountable for his acts when he was in a state of ‘involuntary intoxication’ and he was released, just over a year after the brutal murder.

In an article published in the Kilmore Parish Journal in 2001, Richard Roche, said in the four years between 1851 and 1855 some 21,081 left County Wexford for a new life abroad, many for Argentina.

In the 24 years, 1856-1880, a total of 35,058 left the county and by 1911 more than 75,000 had departed our shores.

Roche writes: ‘ Leaving behind poverty, oppression, and lack of opportunity in darker times, emigrants from Ireland, including those from County Wexford, went on to raise the status and image of the Irish wherever they went.’