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Archiver > IRL-CORK > 2000-12 > 0977596432


From: "Rick A. Francis" <>
Subject: Re: Emigration pre famine times
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 12:33:52 -0600
References: <002b01c06cc5$bbddb440$b08491c2@pbncomputer>


Jane a big YES! Thank you for posting this. Still trying to find my Scott surname. Left Cork about 1735 is all I have found and I have serious doubts about that date. Might have been much earlier about 1650's. One Scott supposedly our progenator came about then after quiting Scots Parliment. Still a quandry. Thanks this needed to be said that not all Scots in Ireland were in the Ulseter Plantation. Highest Regards. Rea Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: Jane Lyons <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2000 3:50 AM
Subject: Emigration pre famine times


> Another old book review - it should be of interest to those who wonder why
> their Ancestors left Ireland prior to the famine times, and of particular
> interest to those whose ancestors came from Waterford, Cork, Wexford,
> Kilkenny.
>
> IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN EASTERN CANADA. by John J. Mannion, University of
> Toronto Press, 1974, 219pp. Paperback
>
> When we consider the Irish abroad our first thoughts, almost invariably, are
> of the mid-nineteenth century emigration to the United States of America,
> the panic-stricken flight of cottiers and landless labourers from the Famine
> to the navvy gangs of New York, Boston and Chicago, the coalmines and
> ironworks of Pennsylvania, and the slums and back streets of a hundred
> American cities. We should, however, remember that there were other
> emigrations, of even more significance in the study of the Irish abroad. Dr
> Mannion's study of the Irish in Canada is concerned with one of these - the
> early nineteenth century exodus of farmers from Ireland to the opening
> territories of the British dominions overseas. This was no frantic rush of
> starving refugees, but a considered and calculated movement of adventurous
> people seeking their fortune in new lands. They came mainly from the south
> and south-east of Ireland and were mainly farmers' sons who had no prospect
> of getting farms of their own in Ireland. They were usually influenced by
> the various inducements to settle in the new lands, such as assisted
> passage, bounties, grants or cheap purchase of land. Most of them had a
> little cash capital. Many of them, on the advice of the authorities, brought
> with them utensils, implements, furniture and household and farmyard gear.
> Often in the new lands they settled in groups, or went to places where
> friends were already settled. Often, too, there were emigrant craftsmen -
> carpenters, blacksmiths and the like, to serve the needs of these growing
> communities in the same way as in their old home. Thus were established in
> many places in Canada and in Australia islands of Irishry which preserved in
> their daily lives much of the tradition, both practical and fanciful, of
> their homeland.
>
> Dr Mannion has studied three such groups in different parts of Eastern
> Canada. These are, first, an area near Peterborough, Ontario, where about
> three hundred families, mainly from north-east county Cork, settled. A
> census here in 1825 records 238 farmers, 53 artisans and only 16 labourers.
> The second area is Miramichi, New Brunswick, where over 150 Irish families
> were established by 1850 but where, as Dr Mannion records, 'genealogical
> evidence suggests that the majority of household heads had arrived in
> Miramichi as single adult males, and had married girls who came as child
> members of nuclear Irish families or the daughters of earlier Irish
> immigrants born in Miramichi.' The third area is the Avalon peninsula of
> Newfoundland, where the fishing trade had long and close connections with
> the south-east of Ireland, especially with the port of Waterford, and where
> the Irish settlers were mainly fishermen or fishing settlement workers who
> succeeded in getting areas of land and becoming farmers. These people, as we
> might expect, came mostly from counties Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford, east
> Cork, south Tipperary - in general the hinterland of the port of Waterford.
> In this work, Dr Mannion investigates how far the life pattern of his chosen
> areas shows the retention of elements and traits derived from Ireland, or
> how far these have been modified in the new environment or discarded in
> favour of local or newly produced appliances and methods. His examples range
> over settlement patterns, dwelling houses and other buildings, agricultural
> methods, implements, furniture and household goods in considerable and
> illuminating detail.
>
> The author's investigations of a very wide and very complex theme are too
> varied, and, indeed, too significant to be summarised in a short review.
> Sufficient to say that this is a pioneer work of the highest importance, the
> opening of a gate into a hitherto neglected area of research. How seriously
> neglected is shown by the first section of the bibliography to Dr Mannion's
> book, which lists works on 'European ethnic group settlement in rural North
> America'; of 296 titles only 8 refer to Irish settlement and 6 of these to
> the "Scotch-Irish".
>
> There are, however, other elements of the Irishness of these settlements. Dr
> Mannion confines himself to an examination of the physical manifestations of
> culture, only hinting at the existence of Irish elements of speech, of
> belief and custom, of balladry and oral narrative, of music and dancing.
> Even to walk down Water Street, the main thoroughfare of St. John's,
> Newfoundland, with ears alert to catch accents and expressions which might
> well be those of New Ross or Carrick-on-Suir, will show that there is an
> Irish tradition. To visit farms and fishing villages, where language is
> larded with words like grafán and sugán, crúibín and taoibhín, ainniseóir
> and bastún, where old beliefs and customs still flourish, where Tacky the
> Lantern flits through the woods and the Bean Sí wails for impending death,
> is to discover a new world of Irish tradition which, sooner rather than
> later, must be studied by Irish scholars. That this has not been done
> already may seem surprising, but we must remember that Irish folklore and
> folk life were given academic status in Ireland as late as 1972 and that our
> first-ever graduates in this discipline came in 1975, so that however dim
> the past may have been the future in these studies undoubtedly looks bright,
> not least in the study of the Irish abroad. Meanwhile, Dr Mannion is to be
> congratulated upon this book, which not only is in itself a valuable
> contribution to knowledge, but also firmly lifts the curtain upon a wide
> range of subjects for study.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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