Earl Grey's Famine Orphan Scheme - What was it?

Earls Grey's Famine Orphan Scheme 

Between 1848 and 1850 over 4000 adolescent female orphans emigrated from Irish workhouses to the Australian colonies, arriving at Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Their emigration has become known as the ‘Earl Grey scheme’ after its principal architect, Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord John Russell’s Whig government at the time of the Great Irish Famine...more

Remembering the 4,000 Irish Famine orphans shipped to Australia

After the brutal conditions in the workhouses, life onboard was a significant improvement...more

Missing Friends - Thomas McLaughlin

3 February 1832  Information Wanted

Son of Terence McLaughlin and Susan O'Brien, a native of the Parish of Dromore, Tyrone, Ireland, arrived about 14 days ago, at St. John's New Brunswick.

He visited Pennsylvania and Maryland. He has not been heard of for the last eight years.

Any information concerning him will be thankfully received by his sister, Mary Potts, Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Missing Friends - John Delahunty

Information Wanted: 12 November 1831

Of John Delahunty of Clonmore, Co. Tipperary, who arrived in America in 1818, and boarded at the house of Mr. William Gleeson, in Boston, at that time. 

His nephew has arrived in Boston, and has something of importance to communicate to him. Any information respecting him, directed to Mr. William Gleeson, or Michael Delahunty, Boston, will be thankfully received.

The Search for Missing Friends

The tidal wave of Irish immigration to North America in the several decades after the potato famine of the 1840s is one of the great epic sagas of nineteenth century history. 

The thousands of immigrants who surmounted incredible hardships to reach Quebec, Montreal, Boston, New York City, or other ports often hoped to join relatives who were already here. Some families became separated at dockside or later, and many recent arrivals were "lost" to kinsmen in Ireland who wanted to hear from them. 

For eighty-five years, from 1831 to 1916, the "Missing Friends" advertisements in the Boston Pilot, the city's major Irish newspaper, helped bring immigrants and kin together. 

The First 7 Volumes contain collections of the advertisements in print in the Boston PILOT as follows: Volume I: 1831-1850, Volume II: 1851-1853, Volume III: 1854-1856, Volume IV: 1857-1860, Volume V: 1861-1865, Volume VI: 1866-1870, Volume VII: 1871-1876.


1 October 1831

Information Wanted

NOTICE: PATRICK MCDERMOTT a native of County Kildare, and who was married in Kingston, near Dublin, is hereby informed, that his wife and four children have arrived in Boston. They understand that he left Roxbury, in the State, about twelve months since, to obtain work as a stone mason, they are extremely anxious to hear from him. He is hereby requested to write or come for his poor family. to the city, as soon as possible.

Editors, with whom we exchange, will perform an act of charity by giving the above notice a few insertions.

Black '47 Official Trailer

Great Famine Voices

Why do so many people associate Strokestown with Irish Famine and emigration? The reasons are manifold. In November 1847, at the height of the Great Famine, the landlord of Strokestown Park, Major Denis Mahon, was shot on his way home from Roscommon. Over 100 years later, Major Mahon's ancestor, Olive Parkenham Mahon, sold Strokestown Park to Jim Callery, a local businessman who needed land in the town to expand his thriving business. Although now owner of the house, Jim allowed Olive to remain resident for many years. Jim tells the story much better than I do. He can take over...more

Partridge Island, N.B.

The Celtic Cross Memorial

Partridge Island is a Canadian island located in the Bay of Fundy off the coast of Saint John, New Brunswick within the city's Inner Harbour.

The island is a provincial historic site and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1974. It lies on the west side of the mouth of the Saint John River
Partridge Island was first established as a quarantine station and pest house in 1785 by the Saint John Royal Charter, which also set aside the island for use as a navigational aids station and a military post. Its first use as a Quarantine Station was not until 1816. A hospital was constructed on the island in 1830.

It received its largest influx of immigrants in the 1840's during the Great Famine, known as the "Irish Potato Famine", when a shortage of potatoes occurred because of potato blight striking Ireland's staple crop, causing millions to starve to death or otherwise emigrate, mainly to North America. During the famine, some 30,000 immigrants were processed by the island's visiting and resident physicians, with 1196 dying at Partridge Island and the adjacent city of Saint John during the Typhus epidemic of 1847. During the 1890's there were over 78,000 immigrants a year being examined or treated on the island.

A memorial to the Irish immigrants of the mid-1840's was set up on the island in the 1890's but by World War One it had deteriorated. In 1926 the Saint John City Cornet Band approached Saint John contractor George McArthur who agreed to lead a campaign to build a suitable monument. The Celtic Cross memorial to the Irish dead of 1847 was dedicated in 1927. 

This was restored and rededicated in 1985. In the early and mid-1980's the Saint John Jewish Community, the Loyal Orange Lodge, the Partridge Island Research Project, and the Partridge Island & Harbour Heritage Inc., a company that was registered in 1988 and dissolved in 2004 erected memorials to the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish immigrants buried in one of the six island graveyards, as well as a monument to all of the Irish dead from 1830 to the 1920's.

©2018 The Past Whispers
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Why are 6,000 Irish buried under a Montreal traffic island?

 

The Irish Diaspora Run sees Michael Collins running almost 900km between June 10th and July 10th, from Grosse Île to Toronto, tracing the steps taken by thousands of Irish immigrants who fled the Famine in 1847. This is the second of his weekly updates for The Irish Times.

The most striking fact that emerged from the research I conducted on the passage of some 100,000 who left Ireland aboard the infamous coffin ships in the spring of 1847 was how the municipal authorities, in tandem with the religious orders of Montreal, marshaled their collective resources to care and minister to the sick and dying Irish…more

 

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All Rights Reserved

Remains of shipwrecked Irish famine victims found in Canada

 

The remain of eight humans discovered in Quebec last month are believed to be those of Irish immigrants who died in an 1847 shipwreck off the coast of Canada, Parks Canada revealed.

The bones and skeletons, found in near Cap-des-Rosiers, Quebec, in late July, appear to be those of five adults and three children who were fleeing the Great Hunger in Ireland when their ship got into trouble during a storm.

Although the remains have yet to be analyzed, Parks Canada archaeologist Martin Perron believes the eight bodies could be the remains of some those who died when the Irish ship, The Carricks of Whitehaven, sank during a storm off the Gaspe coast.

If proven to be those of Irish immigrants aboard the 1847 ship, the discovery may be an indicator of a mass grave in the area for the massive fatalities among the 167 passengers. At first discovery, Perron stated that the bones appeared to be very ancient, possibly as old as the 170 years since the ship sank, although further analysis is needed before this is confirmed.

Adding to the evidence that this may be a burial site for The Carricks, the remains of three European children were previously discovered close to this site in 2011. The bones were found on Cap-des-Rosiers beach just a few hundred meters away from July’s grave discovery. The coroner ruled that the three children were the victims of a maritime tragedy and that they had also suffered from malnutrition, a fact that would fall in line with the theory the children were Irish and leaving Ireland because of the famine.

"All these elements point towards a mass grave that is quite ancient, which could be linked to the Carricks shipwreck,'' Perron told CBC Canada.

The Carricks was just one of the Irish ships, often called the “coffin ships,” that transported thousands of Irish people from their suffering island to a new life in the US and Canada. Unfortunately, conditions on many of these ships were deadly and hunger, malnutrition, and disease caused the death of many on the passage and many more when disease spread among immigrants and the local population on landing.

This particular ship is believed to have been traveling to Quebec in 1847, the very worst year of the Great Hunger and often referred to as “Black ‘47.”

Some 100,000 Irish immigrants made the journey to Canada in 1847, descending on the quarantine station in Grose Íle which welcomed the arrival of 14,000 Irish by the summer months alone, despite having just 150 beds. If they escaped the quarantine station, many Irish may have made it to Montreal, where typhus was killing those who survived the journey, while others carried along the river to Toronto.

A fifth of those who traveled that year - 20,000 immigrants - died.

Built in 1812, The Carricks set sail from Sligo, one of the principal points of emigration during the Great Hunger, in March 1847, under the command of Captain R.Thompson, with 167 passengers, most of whom were tenants from the Irish estates of Lord Palmerston. On April 28, she ran into a storm and most of her passengers were lost. It appears that of all those on board, only 48 made it to the shore. Nine had died previously on the voyage while the remaining 119 were lost in the wreckage. All of the crew survived but for one boy.

One Quebec film maker Viveka Melki is currently making a documentary about The Carricks ship and the fate of those poor Irish on board. During the course of her preparation for the documentary, Melki came across an obituary written by a local priest referring to the way in which the shore was strewn with bodies after the shipwreck and that a shallow, hasty mass grave had been dug for the remains along the beach, leading her to believe that this latest discovery must be several of The Carricks victims.

"It's not been easy for us or for the descendants (interviewed) in the film to even suppose that this might be the grave,'' Melki said.

Other documentaries have been made regarding the ship which focuses on the Irish-speaking family, the Kaveneys from Sligo, who five generations later are now the French-speaking Kavanaghs of Gaspé.

The areas around the bodies has now been cordoned off and Park Canada will continue to excavate the site to discover if there are further remains buried nearby.

"There's a way to give a second life to these bodies and make them talk, thanks to the different analyses that can be done,'' Perron said.

A monument already stands to the victims of the shipwreck in Gaspé, which was offered by St. Patrick’s Parish in Montréal in 1900. It is joined by the enshrined ship’s bell, discovered in 1966. The monument’s inscription reads: “Sacred to the memory of 187 Irish Immigrants from Sligo wrecked here on April 28th 1847 (Ship Carricks of Whitehaven 87 are buried here. Pray for their souls.”

 

-courtesy Irish Central

©2016 Linda Sullivan-Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved