own expense, the government encouraged emigration to less hospitable, or further-flung parts of the Empire, such as Australia, via the Colonial Land and Emigration Office (renamed Colonial Commission of Land and Emigration), which granted land and paid for journeys. Its records are at TNA, and may help if you are stuck:
CO 384: correspondence 1817–96 from and concerning settlers.
CO 327–8: registers for North America, 1850–96.
CO 385: emigration entry books 1814–71.
CO 386: records of the Commission for Land and Emigration, 1833–94.
for they record journeys that changed your family’s history for ever. They can help establish your Irish roots too. The port of departure was often the nearest one to the family home, giving you a rough idea of the area of Ireland they came from. Migrants usually travelled in groups, so people of the same name in the ship’s manifest may be related. People travelling in groups were often listed together, so the people above and below your ancestors in a list could be relatives. Looking at these people’s origins could lead you to your own family’s roots.
Local histories
Many settlements in the New World and Antipodes have only been there a handful of generations. A good number have had their histories written up, often utilising oral history and local records. These frequently include lists of the original inhabitants, with good genealogical details. Once you know where your Irish migrant ancestors first settled, contact the local libraries and archives to see what material may be available.
FURTHER READING
John Grenham, Tracing your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide (Gill & Macmillan, 3rd edn, 2006).
John O’Hart, Irish Pedigrees (Dublin 1892: GPC, 1999).
James G. Ryan, Irish Records, Sources for Family and Local History (Ancestry Incorporated [USA] and Flyleaf Press [Ireland], 1997, revised edn, n.d.).
PART 2 Tracing back to Ireland: country by country
The spread of the Irish around the globe dates back to ancient times, but it reached epic proportions with the Great Famine. In this section, we will look at the seven countries to which they migrated in most numbers, following a rough chronological order – England and Wales, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. But these are not seven separate stories – all extended Irish family trees span each of these countries, and the accounts of invasion, transportation, colonisation and economic migration are an extension of Ireland’s own story.
Irish migration into England and Wales was fairly negligible until the 19th century, when many Irish Catholic labourers, called spailpíns (or ‘spalpeens’ in English), flocked to mainland Britain to find work, to benefit from the Poor Law, or simply to avoid famine.
The 1841 census records 60,000 Irish living on the mainland. Few wanted to stay permanently – many who came to Liverpool, for example, hoped to earn enough to pay for the passage to America. When they remained, it was often accidental, not planned. Many came seasonally, and within living memory Irish people would walk from the ferry at Holyhead, Wales, to wherever they could find summer work, culminating in hop-picking in Kent, only to return with their wages to their families in Ireland. Many others came with their families, especially to settle in the industrial towns. Such migration often followed distinct patterns, i.e.:
Yorkshire – many from Leinster and Connacht
Bradford – mainly Dublin, Laois, Mayo and Sligo
Leeds – mainly Mayo, Tipperary and Dublin
Stafford – 40 per cent from the Castlerea area of Co. Roscommon
The Great Famine brought in vast numbers, sailing to Liverpool, Swansea, Newport and Cardiff. Some 80,000 came in 1847 alone. The 1861 census shows a third of Cardiff’s population was Irish. In Liverpool, where 300,000 people arrived in a mere six months, food was distributed from workhouse to 23,866 people a day. It was from Irish slums there that the typhus epidemic is thought to have started. After the Famine subsided, migration continued erratically: during World War II and in the 1950s, when demand for manual labour was high, more Irish migrated to mainland Britain than to America.
Early migration
In the 4th century AD, western Britain was subject to constant raids from Ireland. The Úi Liatháin, kin to the Eóganacht of Munster, settled in parts of Wales and south-west Britain, whilst the Medieval Irish poem The Expulsion of the Déisi tells how Eochaid Allmuir (‘from over the sea’) of the Dési tribe from Co. Waterford, ‘with his descendants, went over the sea into the land of Dyfed, and his sons and grandsons died there. And from them is [descended] the race of the Crimthann over there.’ Linguistic and archaeological evidence in Dyfed supports this, and the old Welsh pedigrees proudly trace the kings of Dyfed and Brycheiniog back to Aed Brosc, son of Corath, son of this Eochaid of the Dési. The ultimate descendant of the Dyfed dynasty, Ellen ferch Llywarch in the 10th century, married Hywel Dda, King of Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Powys, forebear of virtually everyone with Welsh princely blood in their veins.
The 13th-century English surnames Yreys, Irlond and Iryssh denote people from Ireland, but these may have been returning Cambro-Norman settlers, not native Gaels. This probably applies also to the MacWilliams, traders of Bristol who bought a landed estate at Stambourne, Essex, who are thought to be from the MacWilliam Oughter branch of the Burkes of Connacht. We know Irish beggars had become a problem by Tudor times, for an Act of 1572 was framed to send them home. Later, besides the army, Irishmen were prominent in the navy, and many an Irish sailor found home in the squalid slums of 18th-century St Giles’s, London.
Archives
Each county has its own County Record Office, supplemented by local archives and local studies libraries. Details, often with access to their catalogues, are at www.a2a.org.uk. Over these is The National Archives (TNA) at Kew, on the outskirts of London, and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. The Mormon’s Hyde Park Family History Centre (FHC), London, has the largest collection of Irish material on microfilm in Britain: copies of MMFs can be ordered to any local branch – see www.familysearch.org. A detailed guide to research in England and Wales is my Collins Tracing your Family History (Collins, 2005).
Societies
The SoG, London, has much material for both English, Welsh and Irish research. As many Irish migrants were Catholics, it is worth joining the Catholic Family History Society and studying the publications of the Catholic Record Society.
Civil Registration
This is the mainstay of genealogical research back to 1 July 1837, when it started, and was thus operational just before
