Irish immigration to the USA

lundi 22 février 2016
par MmesS

Irish Immigration to America : The Reasons for Irish Immigration to America Why did people want to leave Ireland and why did they want to move to America ? The reasons for the early Irish Immigration to America was to escape political and religious persecution. Dire poverty caused by natural disaster of the Irish Potato Famine forced people to emigrate from Ireland to seek a new life in the United States.
- The Voyage to America - the Emigrant Ships Many of the Anti-Catholic Penal Laws were repealed in the 1790’s and Catholic Irish were able to immigrate to America. Irish Immigration to America significantly increased in the early 1800’s, inspired by the American ideals of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Shipping company agents placed immigration advertisements in Irish newspapers and journals. Posters were displayed in Irish towns and villages. Irish immigrants in the early 1800’s undertook the voyage on sailing ships which took anything up to 3 months. Immigrants left from ports all over Ireland including Derry, Cork, Limerick and Galway. Many were offered free passage from Ireland to Liverpool where the majority of ships bound for America started their voyage. The Irish emigrants to America always traveled in the cheap Steerage Class. The conditions on the emigrant sailing ships were dreadful due to overcrowding and cramped accommodation - up to 1000 emigrants were crowded into steerage. Steerage contained 2 or 3 tiers of wooden bunks, 6 ft. long by 6 ft. wide, that were shared by 4 emigrants. The horrendous journeys were made worse by sea sickness and the crowded, unsanitary conditions also led to outbreaks of cholera and typhus.

- Canals, Roads, Railways and Mines The early 1800’s marked the beginning of the Industrialization of America and the age of steam power and the railways. Irish Immigration to America increased with the rising numbers of jobs for cheap, unskilled laborers. Anti-Catholic, particularly anti–Irish Catholic, feelings led to the formation of the American or Know-Nothing Party. The Irishmen provided the backbreaking labor to build the canals, roads and railways of America and were in great demand. American contractors placed advertisements in Irish newspapers advertising vacancies for big construction projects for a dollar-a-day. Other Irish workers went to the coal mines of Pennsylvania.

- Irish Potato Famine Irish Immigration to America in the 1800’s rocketed as Ireland was devastated by the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) and the potatoes in the fields of Ireland turned black and rotted in the ground. The devastation of the Irish Potato Famine, the ’Great Hunger’ is hard to imagine. People were faced with death by starvation. Thousands of men, women and children resembled skeletons with wasted limbs and emaciated faces. Ireland was filled by the endless crying of malnourished, starving children. The Irish Potato Famine led to terrible associated diseases such as typhus and dysentery. Highly contagious typhus was named the ’Black Fever’ as it blackened the skin. The Irish Potato Famine was made even worse by unusually harsh weather conditions as Ireland was subjected to bitter cold gales of snow, sleet and hail. The only escape was to emigrate to America. During the period of the Irish Potato Famine, between 1845-1849 the population of Ireland dropped from 8 million to 6 million due to death from starvation or emigration. The Irish Immigration to America during this terrible period of history was made on what were called the " Famine Ships" or the "Coffin Ships".

-  Far and Away : A 1992 film directed by Ron Howard, starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.

Joseph Donnelly, a young Irish man facing property eviction after his father’s death, decides to take revenge on Daniel Christie, his landlord. In an attempt to kill Christie, however, he is injured and sentenced to a duel with Christie’s arrogant manager, Stephen Chase. Meanwhile, Shannon, Daniel’s daughter, is growing dissatisfied with the traditional views of her parents’ generation and longs to be modern. She makes her plans to leave for the U.S. and with her help, Joseph is able to escape. Upon arriving in Boston, they find jobs and begin saving money. Joseph becomes a local bare-hands boxer, while Shannon works in a chicken processing plant and then as a dancer at the social club. All goes well until Joseph loses a boxing match, after which their money is taken away. Joseph and Shannon are left to starve in the winter cold. Shannon’s parents, still in Ireland, face a devastating loss and decide to come to America to be with her. Chase, who joined them, has begun a campaign to find her, but his efforts are unnecessary Joseph brings Shannon to them after an accident. Joseph then heads west to work on the railroad. After many months, Joseph is confronted by his father in a dream and is reminded of his desire to own his own land. Joseph decides to join the wagon trains and arrives in Oklahoma Territory just in time for the big land race, upon which his fate will lie.

- Watch and listen to the song by U2"The hands that built America". It is the soundtrack of the 2002 movie "Gangs of New York" directed by Martin Scorsese. Gangs of New York is an American epic period drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. The film is set in 1863 and follows fictional gang leader William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in his roles as crime boss and political kingmaker under the helm of "Boss" Tweed (Jim Broadbent). The film culminates in a violent confrontation between Cutting and his mob with the protagonist Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his allies, which prefaces the real-life New York Draft Riots of 1863.

-  Brooklyn is a 2009 novel by Irish author Colm Tóibín.

- Summary (from Wikipedia) Eilis Lacey is a young woman who is unable to find work in 1950s Ireland. Her older sister Rose organizes a meeting with a Catholic priest called Father Flood on a visit from New York City, who tells Eilis of the wonderful opportunities awaiting her in New York with excellent employment prospects. Because of this she emigrates to Brooklyn, New York and takes up a job in a department store while undertaking night classes in bookkeeping. Her initial experiences working in a boring job and living in a repressive boardinghouse, run by the strict Mrs Madge Kehoe, make her doubt her initial decision. Letters from Rose, her mother and her brother bring about severe homesickness but soon she begins to settle into a routine. Eilis meets and falls in love with a young Italian plumber called Tony at the local Friday night dances. Eilis qualifies easily from her night school course. Her relationship evolves further and Tony brings Eilis to meet his family. Their romance becomes more serious, and Tony confesses his love for Eilis, and his plans to build a home on Long Island.

One day while Eilis is working she learns from Father Flood that her sister Rose has died in her sleep from a pre-existing heart condition. She has to return to Ireland to mourn, and she secretly marries Tony before she leaves. In Ireland she falls back into the town society easily. She goes to the beach with Nancy, George and their friend Jim Farrell, who is interested in her. Eilis is forced to spend time with Jim and eventually starts a brief relationship with him. He is a local pub owner, to whom she had been attracted before immigrating to America. Eilis’s mother is desperate for her to settle back in Ireland and marry Jim, as Eilis has not confided in her or her friends about her marriage. Eilis procrastinates about a return to her new life by extending her stay. She saves Tony’s letters unopened thinking at times that she no longer loves him. Eventually a local busybody, Miss Kelly, tells Eilis she knows her secret because Madge Kehoe is her cousin and somehow the story is out in New York. This is the turning point for Eilis and she immediately books her return passage, telling her mother the truth about her marriage and posting a farewell note to Jim as she leaves town by taxi for the docks.

- Brooklyn is also a 2015 historical period drama film directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Hornby, based on Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name. The film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters. Set in 1952, the film tells the story of a young Irish woman’s immigration to Brooklyn, where she quickly falls into a romance. When her past catches up with her, however, she must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within them for her.

Here is the trailer of the 2015 movie adaptation :

- You can read this article from the Telegraph here.

- Read this article from Time : by Sarah Begley, Nov, 4th .2015

Brooklyn and the True History of Irish Immigrants in 1950s New York City As the star of the new movie Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronan is tasked with portraying an Irish immigrant in 1950s New York City as a singular woman in a unique situation. But transatlantic love triangles aside, the experiences of the fictional Eilis Lacey would have been as common as Irish pubs are in today’s Midtown Manhattan.

In the novel on which the movie is based, a best-seller by Colm Tóibín, Eilis moves from small-town Ireland, where she struggles to find work, to Brooklyn. A priest facilitates the move, finds her a job at an Italian-run department store and lodging in an Irish women’s boarding house, and sets her up to take night classes in bookkeeping. Such a trajectory would have been typical for an Irish woman moving to New York at the time—but to fully understand Eilis’s ’50s experience, it’s necessary to back up to the first boom of Irish immigration to America, in the 1840s. When the potato famine sent droves of immigrants to America, New York City saw the beginning of a new immigrant infrastructure in which the Irish would eventually dominate powerful unions, civil service jobs and Catholic institutions in the city. Given their firm hold on construction work during a critical period of growth in Manhattan, “Bono of U2 exaggerated only slightly when he said the Irish built New York,” says Stephen Petrus, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the New York Historical Society. While the Great Depression and World War II had decreased the rate of Irish immigration, newcomers to the city in 1950 would still find vibrant Irish enclaves with steady jobs available, an Irish mayor in William O’Dwyer and an Irish-American Cardinal in Francis Spellman, who was “highly influential, not just in religion, but in politics,” Petrus says.

Meanwhile, economic conditions in Ireland were a different situation. As Irish-American historian and novelist Peter Quinn explains, “The country wasn’t in the Second World War, it had been kind of cut off from the rest of the world, and it wasn’t part of the Marshall Plan. So it was still a very rural country.” The economy was at a standstill, while the U.S. was booming. Some 50,000 immigrants left Ireland for America in the ’50s, about a quarter of them settling in New York.

And, within that community, women played an important role. During the 19th century, the wave of Irish was “the only immigration where there were a majority of women,” Quinn says. And, thanks to a culture that supported nuns and teachers, those women were often able to delay marriage and look for jobs. By the mid 20th century, many Irish women—who also benefited from the ability to speak English—were working in supermarkets, utility companies, restaurants and, like Eilis, department stores. The fact that Eilis finds her job through her priest is also typical. “[The Catholic Church] was an employment agency. It was the great transatlantic organization,” Quinn says. “If you came from Ireland, everything seemed different, but the church didn’t. It was a comfort that way, and it was a connection.”

It’s fitting, then, that Eilis meets her love interest, the Italian-American Tony, at a parish dance. These were tremendously popular social events where women could meet men while under the protective supervision of their priest. No alcohol would have been on offer, which added another layer of safety. And it’s not at all strange that Eilis would strike up with an Italian-American man rather than a fellow Celt. “When people talked about intermarriage in the ‘50s, they weren’t talking about black-white, they were talking about Irish-Italian,” Quinn says.

But there is one place where Eilis’ story departs from the historic norm, and it’s the crux of the plot : her trip home to Ireland and the possibility that the homesick protagonist might move back permanently. Though many immigrants would send money home to relatives who had stayed Ireland, Quinn says, “it was rare for Irish immigrants to go back to live.” Even so, though Tóibín’s protagonist is fictional, the heartache and growing pains experienced by so many women with stories like hers would have been unmistakably real.


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The Hands that built America
The Hands that built America

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