My great grandfather lived in Ireland during 1846 and the blight of a potato crop that left acres of Irish farmland covered with black rot.
As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared. Irish farmers found their food storage rotting in their cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and Protestant landlords. Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus.
Landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of peasants, who then crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Other landlords paid for their tenants to emigrate, sending hundreds of thousands of Irish to America and other English-speaking countries. But, even emigration was not a perfect remedy. Shipowners often crowded hundreds of desperate Irish onto rickety vessels that were labeled "coffin ships." In many cases, these ships reached port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease, hunger and other afflictions.
The Irish Famine of 1846-50 took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease, and changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland in profound ways. The famine also spurred new waves of immigration and shaped the history of the United States.
My great grandfather, Robert McElhaney, was born December 25, 1825, in Donegal, Cork, Ireland. He and his younger brother, Samuel, were the only children born into their family. It's not known for certain what misfortune took the lives of their parents, but records show that they were orphaned as small children. Genealogy records show that both parents died and the young boys were raised by grandparents.
At the age of twenty, Robert migrated to America in 1846. Records show that he traveled by ship across the North Atlantic toward the new land where he landed near Pennsylvania. (I was twenty years old when I prepared to attend college at the University of Idaho. I can't even imagine boarding a ship alone, sailing away from my family to a foreign country.) He likely had little to nothing in his pockets and no employment when he arrived at the shoreline. Like many who came to this country, my great grandfather faced the unknown, from the moment he stepped foot on American soil.
May we never have to worry about our next meal or where it will come from. May we never look for shelter underneath a bridge or wander through the streets with all our earthly belongings in a knapsack. I hope that we will never see anyone die of starvation or find ourselves boarding a ship to sail away from our homeland. Those who have gone on before us became the backbone of America and they provided a better way of life for others to enjoy. I am thankful for my great grandfather's voyage. I believe that one of the most blessed privileged of living in this country, for me, began with the luck of my Irish grandfather's journey to America. Written by Linda Sumner Urza for One fine day.
