Celts In The Us, How did they get here

[Raven]

test

[mingkee]

an American Irish told me the story...
in the past, Ireland was a poor country
then a lot of Irish Immigrant came to New York between 18-20 Century
after that, they moved to New England and East Coast area

that's all I know

and something more interesting...you can easily find Celts around NY

[Eamon]

Not a bad start, Matt! If I was looking to do a history of the Irish Diaspora in less than 50 words, I would be hard pressed to out-do you! That definitly is the short of it, but hopefully we will get some folks to help out me and Raven here and get into the LONG of it.

Eamon

[MacAibhistin]

The Irish protestants were the first to come to America, arriving along the East Coast as early as the 1600s (in small numbers). Large numbers of Presbyterian Scots-Irish emigrated from Northern Ireland and settled mostly in NY, NJ, other New England states, Pennsylvania, and then southward along the Appalachians during the 1700s. The Catholic Irish mostly came during the 1800s, especially during the 1840s and 1850s. There's much more to be said, but there is a bit of a start.

[Aaediwen]

the Castles of Gold collection here has some background to this in the stories. Between the famine, the Protestant vs. Catholic battle, and the outsourcing of work to the young Americas, people were pushed to flee across the sea, in many cases in hopes of helping those they leave behind to survive. They came over and hit the costal cities such as New York, Boston, etc... And did what they could to gain a foothold. On arrival, they still had to fight tooth-and-nail to establish themselves, yet one would think it was still better than what they left behind; or at least it may have been because there was no choice to turn around and go back once the ship left the dock. I can imagine that a lot of homesick Celts found a piece of home when they moved a little further inland to the hills of Appalacia.

Of course, over time, they become more and more an American, but maintained their roots while pushing westward (See Connie Dover's Borders of Heaven). The stories changed to reflectthe new environment, but the message remained the same... The homesickness remained as people wandered this land looking for a piece of the isle they left behind. I admire those people who left one battle only to jump in the fire on arrival here and have to fight to stay alive. I'm glad I didn't have that battle.

Listen to the songs here; listen to the stories. They tell these tales better than I ever could. There is a reason for the sadness in this music. Listen, listen to the old ones tell their tale, and you will learn a little bit of what it was like to leave your beloved home, travel 3000 miles across the sea, and have to find what you could to survive in a strange, new land.

[Madadh]

I don't know about wandering much, My grandfar (4 generations ago) came into this country from Canada, just walked across the border. He found land in Norther New York that looked a lot like home. Rolling hills and rocks . First thing he did was to plant potatoes in the woods and start clearing the trees (used for making a house and sold for pot ash).

Oh if he would have crossed the boarder west of the great lakes.....

[An Claidheamh Soluis]

Around the time of the seventeenth century especially after the Siege of Drogheda. Mr. Cromwell decided it'd be best to move those that were in that siege that weren't one of the every tenth men killed to Barbados. Now we can of course use the example of Crab Island for Caribbean to mainland immigration. See 150 Irish were left on tiny Crab Island for quite some time. Then a month of more later ships swung by and picked them up and whisked them off to South Carolina.

Now most of the earlier Irish and Scottish families came to the New World because of political reasons. In fact almost all of them were sent earlier on because of political reasons. Eventually they came because of oppression. Then for opportunity. Finally because that accounting firm in New York offered them a cushy job.

[gallesjrrt]

Lest we forget, there was also starvation, and loss of land.

I love the romantic story of how the brave Highlanders marched almost all of the way to London under Bonnie Prince Charlie before deciding to return to Scotland, and then of their brave battle at Culloden. I've BEEN to Culloden. It's desolate, and it's beautiful, and it's horrible. Our brave Highlanders exercised their much vaunted independence and were massacred in droves.

Do you know that the flower Sweet William was named (by the English) after William of Cumberland, the son of the then King George? Of course, the Scots called him William the Butcher, and the flower Stinky Billy.

Seriously, though - most people think of the Highland Clearances as being instigated by the English. That may be, in part, true. But most of the clearances were caused by the Clan chiefs who were convinced by the English and the Lowlanders that sheep would be a better "crop" than cattle. They then drove out all of the small crofters to make room for their sheep to graze, limiting the crofters to barely enough land to raise food for themselves, never mind enough to sell to pay their rent.

I am, by birth, half Scots, and I'm proud of that. But that doesn't blind me to the idiocies of my heritage. Pride and independence are all well and good, but when it ends up with you cutting off your nose to spite your face, that's just insane!

Personally, my grandparents both came over early in the 20th century. Their families came over in bits and pieces, so to speak, through Ellis Island. They settled in Connecticut while Yale was doing most of it's building and needed stone masons, carpenters, and glaziers. There was a huge Scottish community here and my grandparents met at one of the social functions and eventually married.

[Mailagnas maqqas Dunaidonas]

Here's what I know about a few of my Celtic immigrant ancestors:

John McCulloch, born 1682 in Parish Galloway, Scotland; died October 15, 1750 in Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, Maryland. He was the son of Sir Godfrey McCulloch and Agnes Kennedy. Sir Godfrey was beheaded for the murder of William Gordon during a dispute over cattle. Following Sir Godfrey's execution, his widow moved the family to Ulster. After her death, John and his two sons emigrated to the US sometime between 1728 and 1735 (perhaps in connection with the Ulster potato famine of 1728).

John Livingston (Sir John, 6th of Dunipace), born Bet. 1613 - 1626 in Scotland; died Abt. 1676 in Virginia. Succeeded his father David in 1634, and was forced to flee to England where he signed an agreement granting him a year's grace period to pay off his father's extensive debts. In 1635 Sir Robert Spottswood was granted title to the lands formerly of Livingston- Dunipace, so John never managed to pay the debts of his freespending father off. It is believed that he later perhaps in the 1640's worked out a passage to the Virginia Colonies from England via his Livingston relatives the Merchant Livingstons of Aberdeen, Scotland, with whom the Livingstons of Virginia did conduct trade in Tobacco.

Peter Hog (or Hogg) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1703, and immigrated to Virginia with his brothers, James and Thomas, about 1745, and located in Augusta county;Virginia, where he married Elizabeth Taylor; was commissioned captain March 9, 1754; delegated July 21, 1756, to contract a line of frontier forts; served also in Sandy Creek Expedition in the same year; licensed to practice law May 10, 1759; appointed by Lord Dunmore April 10, 1772, deputy to the Attorney-General for the county of Dunmore (formed February, 1772, from Frederick, and re-named Shenandoah county by act of October, 1777, Hening, VIII, pp.597-579). He died April 20, 1782. Under the proclamation of Governor Dinwiddie he received 2347 acres of land.

[Senara]

Time to breathe a bit of life back into this one.

Myself personally come from a long line of Irish and Scottish heritage. My geneology traces me through the lines of the Moore's of County Kerry, and the Claflin's of Boston, and the MacLaughlin's. Specifically a Robert MacLaughlin that was captured by Cromwell at the battle of Dunbar (which I can't find any record of prior to such for Robert at this point) and was sent to the US as an indentured servant back in the mid-1600's. Dates of course are a bit fuzzy because of having to type this from memory and not having all my info in front of me.

Anyway, I was at the Milwaukee Irish Festival this past summer doing a Kerry Farms cheese tasting (really good stuff as was my first time trying it) when the lady that was giving the demonstration mentioned two things that were quite interesting to me and I have been thinking about them from time to time.

1. Irish could be considered the "universal donor" of the universe. Where ever we go we find a way to assimilate ourselves with the new culture that surrounds us without losing the fundamentals of our own. If you think about it how many Scotch-Irish, German-Irish, Italian-Irish etc do you know? Guess the Irish mixes with just about anything...


2. There was at one time what were called the Orphan Trains. Many of them filled with Irish children who's parents didn't survive the journey across the big pond. These children were packed on a train and sent cross country from New York, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and further west. The train would make the stops in these towns and they would line up next to the train and local farmers/merchants/millwrights etc would pick them from the line and would then support them and use them for cheap labor. Many times siblings were split apart, in rare cases the new guardians gathered whole families, but very rare occasions were those.

I was wondering has anyone else heard of the Orphan Trains and how accurate is the story I was told?

[Mailagnas maqqas Dunaidonas]

For the transcript of an American Experience show on this subject,
see The Orphan Trains. A google search using the keywords "orphan train" will turn up much more information.

[Cheyrlh]

The story of the Orphan Trains is not only true, but sadder than realized in most cases. Not all of the children were 'adopted', and I have no idea what became of them. Some of them found good homes, but most were used as child labor.

Most of my ancestry came from Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, border Britain and Switzerland. They came for all reasons: adventure, families too large for all the kids to have a piece of land, political prisoners or dissedents, hunger, religous persecution. Some prospered, some didn't. One thing common to all: they retained and passed down through the generations a love of the old country.

[celticfire]

Irish had a big flood of immigrants during the potato famine of the 1840s (An Gabhar Mor) and settled mainly in New York, Boston, and other east coast cities. However, they first came over in the 1600s in the Ulster Presbyterian wave, with lots of Scottish in their numbers. I reccomend the film, "The Irish in America" from the History Channel.