Books glorious (emigration) books

The (mostly) Irish migration and history section of my library.

For her Worldwide Genealogy post earlier this month, Tessa Keogh wrote about a Baker’s Dozen of Genealogy/Family History Books. In a Google+ discussion, Tessa gave me the green light to appropriate her idea and write about the books that are among my own “Top of the Pops”. So this month my post is about my favourite books on migration, especially Irish migration to Australia, a topic near and dear to my heart. I hope some of these will be new to you and offer you some great reading opportunities. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they only apply to Australia as much of the information/research can also be applied to research elsewhere. Either way, it gives a better understanding of where our Irish ancestors’ migration fits into the bigger picture.  

Farewell My Children: Irish Assisted Emigration to Australia 1848-1870, Reid, R. Anchor Books, Sydney 2011.

Dr Richard Reid is one of Australia’s foremost Irish, and military, historians as well as a speaker on Unlock the Past Cruises. If you have Irish ancestry in Australia you absolutely must get your hands on this book: buy it or borrow it from the library or a friend, if they’ll let it go. Based on Richard’s PhD thesis it is an analysis of the Irish migration to Australia in its peak period, revealing the nuances within that movement. I first read it as a thesis and was thrilled when he published the book…from my point of view it’s research gold! I wrote a review on it soon after it was published and it is worth reading even by non-Australian researchers who have Irish ancestry or an interest in migration history.

  

Richard Reid is also co-author or contributor to a couple of small collaborative publications for which the content vastly outweighs their slight appearance.

Visible women : female immigrants in colonial Australia. Richards, E (ed), ANU, Canberra, 1995

Poor Australian immigrants in the nineteenth century. Richards, E (ed), ANU, Canberra, 1991

Neglected sources for the history of Australian immigration.  Richards E; Reid, R; Fitzpatrick, D, ANU, Canberra, 1989.

Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland 1831-1860. Haines, R, St Martins Press, Basingstoke, 1997.

Life and Death in the Age of Sail: the passage to Australia. Haines, R, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2003.

I find both these books by Dr Robin Haines to provide an invaluable understanding of the background to our ancestral families’ migration. It would be interesting for north American readers to compare and contrast the management of migration to Australia with that to the America. Aimed primarily at the academic readership they offer many insights for family historians. Sharon from Strong Foundations blog has recently reviewed the latter book.

Ireland’s New Worlds: Immigrants, Politics and Society in the United States and Australia 1815-1922. Campbell, M. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison Wisconsin 2008.

Now readily available on Kindle as an ebook, or electronically if you have university access, this is an excellent book for its cross-comparison between two Irish migration streams and how their experiences differed. Definitely worth reading by Irish historians in both hemispheres.

Atlas of the Great Irish Famine. Crowley, J; Smyth WJ; Murphy M (eds), Cork University Press, Cork, 2012.

This comprehensive study of the Famine’s impact is excellent but I find its weight a deterrent to settling down to read it. I rather wish they’d issued it in two parts or alternatively that it was available as an ebook or two ebooks.

Mapping the Great Irish Famine. Kennedy L, Ell P S,  Crawford, E M, Clarkson L, (eds), Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1999.

I have had this book for some time. More spatial geography in relation to the Famine allowing a focus on townland or barony in comparison across census returns. I used it for a long time before the Atlas was published.

Oceans of Consolation: personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia. Fitzpatrick, D. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 1995.

Enjoyable and insightful this book of rare letters between emigrants and their families in Ireland opens a precious window into how early emigrants responded to their new country. Although focused on Australian emigrants, the stories would still interest readers from elsewhere in the Irish diaspora. This is one of my favourite reference books. I referred to it in this post a while ago.

Richard Griffith and His Valuations of Ireland. Reilly, J R. Clearfield Company, Inc, 2000

A book no Irish researcher should be without. There’s so much more to the townland pages which we see when we search the valuations. Reilly explains what those cryptic annotations mean in terms of your family research. If you can’t get your hands on the book, this summary article will help.

The End of Hidden Ireland. Scally R J. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.

The story of the residents of the Ballykilcline townland after they are dispossessed from the land. Scally has done a remarkable job of bringing them into the light and demonstrated possible strategies for those interested in One Place Studies.

Migration in Irish History, 1607 – 2007. Fitzgerald, P and Lambkin, B.  Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, 2008

I confess that I have yet to launch myself into this book but I offer it here because it addresses Irish migration across the centuries rather than the narrow timeframe we tend to focus on as family historians.

Have you read any or all of these books? What do you think of them? Would you recommend them to others?

PS Apologies for the weird formatting...I'm a wordpress blogger and sometimes Blogger defeats me.

Did any of your relatives pass through Ellis Island?

When I saw that on Mondays with Myrt on 8th September 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkLDfZbb2iA one of the topics to be discussed was the updated website for Ellis Island I did not expect to find anyone on the website from my family. 
After all my family, apart from one aunt, have always lived in England.

I have deep roots in England and most of my family can be found in just a few counties in the south of the country.

Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire are where they lived with a few exceptions.

So given this they would appear to be the type of people who liked to stay close to home.

However they did migrate within England, family in Dorset and Wiltshire moved to Hampshire.

Some, in more recent times, also travelled further afield (one aunt emigrated after marrying an american soldier after WW2).

Southampton, my hometown, is one of the major UK ports.

More about its history can be found here http://www.plimsoll.org/ .

Living in a major port unsuprisingly some of my family had connections to the maritime trade. 
Some have visited places far across the seas as serving members of the merchant navy. 
My grandfather worked for the Royal Mail Steamship Company and travelled to South America. 
I also know that my uncle worked on the passenger liners, as I have in my possession his discharge books. 
What I had not realized is that now the records go up to the 1950's. He frequently sailed between Southampton and New York in the period now covered by the records.

So I entered his initial and surname, narrowed the search by first name and found him entering Ellis Island on the ship Queen Elizabeth. 
Because there was an index, below the image of the ships manifest, I noticed another person with the same surname. 
This second individual is a good match for my grandfather's brother as the first name and year of birth match and he is a British national.

If you want to try out the new passenger search here is the link 

 http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger .

You may be surprised and one of your family may have been recorded before it close 60 years ago.

I have also found my aunt and 2 of her children but they may not have actually passed through Ellis Island as this was in 1956.