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.

Scots in Australia - Ballarat art exhibition opening in April

From 11 April to 27 July the Art Gallery of Ballarat will have an exhibition on images of Scottish Australia from the beginnings of European settlement to Federation. I am a volunteer guide at the Gallery and we have been studying up on all things Scottish for this exhibition.

Anne Eliza Duff with her daughter, Jessie c.1847  by Martha Berkeley from the Art Gallery of South Australia

This image was used on the front cover of a recent issue of Antiques and Art in Victoria.

The exhibition will highlight the contribution to Australia of emigrants from Scotland. For example, the Australian Dictionary of Biography has 1591 entries of people with Scottish heritage, 12.6% of all 12,590 entries.

Measuring ancestry is tricky - I have lots of ancestors ;) and some of them are Scottish - although my husband's family tree seems to contain no Scottish forebears. About three quarters of my fellow volunteer gallery guides can also claim a Scottish forebear. It is a small sample and not at all representative. Claiming a Scottish forebear does not mean identifying as someone having Scottish ancestry.

Estimated percentages of the ethnic origins of the Australian population 1861-1987

Graph of figures in Table 1.1: Estimated percentages of the ethnic origins of the Australian population 1861-1987 in  Prentis, Malcolm D. (Malcolm David) The Scots in Australia. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2008. Prentis sourced his figures from C. A. Price et al. Birthplaces of the Australian Population 1861-1981, Working Papers in Demography, No. 13 (1984); S. E. Khoo & C. A. Price, Understanding Australia's Ethnic Composition (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, 1996), 11.

Despite having some Scottish forebears, I would not be counted in the 11.9% of those who had Scottish ancestry in 1987.

Malcom Prentis remarks in his book The Scots in Australia that, unlike some groups which came predominantly at particular moments in the history of their home societies and of Australia, the immigration of Scots has been sustained at a consistent and substantial level for the last 200 years.

The Scots have been a very successful ethnic group but largely ignored in the history of Australia which has paid more attention to our Irish forebears.

The forthcoming exhibition looks at a number of themes, including politics, indigenous relations, business endeavours as well as artistic contributions. It will be a great opportunity to learn more about Australian history and the contributions of our Scottish forebears.

Martha Berkeley who did the painting above of Ann Duff was my great great great aunt. She wasn't Scottish but the painting is included because it depicts a Scottish woman. You can learn more about the Duff family at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~barqueasia1839/FINLAYDUFF.htm.

I have been inspired to review my Scottish family history and intend to publish some more stories on my blog about emigration, where my forebears came from and what they did when they arrived in Australia. Before I do that though, I plan to participate in the A to Z blogging challenge - my first time - and it will keep me busy for the next month. It is not only genea-bloggers who participate but there are a couple of other family historians who have put their names down for the challenge.

The Emigrants from East County Clare

Since all those who are, or wish to be, of Irish descent have just celebrated St Patrick’s Day it seems appropriate that my topic this month is my Irish migration research. While I have Irish ancestors from Clare, Kildare, Offaly, Wicklow and Wexford, this project broadens the research lens.

This project focuses on the emigrants from East County Clare to Australia in the mid-late 19^th century, from the Famine era to pre-1900. How have I defined East Clare? Well it is a little subjective, but I’ve used the baronies of Tulla Upper and Tulla Lower, and visually on the map, the area to the east of Ennis. It’s worth remembering too, that the people from parishes in the south-east corner, were part of the Limerick Union so when looking at workhouses, for example, one needs to look at the Limerick Workhouse rather than a Clare one.

While the emphasis is on Australia, it doesn’t mean I have no interest in the emigrants to North America (USA and Canada) but there’s only so much you can focus on without becoming completely befuddled. What I believe from my research is that the emigrants were not as powerless as we sometimes tend to think. Perhaps not during the Famine when survival and just finding a new life were the main goals, but certainly outside that horrific time.

Research by Pauleen Cass 2006. Data is sourced from Irish Census consolidated stats.
It shows quite clearly the impact of the Famine, and subsequent migration, on the parish of Kilseily where Broadford is situated.

For the period 1848-1870, Australia has generally excellent immigration records often (but not always) revealing parents’ names, whether alive or dead, literacy and whether they had relations in the colony. What it omits to mention is just how often each ship carried friends and neighbours from the same place, and it’s all too easy for a novice researcher to not realise that a brother/sister may also have been on board, because adult single men and women were listed separately from each other and the family groups.

Of course, inevitably, the very person you’re looking for may not be among those listed anywhere. This was the case with my Mary O’Brien (later Kunkel) whose immigration I’ve been pursuing for decades, and for whom I’ve only recently found a tentative result. 

The bonus of this is that it sent me down many paths trying to find anything about those who emigrated from the same place, Broadford, in the east of County Clare. This kicked off my East Clare project trying to learn more about them and whether they were typical of their age peers at home, or if there were differences.

One of the greatest (nigh impossible?) challenges of studying migration history is finding why people left their home place. You have the obvious impetus like the Famine (An Gorta Mór) but why did some siblings depart for Australia, others for North America, and yet others remain at home. Mostly it seems it was the older “children” who made the move, and Irish women were atypical of migration in general in that they were often the migration leaders. They would go ahead then bring relatives out in what is called chain migration.

© Copyright 2014 Pauleen Cass. Analysis of data from personal database drawn from Australian immigration records.

So your ancestors came to Australia? Or North America? Please don’t assume that all of the family who emigrated went to the same place. I’ve seen many cases where some of the siblings go to Boston or New York while others came to Australia (or New Zealand). Why would they choose a place so very far from their homeland? Well, the Australian colonies were offering generous government subsidies to attract workers to the colony, especially young women due to the gender imbalance. I have also concluded that the emigrants were more than capable of deciding that one lifestyle suited them better than another eg the opportunity to own their own land and farm in Australia vs a more urban lifestyle in an American city.  

I’ve also seen instances where one child in a family is born in the States and another in Liverpool before the family emigrated to Australia – an example of stage migration. There are cases where parents are already living in the USA, or Scotland, yet the young family chooses Australia as their destination. People are complex and quite capable of making decisions in their own interest when it comes to migration as to all else.

It’s likely that I’ll be back on this hobby-horse in posts to come, but today I also wanted to let you know about a new blog I’ve started (blatant self-promotion?). It’s called East Clare Emigrants and I’m hoping it will provide a locus for researchers with ancestors who came from the eastern half of Clare.

I just had to buy one of these badges
...jealousy got the better of me.

My posts on the blog will predominantly draw on stories and obituaries from our wonderful digitised newspaper site, Trove. It’s now possible to uncover the emigrants’ life stories in a way which would have been impossible until just a few years ago. We could find our own ancestors, or those for whom we had specific dates of death, but had no hope of this kind of general search. No wonder Trove is top of the pops for Aussie researchers and it really is a world-leader with its facilities. I particularly love how these obituaries give us a sense of their lives post-migration. No doubt a sanitised or glorified version, as obituaries tend to be, but offering a human depth to the story.

But will it help those from around the world? Well yes, I think it will because I’ve already come across some obits with references back to family in Ireland or the States.

I’d also be happy to include guest posts from those who have East Clare emigrants in their ancestry, wherever they ended up. So if your ancestors fit the bill, please get in touch via my email, or  have a look at some of the posts. There’s been a time-delay as I regroup after the cruise but hopefully I’ll be posting at least one a week, and often two.

© Copyright 2014 Pauleen Cass