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How did we get here??
No, this is not a discussion of biology. Rather, this is a topic regarding social, religious, economic, personal aspirations, and, most of all, survival. Imagine if you can, what it would take for you to uproot yourself from your family, your friends, your culture, even your native language, leave your home and possessions, and move an ocean away to a place you've never been, abandoning everything familiar. You would be tearing up your roots and starting all over based on your faith in stories from others. Because of circumstances, you may have to travel alone and, hopefully, be able to establish yourself in the new land well enough to send money home for other family members to follow. For most of us this is an inconceivable thought, but, for many of our ancestors, this was their reality. And for the majority of those with Irish roots, it is a story of ancestors with an unimaginable life of poverty, persecution, extreme prejudice, hardship, and wretched squalor on both sides of the ocean. Whether or not Edmund (later to be called Edward, or just “Ned” to family) Devin suffered all of these fates, it is not for us to know. But, it is almost certain he experienced some of them and was familiar with other Irishmen who had.

By the time Ned was born in Drangan Parish, County Tipperary, Ireland, in April of 1847, his homeland had experienced a mortality rate of 15.5 % in the last two years. This rate was to about double in the next two years and double once again the two following years. He had been born in the second year of "An Gorta Mór", The Great Hunger. His year of birth is referred to as “Black ‘47”. Irishmen were starving by the hundreds of thousands. Ireland’s crop of potatoes had been destroyed for the last two growing seasons and was about to be a poor crop this year as well, because most of the seedling potatoes were used as food. The potato, along with milk, was the exclusive diet of over half of the population…the poor. It is estimated a family of five would consume more than two hundred pounds of potatoes a week. Crops had now been devastated for two years by Phytophthora infestans D, the fungus responsible for destroying fields upon fields of potatoes overnight, leaving rotting plants and its stench that permeated the countryside. But, it was not just the potato blight that explained the human wreckage caused by the Irish famine, a devastation whose effects have rippled through the decades and are still felt today across the world. While the blight was the central cause, the reasons for its widespread human ravage were multifaceted, and had roots that extended back centuries in Irish history.

Edmund Devin
(later called Edward, or just “Ned” to family)

Drangan Parish, County Tipperary, Ireland
(click to enlarge)

Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete that causes the serious potato disease known as "late blight" or "potato blight".

Ireland before the Famine
- St Patrick arrived in Ireland in the early 400’s A.D. He is credited with the conversion of its inhabitants to Catholicism. (a)

- After divorcing his first wife, Catherine, in the 1500’s, King Henry IV was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Paul III. It was then that the English Reformation began and the Anglican Church was founded in Britain and thrust upon Ireland (and Scotland). The head of the country’s church now sat on the throne of England rather than in Rome.

- After Oliver Cromwell brutally crushed the Irish rebellion in the early 1600’s, over ten million acres of land were confiscated and the previous owners were exiled to the rocky western regions of Ireland or face the death penalty.

- In 1695, Britain enacted the Penal Laws. Aimed mainly at the Irish Catholics, it prohibited Catholics from voting, holding public office, purchasing land, owning a horse worth more than five pounds, an education, as well as, the public practice of Catholicism. Bishops were deported, ordained priests could not enter Ireland, priests were limited to one per parish and required to register with authorities. (1) Presbyterians, mostly Scots, also felt the same kinds of suffering of the Penal Laws, only to a lesser extent. (2)

- By the early 1700s, the estates were given to immigrant Protestant settlers as a result of England’s attempt to “colonize” Ireland. These new landlords were obliged to take on Irish Catholic tenants, some having been the previous land-owners. Penal Laws also dictated that land be willed to male children, unless one of them converted to the Church of England, in which case, he could claim the entire estate. Great estates were divided and subdivided into ever diminishing plots of land. The poor became poorer, and worked smaller and smaller parcels of land. It was from these small farms that they had to raise enough food to feed themselves and also pay the rent to the landlord.

- Between 1750 and 1845 the total population of the country ballooned from approximately 2.6 million to 8.5 million, or by about 325 percent in a century. (3) Needless to say, this put an additional demand for land and vastly increased the numbers living in poverty.

The Famine 1845-1851
“God put the blight on the potato, but England put the hunger upon Ireland”, Traditional Gaelic Proverb

“It was above all the poverty of such a large segment of the Irish population that made the great famine so destructive of human life” (1) When the paths of population growth, the country-wide poverty, the failure of a vital crop, and the "laissez faire" response from Britain intersected in 1845, a massive downward spiral was unleashed. The blight began in Waterford and Wexford and quickly spread west and north. The potato blight moved across the country like a storm moving overhead, blackening the once lush and verdant landscape as it moved from field to field. Europe’s potato crop was also hit hard by the blight, but, unlike the Irish, the Europeans included many other foods in their diet that were not damaged by this epidemic. In sharp contrast, however, the diet of millions of Irish was exclusively the potato, sometimes supplemented with a little milk and fish. Before the famine, about seven million tons of potatoes were consumed by the Irish. It has been estimated that as high as nine tenths of the potato crop was infected by the fungus in the first year. (7) The fungus is thought to have been brought to Ireland aboard ships from America. This seems ironic since the tuber was originally introduced to Ireland from America, grown by its natives. (7)

Other potato crop failures had occurred prior to 1845, but they were more localized, lasting a brief time and had far fewer fatalities. This particular loss of crops, however, was the worst and longest lasting they had ever experienced. The fungus responsible for the destruction of the potato did not influence the other crops raised by the landlords. Foods such as wheat, oats, barley, wool, and flax were bountiful all during the time that the potato crop was emaciated. Throughout the time that about one million Irishmen were dying, one quarter to one half a million tons of food a year left Ireland bound for England, food that could have kept people alive. Oftentimes armed guards escorted convoys of wagons taking the foodstuffs to the docks for shipment, lest they be hijacked by the starving people along the way. Britain continued its policy of limited government intervention professing a policy of not interfering with market forces.

Workhouses were overcrowded with people outside clamoring to gain entrance. Hunger overcame the shame. Crowds waited outside the soup kitchens for hours with fights breaking out often. Streets in the towns and cities were lined with the starving, begging for food. Bodies were found by roadsides and in cabins after rats or starving dogs and cats had devoured them. Many died of disease which had become epidemic. After a long debilitating starvation, they succumbed finally to cholera, scurvy, dysentery.

Eviction and Emigration
“Alas, a sad and sorrowful fate awaits you in your homeland… but take heart. You will one day reach the promised land, far away, in the West.”, Ancient Gaelic prophecy (4)

As mentioned before, poverty was everywhere in Ireland even before the famine. England was slow to react to the tragedies being played out daily in the streets of her neighboring isle before and during the famine. In 1838, England passed the Poor Laws. These laws seemed to be intended to relieve some of the misery of the poorest of Ireland, but proved to be a finger in the dike. The Poor Laws divided Ireland into 130 unions, each with its own workhouse. This solution only hardened the feelings of the Irish against Britain. In order to enter the workhouse, the poor had to give up any land, even as little as a modest quarter acre. They were subjected to an interrogation to prove their impoverished state and then the entire family was moved onto the compound of the workhouse (the English were concerned they would just dump their children). (5) Men, women, and children were segregated. Most of all, these proud but poor were made to suffer in shame. These workhouses were only designed to accommodate about one percent of the population, a plan destined to fail from the beginning, and to spark animosity and rebellion during the famine.

The Poor Laws also shifted the burden of supporting the poor to the shoulders of the landlords and away from Britain. Landlords now would have to pay taxes for each tenant family. These taxes were to support the workhouses. Many of the tenants were already in arrears with their rent before the famine and some landlords were unsympathetic to their plights. Many landlords were quick to calculate that it was more profitable to evict the tenants and consolidate the land for larger agrarian ventures with fewer laborers, than to support these indigent families in workhouses. Estates were emptied of their impoverished inhabitants. Just in 1849 alone, it is estimated that 50,000 families, or 200,000 people were evicted. (6) Some landlords took the evictions to a new level by paying to have hundreds of families transported to places like Canada and dumping thousands and thousands of penniless Irishmen in their port cities. Landlords were assaulted and even murdered in retaliation. (9)

Evictions became commonplace. The constable would arrive at the door of the cottage along with a few of the landlord’s men and literally put the occupants on the street, then tear down the thatched roof and the walls of the mud cottages so that the dwelling would be inhabitable. The Tipperary Vindicator published this solemn editorial: “Whole districts are cleared. Not a roof tree is to be seen where the happy cottages of the labourer [sic] or the snug homestead of the farmer at no distant day cheered the landscape” (5)

Emigration was the only chance for survival for the poor. In the fifteen years prior to the famine, approximately 40,000 to 50,000 sailed from Ireland annually to escape the poverty and oppression. Now an enormous wave of emigrants fled the unrelenting famine. Refugees in hordes left their beloved country and flooded into England, British North America (Canada), Australia and mostly the United States. 1.2 million Irish left during the years of the famine, and another 900,000 left in the following five years. (8)

These travelers had not yet escaped tragedy once they had climbed the gangplank. The accommodations aboard ship were appalling, especially those who elected to sail to British North America because the steerage fare was about half of the cost for the United States route. Many of the transport ships used were formerly used in slave trading in America and timber ships, freshly unloaded of their Canadian forest products. Before, during, and for a time after the famine, these voyagers, well and sick, old and young, were packed into the ship’s holds until they were crammed. They were kept below deck for the six or seven week journey unless there was fair weather. Provisions of food, water, and medical attention, were minimally adequate. Sailing with them as shipmates were the byproducts of the tight quarters and unsanitary conditions…. infectious illnesses, such as typhus, TB, and cholera. The air was foul with the vile odors that accompany disease and poor hygiene. It was estimated that an average fifteen percent of the passengers never made it to their destination alive. These vessels earned the name of “Coffin Ships”.

In 1864, nine years after the end of the national nightmare, the exodus continued. Ned Devin was now seventeen with probably little reason to remain in Tipperary, one of the harder hit counties in the famine. His family likely helped him pay for the passage from Queenstown in the neighboring county, Cork, to Boston, Massachusetts. While the conditions aboard ship were not comfortable, they were luxurious compared to the abominable fashion some of his countrymen were transported during the years of the famine, nine years earlier. If he was lucky, he bought a ticket for one of the steamers which made the trek in two weeks. As was the tradition, Ned probably had an “American Wake” before he left his beautiful homeland. The American Wake was a gathering of friends and family the night before the emigrant left for the new world. Many came to encourage the traveler with stories of their own relatives who had made the journey, some to weep and lament that life would not be the same without them, yet others would simply press one or two coins into the palm of the guest of honor and express prayers and wishes for a safe journey. Since most emigrants never returned, the tradition was celebrated much like the well-know “Irish wake”, singing, fiddling, whiskey and all. Ned, most likely, traveled alone, since most did not have the money to take the whole family at one time. First one would go and then send money back for the next. When the next arrived, the two would earn enough for the next passage and so on. Ned was no means in the last wave of Irish to flee to America. Ireland continued to hemorrhage its native born well into the early 1900s.

Arriving in the New World
For those Irishmen who arrived during the famine, some things did not change. They were still poor. They would settle in slums with Irish as neighbors. These slums became known in the major cities as "shantytowns". They would suffer discrimination. Signs hung in prospective employers’ windows advertising available jobs with one additional note, “No Irish Need Apply”. Employment was limited to the most laborious and menial jobs. Since they were most likely in a port city, many worked as teamsters, loading and unloading cargoes at the docks. But, some things were different. They were free. Free to practice their religion. Free to vote. Free to run for office. And they did. They were quick to become citizens. They built churches and schools to educate their young. Many became involved in politics and became respected members of their community.

The Irish had a long history of oppression, rebellion, misery and revolution. This experience facilitated their organization of parochial clubs and formation of unions to fight the oppressors of the common workman. They also mobilized more violent and secret groups such as the Molly Maguires (b) , and the Fenians (c). See a list of Parochial Clubs and Irish American Organizations here.

Ned was born into this world during one crisis. As he stepped on to the docks of Boston around September 18, 1864, he knew he was again entering a new world of turmoil. His new homeland was at war with itself. The civil war had been going on since April of 1861. The famous battle of Gettysburg had been fought only ten months before. Most likely there were recruiting agents to greet him as he debarked and offered him a bonus and a wage, if he signed up for the Union Army on the spot. This offer was attractive to many new arrivals, since most had no idea where or how they were going start this new life. For many other young men who still felt the immortality of youth, this offered them just the kind of adventure they craved. Ned must have been fortunate, and met by a friend or relative who was already established in Boston. Many were not as lucky and were greeted by the con artists and rouges that preyed on the new and unsuspecting arrivals.

Ned Devin settled in South Boston or “Southie”, which even until today remains predominately Irish, and lived most of his life in the nearby Columbia Circle area of Dorchester. Ned's life mirrored the typical Irish immigrant in many ways. At least three of his brothers and his parents followed him at various times. He became a naturalized citizen at the age of twenty-six, just nine years after he arrived. He tried his hand as a Grocer and a Saloon- keeper for a short time, but spent the majority of his life as a Carpenter. He built his own home on Moseley St. where he raised nine children, with only two surviving to adulthood. This was not an abnormal mortality rate for children at this time. Since most immigrants lived in communities of their own countrymen, it is not too surprising he met his future wife, Hanora Reardon, in So. Boston. She had grown up a mere ten miles from Ned in Ireland, but they did not meet until the came to the United States. Not much is known about Ned’s temperament or personality, but we get a clue from the nickname Hanora used for him…”The Roaring Tip”. Ah, but that’s another story, for another day.

Slainte!

To view an Outline Descendant Chart of Ned and Hanora Devin, click here.