The Daniel O'meara Family History

THE DANIEL O’MEARA FAMILY HISTORY ADDENDUM 2004 In The Daniel O’Meara Family History, when talking about the family’s migration, I stated “Nothing is known about their actual journey to America but, it must be assumed it was not easy.” The following information, pictures and drawings, will give everyone a feeling of what the family went through before emigrating to America. There is no way to know what the family’s circumstances were before their emigration but, Margie Bernard informed me that her grandmother, Eliza’s daughter, told her that Daniel’s father gave him a bag of coins or gold before their journey, and another contact, Tim O’Hara, remembers his grandfather, Mary Marcella’s son Fonce, “always speaking of the O’Meara side of the family as the sound business side, the ones of some influence back in Ireland.” I would like to lace together the genealogical account with what was happening with Irish history. It is essential to understand what was happening to the country at any point in time, in order to understand what was happening to an individual family. Remember, genealogical research is not just filling in names on a pedigree chart or family group sheet. It is the study of the entire family, its history, and its traditions. All of this brings our family back to life in a new way. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; The rains fall soft upon your fields And, until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand. A Gaelic Blessing Mary Ellen‘Tink’ Stewart-Bailey Feburary, 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Ireland the Tragedy 1 Images of the Famine 4 Baptismal Records 15 Documents 21 Updates 30 Ireland the Tragedy-(1180-1855) During this period the people of Ireland were confronted with several political and economic problems. Many Irish people emigrated to America to escape these hardships. For the Irish many of their problems began in the 1180's when the King of England decided that they needed more land.This need was created due to the small geographic land area of England and the practice of "primogeniture". This term meant that all family land inheritances went to the eldest son. In the1600's, the English attempted to establish their presence by beginning a policy of forced assimilation. In enforcing this policy they tried to eliminate the use of Gaelic (the Irish language) and eradicate the Catholic religion. Before the English introduced their thoughts and beliefs on male supremacy to Ireland, women and men had enjoyed social and political equality. It's a common assumption that Ireland's mass exodus during the first half of the l9th century was the result of the disastrous potato blight of 1845, but the famine was actually the proverbial last straw. Until the 17th century, the Irish, like much of feudal Europe, consisted of many peasants under the rule of a minority of wealthy landowners. When Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland in the mid-17th century, those landowners who refused to give up Catholicism saw their property confiscated and then redistributed to the English Army. By 1661, 40% of Ireland was owned by England. Many Irish peasants-stayed on as tenant farmers, working the land and paying rent for the small plots of land where they lived and grew their own food. But as crops became less profitable, many landowners began taking back the land from the Irish poor in order to graze sheep and cattle for English consumption. This led to a series of evictions, where tenant farmers were forced off the land that sustained them, often with no warning at all. These tenant evictions were another cause of emigration from Ireland. The British ruined the houses by either tearing down the roof or by burning them to the ground. One of the worst, now known as the Ballinglass Incident, (after the west coast village in County Galway), took place on March 13, 1846, about 6 months after the potato blight appeared. Anticipating mass starvation from the previous failed crop, Mrs. Gerrard, like many landowners, feared nonpayment of rent from her tenants, and suddenly leveled 61 houses occupied by 76 families. The following is an eyewitness account taken from The Great Hungar. The inhabitants were not in arrear of their rent, and had, by their industry, reclaimed an area of about four hundred acres from a neighbouring bog. On the morning of the eviction a 'large detachment of the 49th Infantry commanded by Captain Brown' and numerous police appeared with the Sheriff and his men...the people were officially called on to give up possession, and the houses were then demolished --roofs torn off, walls thrown down. The scene was frightful; women running, wailing with pieces of their property and clinging to door-posts from which they had to be forcibly torn; men cursing, children screaming with fright. That night the people slept in the ruins; next day they were driven out, the foundations of the house were torn up and razed, and no neighbour was allowed to take them in. (p. 71-2) This happened first in the middle of Ireland where the land was most fertile. Tenant farmers who weren't evicted found there was less land available to them, and these shrinking plots were being shared by more and more occupants. This created an irregular division of land ownership. Thus, a new way of indicating personal property was developed. Irish subsistance farmers now used stone fences to mark their property. Each fence had a distinct pattern/design clearly labeling ownership. A farmer's land was usually not adjacent, which made farming difficult. This diminishing land contributed much to Ireland's eventual reliance on the potato during the late 18th century. Potatoes didn't rob the soil of its nitrogen, and the amount of land needed to grow potatoes could feed more people than the same amount of land used to grow a grain crop like wheat. By the time the 1845 blight appeared, approximately 3 million people consumed little else, and the average adult male was eating 12-14 pounds per day. 1 The British, now having a predominance of land, exported cattle to England to serve as a source of food. Therefore the people of Ireland, who used to eat chickens and beef with spices, now were forced to become dependent on potatoes to survive. The Act of Union, 1801, annulled the semi-independent Irish Parliament and transferred political power definitively from Ireland to London. The effective disenfranchisement of a corrupt Dublin parliament, and the flight of landowners to London, led to large-scale social transformations. The large estates were now run by agents, and these were under pressure to maximise income from rents for the benefit of absentee landlords. Many were corrupt, all were committed to the greatest possible exploitation of the estates and their tenants. One of the consequences was that Irish agriculture adopted the potato as the staple food-crop of the peasantry, and economic forces acted to bring about what would prove a disastrous dependency on a very few varieties. The potato famine of 1848 was the most devastating Irish famine in history. Many of these people were forced to resort to the desperate practice known as bleeding. Bleeding was draining some of a cow's blood and mixing it with rotten potatoes and cabbage into a soup. This was used to help families combat the famine by keeping their strength up. The famine made some of the English sympathetic to the plight of the Irish. Workhouses were created to house and feed those that were unable to provide for themselves. Unfortunately the British as part of their Poor Laws made one of the conditions for entering the workhouse that you must give up all property that you owned. This was another way of getting the land from the Irish citizenry. There were also no guarantees that your family would be placed together in the same workhouse. They were really nothing more than places to go to die. The following was written by the vice-guardians (British government inspectors) of the Ennistymon workhouse. *There were collections of dirt and filth almost under every bed. On inspecting the laundry, we found the clothes, which had been washed and were in the process of drying, completly covered in vermin, and the persons and clothes of the paupers generally neglected. The situation was tragic enough that many of those suffering sent their children to America. Other times the male head of a household would leave, get employment in the nation of emigration, save his earnings and then send for the rest of the family. A passage to America during this time was approximately $10.00. It is estimated one in four people died during this famine. The high mortality rate caused parishs to hold mass funerals. Putting food on the table was a constant struggle and funeral bills were near to impossible to pay. For this reason, each church had a "community coffin". When there was a death in the community the people would use the coffin for the wake and the funeral. At the gravesite, a trap door would be opened and the corpse would fall into the grave. "Coffin Ships" were used by many Irish families for their passage to America. The British Passenger Acts attempted to deflect immigration from the British Isles to Canada rather than the United States by making it much more expensive to travel to the latter.

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