Professor Rice
History 17A
12 November 2005
I decided to research the topic of Irish immigration to America. Being of Irish heritage myself, I have always been fascinated by the factors that caused many of the residents of Ireland to cross the Atlantic to the United States. Having studied briefly about Irish immigration, I was familiar with the Potato Famine and that the Irish came by the masses to America, but I came to find that there were many other factors that prompted the Irish to settle in America. After doing some background research on the Irish from Reference.com, an Internet encyclopedia, I found that while the Potato Famine was a major cause of immigration, other factors such as religion and political tensions contributed to the Irish immigration to America. After Internet research, a consultation with several librarians, and pouring through magazine and newspaper articles, I completed my research. I acquired a greater understanding of why the Irish immigrated to America, the harrowing passage that they made to America on “coffin ships,” the discrimination that they faced, and ultimately, their contributions to American society.
Coffey, Michael, et al. The Irish in America. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
The Irish in America is a compilation of primary source documents, illustrations, excerpts from books, and contributions from eighteen authors. The author contributions, or “essays” were edited by Michael Coffey, who received a Master’s degree in Anglo-Irish literature from Leeds University. The book also consists of an ongoing narrative that traces the history of the Irish, which is written by Terry Golway. The book is divided into easily-read, chronologically-organized chapters, which remains helpful throughout the 272-page read. Joseph P. Kennedy introduces the book to readers, and he is followed by several other notable figures in our society that have descended from Irish immigrants. The preface takes the time to distinguish the American “melting pot,” leading up to how the Irish found their way to the United States. Beginning with the Potato Famine, this source explains everything from the “Great Hunger” to Irish descendents in the White House. The Irish in America reads like a story – complete with easy to understand graphs illustrating population growth and art depicting the sorrows of the Irish people. The book is extensive in its information, describing events such as the Poor Law Extension Act and Black 47, giving the reader a clear interpretation of what it was like to be an Ireland native in such troublesome times. The book also focuses on the building of a community, and ultimately, how the Irish came to be accepted into what they could call “home” – America. The source presents a well-rounded documentation of Irish hardship, journey, and success, combining primary sources with author contributions to evoke a better understanding of Irish heritage. Indeed, Irish in America seems to bring out the Irish in everyone.
Diner, Hasia. Erin’s Daughters in America. Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Hasia Diner’s Erin’s Daughters in America shows a collective view of what it was like to be a woman Irish immigrant in America. The book opens up by identifying and eventually refuting the typical stereotypes of Irish immigrant women. Diner explains how the women evolved from rural agriculturalists to city dwellers, stating their change from immigrant to American without loosing their cultural values. The book identifies the patterns of kinship systems among the Irish woman, and focuses on who they traveled with to America, a topic that was vaguely covered in previous sources. It also presents the change from rural countryside living to urban cramped apartments, and how the women adjusted to the new change in scenery. Erin’s Daughters in America features other topics such as social problems regarding religion and gender among women Irish immigrants, covering what most other sources lacked. The source also features poems that depict the Irish immigrant woman’s life in America. Readers would find this source most interesting if they wanted a more focused analogy of social structure, kinship ties, and the changes that female Irish immigrants endured in their journey across the Atlantic towards a seemingly better life.
Donlan, Leni, et al. “Immigration: Irish.” 11 September 2003. Library of Congress. 11
November 2005. <http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/irish.html>
This website is sponsored by the Library of Congress, which is the nation’s “oldest federal cultural institution.” The Library of Congress is also one of the oldest libraries in the world, and it boasts more than 130 million items, including books, articles, recordings, and other printed materials. The main purpose of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available to students and educators alike. The prestige of the Library of Congress is evident in the high quality of the compilation of research and multimedia on the immigration site. The website features several pages about Irish immigration, including topics such as colonial immigration, Irish-Catholic immigration to America, adaptation and assimilation, joining the workforce, religious conflict and discrimination, racial tensions, Irish identity, influence and opportunity, and Irish contributions to the American culture. This source is more of a holistic approach to the subject of Irish immigration, but remains thorough in the amount and quality of information. It goes beyond the Potato Famine; making reference to census figures, the passage to America, and the transition from a rural lifestyle to modern industry in the United States. This source also provided information about the aftermath of the masses from Ireland taking residence in the
United States. They faced workplace discrimination, where signs reading “Irish need not apply” forced them out of work, but into cheap labor such as in the coal mines; in addition to religious intolerance from a heavily-Protestant nation, who did not accept Catholicism. In turn, the site recognizes the effects of the mentioned factors, which included riots and social unrest. The Irish Immigration website also featured an interactive timeline, several pictures with captions on each page, maps, and census figures explaining Ireland’s decreasing population throughout the nineteenth century. The presentation was summarized nicely with examples of Irish heritage and pride, including adding the term “The Fighting Irish” to American vocabulary. It was also mentioned that the first Kennedy to arrive in the United States from Ireland was a laborer, who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to later become the grandfather of the late President John F. Kennedy. Indeed, this source offered a broad perspective of Irish immigration, offering useful information in an easy to understand format.
Galenson, David. “Neighborhood Effects on the School Attendance of Irish Immigrants Sons in Boston and Chicago in 1860.” American Journal of Education May 1997: 261-294
David Galenson is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a research associate of the National Bureau of economic Research. His thirty-three page article in the American Journal of Education complies data from the 1860 federal census of population. Galenson’s research reveals that living in a poor immigrant neighborhood in Boston reduced the probability that the son of an Irish immigrant would attend school, while being a son of an Irish immigrant in a poor neighborhood in Chicago would be more likely to attend school. In the article, Galenson describes his “data” or the Irish in scholarly terms, referring to the Irish as an important group in both Boston and Chicago. The Irish population in Boston was the largest immigrant group in the city, and the population of Irish in Chicago constituted of about eighteen percent of the population of 109,000. The article contains several easy to read charts demonstrating the probability of Irish immigrant’s sons attending school. His research concludes that the difference in probabilities of attending school for the two cities is because in Boston, immigrants faced a “public school monopoly,” and chastised the Irish for being inferior. On the other hand, in Chicago, parochial schools focused on educating the Catholic Irish immigrants. Indeed, this article is useful because it describes the different Irish populations within the United States, and discusses the question of how members of ethnic and racial minorities are possibly “injured economically” by living in segregated neighborhoods.
Gavin, Phillip. “Irish Potato Famine.” 12 June 2000. The History Place. 11 November 2005
<http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/america.htm>
A graduate of Northeastern University and Boston University, Phillip Gavin has devoted his time to the creation of a nearly commercial-free, private, independent, and Internet-only publication of collections of historical events. Gavin created The History Place to show examples of “man’s inhumanity to man.” The History Place website has received numerous awards for its content, reliability, and historically accurate accounts of our society. Several awards include, but are not limited to: Britannica Internet Guide Award, Discovery Channel School, and History Channel’s Recommended Sites. Gavin explores the Potato Famine with great depth, beginning with an introduction that describes Ireland as an agricultural nation, a nation that was made up of the poorest people in the Western world, with only one quarter of the population being able to read and write. The site goes into great detail of the history of the potato and the importance of the staple food to the Irish peasants, in addition to describing the social unrest that occurred before the famine. The source describes how English reformers hoped to remake Ireland into their own image, hoping to end the continuous cycle of poverty and misfortune. Gavin also covers such topics such as Relief Commissions, laissez-faire, The Great Hunger, “black forty-seven”, financial ruin, and the history of the troubles that the Irish faced, which all led up to the mass immigration of the Irish to America. Gavin does not just focus on the Potato Famine as a cause for immigration, but rather, includes more history and the hardships that the Irish faced to create a well-covered historical account of Irish immigration. Indeed, this website covers the information where other websites would fall short of covering information in such detail.