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Please Don’t Call it the Irish Potato Famine
Tubers didn’t cause it, it was a genocide
Where are my people of Irish ancestry in the USA? If you believe the statistics, we are everywhere. Over 31 million people in the United States claim Irish heritage, which is second only to German heritage. I claim both, as do many others in Wisconsin, where we might celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a green beverage and a bratwurst.
How did so many of our Irish ancestors decide to come here? Ding. Ding. Ding. You guessed it on the first try: the Irish Potato Famine, which is known in Ireland as the “Great Hunger.” The famine lasted from 1845 to 1852, and by the end, nearly one million people had died and another million had emigrated. In 1841 the population of Ireland was about 8 million, and by 1851 it was counted at 6.5 million. After 1852, the downward trend continued due to continued emigration, and by 1900, the population was just 4.5 million people. Today the population of Ireland is just over 5 million.
The Great Hunger is universally recognized as a tragedy of epic proportions. The problem comes when we try to assign blame. “Oh. Those poor Irish people! They depended too much on the potato, and when the blight came, they died or left. What a shame that the potato blight did that!” That was the version of the story that I learned in school. It was a cautionary tale of depending too much on one crop. What a load of rotten potatoes! The Great Hunger was a preventable disaster caused by racism combined with lassiez-faire capitalism.
Some of my own ancestors emigrated from County Waterford in 1847, at the height of the famine. John and Catherine Morrison left Ballyduff, Waterford, and found their way to Durham in the northern part of England. There they “participated” in the Industrial Revolution, working in the coal mines around Newcastle. In 1887, their son John emigrated to Pennsylvania, where John went to work in coal mines in Cambria County, near Johnstown. His wife Winifred and their ten children followed in 1889.
Winifred Morrison died sometime after 1889 and before 1900 when John is listed on the census as a widower. Winifred must have made quite an impression because every generation has repeated that name. Winifred’s eighth child was named Abraham, who later changed…
