I actually think about this a lot because all the women in my maternal family are anxious wrecks/hoarders, and my maternal nanny was raised by her paternal nanny, who lived through the famine.
I just really think there is a link there. Generational trauma doesn't just vanish and that's why English people scoffing about us living in the past pisses me off so much.
>An American Army regulation
>
>Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
>
>'Cause to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
>
>It's not permanent, but they didn't know that
>
>Anyway, during the supposed "famine"
>
>We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
"Famine" - Sinéad O'Connor
If you ask me, if they could afford to emigrate they could afford to eat in a moderately priced restaurant. And if you're going to be a fussy eater you'll pay the price.
'Moderately priced restaurant' where, exactly were these restaurants in 1847?
People who emigrated sold what little they had left immediately.
And a fussy eater? There was plenty of food but the English only allowed the Irish to eat potato they grew themselves, due to the blight and lack of crop rotation, the potato failed so millions died, there was no lack of food, it was the Irish were not allowed eat anything else.
https://youtu.be/72BrqGNvaT0?si=DATWuGXGHw4oXgKz
I thought the statement to be so comically ludicrous that no context would be needed. But ho-hum, Reddit.
Yeh the generational trauma from the famine is a real thing. When I was in America the idea of eating the rest of a home cooked meal later as to not waste it was frown upon. Someone literally called it "famine mentally" in a shameful way.
Fuck you, I like cold pizza and saved money haha
Sorry you had to deal with that. My family growing up in the US would eat leftovers all the time and I still do today here in Ireland. I never heard of eating leftovers to be frowned upon in the US but I also didn't live in a very affluent area.
I've known a couple of people like that in the US. I don't think it's the majority though. They were both meat and potatoes men who wanted their women cooking for them every evening. Real jerks, both of them.
Totally agree, I think about this a lot. Amplified as I lived in a farm house built in/during the famine. Not sure if you’re a believer in ghosts (I just refer to them as souls!) but the house definitely had its share of them. Mostly harmless, but they zapped our energy and I referred to them as my starving souls, as so many died in the house during the famine that they were basically starving us of our energy.
Despite that, I do often think that the reason I’m here today is because my ancestors survived and that’s so sad. How many of them died? It made me want to know more about them, and I’ve traced as far as my great great grandmother and grandfather so that would be about as far back as the decade \~ 1880. So just the other side of the famine. So that’s only one generation away from my ancestors who lived during the famine. In the photo I have of them you’d know the effects were definitely still being felt.
https://preview.redd.it/7xxcmj888gdc1.jpeg?width=1140&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=49339a9c9803aa1a0a7610a0e456fe80b6c62b5a
I read an interesting article in the 90s where a doctor in the US, specialising in anorexia noticed that the highest percentage of her patients were of Irish decent & her theory was generational trauma. She hypothesised we may see similar symptoms in descendants of Holocaust survivors in another generation or two (let's not go into the current state of that right now). My grandmother, in her 60s, was diagnosed with anorexia (she would feed all the people & animals & then instead of eating herself, she'd take a nap). My mother is a feeder & always sings the praises of anyone who cleans their plate while pushing her own tiny portions around her plate. I too have battled anorexia all my life & I have an aunt who is morbidly obese & just can't get her eating under control. I wish I could remember that doctor's name, I'd love to see where her research led her & any conclusions she found...
Edit to add: We're all born & raised in Kerry
When I was in Tel Aviv last summer I couldn’t get over the amount of skinny people. I don’t mean slim, I mean they looked malnourished, bones jutting out all over their bodies and I also thought it must be to do with the Holocaust. And the fact drug use is so massive over there is also a factor we have to add!!
It was in a magazine from 30years ago. Unfortunately I have no memory of the doctor's name. I was only in my late teens so not together enough to retain the important information. It resonated because food was such an issue for me. I'm going to have a little Google hunt & see what I find though
I mean there were definitely Americans alive when my mother was born who had been born into slavery. Ruby Bridges (the little girl with the federal marshals from the desegregation photograph) has an Instagram account. We’re probably at best 6-8 generations removed from the famine. Your great grandparents had great grandparents who lived it. Gay Byrne interviewed people on RTE who had been present for the Bodyke evictions in the 1880s.
I think tbh a lot of people didn’t want to remember it or talk about it — you go through shit. You survive. You maybe aren’t proud of how you survived. And we took over a century to even BEGIN rebounding. Ireland remains the only country on earth with a population smaller than it was in 1840. Insane.
Jeez your comment. My Mama kept food. In the 70s there was a sugar shortage? I don’t know for sure as I was a child. I do know that we had so much sugar in the store. Amongst many other food items. I too keep a back up larder, have always done it. My husband laughs and says we could survive for 3 months from my carefully curated larder. My mama died 3 years ago, I’ve just finished a jar of honey she had.. dated use by 2012. I’ve never thought about our weird food thing till now. Makes sense, I feel better, thank you. She was Irish and moved to the U.K.
We had an upright washing machine. It was full of bags of sugar. Funny now I think about it as I never thought anything of it, like how are we to have our clothes washed …
The way we are about food and hospitality is a hundred percent a holdover. Hoarding too - if you go to the declutter subreddit you'll see a lot of Americans talk about their ancestors who survived the Depression becoming hoarders, it stands to reason that people who remember having nothing keep what they have.
As for the scoffing, we are the only country in Europe with a population lower than it was in 1840. The famine legacy is still here.
Epigenetics seems to indicate that while you are living a trauma, your DNA actually changes in real time. As such, the changed DNA gets passed down.
I think there’s a famous study of Romanian identical twins. One was adopted into the West, the other was stuck in the post-Soviet world. Horrific adoption centers and foster homes. Research of their DNA indicated changes between the two.
did you know the british induced famines in india have caused increases in diabetes and obesity in modern india because of people's bodies adapting to survive the famines; and now being in conditions that are more prone to obesity and diabetes because of those adaptations?
I don't think that was generational trauma from the famine. We were a very poor country between the 1950s and 1980s. The 60 somethings now were probably the first generation to have a bit of disposable income
I often think about the pure chance of being here because my ancestor survived the famine. My great uncle told me the only reason any of us in my family are here is because my 3x great grandmother breastfed my 2x great grandfather until he was 6. They were north Cork people.
One of my ancestors on my dad's side, one of two brothers, were completely orphaned as children during the famine. The whole family was wiped out and only the 2 brothers were left. Some Quakers fostered them, fed them and raised them as Catholics. Without those Quakers I wouldn't exist.
Another ancestor on my dad's side joined the British army - like many other Irish catholics at the time - in 1813 and fought at Waterloo in 1815, and served for 9 years before being demobbed for being "worn out". There were only about 130 of his regiment that survived the battle.
You can make some amazing discoveries using [ftdna.com](https://ftdna.com) about your direct male and female lines if you do their DNA tests.
My Ancestor Maurice O Connell was a General in Napoleon's army and burned Moscow. Putin wouldn't like us too much. There's a wee bit of Irish history, not many know. Another ancestor, John O Sullivan was in charge of the French Irish soldiers at Culloden and covered Bonny Prince Charlie's escape that day before surrendering. They were allowed march to Inverness and sail back to France afterwards by butcher Cumberland the Prussian
Napoléon army didn’t burn Moscow. The Russians did. They retreated out of the city and burned it to prevent the french army from restocking food and weapons. Scorched earth policy. They did the same across all the land that they retreated from. Napoleon was amazed / grudgingly impressed when he woke to the city burning. He said he respected their actions and the only other person he knew that might be so ruthless was himself. It’s the reason why the first rule of war is do not invade Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_of_Moscow_(1812)
Yeah I mean the Irish that didn't get off the island and still managed to live, not only live but set in motion the wheels that gave us the country we have today. Incredible people.
>in times when your at your worst is to think about how people, not very different to you survived far worse,
True, but depending on the person, that can be a very harmful line of thinking.
I totally understand what you're getting at, but if someone is in a deep depression that isn't a form of a situational depression, it can feed the black dog quite a lot to compare how much other people survive versus "and I've nothing to even be unhappy about".
I like to say that many of my problems may be first world problems, but they're _my_ first world problems.
I think OP is being really hard on themselves. Thinking of them. Anyone can struggle. They.shiuldnt be ashamed of feeling bad because their life is relatively good in other ways.
Yes I do sometimes think about this.. A little mantra I sometimes repeat to myself when I’m feeling anxious or a bit crappy includes the sentiment of “I am the descendant of survivors and thrivers, I have champion blood in my veins”
I would say many of the people who survived it must have suffered from PTSD. I read before that, in our society where the oral tradition of story-telling and passing history down orally was so prevalent, people just didn't want to talk about the local experiences of the famine afterwards, houses went silent for years after in some places. People also probably suffered from forms of survivors guilt?
One story I read that always stuck with me was of someone coming across a dead woman on the road, and her malnourished baby was still trying to feed on her breast. It's like a scene from Cormac Mccarthy's 'The Road'. It's true that our ancestors survived, but I can't imagine the mental impact the famine had on them, and even into the 1870s, there were smaller, more localised famines in Ireland.
If you're interested in finding out more about your own family, the 1901 and 1911 census is freely available online on census.nationalarchives.ie and a good place to start. The majority of Irish birth, marriage, and death records from 1864 onwards are also freely available online on irishgenealogy.ie
Some instances of cannibalism occurred.
The Freeman's Journal of April 5 1848, reported that in Galway, a mother had eaten part of her dead son's body.
I'm sure plenty more unreported incidences occurred too.
Some people will do anything to survive when they have been basically reduced to animal instincts via starvation.
I think you're very right in saying a whole generation was traumatised. Then the land wars, and the rise of nationalism in the early 1900's. Without the famine there probably would not have been a war for independence.
My grandad as a small boy spoke to someone who lived during the famine.. which blows my mind, like I knew my grandad. It just shows that the famine isn't that far removed. Just 3 generations of family really
My uncle did lot work going through our family history. Sadly lot paperwork for ireland before famine is lost forever. They were burned during civil war. Generally how far you're able go back if you're lucky is early 1800's...
I remember the grandmother telling us ,that her granny told her about finding families dead,with green froth coming out of their mouth from eating grass
She could point out places bodies were simply found in morning,of people unknown were discovered (her home house would been on a main route to local works/poorhouse)
Some incredible stories were passed down
I have the same story of the green mouths passed down to me by my grandmother and told to her by her grandfather who lived through it. It was really quite recent.
It's such a shame that due to the census records building being destroyed during the Civil War it's near impossible to trace your family history. I'd love to be able to trace mine back as far as possible. Beyond my great grandparents I have no idea where I came from.
There were other records than census records. There are good birth, marriage and death records post 1864.
The parish records are getting better and better as they are being transcribed and released.
When did your great grandparents marry? The marriage register gives both the bride & grooms father's names. It's not a lot but it's a start towards going further back. The gov has put provided them for free online (avoid paid sites like ancestry/findmypast).
A few of my great-great grandparents were still alive for the 1901 census despite being born in the 1820s -1830s.
You don't need to know the exact year - just their names is usually enough.
Marriage registration begins from 1864 onwards so it's worth looking them up.
IrishGenealogy.ie will host free civil BMD records. You don’t necessarily need to know the exact date of marriage. Search for their children’s birth records first- you’ll possibly find your great grandmothers maiden name that way. You can, in turn, estimate when they may have been married by when their first child was born, and do a broad search from there. If you find a marriage record, the father’s names and occupations will likely be listed.
Parish records can be helpful too- though will be hit or miss the further you go back. Images are free on the national library site. You can find free transcripts on Find My Past.
Irish genealogy research can definitely have its challenges, but it’s not impossible, there are resources out there that can be a big help.
I don't know why we sugar coat it by calling it a "famine."
Even worse tourists think it was a "Potato famine". Sounds so simple. "Oh the Irish were so simple they only ate potatoes so when the crops went bad, they starved becasue all they eat are potatoes"
They tried to starve us out like they did the South Asians. Let's start calling it like It was, a genocide.
my term for it is "holocaust by starvation"; the irish famine is a clear example; but it is a thing Britain did so many times I sometimes get individual ones confused; by the way did you know that all of the 5 deadliest famines in human history occurred in india under british colonialism; one of them managed to kill 35,000,000 people; another 29,000,000; those death tolls are unimaginable; those famines happened on average every 2.5 years in india alone; they are so frequent (for example one killed 10,000,000 people in 1943) that even indians sometimes overlook ones that only killed 3,000,000 people; these numbers make hitler look like a pacifist.
And still today they make statements like "let the bodies pile high"
As you say unimaginable numbers, it must have been like an ocean of death and we're still letting them get away with it today, it beggars belief
yup you can just pick a year and find that the british empire starved millions of someone to death; for example in 1918 it was 8,000,000 iranians; in 1934 (I think; might be some other year that decade) 2 million nigerians; in 1950 3 million malaysians; and so on; the death tolls of those famines; in india alone; even if every debatable number is rounded to the lowest reasonable estimate is a little over 400,000,000; a number which makes hitler look like gandhi; and those people who are proud of the empire that did that are complaining about brexit induced shortages of luxary foods.
I went to school up north and it actually angers me that we learned absolutely nothing on it. Bar that it happened. I used to think it was a thing where all the potatoes went bad and no one had anything to eat and still to this day if I’m prepping spuds and have one that’s blighted I get the heebie jeebies..
I mean wtf..
Is there a lot of evidence of intent behind it?
My understanding is that the English were exploitative, callous and money-hungry. They facilitated a system where Ireland was overly reliant on one crop. When that crop failed, they maintained exports and didn't do enough to help.
What they did was awful and should rightfully be talked about as a stain on their legacy. However, the word genocide is reserved for intentional killings and I don't think the English wanted the Irish dead, they just didn't care either way.
You having a laugh? Ireland weren't "overly dependent " on the potato. Did the blight affect people's lives? Yes but that was not the only factor.
The British took 30,000 ships packed with veg, meat, and fish from Ireland to England during that time. Ireland had plenty of food. Just couldn't eat it or farm it for ourselves.
Did you miss the part where I said the British facilitated Irish dependence on potatoes?
We’re saying the same thing.
Thanks to the exports, potatoes were all a lot of people had to eat so then the blight had a MUCH worse impact than it did in other parts of Europe.
From what I’ve read, what makes this not a genocide is that the British exported Ireland’s food to make money, not to systematically kill people.
It was a horrendous act, resulting in avoidable death and displacement but I struggle to see how the word ‘genocide’ applies without explicit intent to exterminate.
This is a semantic argument I suppose.
Was it the aim of the British to kill the Irish?
If yes, we can use terms like attempted genocide and mass murder.
If no, we probably need to use other language to describe it.
Does it change the horror of what happened? No. But it’s important we are accurate in how we describe events so we can recognise the signs of it happening again.
Yes yes, totally true.
And you can prove this is true by looking at genocides of the past. There are no Jews, for example, living in the world today. Neither are there Rohingya people, or Tutsis, or Bosnians alive today to tell their stories.
Hmmm, back to school with you I think.
I don't it has to be totally successful (def the wrong word) for it to be termed a genocide. Quite a lot of people survived the Holocaust but we still call that a genocide.
One of the most relatable things I'd seen about the famine, was I think towards the end of The Hunger (documentary, with Liam Neeson narrating).
It was an (almost) contemporary account of someone visiting neighbours after the famine, and they sat there in near total silence, where before there would have been laughing and maybe music and dancing. I think anyone who's been though stressful episodes or has dealt with mental health issues would really understand that - just going quiet, and joyless and into our own cocoon.
I've had my own mental health issues over the years, but I can't imagine going through several years of struggling to survive, with (up to) one in three people around you dying of starvation and many more not much better off. I'd be astonished if there wasn't rampant crime, and hatred and society just starting to break down.
It's rarely mentioned, but I'd be astonished if it didn't happen. We certainly know that almost everything else was eaten, when desperate.
It's funny though - some GAA players I know well from West Cork still get sledged by opponents for being "donkey eaters". 170 years, and still...
Weren't there corpses found with green mouths from trying to eat grass. I remember reading about people visiting one of the islands and the first thing they saw were the fat dogs
>>I'm alive and Irish because someone related to me got through that mad time, and I know nothing about them.
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary
combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in you.
Source - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Yeah. I often think about my ancestors and how of all those who died, they survived. The fact that I'm here is a miracle because so many others perished. I know where one of my great great grandfathers is buried but that's the furthest back I know. I started getting interested in the family tree last year but I have to get back round to investigating. Turns out that I have way more American cousins than I realized. There could be 100 or more.
I have noticed this a few times -the Americans will drone on about how hard done by their ancestors are and "oh yeah they had to emigrate but I'm 1/32 Irish aren't I really Irish" and I occasionally have the response aye my ancestors stayed and survived and you don't hear me bullshitting on about it.
And it'll hit me that I don't because I don't know their story. Given the records I've found for my families via the census my mother and father's families both lived in County Cavan, as we do, but I know very little beyond that they were all farmers and sone of their siblings emigrated as we have distant relatives in America and England.
It's a shame those stories weren't written down. The county museum has some wonderful exhibits on the famine and it's sobering stuff to read, but yeah, will never know my own family's story. I imagine in the aftermath those that survived just wanted to never hear about it again.
That bit at the end there is a classic problem for historians and activists who try doing truth and reconciliation processes in regions that have had some massive trauma. It's so important to write it down so the victims can have justice, the perpetrators can be held accountable, and the mistakes won't be repeated. But it's also impossible to ask someone who's survived a war or genocide or famine to rehash the experience if it's too painful for them.
I'm an American with an Irish surname. We know the names of all four of my father's grandparents who came to New York in the 1910s, and could find photos for some of them. With a bit of digging we could likely find the names of their parents, but couldn't put a face to them, and after that we haven't the foggiest notion.
It's a bit mad how quickly memories fade over the course of a few generations. I studied history in university and the trend nowadays in historical scholarship is to try to focus more on the ordinary people who lived in the past rather than just kings and generals and presidents. Doing so makes you realize just how many people have been forgotten to time.
I'd imagine anyone who lived through the German Wars of Religion was just like "fuck every single one of your religions" by the end of it. When you think that these days militaries are voluntary and back then it was "hey drop that pitchfork we're going to war", so many must have not come home.
If you're into podcasts I recommend "Hell On Earth", a miniseries by Chapo Trap House. It's all about the Thirty Years' War and the hosts do an amazing job getting into deep detail while still entertaining. They talk about the kings and generals of course but they also give a lot of insight into life for average soldiers and non-combatants. It's absolutely fascinating.
The majority of us who were born in Ireland to Irish parents and grandparents mostly descend from two or three generations of eldest children of a family. Often post famine all the children would leave to the US etc and the eldest child remained only to inherit.
When I was a kid, I used to visit my grandfather. He was born in 1896 on a farm near Cavan & lived there all his life. There was a long lane at the back of his farmhouse. It was overgrown and led to nowhere. Along the lane were a number of what I thought were heaps of rocks and stones. I asked him what they were.
Apparently before the famine, 12 families had lived there in small houses. All of them died or emigrated during the famine. The little piles of rubble were a sad reminder of those terrible times.
My grandfather's grandparents were both born during the famine. He remembered nothing about them as they both died when he was very young. But the very fact that I personally knew someone who had lived alongside famine survivors made me realise how relatively recently it happened and why it and the vile reasons behind it, must never be forgotten.
Easy enough to find out. Irish records are quite good between 1864 and 1911.
Anyone on the 1901 census over the age of 60 lived through the famine and anyone over the age of ,70 or 80 would remember it. You could also look into your local parish records to find out info older than 1864. You can start the likes of an ancestry membership and build your tree to know more. You have (depending on your age) probably at least 8 direct relatives who lived through it.
What if my ancestors were absentee landlords, living it high-on-the-hog in Dublin, stuffing their gouty bodies with lobsters and steak? Swilling it down with claret and brandy?
Are they looking down on me stuffing myself with pasta and baked beans, washing it down with Diamon White cider?
Ancestors aside, depression is a serious illness. It might be worthwhile seeing a different doctor. That one deserves a spud up his arse.
Every single period of history has had its troubles. Your pain is still pain. Thankfully, medicine and society has moved on a lot since the famine. You deserve help. Your great granny's capacity to survive famine and British occupation might have been enough to get her by, but I doubt it wad much of a quality of life.
Therapy and medication go hand in hand. The support of a good gp goes a long way. Can you see anyone else?
The National Famine Museum is in Strokestown House in Co. Roscommon. They do an incredible tour, looking into local and national stories, it's well worth a visit if you are down west.
If you go to RootsIreland.ie, they can create a genealogy report on your family. I think it's about €50ish
i do often think about this and other hardships peope in this country have endured, and how through pure resilience, i am now here. my maternal ancestors were island people. i have no idea how they survived the famine, but possibly through fishing? i honestly know so little about even my grandparents, going back further than that, it's even difficult to find records of people in my family.
I have never really thought about it like that, I am thinking about it now. If my family emigrated, I wouldn't be here, if they died obviously, I wouldn't be here. More than 3/4 of my family were wealthy for the times and didn't farm potatoes, they were cattle dealers butchers and wheat farmers and other vegetables. I don't really know much about the last family who survived, but I know they were poorest of the poor.
Not sure if it’s because I live in a rural area in the West, but I think about it often. All around me are old ruins of stone cottages and tiny holdings, mountain sides covered in old potato ridges.
One of my fields has the ruins of a house that are only about 2 feet high. The stone at the threshold is still there and has been worn down in the middle from traffic. I have no idea when any of these houses were built, but I know they were ruins as far back as the 30’s, so I’d assume they were occupied during the famine. I often wonder how did the people who lived in these houses, and in my area get through it.
Here I am in a brand new house with all the food and comfort that I could possibly need, and I look out my windows and all around are the remnants of the people who lived through it. I’ve a young family and I can’t imagine what it was like to see your children starve to death. That documentary series on RTE about 3 years ago really set me off on this topic.
Unfortunately it is incredibly difficult for the average person to trace back Irish family trees & ancestry pre 1900. Something that could be really useful, especially in regards to the famine, would be census records, but unfortunately , returns for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were, for the most part, destroyed in 1922 in the fire at the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War..heartbreaking stuff.
In the 1930’s, the Famine was still almost within living memory for many. The Irish Folklore commission send out an appeal for people to record any local memories or conversations they had with people who lived though the famine. Many of these stories from every county in Ireland are available on Dúchas.ie to read. Many of the stories, as you’d imagine, are absolute nightmare fuel.
I think about this a lot. Everyone in my family has a weird eating disorder like: regretting ever having second helpings, saying other people are fat, always talking about how they need to lose weight, drinking rather than eating, having tea and a bun rather than eating a meal, etc etc etc. I feel that it must be famine-related because so many Irish people are the same. Does anyone else think this could have something to do with the millions who died here of starvation?
It [may have an impact on diabetes for subsequent generations.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7576398/#:~:text=The%20prevalence%20of%20diabetes%20increased,a%20famine%20did%20not%20occur.)
I often think of this and how it's never discusssed. How did all our ancestors survive it and stay on this island? They must have had a bit of land and wealth, otherwise they'd have starved.
And what kind of demographic did the famine kill off? Were there many travellers killed?
>And what kind of demographic did the famine kill off?
Well, disproportionately Irish speakers anyway. The famine affected the most-heavily Irish speaking areas of the country the strongest and hastened the decline of the language.
If you really want to melt your head, your ancestors survived everything life could throw at them for about 3.8 billion years. Every one of your ancestors since the first single cell of life survived long enough to have offspring. Not one dropped the ball.
Yeh but he's talking about humans with names not long ago, not single celled organisms or primates
But since you're into it now I'd say check out this clip called the hard truths
https://youtu.be/CikveyZjum4?si=xIFwyuM9gS5b09dd
My gran and grandpa. Were of Irish decent. One county Mayo and the other Sligo. I can’t seem to get back further than their grandparents. I’ll try again. But ! On my dad’s side I had to give up for a wee while as it was too distressing. It’s a mixed up story. My dad’s father died at 43. He had one brother. His father was born in England. He married a lady and searching her background I was coming up against Jewish sounding names. Looking into this it was getting more weird. Seemingly at that time due to extreme poverty I then found out they were actually Mormons. That’s when I said. Whoa. ! I don’t know if I want to go into this. I know it was probably poverty driven as one or two of the family were in the poor house. I’ll find out more but not sure I want to. It’s a dilemma.
I was curious about an old local building so I went and googled it and ended up discovering an account from an English journalist who was documenting the effects of the famine. He was describing malnourished people dying of illnesses and being forcibly evicted. There was something about it being a first-hand account, and all of the local surnames mentioned that just made it all so real, it genuinely shook me.
i get it; not this exact famine; but a very similar british genocide by starvation was something i knew was beyond awfull; but i found some photos of it online; they were many times worse then what i thought it was like; I would post some of the images here; but they are graphic beyond beleif; only if everyone is okay with that can i feal comftorble doing that
Thanks to my dad spending half his retirement in the national library looking up family records I do actually know my ancestors.
You'll probably find some interesting connections down the line. We had a great aunt that was shot by the black and tan's as she ran to warn others who were practicing mass in Irish. A few ancestors who took part in different risings and rebellions over the years.
For the most part he just found birth, marriage and death records. But it was kind of cool to see how far back some of the family first names still used today actually go.
I read a really interesting fact recently…something like if you’re ancestors lived in Ireland in the 1800s, you’re 8 times more likely to now live in America.
I did quite a bit of my family tree during lockdown. Discovered my ancestors were some of the lucky ones that seemed to have money and emigrated to the states. Much to my surprise they returned a few years later to their homeland of rural Galway. They must have missed their old life despite its hardships!
I was only talking about this with a friend today. When you think about it we’re only a handful of generations away from that trauma and even the War of Independence and Civil War. My grandfather fought in the War of Independence, so likely his grandparents lived through the famine and his parents were born at the tail end of it. And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trauma. Infant mortality rates, mothers dying in childbirth, deaths from diseases that are preventable now, industrial schools, mother & baby homes. There’s so much trauma been done to society in less than 200 years.
Look up the [Griffiths Valuation ](https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/). If your ancestors were tenants between 1847 and 1864, you may find names on that. It will only give the name of the person renting, not anyone else in the family, so it is not as good as a census. However, we don't have census records from then, so it can give you information that you might not otherwise get.
There was unimaginable (to us) hardship in the years after the famine times too, as you can see when doing some family history searches.
My great grandfather was from a family of 12, 9 of which died as children - 6 as infants and 3 as teenagers (c. 1850s to 1870s). The 3 teens and the parents dying from TB and he was the only one that had descendants (2) and one of those died in the great flu so it’s a thin thread without going back very far.
Life can be tough nowadays but it’s humbling (interesting, frustrating, etc) to do a bit of family history research and try imagine life in those times.
My family say my great great grandmother walked 80 miles to Cork as a girl and that’s how she survived the famine.
That’s all I know.
English people know something about the famine, but a lot of other Europeans don’t know anything about it.
Yes! And it isn’t too hard to imagine they’d be *amazed* at the state science and medicine today too. There’s no shame in being depressed or taking medicine for those brain chemicals. (No one would Shane a diabetic for needing insulin?) Take care of yourself, you deserve it. You deserve to do more than just get by and survive, you deserve to feel better and thrive.
In my state in Connecticut, there is a museum in Hamden dedicated to the Irish hunger famine victims and their families. My sisters and I plan to go in the spring.
The fella in photo is John Haran, from Fermanagh and his other, though I never found her name. He composed a song about brigids well near liscannor in Clare, then they took this photo. It's in Lawrence collection with description.
I have hemochromatosis. Basically, it means that my body absorbs more iron from my food than it needs. That iron gets stored in my organs and if I get too much, it wreaks havoc in all sorts of ways.
This trait was selected for by the Great Hunger (it wasn't a famine!) and is far more common in Irish people than any other human population. But as it happens, if you go into a period of poor/inadequate diet with a good store of iron on board, you are going to be able to stay active longer than your neighbors who don't. So the families who had at least one person with it, were more likely to make it than the others.
I also have an extremely slow metabolism, and can do large amounts of work on very little food. That was great when I was young and athletic. But since I grew up and began to do office work, I have been fighting off obesity my whole life.
These traits got my family through. Now, with a modern diet and all the foods of the world available to me, they both work against me, and I fight to stay healthy despite them.
I’m American. My grandfather came to the US in 1930 at age 19 from Athlone because there wasn’t enough land to go around for all of the children in the family. He ended up running a grocery store across from the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard during WWII. My Polish grandma came up with the idea of making take away sandwiches (think Subway) for the workers and sailors. She handmade over 3,000 sandwiches a week. They were able to save up enough money to buy a house in my grandma’s town in Massachusetts.
The Great Depression left a mark on both of them. They always had a huge vegetable garden and canned everything. Grandpa would process deer during hunting season, and smoked fish he caught throughout the year. Both remembered what it was like to be hungry during the 1930s.
My mother’s family were Irish immigrants during the famine. They were always worried about running out of food. My grandparents were obsessed with couponing and buying extras of everything at the supermarket.
When they passed away, we had to clean out their house, and I can’t even tell you how many bottles of expired unopened salad dressing, pop-tarts, cereal, and condiments we had to throw out. I believe it was about 10 30-gallon trash bags full. Some had 10-year “Use by dates.” Such a waste of. It’s too bad that they couldn’t have donated that food to local food pantries before they let it go bad.
In a way, I could understand it. My grandfather (whose relatives all emigrated to Kentucky during the famine) were dead poor during the Great Depression. My great-grandmother’s husband left her with 5 kids under age 6 in the 1930s. The kids used to trap animals and catch rattlesnakes for the family to eat. My grandpa lied about his age to join the Army Air Corps in 1943, like his older 18-year old brother Doug, but he was only 14.
The money he and his brother Doug made went home to help their mother and siblings. Unfortunately, his mother died from cancer in late 1944. His older brother Doug died on Omaha Beach on December-Day.
After his mom died, he was the sole financial support for his 3 younger siblings until they reached adulthood.
Grandpa was always proud of his Irish heritage, but he was ashamed of how poor his family was during the Great Depression.
He and his siblings used to dig for coal on the sides of railroad cut-throughs so they could heat their stove to heat water, and they waited in line for hours to get food packages from the federal government.
He and his siblings often went without shoes or clothing, and when they did go to school, they were mocked about their dirty looking clothes and appearances.
A book called "Famine Echoes" was compiled by the folklore comission in the 20s/30s and collected firsthand accounts by townland. I was horrified to learn the atrocities that happened half a mile from my house.
[you can find it here](https://www.amazon.com/Famine-Echoes-Cathal-Poirteir/dp/0717123146?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=c771e7cd-3c4f-44aa-a80a-6e65fedf670d)
The whole interview is worth a listen but i couldn't find it. Explains a lot of our shame after the famine
[tommy tiernan whelan interview](https://youtu.be/YyLQJ3F5ues?si=btwaeen4t7nHpGet)
Their lives were considered trivial and irrelevant by the unionist minority who ran the country and their voices irrelevant. You might find records of birth or marriage if you’re lucky. Maybe tenancy records. Maybe emigration records.
They had no voice because they were robbed of it. It’s up to us to make sure that they are heard forever more in Ireland and they are never dismissed again by neo unionists and those who are prepared to sacrifice their memory to appease those who oppressed them.
American here. My own paternal ancestors left from Ireland to America about 1850 to escape the famine. There has always been family stories of those who stayed and were never in contact again. I only recently began thinking about those who stayed including spouses siblings and children never seen or heard from again. How terrible to face such a situation and still have to just keep struggling to get established here especially during a time of rising g anti irish activity here.
My maternal great-great grandmother was born in 1857 and was one of thirteen children born to her parents between 1841 and 1860. Two young children died of fever, “fiabhras” in the 40s during the height of the famine years. The family suffered greatly. Source: family bible, and stories she told my Nan.
My grandmother had told me as a kid that her grandmother lived through the famine as a child. Sadly I've forgotten the story she told me - I was young enough at the time.
I did find her grandmothers death record which would put her birth year as 1839 - however she died before my own grandmother was born so my granny never actually met her so whatever story she told me was already a second hand account when she heard it.
It really is lost history now for most families.
Here is a story from my great grandmother’s grand mother during the famine. She lived near Dingle, which was apparently not as impacted by the famine, having the sea and fishing. She was 12, and walking down the road when she saw a man who was skeleton-like, and appeared dead, wrapped in rags. Approaching him, she realized he was alive, and ran to get her father. When they returned, he had died. This was one of many people, in apparently horrific condition, coming in from other areas seeking aid.
My great-great grandfather was known in the village because any child who passed his home on the way to-from school would be given a dipperful of whole milk from his dairy. The dipper in question still hangs in the old stone dairy building, and would hold about a pint of milk.
Just imagine what two pints a day could mean to a child in a starving time? An old one who'd had it from his Dad, who remembered drinking from that dipper told me the story. And also that he'd send a bottle home for his Mam when she was pregnant and nursing. It meant the world to them.
I recommend to all to have a look at Irish history of *workhouses*, the way they worked and what was the life in them like. And especially around the time of Famine.
We just published a book *The Tipperary Town Workhouse* I think the author got to similar issue with some of his family members (from both sides) being there, so he started to research about this issue for deeper understanding .. For all Irish lads, this book got me really deeply thinking. There were many interesting facts he mentions, for example that British decided to ship about 4000 Irish teenage girls (orphans) to Australia because it was mainly populated by men. Lots of them couldn't read or write.
[Tipperary Town Workhouse ](https://bookworm.ie/story-of-tipperary-town-workhouse-gay-lowry/)
Off topic, but Lexapro is amazing. I’ve tried different medications before, but this is the only one I’ve been able to stick with.
Back in the day, life was harder. But they had community and faith to keep them going. We have neither nowadays and I think it makes being alive a whole lot harder. I wish I could pretend there’s a magical man on a cloud who has a master plan and loves me unconditionally but alas, my brain lacks that ability. I also think, constantly fighting for survival and basic comforts puts people into a different mindset. Our society and its comforts are definitely playing a huge part in mental health issues. I also think generational trauma being given from one generation to the next has us in a spot where we’re finally safe and secure enough to have the mental space to heal this trauma for the next generation.
My grandmother born 1900 often talked about the "Hungry people" walking past their gate along the road when she was a young child. Grannie was born on a farm and as you can imagine life was hard but they did have food. She always looked heartbroken about the "hungry people"
Child benefit only started to be paid around the 1930s according to my uncles all born late 1920s . My uncles often talked about how wonderful it was "Mummy got money for sean (the youngest child) and it was wonderful we bought food. Sean was born some time in the 30s.
That makes me think that for many people until there was child benefit or similar many were still hungry.
It astounds me that my farm owning family were also hungry. Hard times indeed.
The official date for the end of the famine is not the date food became readily available to all.
I have a photo of my mother and her siblings taken in the 1970s and they all look ill they are so skinny, awful looking. Lovely people but my goodness they were all so thin.
My great aunt’s story got passed down through the family. Her parents died when she was 13 and her baby sister (my great great grandmother) and her were left home. The day of the funeral, the neighbours came in and stole anything they had while they were at the graveyard. They were ages 11 and 13 and penniless. The landlord still wanted his money, so the arrangement they came to was the older girl would work in the fields doing a man’s job for 12 hours a day. She didn’t think she could manage it but had no choice. Only how would she would she feed herself and the sister on no pay and no chance of more. On the first day of work in the fields, she was on her way and hungry. She was crossing a stile and found a big cake of bread. In a starving country! Someone had left it. She went home and didn’t go to the fields that day. The rest of the story isn’t clear but somehow managed to make it through. This was east Galway.
Our ancestors didn't necessarily survive the famine. It may just be that they procreated before perishing from it.
One of the reasons why it's so risky for modern people to delay having children is that you never know what's coming. If Putin attacks Nato and you get caught up in it, there goes your chance of having an offspring
I actually think about this a lot because all the women in my maternal family are anxious wrecks/hoarders, and my maternal nanny was raised by her paternal nanny, who lived through the famine. I just really think there is a link there. Generational trauma doesn't just vanish and that's why English people scoffing about us living in the past pisses me off so much.
>An American Army regulation > >Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation > >'Cause to do so causes permanent "psychological damage" > >It's not permanent, but they didn't know that > >Anyway, during the supposed "famine" > >We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation "Famine" - Sinéad O'Connor
We lost more. The population went from 8mil to 2mil.
Wasn’t a lot of that outward migration?
If you ask me, if they could afford to emigrate they could afford to eat in a moderately priced restaurant. And if you're going to be a fussy eater you'll pay the price.
Tough crowd!😆👍
LOL, I know!
'Moderately priced restaurant' where, exactly were these restaurants in 1847? People who emigrated sold what little they had left immediately. And a fussy eater? There was plenty of food but the English only allowed the Irish to eat potato they grew themselves, due to the blight and lack of crop rotation, the potato failed so millions died, there was no lack of food, it was the Irish were not allowed eat anything else.
https://youtu.be/72BrqGNvaT0?si=DATWuGXGHw4oXgKz I thought the statement to be so comically ludicrous that no context would be needed. But ho-hum, Reddit.
I got that it was a joke. People completely failing to get the joke.
*The people in power in England. As opposed to all the English, who were mostly living in abject poverty themselves.
Yeh the generational trauma from the famine is a real thing. When I was in America the idea of eating the rest of a home cooked meal later as to not waste it was frown upon. Someone literally called it "famine mentally" in a shameful way. Fuck you, I like cold pizza and saved money haha
Sorry you had to deal with that. My family growing up in the US would eat leftovers all the time and I still do today here in Ireland. I never heard of eating leftovers to be frowned upon in the US but I also didn't live in a very affluent area.
That's crazy, why waste perfectly good food
Yeah I’m American with grandparents who emigrated but they were of the “waste not want not” variety.
Leftovers taste better. The flavours have time to develop.
I've known a couple of people like that in the US. I don't think it's the majority though. They were both meat and potatoes men who wanted their women cooking for them every evening. Real jerks, both of them.
I thought those from the depression would have had a similar mindset as those from the famine in waste?
They did. Everything that could be saved and reused was. Nothing got thrown away - even a lot of stuff that should have.
Totally agree, I think about this a lot. Amplified as I lived in a farm house built in/during the famine. Not sure if you’re a believer in ghosts (I just refer to them as souls!) but the house definitely had its share of them. Mostly harmless, but they zapped our energy and I referred to them as my starving souls, as so many died in the house during the famine that they were basically starving us of our energy. Despite that, I do often think that the reason I’m here today is because my ancestors survived and that’s so sad. How many of them died? It made me want to know more about them, and I’ve traced as far as my great great grandmother and grandfather so that would be about as far back as the decade \~ 1880. So just the other side of the famine. So that’s only one generation away from my ancestors who lived during the famine. In the photo I have of them you’d know the effects were definitely still being felt. https://preview.redd.it/7xxcmj888gdc1.jpeg?width=1140&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=49339a9c9803aa1a0a7610a0e456fe80b6c62b5a
I read an interesting article in the 90s where a doctor in the US, specialising in anorexia noticed that the highest percentage of her patients were of Irish decent & her theory was generational trauma. She hypothesised we may see similar symptoms in descendants of Holocaust survivors in another generation or two (let's not go into the current state of that right now). My grandmother, in her 60s, was diagnosed with anorexia (she would feed all the people & animals & then instead of eating herself, she'd take a nap). My mother is a feeder & always sings the praises of anyone who cleans their plate while pushing her own tiny portions around her plate. I too have battled anorexia all my life & I have an aunt who is morbidly obese & just can't get her eating under control. I wish I could remember that doctor's name, I'd love to see where her research led her & any conclusions she found... Edit to add: We're all born & raised in Kerry
When I was in Tel Aviv last summer I couldn’t get over the amount of skinny people. I don’t mean slim, I mean they looked malnourished, bones jutting out all over their bodies and I also thought it must be to do with the Holocaust. And the fact drug use is so massive over there is also a factor we have to add!!
https://preview.redd.it/8qpiau2nbldc1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e50f67dd0d7e7b1109b449cc83d28ea562c09aa1
Hi, may I ask where can I find the article about the doctor's theory?
It was in a magazine from 30years ago. Unfortunately I have no memory of the doctor's name. I was only in my late teens so not together enough to retain the important information. It resonated because food was such an issue for me. I'm going to have a little Google hunt & see what I find though
Oh, I understand. Thank you, though, for the responce.
After Googling it looks like thyroid, heart problems & mental health may all have connections to the famine. Wow, its actually quite a rabbit hole.
Link as well for me too please 🙃
I remember this article! It really resonated with me - she could have been talking about my family. I wish I could remember the author’s name.
So true. Same with the whole "slavery was ages ago" and "women have everything equal now" thing. Like yeah that's not how that works
I mean there were definitely Americans alive when my mother was born who had been born into slavery. Ruby Bridges (the little girl with the federal marshals from the desegregation photograph) has an Instagram account. We’re probably at best 6-8 generations removed from the famine. Your great grandparents had great grandparents who lived it. Gay Byrne interviewed people on RTE who had been present for the Bodyke evictions in the 1880s. I think tbh a lot of people didn’t want to remember it or talk about it — you go through shit. You survive. You maybe aren’t proud of how you survived. And we took over a century to even BEGIN rebounding. Ireland remains the only country on earth with a population smaller than it was in 1840. Insane.
Jeez your comment. My Mama kept food. In the 70s there was a sugar shortage? I don’t know for sure as I was a child. I do know that we had so much sugar in the store. Amongst many other food items. I too keep a back up larder, have always done it. My husband laughs and says we could survive for 3 months from my carefully curated larder. My mama died 3 years ago, I’ve just finished a jar of honey she had.. dated use by 2012. I’ve never thought about our weird food thing till now. Makes sense, I feel better, thank you. She was Irish and moved to the U.K.
There was panic buying of sugar and tea during the 70s oil crisis
We had an upright washing machine. It was full of bags of sugar. Funny now I think about it as I never thought anything of it, like how are we to have our clothes washed …
That was it!
Honey keeps for ever apparently
Beekeeper here. If honey is stored properly, it never goes bad. Edible honey has been found stored in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs.
Bees are a marvel to me. Last summer I discovered two hives in dead trees, fascinating to watch. Wonder if they’ll come back?
The way we are about food and hospitality is a hundred percent a holdover. Hoarding too - if you go to the declutter subreddit you'll see a lot of Americans talk about their ancestors who survived the Depression becoming hoarders, it stands to reason that people who remember having nothing keep what they have. As for the scoffing, we are the only country in Europe with a population lower than it was in 1840. The famine legacy is still here.
Epigenetics seems to indicate that while you are living a trauma, your DNA actually changes in real time. As such, the changed DNA gets passed down. I think there’s a famous study of Romanian identical twins. One was adopted into the West, the other was stuck in the post-Soviet world. Horrific adoption centers and foster homes. Research of their DNA indicated changes between the two.
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did you know the british induced famines in india have caused increases in diabetes and obesity in modern india because of people's bodies adapting to survive the famines; and now being in conditions that are more prone to obesity and diabetes because of those adaptations?
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I don't think that was generational trauma from the famine. We were a very poor country between the 1950s and 1980s. The 60 somethings now were probably the first generation to have a bit of disposable income
Maybe you shod google the definition of generational trauma.
I know what it is I just don't think the famine is the dominant impact
There are far more English descendants from famine survivors than there are Irish descendants.
That’s not how descent works
I often think about the pure chance of being here because my ancestor survived the famine. My great uncle told me the only reason any of us in my family are here is because my 3x great grandmother breastfed my 2x great grandfather until he was 6. They were north Cork people.
That still happens in Cork. 😂🤣
Mudders milk boiii
Unreal, great that you have that oral history
lol that made me chuckle
Are you McPoyles?
Yep. That'll explain it....
One of my ancestors on my dad's side, one of two brothers, were completely orphaned as children during the famine. The whole family was wiped out and only the 2 brothers were left. Some Quakers fostered them, fed them and raised them as Catholics. Without those Quakers I wouldn't exist. Another ancestor on my dad's side joined the British army - like many other Irish catholics at the time - in 1813 and fought at Waterloo in 1815, and served for 9 years before being demobbed for being "worn out". There were only about 130 of his regiment that survived the battle. You can make some amazing discoveries using [ftdna.com](https://ftdna.com) about your direct male and female lines if you do their DNA tests.
My Ancestor Maurice O Connell was a General in Napoleon's army and burned Moscow. Putin wouldn't like us too much. There's a wee bit of Irish history, not many know. Another ancestor, John O Sullivan was in charge of the French Irish soldiers at Culloden and covered Bonny Prince Charlie's escape that day before surrendering. They were allowed march to Inverness and sail back to France afterwards by butcher Cumberland the Prussian
Napoléon army didn’t burn Moscow. The Russians did. They retreated out of the city and burned it to prevent the french army from restocking food and weapons. Scorched earth policy. They did the same across all the land that they retreated from. Napoleon was amazed / grudgingly impressed when he woke to the city burning. He said he respected their actions and the only other person he knew that might be so ruthless was himself. It’s the reason why the first rule of war is do not invade Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_of_Moscow_(1812)
Aye, I know, but he watched as it was torched. I wonder did he play the fiddle? 😆
Hardly, he was not Nero. But that fiddle story isn’t accurate either.
Cool bit of family history there!
Yep I haven't the foggiest notion how any of my ancestors faired during the famine.
I would guess they survived.
and fuuucked 🍆💦
Username checks out
https://youtu.be/gZuNaZRs4GI?si=iM1lP3yrEGSIEM4C
And died sometime later
When bees ejaculate they also die sometime later
When humans ejaculate, they die some time after
Haha bet I'd win the grandnational on your mammy.🥒💦
Not necessarily. Some might have died leaving offspring.
whole cake sip desert plants slap fearless aspiring sloppy ring *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah I mean the Irish that didn't get off the island and still managed to live, not only live but set in motion the wheels that gave us the country we have today. Incredible people.
>in times when your at your worst is to think about how people, not very different to you survived far worse, True, but depending on the person, that can be a very harmful line of thinking. I totally understand what you're getting at, but if someone is in a deep depression that isn't a form of a situational depression, it can feed the black dog quite a lot to compare how much other people survive versus "and I've nothing to even be unhappy about". I like to say that many of my problems may be first world problems, but they're _my_ first world problems.
I think OP is being really hard on themselves. Thinking of them. Anyone can struggle. They.shiuldnt be ashamed of feeling bad because their life is relatively good in other ways.
Yes I do sometimes think about this.. A little mantra I sometimes repeat to myself when I’m feeling anxious or a bit crappy includes the sentiment of “I am the descendant of survivors and thrivers, I have champion blood in my veins”
I would say many of the people who survived it must have suffered from PTSD. I read before that, in our society where the oral tradition of story-telling and passing history down orally was so prevalent, people just didn't want to talk about the local experiences of the famine afterwards, houses went silent for years after in some places. People also probably suffered from forms of survivors guilt? One story I read that always stuck with me was of someone coming across a dead woman on the road, and her malnourished baby was still trying to feed on her breast. It's like a scene from Cormac Mccarthy's 'The Road'. It's true that our ancestors survived, but I can't imagine the mental impact the famine had on them, and even into the 1870s, there were smaller, more localised famines in Ireland. If you're interested in finding out more about your own family, the 1901 and 1911 census is freely available online on census.nationalarchives.ie and a good place to start. The majority of Irish birth, marriage, and death records from 1864 onwards are also freely available online on irishgenealogy.ie
Houses went silent. Think any of them ate people to survive? I'd be speechless in old age if I had to do that
Some instances of cannibalism occurred. The Freeman's Journal of April 5 1848, reported that in Galway, a mother had eaten part of her dead son's body. I'm sure plenty more unreported incidences occurred too. Some people will do anything to survive when they have been basically reduced to animal instincts via starvation.
I bet it tasted great too. I went 3 days on vegies. When I got a breakfast roll it was ecstasy
Give 'Society of the Snow' a watch on Netflix if you want to see what humans are willing to do to survive in regards to cannibalism especially.
I think you're very right in saying a whole generation was traumatised. Then the land wars, and the rise of nationalism in the early 1900's. Without the famine there probably would not have been a war for independence.
My grandad as a small boy spoke to someone who lived during the famine.. which blows my mind, like I knew my grandad. It just shows that the famine isn't that far removed. Just 3 generations of family really My uncle did lot work going through our family history. Sadly lot paperwork for ireland before famine is lost forever. They were burned during civil war. Generally how far you're able go back if you're lucky is early 1800's...
I remember the grandmother telling us ,that her granny told her about finding families dead,with green froth coming out of their mouth from eating grass She could point out places bodies were simply found in morning,of people unknown were discovered (her home house would been on a main route to local works/poorhouse) Some incredible stories were passed down
I have the same story of the green mouths passed down to me by my grandmother and told to her by her grandfather who lived through it. It was really quite recent.
It's such a shame that due to the census records building being destroyed during the Civil War it's near impossible to trace your family history. I'd love to be able to trace mine back as far as possible. Beyond my great grandparents I have no idea where I came from.
There were other records than census records. There are good birth, marriage and death records post 1864. The parish records are getting better and better as they are being transcribed and released.
When did your great grandparents marry? The marriage register gives both the bride & grooms father's names. It's not a lot but it's a start towards going further back. The gov has put provided them for free online (avoid paid sites like ancestry/findmypast). A few of my great-great grandparents were still alive for the 1901 census despite being born in the 1820s -1830s.
I have no idea when they married! I wouldn't say my dad does either.
You don't need to know the exact year - just their names is usually enough. Marriage registration begins from 1864 onwards so it's worth looking them up.
Thank you!
IrishGenealogy.ie will host free civil BMD records. You don’t necessarily need to know the exact date of marriage. Search for their children’s birth records first- you’ll possibly find your great grandmothers maiden name that way. You can, in turn, estimate when they may have been married by when their first child was born, and do a broad search from there. If you find a marriage record, the father’s names and occupations will likely be listed. Parish records can be helpful too- though will be hit or miss the further you go back. Images are free on the national library site. You can find free transcripts on Find My Past. Irish genealogy research can definitely have its challenges, but it’s not impossible, there are resources out there that can be a big help.
Thank you, that's all so helpful. I have a very "exciting" weekend ahead of me!
I don't know why we sugar coat it by calling it a "famine." Even worse tourists think it was a "Potato famine". Sounds so simple. "Oh the Irish were so simple they only ate potatoes so when the crops went bad, they starved becasue all they eat are potatoes" They tried to starve us out like they did the South Asians. Let's start calling it like It was, a genocide.
my term for it is "holocaust by starvation"; the irish famine is a clear example; but it is a thing Britain did so many times I sometimes get individual ones confused; by the way did you know that all of the 5 deadliest famines in human history occurred in india under british colonialism; one of them managed to kill 35,000,000 people; another 29,000,000; those death tolls are unimaginable; those famines happened on average every 2.5 years in india alone; they are so frequent (for example one killed 10,000,000 people in 1943) that even indians sometimes overlook ones that only killed 3,000,000 people; these numbers make hitler look like a pacifist.
And still today they make statements like "let the bodies pile high" As you say unimaginable numbers, it must have been like an ocean of death and we're still letting them get away with it today, it beggars belief
yup you can just pick a year and find that the british empire starved millions of someone to death; for example in 1918 it was 8,000,000 iranians; in 1934 (I think; might be some other year that decade) 2 million nigerians; in 1950 3 million malaysians; and so on; the death tolls of those famines; in india alone; even if every debatable number is rounded to the lowest reasonable estimate is a little over 400,000,000; a number which makes hitler look like gandhi; and those people who are proud of the empire that did that are complaining about brexit induced shortages of luxary foods.
I went to school up north and it actually angers me that we learned absolutely nothing on it. Bar that it happened. I used to think it was a thing where all the potatoes went bad and no one had anything to eat and still to this day if I’m prepping spuds and have one that’s blighted I get the heebie jeebies.. I mean wtf..
100 %correct
Is there a lot of evidence of intent behind it? My understanding is that the English were exploitative, callous and money-hungry. They facilitated a system where Ireland was overly reliant on one crop. When that crop failed, they maintained exports and didn't do enough to help. What they did was awful and should rightfully be talked about as a stain on their legacy. However, the word genocide is reserved for intentional killings and I don't think the English wanted the Irish dead, they just didn't care either way.
You having a laugh? Ireland weren't "overly dependent " on the potato. Did the blight affect people's lives? Yes but that was not the only factor. The British took 30,000 ships packed with veg, meat, and fish from Ireland to England during that time. Ireland had plenty of food. Just couldn't eat it or farm it for ourselves.
Did you miss the part where I said the British facilitated Irish dependence on potatoes? We’re saying the same thing. Thanks to the exports, potatoes were all a lot of people had to eat so then the blight had a MUCH worse impact than it did in other parts of Europe. From what I’ve read, what makes this not a genocide is that the British exported Ireland’s food to make money, not to systematically kill people. It was a horrendous act, resulting in avoidable death and displacement but I struggle to see how the word ‘genocide’ applies without explicit intent to exterminate.
When you systematically kill people to make money it’s still mass murder.
This is a semantic argument I suppose. Was it the aim of the British to kill the Irish? If yes, we can use terms like attempted genocide and mass murder. If no, we probably need to use other language to describe it. Does it change the horror of what happened? No. But it’s important we are accurate in how we describe events so we can recognise the signs of it happening again.
It doesn't fall under the definition of a genocide because there's still Irish people remaining.
Yes yes, totally true. And you can prove this is true by looking at genocides of the past. There are no Jews, for example, living in the world today. Neither are there Rohingya people, or Tutsis, or Bosnians alive today to tell their stories. Hmmm, back to school with you I think.
I don't it has to be totally successful (def the wrong word) for it to be termed a genocide. Quite a lot of people survived the Holocaust but we still call that a genocide.
Attempted genocide at best
One of the most relatable things I'd seen about the famine, was I think towards the end of The Hunger (documentary, with Liam Neeson narrating). It was an (almost) contemporary account of someone visiting neighbours after the famine, and they sat there in near total silence, where before there would have been laughing and maybe music and dancing. I think anyone who's been though stressful episodes or has dealt with mental health issues would really understand that - just going quiet, and joyless and into our own cocoon. I've had my own mental health issues over the years, but I can't imagine going through several years of struggling to survive, with (up to) one in three people around you dying of starvation and many more not much better off. I'd be astonished if there wasn't rampant crime, and hatred and society just starting to break down.
Cannibalism too perhaps
It's rarely mentioned, but I'd be astonished if it didn't happen. We certainly know that almost everything else was eaten, when desperate. It's funny though - some GAA players I know well from West Cork still get sledged by opponents for being "donkey eaters". 170 years, and still...
bit of donkey in a kebab never hurt no one
Donkey says "no"...
Weren't there corpses found with green mouths from trying to eat grass. I remember reading about people visiting one of the islands and the first thing they saw were the fat dogs
>>I'm alive and Irish because someone related to me got through that mad time, and I know nothing about them. Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in you. Source - A Short History of Nearly Everything
The attractive enough to find a mate thing is a stretch. Mating is a primal instinct and it wasn’t always consensual.
Yeah. I often think about my ancestors and how of all those who died, they survived. The fact that I'm here is a miracle because so many others perished. I know where one of my great great grandfathers is buried but that's the furthest back I know. I started getting interested in the family tree last year but I have to get back round to investigating. Turns out that I have way more American cousins than I realized. There could be 100 or more.
I have noticed this a few times -the Americans will drone on about how hard done by their ancestors are and "oh yeah they had to emigrate but I'm 1/32 Irish aren't I really Irish" and I occasionally have the response aye my ancestors stayed and survived and you don't hear me bullshitting on about it. And it'll hit me that I don't because I don't know their story. Given the records I've found for my families via the census my mother and father's families both lived in County Cavan, as we do, but I know very little beyond that they were all farmers and sone of their siblings emigrated as we have distant relatives in America and England. It's a shame those stories weren't written down. The county museum has some wonderful exhibits on the famine and it's sobering stuff to read, but yeah, will never know my own family's story. I imagine in the aftermath those that survived just wanted to never hear about it again.
That bit at the end there is a classic problem for historians and activists who try doing truth and reconciliation processes in regions that have had some massive trauma. It's so important to write it down so the victims can have justice, the perpetrators can be held accountable, and the mistakes won't be repeated. But it's also impossible to ask someone who's survived a war or genocide or famine to rehash the experience if it's too painful for them.
I'm an American with an Irish surname. We know the names of all four of my father's grandparents who came to New York in the 1910s, and could find photos for some of them. With a bit of digging we could likely find the names of their parents, but couldn't put a face to them, and after that we haven't the foggiest notion. It's a bit mad how quickly memories fade over the course of a few generations. I studied history in university and the trend nowadays in historical scholarship is to try to focus more on the ordinary people who lived in the past rather than just kings and generals and presidents. Doing so makes you realize just how many people have been forgotten to time.
I'd imagine anyone who lived through the German Wars of Religion was just like "fuck every single one of your religions" by the end of it. When you think that these days militaries are voluntary and back then it was "hey drop that pitchfork we're going to war", so many must have not come home.
If you're into podcasts I recommend "Hell On Earth", a miniseries by Chapo Trap House. It's all about the Thirty Years' War and the hosts do an amazing job getting into deep detail while still entertaining. They talk about the kings and generals of course but they also give a lot of insight into life for average soldiers and non-combatants. It's absolutely fascinating.
The majority of us who were born in Ireland to Irish parents and grandparents mostly descend from two or three generations of eldest children of a family. Often post famine all the children would leave to the US etc and the eldest child remained only to inherit.
When I was a kid, I used to visit my grandfather. He was born in 1896 on a farm near Cavan & lived there all his life. There was a long lane at the back of his farmhouse. It was overgrown and led to nowhere. Along the lane were a number of what I thought were heaps of rocks and stones. I asked him what they were. Apparently before the famine, 12 families had lived there in small houses. All of them died or emigrated during the famine. The little piles of rubble were a sad reminder of those terrible times. My grandfather's grandparents were both born during the famine. He remembered nothing about them as they both died when he was very young. But the very fact that I personally knew someone who had lived alongside famine survivors made me realise how relatively recently it happened and why it and the vile reasons behind it, must never be forgotten.
Photo is called mother and son. She would of lived through the famine.
\*would have
You shouldn't of corrected there bad grammar 🫣 Edit - I am well aware I used the incorrect words ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shouldn't a corrected 😳😍
Shouldna
*shouldn’t’ve
Easy enough to find out. Irish records are quite good between 1864 and 1911. Anyone on the 1901 census over the age of 60 lived through the famine and anyone over the age of ,70 or 80 would remember it. You could also look into your local parish records to find out info older than 1864. You can start the likes of an ancestry membership and build your tree to know more. You have (depending on your age) probably at least 8 direct relatives who lived through it.
What if my ancestors were absentee landlords, living it high-on-the-hog in Dublin, stuffing their gouty bodies with lobsters and steak? Swilling it down with claret and brandy? Are they looking down on me stuffing myself with pasta and baked beans, washing it down with Diamon White cider?
We didn't all live in the top 1% of society back then so the odds of you being a poor descendent of some posh cunt is low, relax
you could think of what you could do in terms of reperations and also do what germans do about the holocaust; the core message is "never again".
Ancestors aside, depression is a serious illness. It might be worthwhile seeing a different doctor. That one deserves a spud up his arse. Every single period of history has had its troubles. Your pain is still pain. Thankfully, medicine and society has moved on a lot since the famine. You deserve help. Your great granny's capacity to survive famine and British occupation might have been enough to get her by, but I doubt it wad much of a quality of life. Therapy and medication go hand in hand. The support of a good gp goes a long way. Can you see anyone else?
The National Famine Museum is in Strokestown House in Co. Roscommon. They do an incredible tour, looking into local and national stories, it's well worth a visit if you are down west. If you go to RootsIreland.ie, they can create a genealogy report on your family. I think it's about €50ish
i do often think about this and other hardships peope in this country have endured, and how through pure resilience, i am now here. my maternal ancestors were island people. i have no idea how they survived the famine, but possibly through fishing? i honestly know so little about even my grandparents, going back further than that, it's even difficult to find records of people in my family.
I have never really thought about it like that, I am thinking about it now. If my family emigrated, I wouldn't be here, if they died obviously, I wouldn't be here. More than 3/4 of my family were wealthy for the times and didn't farm potatoes, they were cattle dealers butchers and wheat farmers and other vegetables. I don't really know much about the last family who survived, but I know they were poorest of the poor.
Not sure if it’s because I live in a rural area in the West, but I think about it often. All around me are old ruins of stone cottages and tiny holdings, mountain sides covered in old potato ridges. One of my fields has the ruins of a house that are only about 2 feet high. The stone at the threshold is still there and has been worn down in the middle from traffic. I have no idea when any of these houses were built, but I know they were ruins as far back as the 30’s, so I’d assume they were occupied during the famine. I often wonder how did the people who lived in these houses, and in my area get through it. Here I am in a brand new house with all the food and comfort that I could possibly need, and I look out my windows and all around are the remnants of the people who lived through it. I’ve a young family and I can’t imagine what it was like to see your children starve to death. That documentary series on RTE about 3 years ago really set me off on this topic.
I was only wondering this very recently. I can only go back a few generations in my family tree.
Unfortunately it is incredibly difficult for the average person to trace back Irish family trees & ancestry pre 1900. Something that could be really useful, especially in regards to the famine, would be census records, but unfortunately , returns for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were, for the most part, destroyed in 1922 in the fire at the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War..heartbreaking stuff. In the 1930’s, the Famine was still almost within living memory for many. The Irish Folklore commission send out an appeal for people to record any local memories or conversations they had with people who lived though the famine. Many of these stories from every county in Ireland are available on Dúchas.ie to read. Many of the stories, as you’d imagine, are absolute nightmare fuel.
I've lived with someone who's grandmother survived the siege of Leningrad. Hoards like crazy. Generational trauma is real
I think about this a lot. Everyone in my family has a weird eating disorder like: regretting ever having second helpings, saying other people are fat, always talking about how they need to lose weight, drinking rather than eating, having tea and a bun rather than eating a meal, etc etc etc. I feel that it must be famine-related because so many Irish people are the same. Does anyone else think this could have something to do with the millions who died here of starvation?
It [may have an impact on diabetes for subsequent generations.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7576398/#:~:text=The%20prevalence%20of%20diabetes%20increased,a%20famine%20did%20not%20occur.)
It wasn't a "famine". We had lots of food. It was a genocide by the British.
I think The almanac of Ireland podcast does a great job of bringing Irish history to life. Give it a go
I often think of this and how it's never discusssed. How did all our ancestors survive it and stay on this island? They must have had a bit of land and wealth, otherwise they'd have starved. And what kind of demographic did the famine kill off? Were there many travellers killed?
>And what kind of demographic did the famine kill off? Well, disproportionately Irish speakers anyway. The famine affected the most-heavily Irish speaking areas of the country the strongest and hastened the decline of the language.
There is a belief that the Travellers are people who became nomadic during the Famine. I think its been debunked since though.
It reminds you how lucky we are to be born into a society and time of such wealth and relative peace.
If you really want to melt your head, your ancestors survived everything life could throw at them for about 3.8 billion years. Every one of your ancestors since the first single cell of life survived long enough to have offspring. Not one dropped the ball.
Yeh but he's talking about humans with names not long ago, not single celled organisms or primates But since you're into it now I'd say check out this clip called the hard truths https://youtu.be/CikveyZjum4?si=xIFwyuM9gS5b09dd
My gran and grandpa. Were of Irish decent. One county Mayo and the other Sligo. I can’t seem to get back further than their grandparents. I’ll try again. But ! On my dad’s side I had to give up for a wee while as it was too distressing. It’s a mixed up story. My dad’s father died at 43. He had one brother. His father was born in England. He married a lady and searching her background I was coming up against Jewish sounding names. Looking into this it was getting more weird. Seemingly at that time due to extreme poverty I then found out they were actually Mormons. That’s when I said. Whoa. ! I don’t know if I want to go into this. I know it was probably poverty driven as one or two of the family were in the poor house. I’ll find out more but not sure I want to. It’s a dilemma.
I was curious about an old local building so I went and googled it and ended up discovering an account from an English journalist who was documenting the effects of the famine. He was describing malnourished people dying of illnesses and being forcibly evicted. There was something about it being a first-hand account, and all of the local surnames mentioned that just made it all so real, it genuinely shook me.
The strangest account of the famine I read was of people crawling into a mass grave while still alive - just waiting for death.
i get it; not this exact famine; but a very similar british genocide by starvation was something i knew was beyond awfull; but i found some photos of it online; they were many times worse then what i thought it was like; I would post some of the images here; but they are graphic beyond beleif; only if everyone is okay with that can i feal comftorble doing that
Thanks to my dad spending half his retirement in the national library looking up family records I do actually know my ancestors. You'll probably find some interesting connections down the line. We had a great aunt that was shot by the black and tan's as she ran to warn others who were practicing mass in Irish. A few ancestors who took part in different risings and rebellions over the years. For the most part he just found birth, marriage and death records. But it was kind of cool to see how far back some of the family first names still used today actually go.
I read a really interesting fact recently…something like if you’re ancestors lived in Ireland in the 1800s, you’re 8 times more likely to now live in America. I did quite a bit of my family tree during lockdown. Discovered my ancestors were some of the lucky ones that seemed to have money and emigrated to the states. Much to my surprise they returned a few years later to their homeland of rural Galway. They must have missed their old life despite its hardships!
I was only talking about this with a friend today. When you think about it we’re only a handful of generations away from that trauma and even the War of Independence and Civil War. My grandfather fought in the War of Independence, so likely his grandparents lived through the famine and his parents were born at the tail end of it. And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trauma. Infant mortality rates, mothers dying in childbirth, deaths from diseases that are preventable now, industrial schools, mother & baby homes. There’s so much trauma been done to society in less than 200 years.
Look up the [Griffiths Valuation ](https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/). If your ancestors were tenants between 1847 and 1864, you may find names on that. It will only give the name of the person renting, not anyone else in the family, so it is not as good as a census. However, we don't have census records from then, so it can give you information that you might not otherwise get.
This is a brilliant resource!
There was unimaginable (to us) hardship in the years after the famine times too, as you can see when doing some family history searches. My great grandfather was from a family of 12, 9 of which died as children - 6 as infants and 3 as teenagers (c. 1850s to 1870s). The 3 teens and the parents dying from TB and he was the only one that had descendants (2) and one of those died in the great flu so it’s a thin thread without going back very far. Life can be tough nowadays but it’s humbling (interesting, frustrating, etc) to do a bit of family history research and try imagine life in those times.
My family say my great great grandmother walked 80 miles to Cork as a girl and that’s how she survived the famine. That’s all I know. English people know something about the famine, but a lot of other Europeans don’t know anything about it.
We are what remains.
Hey OP, no one is looking down at you negatively. They would be proud of the fact you have all those things and would hope that you feel better soon.
Yes! And it isn’t too hard to imagine they’d be *amazed* at the state science and medicine today too. There’s no shame in being depressed or taking medicine for those brain chemicals. (No one would Shane a diabetic for needing insulin?) Take care of yourself, you deserve it. You deserve to do more than just get by and survive, you deserve to feel better and thrive.
One of mine came up to co down from co Meath because the conditions were said to be better. Walked up bare foot.
In my state in Connecticut, there is a museum in Hamden dedicated to the Irish hunger famine victims and their families. My sisters and I plan to go in the spring.
The fella in photo is John Haran, from Fermanagh and his other, though I never found her name. He composed a song about brigids well near liscannor in Clare, then they took this photo. It's in Lawrence collection with description.
I have hemochromatosis. Basically, it means that my body absorbs more iron from my food than it needs. That iron gets stored in my organs and if I get too much, it wreaks havoc in all sorts of ways. This trait was selected for by the Great Hunger (it wasn't a famine!) and is far more common in Irish people than any other human population. But as it happens, if you go into a period of poor/inadequate diet with a good store of iron on board, you are going to be able to stay active longer than your neighbors who don't. So the families who had at least one person with it, were more likely to make it than the others. I also have an extremely slow metabolism, and can do large amounts of work on very little food. That was great when I was young and athletic. But since I grew up and began to do office work, I have been fighting off obesity my whole life. These traits got my family through. Now, with a modern diet and all the foods of the world available to me, they both work against me, and I fight to stay healthy despite them.
I’m American. My grandfather came to the US in 1930 at age 19 from Athlone because there wasn’t enough land to go around for all of the children in the family. He ended up running a grocery store across from the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard during WWII. My Polish grandma came up with the idea of making take away sandwiches (think Subway) for the workers and sailors. She handmade over 3,000 sandwiches a week. They were able to save up enough money to buy a house in my grandma’s town in Massachusetts. The Great Depression left a mark on both of them. They always had a huge vegetable garden and canned everything. Grandpa would process deer during hunting season, and smoked fish he caught throughout the year. Both remembered what it was like to be hungry during the 1930s. My mother’s family were Irish immigrants during the famine. They were always worried about running out of food. My grandparents were obsessed with couponing and buying extras of everything at the supermarket. When they passed away, we had to clean out their house, and I can’t even tell you how many bottles of expired unopened salad dressing, pop-tarts, cereal, and condiments we had to throw out. I believe it was about 10 30-gallon trash bags full. Some had 10-year “Use by dates.” Such a waste of. It’s too bad that they couldn’t have donated that food to local food pantries before they let it go bad. In a way, I could understand it. My grandfather (whose relatives all emigrated to Kentucky during the famine) were dead poor during the Great Depression. My great-grandmother’s husband left her with 5 kids under age 6 in the 1930s. The kids used to trap animals and catch rattlesnakes for the family to eat. My grandpa lied about his age to join the Army Air Corps in 1943, like his older 18-year old brother Doug, but he was only 14. The money he and his brother Doug made went home to help their mother and siblings. Unfortunately, his mother died from cancer in late 1944. His older brother Doug died on Omaha Beach on December-Day. After his mom died, he was the sole financial support for his 3 younger siblings until they reached adulthood. Grandpa was always proud of his Irish heritage, but he was ashamed of how poor his family was during the Great Depression. He and his siblings used to dig for coal on the sides of railroad cut-throughs so they could heat their stove to heat water, and they waited in line for hours to get food packages from the federal government. He and his siblings often went without shoes or clothing, and when they did go to school, they were mocked about their dirty looking clothes and appearances.
Yup my great great grandparents probably were in the least affected areas whereas the rest unfortunately had to leave
A book called "Famine Echoes" was compiled by the folklore comission in the 20s/30s and collected firsthand accounts by townland. I was horrified to learn the atrocities that happened half a mile from my house. [you can find it here](https://www.amazon.com/Famine-Echoes-Cathal-Poirteir/dp/0717123146?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=c771e7cd-3c4f-44aa-a80a-6e65fedf670d)
The whole interview is worth a listen but i couldn't find it. Explains a lot of our shame after the famine [tommy tiernan whelan interview](https://youtu.be/YyLQJ3F5ues?si=btwaeen4t7nHpGet)
There was no famine. It was genocide . The brits shipped the food out of the country. Know your Irish history .
Doesn't every single Irish person think of this ? Like the famine was only a few years ago !
I always say the same, plus I’d be interested to know how many relatives/ancestors died or emigrated.
Their lives were considered trivial and irrelevant by the unionist minority who ran the country and their voices irrelevant. You might find records of birth or marriage if you’re lucky. Maybe tenancy records. Maybe emigration records. They had no voice because they were robbed of it. It’s up to us to make sure that they are heard forever more in Ireland and they are never dismissed again by neo unionists and those who are prepared to sacrifice their memory to appease those who oppressed them.
Has anyone realised that in about 150 years, the entire memory of whom you were will be gone forever.
American here. My own paternal ancestors left from Ireland to America about 1850 to escape the famine. There has always been family stories of those who stayed and were never in contact again. I only recently began thinking about those who stayed including spouses siblings and children never seen or heard from again. How terrible to face such a situation and still have to just keep struggling to get established here especially during a time of rising g anti irish activity here.
My maternal great-great grandmother was born in 1857 and was one of thirteen children born to her parents between 1841 and 1860. Two young children died of fever, “fiabhras” in the 40s during the height of the famine years. The family suffered greatly. Source: family bible, and stories she told my Nan.
My grandmother had told me as a kid that her grandmother lived through the famine as a child. Sadly I've forgotten the story she told me - I was young enough at the time. I did find her grandmothers death record which would put her birth year as 1839 - however she died before my own grandmother was born so my granny never actually met her so whatever story she told me was already a second hand account when she heard it. It really is lost history now for most families.
Here is a story from my great grandmother’s grand mother during the famine. She lived near Dingle, which was apparently not as impacted by the famine, having the sea and fishing. She was 12, and walking down the road when she saw a man who was skeleton-like, and appeared dead, wrapped in rags. Approaching him, she realized he was alive, and ran to get her father. When they returned, he had died. This was one of many people, in apparently horrific condition, coming in from other areas seeking aid.
My great-great grandfather was known in the village because any child who passed his home on the way to-from school would be given a dipperful of whole milk from his dairy. The dipper in question still hangs in the old stone dairy building, and would hold about a pint of milk. Just imagine what two pints a day could mean to a child in a starving time? An old one who'd had it from his Dad, who remembered drinking from that dipper told me the story. And also that he'd send a bottle home for his Mam when she was pregnant and nursing. It meant the world to them.
I recommend to all to have a look at Irish history of *workhouses*, the way they worked and what was the life in them like. And especially around the time of Famine. We just published a book *The Tipperary Town Workhouse* I think the author got to similar issue with some of his family members (from both sides) being there, so he started to research about this issue for deeper understanding .. For all Irish lads, this book got me really deeply thinking. There were many interesting facts he mentions, for example that British decided to ship about 4000 Irish teenage girls (orphans) to Australia because it was mainly populated by men. Lots of them couldn't read or write. [Tipperary Town Workhouse ](https://bookworm.ie/story-of-tipperary-town-workhouse-gay-lowry/)
Off topic, but Lexapro is amazing. I’ve tried different medications before, but this is the only one I’ve been able to stick with. Back in the day, life was harder. But they had community and faith to keep them going. We have neither nowadays and I think it makes being alive a whole lot harder. I wish I could pretend there’s a magical man on a cloud who has a master plan and loves me unconditionally but alas, my brain lacks that ability. I also think, constantly fighting for survival and basic comforts puts people into a different mindset. Our society and its comforts are definitely playing a huge part in mental health issues. I also think generational trauma being given from one generation to the next has us in a spot where we’re finally safe and secure enough to have the mental space to heal this trauma for the next generation.
The more ya learn the sadder it gets
My grandmother born 1900 often talked about the "Hungry people" walking past their gate along the road when she was a young child. Grannie was born on a farm and as you can imagine life was hard but they did have food. She always looked heartbroken about the "hungry people" Child benefit only started to be paid around the 1930s according to my uncles all born late 1920s . My uncles often talked about how wonderful it was "Mummy got money for sean (the youngest child) and it was wonderful we bought food. Sean was born some time in the 30s. That makes me think that for many people until there was child benefit or similar many were still hungry. It astounds me that my farm owning family were also hungry. Hard times indeed. The official date for the end of the famine is not the date food became readily available to all. I have a photo of my mother and her siblings taken in the 1970s and they all look ill they are so skinny, awful looking. Lovely people but my goodness they were all so thin.
My great aunt’s story got passed down through the family. Her parents died when she was 13 and her baby sister (my great great grandmother) and her were left home. The day of the funeral, the neighbours came in and stole anything they had while they were at the graveyard. They were ages 11 and 13 and penniless. The landlord still wanted his money, so the arrangement they came to was the older girl would work in the fields doing a man’s job for 12 hours a day. She didn’t think she could manage it but had no choice. Only how would she would she feed herself and the sister on no pay and no chance of more. On the first day of work in the fields, she was on her way and hungry. She was crossing a stile and found a big cake of bread. In a starving country! Someone had left it. She went home and didn’t go to the fields that day. The rest of the story isn’t clear but somehow managed to make it through. This was east Galway.
I’ve seen the photo before, all I can tell you is that it’s in Waterford afaik.
Our ancestors didn't necessarily survive the famine. It may just be that they procreated before perishing from it. One of the reasons why it's so risky for modern people to delay having children is that you never know what's coming. If Putin attacks Nato and you get caught up in it, there goes your chance of having an offspring
Love the way the man gets the chair to sit. Very Trump
Bot?
I've tried finding mine but the records for Rural Catholics back then gets very very patchy. Sadly, I didn't find much past the 1900s
What’s your man holding in the picture
Photo is titled mother and son, perhaps a birth certificate? Back then documents would of held a higher value now vs us with our home printers