Galway’s Emigration and Diaspora Connections.

Ireland’s greatest export throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was her people when between nine and ten million people left the country.  By the end of the nineteenth century 40 percent of Irish-born people lived outside of Ireland.  Galway was one of the counties most affected by this exodus with over 229,000 leaving between 1851 and 1914, undoubtedly an underestimation as emigration returns were not accurately recorded until 1876.  As emigration is not a homogenous experience, each of these emigrants has their own story to tell as to why they left, how their passage was funded and the process of integration and assimilation in those countries they settled in.  The decades of highest emigration were the 1850s when 50,838 left, coinciding with the aftermath of the Great Famine and the large-scale evictions that took place from properties such as the St George estate near Headford and the Gerrard property at Ballinass near Mountbellew; and the 1880s when 51,121 people emigrated as a result of the potato failure in 1879-81 and 1885-6.  The years of greatest haemorrhage were 1852 (10,222), 1853 (8,867) and 1883 (10,065).  The county was also greatly affected by emigration in the 1950s.  Emigration patterns are largely determined by economic conditions in the both the home and host countries: increasing when an economic crisis occurs as with the failure of the main food source or when the people are attracted by better economic opportunities in a foreign land and declining when conditions at home are good and poor economic chances abroad.

While emigration in the immediate decades after the Great Famine was mainly associated with the south and east of Co. Galway, in 1846 some villages in the east of the county lost almost one-third of their populations, the exodus in the post-1880 period came mainly from Connemara with 15 per cent of its population leaving between 1880 and 1884 under the assisted emigration schemes of philanthropists such as James Hack Tuke, Vere Foster and Fr James Nugent.  While emigration is mainly associated with young single males, the evidence from Galway shows that more women than men left, especially after 1870 when 55 per cent of the emigrants were women, mainly young girls aged between sixteen and twenty-four years.  Parents were more likely to encourage their daughters to leave because they were more likely to send remittances home over the long term and there was a major demand for domestic servants in the United States.  Annie O’Donnell who left Spiddle in 1899, aged nineteen years, and settled in Pittsburgh where she took up a position in the Mellon household, was not only sending money home to her family, but also contributed towards the building of the new church in her home parish.  One girl from Connemara who had her passage paid under the Tuke assisted emigration scheme in 1882 and settled in Chicago, told her sister to join her in the United States ‘so father can sit down by the fireside then and let the rough day pass him and us earning lots of money for him in this country where there is plenty of it’.

It is difficult chart the movement of many emigrants from Galway as they were involved in step migration: moving from place to place, and even from country to country, in search of work and a better life.  While most Galway emigrants in the nineteenth century settled in the United States, many did so in stages.  There were those who did not have the money to make the journey directly and headed to Britain to work until such time as they had the fare to travel to the United States.  Others travelled to Canada because the passage fares were cheaper and then moved to the United States.  This creates its own difficulties in trying to locate a section of the Galway emigrant community as the official enumerator sheets for the United States only give Ireland as the place of origin for the emigrants.

Others emigrated through a chain migration process, their passage being paid by friends and relations who had already settled in foreign land and now provided the resources for those living in Galway to join them and have a better life.  Going to friends and relations had its advantages: it provided a place to stay until the new emigrants were established, information could be provided on job opportunities, in times of crisis help those who were sick and out of work and neighbours took in children when their parents died.  The established emigrants were often the main agents for emigration providing those at home with information of wage rates, the price of accommodation, the cost of food and other vital details of the areas where intending emigrants hoped to settle.  While the settled emigrants were prepared to help the new arrivals, they were not allowed to overstay their welcome and were expected to be independent as quickly as possible.  When Annie O’Donnell went to Pittsburgh to her two sisters, she was told that while they were happy to see her, she was expected to find her own way and not be dependent on them.  Chain migration did result with strong bonds with home and as a result Galway communities in exile were established by people from Carna in Minnesota, from Clifden with Pittsburgh, from Cois Fharraige with Portland, Maine; and Mountbellew with Northwich, Cheshire.  The sense of looking back to the home place in Galway was strong: Annie O’Donnell when she heard that a girl from Spiddle had come to work in Pittsburgh wanted to meet her to get news from home, in particular to find out about her parents.

The study of emigration and the diaspora can only be undertaken to the extent that the surviving evidence permits and it is difficult to find traces of diasporic sensibility among the poor and minimally literate who form the bulk of most mass migrations.  This is especially true of Irish emigrants in the nineteenth century.  While many retained a strong link with home, others disappeared and were never heard from, either because of death or the desire to start a new life divorced from any connection with their past: failing to maintain contact with family or the home community in Galway. Between 1831 and 1921 the Boston Pilot newspaper carried a section entitled ‘The Search for Missing Friends’ where people in Ireland and the United States sought information about friends and relatives who left for North America, but had not maintained contact with their families back home.  There are over 41,000 notices indicating how desperate people were to know what happened their loved ones.  Did Patrick Costello from Spiddle, a blacksmith, who arrived in New York in 1849, aged 25 years, ever make contact with his brothers, Thomas and Michael?  He was known to be living in Paris, Kentucky, at one point, but in June 1856 his brothers were desperate to contact him.  Did John Cunningham from Galway contact his wife, Catherine, who arrived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, from Ireland with their child in July 1855, but he had moved on and the family were now destitute?

The strong bond between the diaspora and home are also evident through the financial connections.  In the half century after the Great Famine Irish emigrants remitted £1 million annually, undoubtedly a conservative figure, back to Ireland and this chain of money was greatest in counties like Galway because of the precarious nature of agriculture in many areas.  For many families these remittances were the difference between survival and ruin.  The money paid the rent, purchased the extra acre of land, built a new home, educated other family members, etc.  It indicates that those who left did not forget those who remained at home.

In reaching out to the Galway diaspora it is important to document the people who left, where they came from and what happened to them in foreign lands, while at the same time demonstrate the impact which the exodus had on those who remained in Galway.  The objective of the Galway Emigration and Diaspora Connection Project is to engage with the descendants of those emigrants, and that their shared experiences will re-establish a bond between areas in Galway and those regions where the emigrants settled.  It is the start of a process which will strengthen the connection between the descendants of the emigrants and the home place of their ancestors.  The emigrants left with a sense of identity with home, they were not forgotten and are now being remembered.