Irish Immigration Records
Irish Immigration Records
Irish immigration records can take you on a search of genealogical files and ancestry resources worldwide, because people immigrated from Ireland to find better opportunities in many different parts of the world in the 18th, 19th and 20th century. You could have cousins in the United States, Canada, Australia or a number of other destinations.
Of course, if you’re an Irish-American searching for your Irish ancestors, you’ll probably only want to begin your research on your family tree in the U.S. and Ireland. There are several online ancestry resources that should let you search their files for free, so you should have a pretty solid picture of your Irish family ancestry before you ever purchase a subscription to a paid Internet ancestry website.
Genealogy Branches
Genealogybranches.com is an impressive site with links to many different Irish immigration records, specifically Irish migrating to America throughout the 18th and 19th century. There were waves of immigration from the Irish countryside to America, because many people in Ireland were oppressed by British overlords and the United States was considered a land of opportunity and largely anti-British. Even before the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, emigration from Ireland to America had been going on for well over a century (even during the Colonial Era). This only sped up post-independence.
Irish Immigration Records Before 1820
If you’re Irish forebears moved to America before 1820, you might have difficulty finding their passage information. That’s because ships were not required by law to keep a full passenger registry, though it was a custom most ship captains followed.
Though ship passengers lists probably existed at one time or another, the absence of a law stipulating such archives means that many ship records from the pre-1820 period no longer exist. Still, if you ancestors moved here in an earlier time, it’s worthwhile to commit the time for a search, because you might find the immigration records you’re searching for.
Irish Quakers
You can find two different passenger lists for Irish Quakers moving to Pennsylvania in 1682, including the Antelope passenger list, whcih sailed from Belfast to Pennsylvania.
Irish Immigration Books
You can also read books on Irish immigration in the early period of immigration, such as Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750, with their Early History in Ireland by Albert C. Myers. With a subscription, you can search online for your Irish Quaker ancestors from a link on this website.
Another good book (non-Quaker) is Emigrants to Pennsylvania, 1641-1819 by Michael Tepper. This book contains a consolidation of ship passenger lists that were first published in the Pennsvlvania Magazine of History and Biography. Finally, there is the Passenger Arrivals at the Port of Philadelphia 1800-1819, also by Michael Tepper, which contains 40,000 alphabetical passenger names, mostly of immigrants from Northern Ireland and Germany.
Irish Immigration Record CD-Rom
Other valuable resources you can purchase are a series of CD-Rom’s with searchable text of Irish immigration records. One CD-Rom, titled Immigrants to Pennsylvania, contains the text of the three books listed above on it.
Another CD-Rom, Irish Immigrants to North America 1700s & 1803-1871, contains 46,000 Irish immigrants, culled from 10 different sources, including an Irish House of Commons report on “enforced immigration” to America, standard passenger lists, indexes of immigration from Ulster and records of state-aided schemes from the notorious Crown Estates in Ireland.
Irish Immigration to Antebellum America
Genealogy Branches also has passenger lists of Irish passengers coming to the five major destinations from Ireland to America: New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Orleans. These are going to be important Irish immigration records, because it comprises most of the period of the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852, when millions of Irishmen died of starvation, disease and other effects of malnutrition.
This was a time of great upheaval in Europe, as bad crops and bad economies led to the watershed Revolutions of 1848, which saw (mostly failed) revolutions in France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland, led to a rebellion in Ireland, saw the leading conservative statesman (Metternich) fall from power in Austria, led to a Tsarist Russian armed intervention to keep the Central European monarchies in control, and brought Napoleon III to power in France.
In those years, the Irish had few places to turn, besides the United States and Canada, so they came by the hundreds of thousands. While Irish immigration had been happening for a century and had sped up after the defeat of Napoleon in the earlier part of the century, Irish immigration sped up again from 1845 to 1850, mostly using the McCorkell Line to get to America. If you have Irish ancestors, there’s a good chance some of them came to American in the years between 1820 and 1852, so these should be an important resource for you.
Irish Immigration in the Late 19th Century
Irish immigration records don’t stop there, because the people of Ireland continued to stream to America throughout the remainder of the 19th century, especially into the mid-1880s.
Disenchantment with continued British rule in Ireland led many Irishmen and their families to conclude they would never get a fair shake in Ireland, and the dangers of an Atlantic crossing and starting over in the cities of the American Eastern Seaboard was preferable to toiling on behalf of England landlords and their Irish Protestant allies. You’ll be able to find books and CD-Rom’s with Irish immigration records for this period, too, often in better shape, since the American immigration services were quite experienced in taking in immigrants by now.
All in all, Irish-Americans searching through ship records and immigration archives are in pretty good luck, if they are searching through the American immigration archives.
Related Posts
England Ancestry Records
UK Immigration Records
Australia Immigration Records
Australian Immigration Records
Canadian Immigration Records
This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Genealogical Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
they did nothing to help the Irish !
Virtually any international nationals prepared become permanent residents of the USA and want a Green Card. To relish the massive benefits attached with a Green Card, individuals from all over the world get a Green Card every year. Nevertheless, not many of these are fortunate to have one.
Tóibín wins Costa prize to at last take first major award…
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