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An Irish Emigrant to New York Writes Home
This letter home from 23-year-old Irish emigrant Margaret McCarthy captures both the opportunity and adversity awaiting arrivals to a new land. McCarthy sailed from Liverpool on the Columbus on September 7, 1849, and arrived in New York on October [...]
A Letter from Ireland Tells of the Suffering Caused by the Potato Famine
This 1847 letter from Hannah Curtis to her brother John, who had emigrated from Queen's County, Ireland to Philadelphia some years earlier, gives a sense of the deprivation of those who remained behind during the time of the Irish potato famine. The [...]
A Destitute Famine Victim Sends a Desperate Letter from Ireland
Like many victims of the Great Famine, Mary Rush and her husband Michael had only one place to turn for assistance: parents or other relatives who had already emigrated. On September 6, 1846, the illiterate Mary dictated this desperate letter, [...]
A Nativist New Yorker Disparages Irish Arrivals
The following are excerpts from the diaries of George Templeton Strong (1820-1875), a prominent New York lawyer. Written between 1838 and 1857, the entries reveal Strong's undisguised contempt for the Irish immigrants who were then flooding the [...]
An Irish Emigrant Writes to Relatives in County Donegal
In this letter to relatives back home in County Donegal, William Dever describes some of the obstacles faced by Irish immigrants in the antebellum period. In contrast to German and Dutch immigrants, who were often able to purchase farms, the Irish [...]
New York State Census Page of Five Points, 1855
This page from the 1855 census for New York City's Sixth Ward, the home of the Five Points neighborhood, includes residents of two buildings. The notorious Five Points, formed by the intersections of Mulberry, Orange, Anthony, Cross, and Little [...]
Table of Emigrant Savings Bank Account Records
This sample of account records from Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank provides evidence about the lives of immigrants living in New York City during the mid-nineteenth century. All account holders included in this sample lived in the Five Points [...]
Table of Marriage Records from the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City, 1855
A selection of marriage records transcribed from the original marriage certificates of the Church of the Transfiguration located in Lower Manhattan in present-day Chinatown.
"I Am the Little Irish Boy"
Henry David Thoreau is one of America's best-loved poets and authors, known especially for his work Walden, with its meditations on nature. In this 1850 poem, Thoreau turns his attentive eye to a "little Irish boy," destined for a life of manual [...]
"Poor Pat Must Emigrate"
A.W. Auner of Philadelphia was among the most prolific printers of "broadside ballads," cheaply-produced topical songs and poems that were widely available throughout the nineteenth century. "Poor Pat Must Emigrate," published by Auner sometime in [...]