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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Lancashire => Topic started by: Rosezi on Sunday 12 July 15 10:59 BST (UK)
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Searching for Irish ancestors who emigrated from Ireland and settled in Liverpool. All the passenger lists seem to focus on emigration to America. Dates 1846-1855
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Ireland was part of the U.K. so no records were kept of people travelling between Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales.
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Thanks, but I have heard that many Irish people who intended to emigrate to America never got that far and many settled in Liverpool, London, Manchester etc....? which is probably what happened to all of my Irish ancestors.
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Some perhaps but most just left Ireland and went to places across the water where they could join friends and find work.
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Irish people have been coming to Liverpool for hundreds of years. Some chose to look for work in England, or decided to get a Liverpool ship to go abroad and some people in times of difficulty had no choice and had to leave Ireland to go anywhere that might give them a better life. In the 19th and early 20th century all Irish people were British subjects so no passenger records were needed for such "internal" travel. During the time the south of Ireland was the Irish Free State and later a Republic (pre European union etc) Irish people retained a special status so that they were not considered as foreigners in the UK. The British government wanted the southern Irish to retain the freedom they previously had as British Subjects to come over to work in Britain.
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I've heard travelling from Ireland to England or Scotland described as being like getting on the bus.
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It's the old migrant versus immigrant issue this one. Irish immigrant versus Irish migrant. The relationship between Britain and Ireland and the status of Irish people in Britain. Some people will argue that Irish people in Britain were always immigrants on the grounds of having a separate identity. I use the term migrants because it is historically correct, certainly still correct for the Northern Irish of today and can still be said to be true to a certain extent for people from the Republic of Ireland on the following grounds:-
1. Separate to nationality law, the 1949 Act also provided that "citizens of the Republic of Ireland" (the British nomenclature adopted under the Act) would continue to be treated on a par with those from Commonwealth countries and would not be treated as aliens.
2. Irish citizens are automatically deemed to be "settled" in the United Kingdom. This is a more favourable status than that given to citizens of other EU and EEA member states. This special status comes from section 1(3) of the Immigration Act 1971, the legislative basis for the Common Travel Area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nationality_law_and_the_Republic_of_Ireland
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It is called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for a reason.
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For most of our Irish migrant ancestors this was their country:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland
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The entire Island of Ireland is quite a large country. There would have been a number of crossing points. The shortest would have been between Ireland and Stranraer, Scotland.
Then several crossings to Wales.
The big transatlantic Liners usually stopped at Cork or Cobh before sailing on to Liverpool.
So, many crossing routes.
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True. There were many different Irish ports that provided ships for people to go to Liverpool. It was very easy for the Irish to get to Liverpool as shown by the great numbers of Irish people who came to Liverpool in the 1840s at the time of the famine.
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I had a few days in Dublin several years ago. When I said I was from Liverpool, they recalled that during the Potato Famine, Some Landowners were still exporting Potatoes to England. But the Liverpool dockers refused to unload them from the ships.
Just one more reason why Liverpool is held in high esteem by Irish people?
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I had a few days in Dublin several years ago. When I said I was from Liverpool, they recalled that during the Potato Famine, Some Landowners were still exporting Potatoes to England. But the Liverpool dockers refused to unload them from the ships.
Just one more reason why Liverpool is held in high esteem by Irish people?
There weren’t many potatoes to export during the famine due to the fact that the majority were blighted. There were other crops such as barley, oats etc which were unaffected. However very few landowners grew crops. Instead they let the land to native Irish farmers, and those farmers were the ones with the surplus crops to sell in England. (The British Government should have intercepted them, bought them up and redistributed them, but that’s another issue). The fact is that many Irish farmers in the more prosperous agricultural areas did quite well during famine years, selling their surplus crops on the open market. There’s some sloppy history written about Ireland at times. The truth can be a bit more complex.
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I can understand the original poster's wish to see some lists. I get especially into despair when I see in the 19th Century census record "Ireland" written by so many of my mob, without any county mentioned (which may possibly give me that proverbial cat-in-hell's chance of tracing them). It'd be lovely to know at least if they were from "modern" Southern or Northern, - and I can't even be sure which religions they were. Oh dear.
Everything seems to lead to the Irish Sea - but never emerge waving evidence. But it wouldn't have been needed or practical to try and record all the passengers to and fro from Ireland, so we'll never have that. It's far more frustrating that there are so few Irish Census records available, shows you shouldn't ever put all your eggs into one basket! I've a few families where I've all the names, from 1840s and 50s, and 60s, before they arrived in England and/or Wales, so just may have been able to get closer to fixing them, had the records survived.
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There's similar problems with researching the Welsh who came to England due to the surnames being so numerous like Jones, Davies, Evans, Thomas etc
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Yes, I'd noted that, too - on OH's side got Jones, Roberts, Evans, and I've got Williams, Parrys etc. Terribly unimaginative - but at least the Welsh ones often gave more of a clue in their birthplace decalarations ... sometimes.
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Only some of the ships called in at Cobh (then Queenstown) on the way out to the USA and on the way back. The majority of ships that sailed from Liverpool went direct. So most of the emigrants had to make it to Liverpool first out of necessity presumably via one of the many ferry routes. Looking at the dates you mentioned the Republic of Ireland was part of the UK so I doubt there would have been any requirement to have passenger lists at all. There are lots of reasons as to why so many emigrants never made it to the USA including being preyed upon and robbed by gangs in Liverpool itself. In short they had no choice but to remain - no money to make it to the USA and no money to go back to Ireland.
And other posts are right - you rarely see anything more precise than ‘Ireland’ on census or shipping records which as ThrelfallYorky said it’s the “proverbial cat-in-hell's chance of tracing them”.
I’m lucky, my lot went to the USA first and we know when and where they were from in Ireland. All the records I’ve got confirm this. My Great Grandfather was New York born and bred and when older worked on the ships between NYC and Liverpool where he eventually married and settled.
I once heard it said as a supposed joke that the Irish in Liverpool were those who got on the wrong boats. Given that most had to come to Liverpool first then the joke is wrong and in my case then that ‘mistake’ lies with my Great Grandfather who was American!
So in a roundabout way I made it from Clonakilty to Liverpool only via New York.
Good luck.
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I like that idea! I just have a vision of them all solidly paddling ashore on the English coast, coming ashore dripping wet through, with a neat bag of potato chips in one hand.... Oh dear, where have all my Irish ancestors hidden themselves? I'll never know.
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It's a bit of a myth really that the Irish who settled in Liverpool or elsewhere in Britain were confused or unable to travel on to America. There are well known accounts of travellers being conned out of their money in Liverpool but travellers were usually well informed of all the dangers of travel and had their wits about them so widespread were these stories. The main reason for Irish settlement in Liverpool was the availability of work, usually connected to the docks and shipping. By 1841 (pre-Great Famine) there were 49,639 Irish-born people in Liverpool making up 17.3% of the city's population. If Irish people wanted to go to America and they didn't have the money they could work on the ships that were regularly going there. Liverpool was an attractive destination for Irish people throughout the 19th century.
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