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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Andrew Tarr on Wednesday 27 February 19 17:29 GMT (UK)
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Not long after his father died, my g-g-grandfather left the family farm near Ashburton in Devon, and took everyone across to Ireland, probably in 1854 when the farm was put up for sale (this was a few years after the famines and mass emigration, so there must have been plenty of farms vacant). There had been seven children; the eldest (my g-g) married an Irish girl and apparently learnt the language. He seems to have been the only one to settle - several of the others returned to Devon in the early 1880s.
I was wondering what route they might have taken to reach Midleton in eastern county Cork. Cork itself is a major port and there are harbours at Youghal, Waterford and Dungarvan, where the one settler died in 1904. But where to sail from? Does anyone know what passages there were between the West Country and Ireland in the 1850s ?
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Hello Andrew
You could try the Port of Bristol (the City of Bristol has its own Archives with limited emigration items), if they lived in the South-west of England. That would be my first 'port of call' for enquiries (if you pardon the pun ;D ) as to whether anything local was kept and where held.
But smaller harbours were navigating boats along the coast to other Ports, before crossing the sea.
TNA, Kew
Emigration Fact Sheets
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/emigration/
Many Government Files mainly relate to Policy, but the PRO TNA is a most interesting place if you have stacks of time and can get there.
Media File
https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/emigration-records/
Search Emigration & 1854
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_aq=emigration&_dss=range&_sd=1854&_ed=1854&_ro=any&_st=adv
and
Search emigration & Ireland & 1854 ...
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_dss=range&_sd=1854&_ed=1854&_ro=any&_q=emigration+Ireland
These are all likely to be original documents at TNA and will require a READERS TICKET application and recent Proofs of ID and Address (See their "Visit Us" page). Contact other Archives re access requirements.
However, I was led to believe by TNA, Kew, that many of the early government Emigration Registers are gone.
Surviving Crew Muster Sheets Bound
Surviving Muster Sheets that were saved for Merchant Crews (Bristol search in BT 98, other Ports available), see also CUST series (Customs)
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_ep=Bristol&_cr=BT%2098&_dss=range&_ro=any&_st=adv
Bit unusual for a Passenger to be listed with the Crew names, but I have seen them.
Also worth remembering that many inland rivers and waterways were more navigable further inland in time gone by, than they are now.
I do know that in c.1780 there were sailings with cargo from Liverpool to Waterford & Belfast
Reply 53
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=731922.msg6535046#msg6535046
If the last point of departure from the English Coast was Liverpool, there might be some interesting items at the Maritime Museum, Liverpool (if documents not online).
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/archive/
This company (who also do paid research) have put a lot of general useful links on their site, for those interested in Merchant Shipping.
http://www.maritimearchives.co.uk/
Also Lloyds of London Registers of Vessels (many online) are scanning their Archives.
Also National Maritime Museum Archive, Greenwich.
British Library, UK.
Other smaller Coastal places have Museums with Maritime pieces.
There are others on here with a deep interest in Shipping.
Some travelled on chartered boats and vessels from smaller harbours, if a group emigrated together.
Mark
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:o Forgive me, but; Standing Ovation!
What an incredibly generous response!
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Thanks for all that, Mark. I wasn't hoping to find a record of their travel, more a general idea of how such a journey might have happened. By 1854 railway travel was expanding - Ashburton was not yet connected, but their farm was only a few miles from the main line at Newton Abbot. I guess the nearest port would have been Exeter, but Bristol or even Highbridge on the north coast might have been a possibility. I can't see them going as far as Liverpool or south Wales somehow. The family wills suggest that they were well-off enough, but that kind of travel would have cost; I don't think they saw themselves as true emigrants.
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Bideford looks a possibility, wiki tells me Canadian emigrants left from there in the 1800s.
There don’t seem to be many ports on the north devon coast
I doubt they would have gone from any south coast port as the journey round Cornwall would have lengthened the voyage considerably
Mike
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Bideford looks a possibility, wiki tells me Canadian emigrants left from there in the 1800s.
There don’t seem to be many ports on the north Devon coast
I doubt they would have gone from any south coast port as the journey round Cornwall would have lengthened the voyage considerably.
Thanks, Mike, I had forgotten about Bideford, but Barnstaple is close by, and Watchet has been a port for centuries. There remains the question of how they travelled; without knowing exactly when that was, it remains hard to guess. A new railway reached Barnstaple from Exeter in summer 1854 (so that seems just possible), and Bideford the following year, but a railway didn't get to Watchet until 1862.
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Millford Haven?
Skoosh.
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Milford Haven?
No railway there either in 1854. I think a likely plan would have been to cross the Bristol Channel, perhaps from Highbridge, to Cardiff or Swansea, and get another ship there.
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I would also favour Bristol.
Railway reached Anglesey in 1848. Was Holyhead an option?
Irish Genealogy Toolkit has pages on emigration. The section on Britain has a bit about migration routes.
https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com Emigration is on Genealogy tab on home page. There's a ship advert.
They may have gone to Ireland by packet steamer.
Expansion of steamship travel and competition between companies reduced fares. Travel between Britain and Ireland became very cheap.
They might have bought 3rd class train tickets.
Search for newspaper adverts for sailings to Ireland from ports on your shortlist.
Edit. Bristol had an Irish population of long-standing.
There was a tradition of Munster people as seasonal agricultural workers in Britain.
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I would also favour Bristol. Railway reached Anglesey in 1848. Was Holyhead an option?
Irish Genealogy Toolkit has pages on emigration. The section on Britain has a bit about migration routes.
Thanks for that, M-S. Holyhead would have been an option, but a long (and expensive) journey, and unlikely for people heading (I assume they knew roughly where they were going) for southern Ireland.
I've had a look at the Toolkit page, but unsurprisingly it concentrates on those leaving Ireland, not immigrants, and it doesn't mention any southern ports. I'll look again tomorrow.
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Having arrived in Ireland, depending on which port they landed, they might have travelled onward by train. The first railway line in Ireland opened 1834 between Dublin and Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) as part of the Royal Mail route between London and Dublin.
The Great Southern & Western Railway from Dublin to Cork reached Cork in 1849.
There were several other railway lines connecting most regions of Ireland by mid 1850s.
Middleton was a post town. It's only 10 miles from Cork City, so hardly in the middle of nowhere. Investigating the Royal Mail routes in Ireland, England and Wales may be fruitful. There's a book "History of the Mail Routes to Ireland to 1850" by George Ayres. Preferred route was Holyhead to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire). So if your family could have got to Holyhead, onward travel should have been efficient, although they may have had to change trains.
Articles about the history of Irish transport 18th & 19th centuries:
"Ireland's time-space revolution" History Ireland website.
"Charles Bianconi and the Transport Revolution 1800-1875" The Irish Story website.
County Cork was well-supplied with army barracks. Rapid movement was vital. (1798 Rising and French invasion emphasised that.) Royal Engineers were stationed on one of the islands at Queenstown (Cobh). They surveyed and mapped Ireland in detail during first half of 19thC.
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Cork Ancestors website has, among other gems, some extracts from "Cork Constitution" newspaper.
www.corkgen.org
1826 editions had adverts for steam packets to Bristol and Liverpool. Lists of arrivals & cargoes at "Cove of Cork" included coals from Milford and slate from Bangor and many colliers with coals, departure port not named.
1896 edition advertised sailings from Cork to Cardiff, Milford, Newport, Plymouth and Southampton. I found the 1896 edition by looking under heading "Shipping".
I don't know if there are extracts from 1850s editions of the newspaper.
Other items I found were lists of deaths on emigrant ships from Cork in 1847 and discharged soldiers who were natives of a town. There are bits about many Cork towns. Illustrated.