Our migration...

Note: The below information was copied from another Ahern family who researched and reported on their own immigration story from Ireland. Our intention is to use the below as a basis for researching our ancestor's migration story as they as well traveled from Cork to America.

The Ahern Family immigration

In the middle of the 19th century an island nation on the western edge of Europe was devastated. The fates of its people, whether they lived or died, were forever changed. The Ahern family from County Cork was among the millions of people whose lives were touched by the forces of nature whose dark hand swept over the green land of Erin. The mass exodus from Ireland was precipitated by a fungus, a rot that afflicted the potato, decimating the entire crop and with it, the food source for many of the eight million Irish. The blight struck first in 1846, more heavily the following year. Although grain was grown in Ireland, it was slated for export. When the potato, staple of their diet was eliminated, the poor tenant farmers had virtually nothing to eat. Many scrubbed for whatever roots they could dig. A lucky few by the coast were able to fish or gather shellfish or seaweed. The unlucky had nothing. Starvation decimated the country. Scurvy, typhus, dropsy and other disease wracked bodies from Cork to Donegal. Tenant farmers, unable to pay rent, were evicted from their homes, the houses often destroyed by the landlord to provide pasture for livestock. Children, bellies swollen and distended by starvation, mouths green from the grass they ate to sate their hunger, cried along the roadside, shoeless, their clothes in tatters.

In the years of the famine, Ireland lost roughly a quarter of her population, many to starvation, the remainder to emigration. The strong, those who were able, left their homeland for opportunities abroad, in England, Australia or America.As a young man or woman would prepare to emigrate, they would spend the week prior to departure saying their good-byes to friends and neighbors. Advice would be given, tears would be shed, letters would be collected for delivery to those already gone. The week would culminate in a wake – an American wake – sending off the loved one in as high a style as could be mustered - food, tobacco, whiskey or stout, and the craic, the magic spell of the music, the conversation, the warmth, the spirit coming together to make an Irish celebration. The light of dawn breaking on the festivities, the young man would say his final good-byes to his parents. Mothers would cry, fathers would comfort and advise, and the son would start down the footpath, accompanied for a distance by friends not quite ready to make their leave. As denoted by the name of the prior night’s festivities, a death of a sort was occurring – the “decedent” departing, never to be seen again by his loved ones, almost as if he had died. Carrying food and baggage for his journey to a new life, first John Ahern, then James, Michael and Jeremiah made his way to the embarkation point. They might have waited in a port for a week or more, trying to keep away from the disease present in the filthy overcrowded lodgings in the cities, and also to keep from being swindled out of their meager travel funds.

Conditions on the transatlantic ships of the period varied greatly. Ships left from ports in Ireland, including Dublin and Queenstown (now known as Cobh) as well as Liverpool, to which emigrants would take a small ship across the Irish Sea and catch a larger sailing ship to North America. Ships might hold as few as 60 or 70 passengers or as many as 900. In the hold of a vessel the ship’s carpenter would hastily construct bunks to hold the human cargo on the journey westward, the bunks removed as the hold was filled with timber or other crops for the return journey. If the weather were fair, the passengers might be allowed on deck to take some fresh air, but in rough weather they would remain below, in the darkness, cramped and perhaps seasick. The rats, the feces, the maggot-infested rotting food, all contributed to the atmosphere below. A chamber pot became a prized possession. The movement of the ship could open the planks of the hull enough to catch a woman’s skirts, pinning her as the boards moved back together, releasing her briefly as the ship tacked onto another course, only to catch her again if she wasn’t careful. A storm would cast passengers out of their bunks, hurling them across the ship into other passengers, partitions, bunks, whatever was in their path, bruising bodies, breaking limbs, crushing small children. Water might burst through the hatch, soaking all below. When the storm passed through, the disarray in steerage gave testament to the gales which raged above, a collection of shawls, bonnets, pots and pans, water-filled bedding strewn under, over and between the tangled wreckage of the bunks. With favorable winds and fair weather, the journey could be quick and relatively painless. But with adverse conditions, ships were at the mercy of fate. Passengers’ tickets generally provided for an allotment of bread, biscuit, rice, oatmeal, potatoes, sugar, tea, and water, but the seven pounds per week ration provided little more than an insurance against starvation. Passengers could judge that the journey was taking longer than anticipated when the water ration was cut. Fire was a constant danger on the wooden ships. Passengers were allowed some rudimentary cooking facilities, generally a box lined with bricks. If the wind calmed a bit, as it often did in the early evening, a few passengers would be allowed on deck to cook for themselves and their companions, watched over by Jack in the Shrouds, a young crewman who remained aloft in the rigging, on the lookout for a gust of wind, ready to douse the cooking fires with a jug of water at the first sign of danger.

Hungry passengers might protest, but would get no satisfaction.The baggage allotment for an emigrant on these ships was scanty at best. Some extra food, a few cooking utensils, and if one were lucky, a watchmaker perhaps, he would have room for a few tools of his trade. The farmers and carpenters among the passengers would arrive in America with little more than their wits and their hands. Passengers would seek amusement to break the tedium of the journey. Perhaps a fiddle or squeezebox would be brought forth to accompany a tenor or a dancer.

Another pastime would be the lottery – tickets sold to guess at the time land would be first sighted, the lucky winner taking the pot. Other betting was held on the ship’s mileage, a log tied to a line heaved overboard, the length of line tailing out in an hour’s time giving a rough estimate of mileage for a twenty-four hour period. Such bets might be paid out in cash, rum, tea, or salted fish, whatever the passengers had and were willing to risk on a bet. Ship’s fever -- typhus, caused by the lice infesting the passengers --was always a threat in the cramped conditions. The afflicted ran high fevers, suffering from severe headaches, dry mouth, dizziness, delirium. A funeral service would be held on board for the first death, the body prepared, washed, weighted with rocks, covered with a flag, placed on a hatch batten. The captain or chaplain of the ship might read from the English Book of Common prayer, the irony not lost on the Irish Catholics. The batten would be tipped, the body sliding into the water with little but a small splash. After that milestone, the focus of the journey became a struggle simply to survive.

At some point in the journey, seaweed would appear in the water, a heaven-sent sign that land was near and the shores of the promised land would soon be seen. When land was finally sighted, there might have been a call to prepare the ship for arrival. Able-bodied passengers would be ordered to dispose of bedding, transfer the ailing passengers to the deck, shovel the accumulated muck and effluvia from the steerage, scrub and mop, eliminating any evidence of pestilence or disease which might prompt a medical officer boarding the ship to order a quarantine upon the vessel. This beehive of activity was rarely required on the American ships, which were cleaned with regularity during the trip, but was a common sight on those flying the British flag.The ship, riding the incoming tide amidst the bedding, baskets, ticking and clothing cast overboard, would make its way into the busy harbor. The medical officer would board and ask his questions about how many sick, how many died at sea, how many passengers aboard. Sick passengers would be yanked off to quarantine, separated from companions on board with little chance to devise a plan to regroup at a later date. Dodging vessels of all size and description, the captain would guide the ship toward Manhattan and the piers on South Street to the waiting slip… lines thrown…, the final yards… the journey over.

The eager but exhausted new arrivals would be besieged on disembarkation by all manner of tavern and boarding house runners, ready to guide the unwary immigrant to lodging of questionable character but unquestionably exorbitant price. However, in many cases, members of the Irish immigrant societies stepped in to aid their newly arrived countrymen. New York was the final destination for many immigrants who found housing in the numerous tenements and looked for employment, despite the prevalence of the NINA signs – No Irish Need Apply. Others left the teeming metropolis for smaller cities and villages, for small farms along the east coast or the vast prairies of the mid-West, for the coal mines of Pennsylvania, or for the gold fields of California.