Irish Emigrants in North America. Part Eight

Description

Emigration from Ireland to the Americas started in earnest during the early 18th century. In 1718 the first successful emigration from Ireland to New England occurred, laying the foundation for the large-scale settlement of colonial America by the “Scots-Irish.” The scale of emigration, particularly from the north of Ireland, grew from a trickle in 1718 to a torrent by the mid-19th century. This work is the eighth installment (and the fifth volume) in a series compiled by David Dobson that documents the departure of thousands of individuals who left Ireland for the promise of the New World between roughly 1670 and 1830. As many as half of the immigrants referred to here disembarked at Canadian ports or the Caribbean, while most of the rest entered North America through the Mid-Atlantic.

Part Eight is based mainly on archival sources in Canada, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scotland, the U.S., and the West Indies, together with contemporary newspapers and journals, a few published records, and some gravestone inscriptions from both sides of the Atlantic. In the majority of cases, Mr. Dobson’s transcriptions provide some or all of the following: name of passenger, date of birth, name of ship, occupation in Ireland, reason for emigration, and, sometimes, place of origin in Ireland, place of disembarkation in the New World, date of arrival, number of persons in the household, and the source of the information.

Here is an entry that is typical of those found in the volume:

CUSACK, GEORGE, alias Jorge Cusicque, an Irishman in Tortuga, 1670, a mutineer aboard the St. Joseph bound from Tortuga to Lisbon and La Rochelle, took the ship to Boston, New England [SPAWI.1672.1007]