The Potato Famine

(written by Michael Barnard Fero - May 2002)

Note: The facts regarding the cholera epidemic and potato famine are correct and verified. The story of the Woodward's part in it pure speculation at this point, based upon fact and conjecture. All the dates regarding the family are verified, however. The purpose of this story is to suggest reasons why the Woodward family left Ireland for Canada in the first place.

In Ireland, the decade of the 1840s is known simply as the Great Famine.

The 1841 national census recorded 8,200,000 residents. From that total -- over the next nine years -- an estimated one million people starved to death or died from related diseases and 1,300,000 others left Ireland to live elsewhere. That constitutes approximately a quarter of all the people in the country.

With the exception of three urban areas -- Dublin, Belfast, and Cork -- the majority of Irish lived in a rural setting and were dependent upon the potato for food. In fact, it's estimated that 30% of the entire population was wholly dependent upon it for sustenance.

Ironically, the potato blight is believed to have reached Ireland via England. But its origin is thought to have been North America where the blight traveled aboard trade ships bound for the British Isles.

During the winter of 1845-6 one-third to one-half of the entire potato crop was wiped out by the blight which causes the interior of a potato to deteriorate into an inedible mush. In the late winter of those years, there was severe famine which was complicated by a complete failure of the new spring crop.

Although the 1847 crop was a success, starvation continued to be a severe problem nationwide. Too many people who had lived on farms had been forced to move off them and the crop was not large enough to feed the population.

Blight again struck the crop in 1848 and in 1849. Adding to the misery, a cholera epidemic broke out in 1849, killing tens of thousands of people before they would have starved to death.

Both the governments in London and Dublin were slow to recognize the severity of the situation and many people died or were forced to emigrate before government assistance began to make a difference. Irish emigrated in largest numbers to neighboring England and across the Atlantic to the United States and to Canada. Because passage was cheaper to North America, some 28% of the émigrés chose to relocate there. Below-deck steerage tickets cost 55 shillings. Additionally, emigrating to Canada -- another commonwealth country -- required few, if any, documents.

Life was toughest during this decade in Ireland's western states and counties -- and in the rural areas all over the southern portion of the country -- where upwards of 20% of the entire population was enrolled in government work programs. People living along the coastal areas and in the urban centers fared better.

Land-locked County Tipperary in southern Munster state experienced one of the greater negative impacts in all Ireland. The heart of Ireland's farming region, potatoes were a major crop, and when the blight hit, famine was severe immediately. People poured into the county's two major cities, Tipperary in the north and Clonmel along the southern border with County Waterford. The more people fled the farms, the worse living conditions became until cholera reared its ugly head. Most cities over 2,000 inhabitants were hit with the plague in the final years of the decade, including Tipperary and Clonmel.

Daniel and Mary Woodward's family was a part of this disaster. Born in 1794, Daniel and wife Mary, born 1798, were farming and raising their family when disaster struck. Living in the farming area near Clonmel (gaelic: "meadow of honey") with children Catherine, Mary, Daniel, John, and Patrick (?), they would have been driven off the land and into Clonmel to live with relatives or in make-shift huts in the city. At the time, Clonmel was a small city 13 miles east of Carrick-on-Suir and 23miles north of Waterford City, situated on the north shore of the River Suir, which formed the border between southern County Tipperary and County Waterford. Blight and disease would have been present in the serene green rolling hills and Commeragh and Knockmealdown Mountains which ringed the city.

Daniel would have sought work with the government's work relief program. But eventually, faced with the widening cholera epidemic and no end to the potato blight, Daniel and Mary would've sold all their possession and traveled southwest to the nearest Irish port, City Cork, intent upon emigrating. There, they would have used all of their resources to book passage aboard a ship headed for Canada.

It is unknown exactly when and how they emigrated but Canadian records show Daniel and Mary living in London Township, Middlesex County in 1850.

Daniel stood as a witness to his daughter Catherine's wedding to William Moore in St. Peter's Cathedral Basilica on July 20, 1850. Seven months and one day later, Daniel was interred in the Roman Catholic cemetery of London. He was 57.

Upon her husband's death, Mary Woodward moved into her daughter Mary's home. Mary, age 28, was married to William Dwyer, had a young daughter Jane, and were living in a one-story, single-family, log farmhouse in London Township. There, Mary lived for many years until her death sometime after 1870.

-mbf