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Irish Emigration

Most of the original settlers of the Gatineau Valley were transplanted Irish, with Northern Irish Protestants located near Wakefield and Rupert, and Roman Catholics further north.

In the early 1600's, Scottish settlers began to come in large numbers to the historic province of Ulster, which includes counties Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan. The Plantation of Ulster was the organized colonization (or plantation) of Ulster by people from Great Britain. Private plantation began in 1606, while official plantation controlled by King James I began in 1609, transferring land ownership to Protestants and settling their lands with Protestant tenants. (However, Monaghan was not planted like the other counties of Ulster, although there was some later settlement, mostly Scottish farmers brought over from the area of Strathclyde. Common names among these settlers included "Ferguson". In 1861, only 12% of the Monaghan population was Presbyterian.)

Large-scale emigration of "Scots-Irish" to colonial America began in 1718. The traditional view of emigration in Presbyterian Ulster was that the New World offered deliverance from religious intolerance and economic oppression, whereas for Gaelic Catholics emigration meant exile.

A flood of emigration from Ireland began in the early decades of the 1800's. The fundamental cause was rapid population growth, but other factors included discrimination under the Penal Law, the rebellion of 1798 that led to union with England in 1800, and recurring crop failures well before the Great Famine of 1845-1855. As well, widespread depression followed the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1814; once the shipping lanes to the Americas re-opened, mass emigration started. From 1815-1819 about two-thirds of emigrants were from Ulster, and many emigrants were artisans, shopkeepers, strong farmers, and professionals, most often travelling in family groups. British legislation discriminated against United States shipping, keeping the cost of passage prohibitively high for the poorest classes, and most emigrants went to British North America, in returning Canadian timber ships. The vast majority pushed on from Canada to the U.S., although increasing numbers began to stay in the colony.

In 1827, all restrictions on emigration were repealed, and between 1828 and 1837 almost 400,000 Irish people left for North America. Up to 1832, about half of emigrants still came from Ulster, but after that, the Scots-Irish proportion of emigration was in continuous decline.