Library Article

April 5, 2003 - Stirlings in the NARA "Irish Famine" Database

The Irish Potato Famine of 1846-50 It began with a blight of the potato crop that left acre upon acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared. Subsistence-level Irish farmers found their food stores rotting in their cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and Protestant landlords destroyed. Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in the clothes they wore when they died.   Landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of peasants, who then crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Other landlords paid for their tenants to emigrate, sending hundreds of thousands of Irish to America and other English-speaking countries. But even emigration was no panacea -- shipowners often crowded hundreds of desperate Irish onto rickety vessels labeled "coffin ships." In many cases, these ships reached port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease, hunger and other causes. While Britain provided much relief for Ireland's starving populace, many Irish criticized Britain's delayed response -- and further blamed centuries of British political oppression on the underlying causes of the famine. The Irish Famine of 1846-50 took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease, and changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland in profound ways. The Famine also spurred new waves of immigration, thus shaping the histories of the United States and Britain as well. The combined forces of famine, disease and emigration depopulated the island; Ireland's population dropped from 8 million before the Famine to 5 million years after. If Irish nationalism was dormant for the first half of the nineteenth-century, the Famine convinced Irish citizens and Irish-Americans of the urgent need for political change. The Famine also changed centuries-old agricultural practices, hastening the end of the division of family estates into tiny lots capable of sustaining life only with a potato crop. Embarking at Waterloo Many emmgrated to the USA by way of Waterloo  National Archives & Records Administration Data sorted by arrival date Last_Name First_Name Age Sex Occ Dest Month Day Year STERLING GEORGE 60 M MCHT CANADA 7 1 1846 STERLING MARY 60 F MCHT CANADA 7 1 1846 STIRLING M.L. 27 M MCHT GT.BRITAIN 3 18 1847 STERLING MGT. 40 F NN USA 4 15 1847 STERLING ARCHIBALD 22 M LABR NEW YORK 4 26 1847 STERLING ROBERT 25 M LABR NEW YORK 4 26 1847 STERLING ROBERT 24 M LABR NEW YORK 4 26 1847 STERLING ISABELLA 26 F NN USA 6 18 1847 STERLING PETER 24 M MECH USA 6 18 1847 STIRLING K. 45 M NN USA 6 23 1847 STERLING BGT. 22 F NN USA 7 2 1847 STERLING JAMES 18 M PNTR USA 10 28 1847 STIRLING JOHN 28 M MECH USA 11 26 1847 STERLING JOHN 18 M LABR USA 4 26 1848 STERLING ALEXR. M   INF USA 7 3 1848 STERLING JAMES 40 M LABR USA 7 3 1848 STERLING MARGT. 30 F SMSTS USA 7 3 1848 STERLING MARGT. 8 F CH USA 7 3 1848 STERLING SABINE 3 F CH USA 7 3 1848 STERLING SARAH 20 F SMSTS USA 7 3 1848 STERLING HENRY 34 M LABR USA 8 5 1848 STERLING DAVID 20 M U USA 9 15 1848 STERLING VILAS 40 U U USA 9 15 1848 STERLING LOUISA 20 F FMR USA 11 8 1848 STERLING SAMUEL 20 M LABR USA 11 20 1848 STERLING ISABELLA 21 F W USA 12 11 1848 STERLING ISRAEL 24 M SVNT USA 12 11 1848 STERLING JAMES 15 M SVNT USA 12 11 1848 STIRLING ELLEN 5 F CH USA 1 26 1849 STIRLING GEORGE 3 M CH USA 1 26 1849 STIRLING JANE 27 F W USA 1 26 1849 STIRLING MARY F   INF USA 1 26 1849 STERLING DOMINICO 21 M MUSN USA 3 5 1849 STERLING MARY-ANN 20 F SVNT NEW YORK 4 18 1849 STERLING WILLIAM 22 M LABR NEW YORK 5 1 1849 STERLING ANN 23 F U USA 7 12 1849 STERLING BRIDGET 55 F U USA 7 12 1849 STERLING JAMES 23 M ENGR USA 7 12 1849 STERLING JOHN M   INF USA 7 12 1849 STERLING THOS. 30 M U USA 8 14 1849 STERLING ROSE 18 F HSMD USA 8 18 1849 STERLING ELIZABETH 26 F U USA 9 4 1849 STERLING ALEXR. 12 M CH USA 9 18 1849 STERLING JOHN 4 M CH USA 9 18 1849 STERLING JANE 25 F U USA 4 4 1850 STERLING ROBERT 28 M SMER USA 4 4 1850 STERLING ROBERT   M INF USA 4 4 1850 STERLING ALEXANDER 28 M LABR USA 5 28 1850 STERLING MARTHA 40 F WI USA 5 28 1850 STERLING JANE 20 F U NEW YORK 7 1 1850 STERLING ALFRED   M U USA 7 15 1850 STERLING JANE   F U USA 7 15 1850 STERLING GEORGE 35 M SHMK USA 10 10 1850 STERLING ANDREW 30 M LABR NEW YORK 11 13 1850 STERLING ELLEN 27 F U NEW YORK 11 13 1850 STERLING JOHN 6 M CH NEW YORK 11 13 1850 STERLING MARY 3 F CH NEW YORK 11 13 1850 STERLING MARY 21 F FMR USA 6 3 1851 STERLING JOHN 40 M LABR USA 6 9 1851 STERLING AGNES 43 F U USA 7 5 1851 STERLING AGNES 14 F U USA 7 5 1851 STERLING ANN 12 F U USA 7 5 1851 STERLING ELIZABETH 2 F CH USA 7 5 1851 STERLING FANNY 10 F U USA 7 5 1851 STERLING MARGARET 6 F CH USA 7 5 1851 STERLING SAMUEL 45 M CBTMKR USA 7 5 1851 STERLING SAMUEL 8 M CH USA 7 5 1851 STERLING ELIZA 50 F U USA 7 12 1851 STERLING ELIZA 15 F U USA 7 12 1851 STERLING JOHN 20 M U USA 7 12 1851 STERLING SAMUEL 60 M FMR USA 7 12 1851 STERLING ANN 19 F U USA 8 1 1851 STERLING JOHN 34 M WVR USA 8 21 1851 STERLING CATHN. 30 F SVNT USA 10 7 1851 STERLING THOS. 21 M U USA 10 13 1851 STIRLING WILLIAM 20 M AUC NEW YORK 11 12 1851