received mail from his brother John Charles, and family in Ireland, as well as legal communications concerning investments. From that, it seems likely that his family in Ireland could also read and write, as could a nephew of Margaret Donlan's.
Those who escaped the Potato Famine4 through emigration, though, were generally the poorest and least powerful; England hurried their departure by advancing fares for Irish Catholics by the Poor Relief Act in April of 1847 (Patrick arrived in New York in July of this year) - the faster to be rid of people using land that could be put to use more profitably grazing animals for England's tables, continuing a program begun when the "Mother Country's" farmlands could not produce enough meat in the 1750s, Irish plots cleared of produce, even the corn and oats that England imported, made more money for the landlords with smaller effort when left to pasture.
Compare the value: Sir William Petty, a "Political Arithmetician" valued an English citizen, man, woman or child at £70 (70 pounds) per person. The Irish value he computed was a man at £25, and children at £5 each, in 1691.5 Considering these numbers and the fact that European opinion was beginning to blame Britain for the Irish starvation, Parliament grudgingly agreed the economic answer was providing enough money for ship's passage. Feeding Irish farmers on their own harvest of grain and animals was out of the question - England's landlords and their managers felt the expense was too great.
Can we deduce from this evidence that Patrick's family was rich enough to stay alive and by circumstance of famine, committed to a home other than Ireland?
At the time Patrick's parents were born in the early 1790s, (Thomas was born 26 May 1790 and his wife, Mary
________________________________________________________________
4
It may be noted from many sources that the Potato Famine was just that. Nearly three-quarters of arable land was devoted to "corn", i.e. wheat, oats and barley, almost all of which was shipped to England, after a good harvest in the Famine years. But because this grain, and a farmer's pig paid the rent on Gale day (the first of May and November), a Catholic Irishman could not afford to eat it. Though after the 1845 potato blight took his sustenance, the total potato failure in 1846 subjected the Irish to the utter devastation as they suffered not only hunger but the resulting disease further spread by lice that poor sanitation fostered.5
Kenneth C. W. Kammeyer, "The Dynamics of Population", quoting Sir William Petty's The Political Anatomy of Ireland 1691. Irish History and Culture, ed. Harold Orel, Lawrence, KS: The University of Kansas Press. 1976 pp l92,193.
- Page 2 -