Between 1841 and 1901 Ireland lost six million people. The population was cut in half. People had been emigrating prior to the famine, but that crisis opened the flood gates.
My great grandpa John was born in Waterford Ireland to Phillip and Catherine on the eve of the famine in 1844. He emigrated when he was 25 years old. So he left in 1869. He was part of the great immigration from Ireland to the U.S.
In 1845 half of the potato crop was destroyed by blight, a type of fungus. People managed to survive that year. When it came back the following year people started to starve to death.
For most of the Irish people potatoes were the daily diet. They were easy to grow and plentiful in the climate. The way Ireland was set up with the English owning most of the land and renting it to the Irish, it was all they could afford. So when the crop failed they were in serious trouble.
With little help from the English government they began to die of starvation and disease. They couldn’t pay rent so they were evicted by the thousands.
0ne million people died during the famine. One million people left Ireland during the famine. After the famine and potato blight ended, people kept leaving leaving by the hundreds of thousands til half the population was gone, among them my great granddad John. He settled in Minnesota, married and had 10 children, among them my grandpa Joe.
Grandpa Joe had eleven children, among them my father Bill. Can you tell they were Irish Catholics?
The average Irish man ate 14 pounds of potatoes a day prior to the famine. Seems like a lot of potatoes doesnt it? It isn’t if you divide into 3 meals a day. That’s 4.6 pounds of potatoes a meal or maybe 5-6 potatoes a meal.
