In 1848, a young lad named Patrick Cooper Hunt fled a starving land - a boy refugee desperate for a chance to live. His story is the story of America and the promise of prosperity offered to immigrants and refugees for more than 200 years. St Patrick's Day is not about Ireland, it is about immigrants who weren't wanted, refugees who had not choice but to flee.
Patrick Cooper Hunt left Westport in County Mayo, Ireland in 1848 at the height of the Great Famine.
Gorta Mór killed a million Irish and sent a million more fleeing across the seas in search of something better.
Gorta Mór killed a million Irish and sent a million more fleeing across the seas in search of something better.
One third of the population of Ireland was gone when the famine finally ended. The British landlords blamed the poor for their poverty while exporting crops to England.
It was the young that had the strength to leave, to seek a better life than starving while growing crops you can't eat.
Many died never touching shore. Packed as they were aboard the coffin ships, two-fifths died at sea of disease and starvation.
Patrick was lucky to have an uncle in Lambertville, NJ so he worked in England to scrape up the fare and he sailed from Liverpool, for the port of Philadelphia aboard the ship Wyoming.
He was just a teenager, sailing alone. Or he may have been 22 - it depends if you trust his headstone which says 1833 or the ship's manifest which lists him, and a dozen other young immigrants as 22. It might have been a wee lie about one's age that meant the difference between life and death when it came time for the ship to sail.
He was just a teenager, sailing alone. Or he may have been 22 - it depends if you trust his headstone which says 1833 or the ship's manifest which lists him, and a dozen other young immigrants as 22. It might have been a wee lie about one's age that meant the difference between life and death when it came time for the ship to sail.
In America he found work for his uncles who had sponsored him. He found opportunities he would never have had in an Ireland occupied and oppressed by England.
Yet by 1850, more than a quarter of the population of Philadelphia was Irish and the flow of Irish Catholic refugees created resentment and discrimination as well. "No Irish Need Apply" was a familiar sign by 1851 -- a door slammed in a man's face, when he sought only pay for a day's work and food for an empty belly.
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| The ship Wyoming, part of the Cope Line of Philadelphia. Constructed in 1845 By John Vaughan & Sons of Philadelphia, the Wyoming would have been newer and perhaps quite a bit more seaworthy than many of the "coffin ships" that brought Irish immigrants to America. (source Wyoming Trails and Tales) |
Secret societies and an entire political party emerged in opposition to Irish immigration. The Irish were the "wrong religion" because they were Catholic. Nativists believed their religion was incompatible with American Values.
Sound familiar?
The Know Nothings used fears of Irish immigration and conspiracy theories of Papal armies to gain power in statehouses and Congress in the 1850s. The Know Nothings electing governors, over 100 congressmen and ran a Presidential candidate that got 20 percent of the vote. They enacted laws to restrict voting rights of the Irish.
Mobs of Know-Nothings dragged priests out of churches and attacked immigrants with deadly violence as they became emboldened by their rising political power.
Mobs of Know-Nothings dragged priests out of churches and attacked immigrants with deadly violence as they became emboldened by their rising political power.
As Christopher Klein writes,
Abraham Lincoln was among the many Americans disturbed at the rise of the nativist movement as he explained in an 1855 letter: “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
The civil war over slavery overshadowed the nativist political rise, but it has always remained in the background. As the Irish gained political power, they gained pride and marched in the streets.
"Yes, the Irish transformed the United States, just as the United States transformed the Irish. But the worst fears of the nativists were not fulfilled. The refugees from the Great Hunger and the 32 million Americans with predominantly Irish roots today strengthened the United States, not destroyed it. A country that once reviled the Irish now wears green on St. Patrick’s Day."
In America Patrick Cooper Hunt found a girl named Mary Malone. She too had emigrated from County Mayo. She too had seen the Great Hunger of Gorta Mór and survived. Together they made a life. They had five children and went on to become upstanding Americans.
Patrick Cooper Hunt and his children did well in the US. He found work in a Lambertville rubber mill.
Patrick Cooper Hunt and his children did well in the US. He found work in a Lambertville rubber mill.
His eldest son John got skilled work as a Boilermaker - a union job that required skill and paid well. His grandson, Charles started out on the railroads as a teenager, then served in World War I as a pharmacist's mate caring for sailors felled by the Spanish Flu. After the war, he became a state transportation engineer and taught college in New Jersey well into his 80s.
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| From Irish immigration to jetpacks in Space. Patric Cooper Hunt's great grandson helped design the MMU. |
And of course, that Irish refugee's great great grandson is writing his story today.
So on this St. Patrick's day, dress in your green and lift your glass, but take a moment too to remember those refugees that America took in. Those men and women fleeing political and economic oppression, who found a new life in this land of opportunity and hope -- and made the country better by their presence.
Because that is what St. Patrick's day is all about.
It is a story of refugees coming to America because they could no longer survive in their beloved homeland.
It is a story of refugees coming to America because they could no longer survive in their beloved homeland.
It is a celebration of immigration and an act of defiance by the immigrants and refugees that could not know freedom until they came to America.
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