B.E.S.T. HISTORY of Irish immigration to America

• Report rights infringement
• published: 24 Oct 2015
• views: 11

HISTORY of the Irish immigrants to America Many colonial settlers coming from the province of Ulster came to be known in the United States as the "Scots-Irish", although most descendants of the Scots-Irish today identify their ancestry as "American" or "Irish". They were descendants of Scottish and English tenant farmers who had been settled in Ireland by the British government during the 17th-century Plantation of Ulster. An estimated 250,000 migrated to United States during the colonial era. Only 20,000 immigrants of these immigrants from Ireland were Catholics—English, Irish or a few Germans. Catholics numbered 40,000 or 1.6% of the total population of 2.5 million in 1775. The Scots-Irish settled mainly in the colonial "back country" of the Appalachian Mountain region, and became the prominent ethnic strain in the culture that developed there.[12] The descendants of Scots-Irish settlers had a great influence on the later culture of the United States through such contributions as American folk music, country and western music, and stock car racing, which became popular throughout the country in the late 20th century. Charles Carroll, signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, was the descendant of Irish nobility in County Tipperary. Signers Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith were all born in Ireland. Irish immigrants of this period participated in significant numbers in the American Revolution, leading one British major general to testify at the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland." Irish Americans signed the foundational documents of the United States—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and, beginning with Andrew Jackson, served as President. The early Ulster immigrants and their descendants at first usually referred to themselves simply as "Irish", without the qualifier "Scotch". It was not until more than a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that some descendants of the Protestant Irish began to refer to themselves as "Scots-Irish" to distinguish them from the predominantly Catholic, and largely destitute, wave of immigrants from Ireland in that era. However, most descendants of the Scots-Irish continued to consider themselves "Irish" or "American" rather than Scots-Irish. The two groups had little initial interaction in America, as the 18th-century Ulster immigrants were predominantly Protestant and had become settled largely in upland regions of the American interior, while the huge wave of 19th-century Catholic immigrant families settled primarily in the Northeast and Midwest port cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Buffalo, or Chicago. However, beginning in the early 19th century, many Irish migrated individually to the interior for work on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and, later in the century, railroads. Irish immigration had greatly increased beginning in the 1820s due to the need for labor in canal building, lumbering, and civil construction works in the Northeast. The large Erie Canal project was one such example where Irishmen were many of the laborers. Small but tight communities developed in growing cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Providence. From 1820 to 1860, 1,956,557 Irish arrived, 75% of these after the Great Irish Famine (or The Great Hunger, Irish: An Gorta Mór) of 1845–1852, struck. Of the total Irish immigrants to the U.S. from 1820 to 1860, many died crossing the ocean due to disease and dismal conditions of what became known as coffin ships. Gravestone in Boston Catholic cemetery erected in memory of County Roscommon native born shortly before the Great Famine Most Irish immigrants to the United States during this period favored large cities because they could create their own communities for support and protection in a new environment.[28] Another reason for this trend was that many Irish immigrants could not afford to move inland and had to settle close to the ports at which they arrived. Cities with large numbers of Irish immigrants included Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In 1910, there were more people in New York City of Irish heritage than Dublin's whole population, and even today, many of these cities still retain a substantial Irish American community. Mill towns such as Lawrence, Lowell, and Pawtucket attracted many Irish women in particular. The anthracite Coal Region of northeastern Pennsylvania saw a massive influx of Irish during this time period; conditions in the mines eventually gave rise to groups such as the Molly Maguires.The best urban economic opportunities for unskilled Irish women and men included "factory and millwork, domestic service, and the physical labor of public work projects."