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I've been trying to find my g great grandfather on one, or at least my g g grandmother's first husband. I know he came from Ireland, and when his first children were born in Iowa and when he died, and his name, so its hit or miss. But I'm looking at all the ships that sailed out of Ireland before the civil war
I've had name hits on a few, which when you look at the names and ages, there are no full adults. There is the crew and perhaps one or two adults, but the rest mostly under sixteen, including kids as young as three. I'm reading about the policies of the time, and this suggests that some of these were orphans or child roundups. There seem to be a lot of children not listed with families on other passanger lists.
Where do you look to see what happened to these children without parents after they arrived on our shores?
That's an almost impossible task. Unaccompanied children could have come as indentured servants, they may have come to join family who'd earlier came over, they could have come with their mother who was remarried, or lots of other explanations. Problem is, you have no idea where they went to in America. And if it was a situation where the courts were involved, you'd need to be looking at the local court records.
And then there are all the passenger lists that are no longer in existence. For example, I know the date and port my German ancestor arrived at. There are no passenger lists for that day. They've obviously been lost. How many others were?
What years are you looking at? The famine/starvation was about 1845-1850. Those children may have been orphans.
It could have been in that time, but with no birth date its hard to tell. My grandmother was born in 1891, but may not have been his daughter. The child before her was ten years before so he was there post civil war. Before that is unknown, but he was should have married about 1868 (my grandmother was about 13/14) and had already made it to Iowa.
It's possible it was during the famine years since I don't know his age when he died either. Frustrating.... I'm thinking of seeing if I could find some of the relatives in Iowa/Missouri and see if anyone has records.
I keep thinking about those children. One list there was one adult passanger, and about 50 children, few last names repeating. The youngest one was three. What happened to kids like this? There were checkmarks on the side on some names, and the bottom was missing with the count of how many made it alive.
Read about it and its this thing that happened, see names and ages and think about a couple months at sea as a child alone... not so distant.
I think about those children too. Mind boggling to send a 3 year old across an ocean, alone. I suppose they were desperate to get a child to a place where they might not starve, but still.
I think about those children too. Mind boggling to send a 3 year old across an ocean, alone. I suppose they were desperate to get a child to a place where they might not starve, but still.
I was afraid to take mine on the Disney Cruise, afraid they'd fall overboard!
I think about those children too. Mind boggling to send a 3 year old across an ocean, alone. I suppose they were desperate to get a child to a place where they might not starve, but still.
I just started reading this book called The Tin Ticket. Its about the convice transports to Australia, focusing on three women. They used the 1718 transportation law to send 162,000 women, men and children there between 1788 and 1868, especially to areas where willing settlers did not want to go they were so foreboding. But ironically during that period the poor in England, Scotland and Ireland were *so* poor, that when transported on months long voyages at sea with two meals a day, most of the childrens health improved since at home they had been lucky to get one meal a day. It's astonishing to read how incredably poor the poor were then. Despite the high death toll and grinding work demanded of them to fufill their sentences, the survivors were still luckier than the ones trying to survive on the streets or starving in the countryside. I reccomend the book.
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I suppose they were desperate to get a child to a place where they might not starve, but still.
