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Rensselaer County Irish Research |
We are very fortunate in that we have two excellent sources available on the subject of Irish ancestors in Rensselaer County, NY: the Troy Irish Genealogy Society (TIGS) and Pat Conners's website. The best help I can give you in your Irish research is to refer you to them! Their links are below.
| The Troy Irish Genealogy Society (TIGS) |
| The Ireland Page of Pat Connors's website |
| The Irish section of Genuki, the GenWeb for the UK and Ireland |
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Ellis Island passenger arrivals (with search
engine; search by surname for free; no subscription necessary) |
A BRIEF HISTORY: The common white potato,
Solanum tuberosum, is native to South America, to the Andes Mountains of Peru.
This plant was unknown in Europe until Spanish explorers took it back there in about 1570.
The potato was an instant hit. Many European countries began to grow the potato,
but the country that became most heavily dependent on the growing of the
common white potato was Ireland, where the [primarily English] land-owners
went overboard in the planting of it in the 18th century. Previous staple crops
were abandoned in favour of the potato, and the spud soon became the
staple food of Ireland, so much so that this South American plant acquired
the name "Irish potato".
In the 1840s, the fungal pest called potato blight took hold in
Irish potato fields, causing the tubers to suffer a dry brown rot.
Potato blight had no natural enemies in Europe, and consequently,
it became virtually impossible to stop its spread. By the 1845-1846 season,
blight had destroyed virtually the whole of the potato crop in Ireland.
People lost not only their source of income but also the staple food
they depended on for their survival. It is estimated that as a direct result
of the Irish potato famine of 1845-1848, more than a million
Irish people starved, and more than 1.5 million Irish people
emigrated from the island, the vast majority of them choosing
the USA as their destination.
Send comments or suggestions to:
Lin Van Buren