Trahaw,
You ask about emigration during the famine years and thereafter. Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Britain, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.
Other factors led to continued emigration too, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything. The famine wreaked havoc in most of Ireland but in Co Antrim, a comparatively wealthy county, it wasn’t too severe (and most bigger farmers had not been one crop dependent).
There was a massive tide of migration all through that century, including long before the famine. Years after the worst of the famine it’s impact was still being felt across Ireland, and there were still plenty of much better job opportunities in Australia and the USA. So to summarise, people had been pouring out of Ireland long before the worst of the famine. All the famine did was speed the tide up. What happened after the famine? They carried on leaving in droves. (The population today is still only 6 million compared with 8 million in 1841).
Clonkeen forms part of the Ballymena Poor Law Union. You might be interested in this article taken from Bill McAfee’s website, which gives some statistics for Ballymena PLU during the main famine years.
http://billmacafee.com/otherrecords/faminebackground.pdf
You will note that whilst the population of Ireland as a whole declined by 20% in the 10 year period 1841 – 1851, in Ballymena PLU area the decline was just 3%. The decline for Ulster as a whole was 15% and for Co Antrim 2%. The Co Antrim figures will be skewed slightly by the fact that many people had moved from other counties to Belfast (which is mostly in Antrim) to find work. But the overall picture for the Ballymena PLU area is that it was far less affected by famine than other parts of Ireland. This was primarily due to the fact that the farms were pretty prosperous and so could manage by without potatoes, and for the labourers it was because they had income from weaving. (Most Irish linen comes from Ulster and so labourers there had this top up income, not available in many other parts of Ireland).
Bill McAfee’s paper gives extracts from letters from Earl Mountcashell’s agent (Mountcashell was a classic spendthrift absentee landlord) in which he pleads with his employer to ease the rents for tenants in the Ballymena area, due to the impact of the famine. He got sacked for his compassion.
Some years back I spent a little time going through the minutes of the Antrim Board of Guardian’s meetings, around the time of the famine. They make interesting reading, because although the adverse impact of the potato blight was noted and commented on, the other crops grew well and commanded higher prices. So some farmers in the area were apparently managing to cope. Any losses from rotten potatoes were offset by higher prices for oats, hay & barley. The labourers who often only grew potatoes were hit badly but they had linen weaving money which eased things a bit.
A common myth about the famine is that the English government exported all the crops from Ireland whilst the people starved. It’s not quite accurate. Irish farmers exported their surplus crops whilst their neighbours starved. Discuss, as they say. (Of course the Government should have intervened and bought up those surplus crops to distribute to the population but there is an uncomfortable truth that during the famine years some Irish farmers did OK, whilst others starved around them. But then they had their own families to look after. No easy answers).
I once spoke to a farmer outside Ballymena who had about 60 acres and whose family had been on the same farm since at least the 1700s. He said that his grandfather had talked about the farm in the 1800s, and what his own grandfather had said (who was alive in the famine years) and the famine had hardly been mentioned at all. The strong impression he had was that it had not made much significant impact on their own circumstances. And certainly any impact had never been mentioned. So some wealthier folk in this area appear to have come through the famine years relatively unscathed. There are one or two famine graveyards in Co. Antrim. There’s one at Craigs Church of Ireland for example, but the numbers in it are less than 100. That’s a tiny number compared with the millions that died elsewhere in Ireland.
Your ancestors rented their farm from the O’Neills at Shane’s Castle, between Randalstown & Antrim. (The current Lord O’Neill still lives there today). They had a reputation as being good landlords, generally fair to all their tenants. There are no horror stories about them evicting folk unreasonably etc, as you find in other parts of Ireland.
You are correct that Belfast was thriving economically around the early 1900s. It was the one part of Ireland that did have some heavy industry, and there were quite a lot of jobs, in ship building and support industries. (Population of Belfast went from 13,000 in 1780 to 349,000 in 1900). Those jobs would have deterred some people from leaving.
You ask whether the prospect of Home Rule might have been a factor in your ancestors’ decision to leave. I honestly don’t know. But I have not heard of it as a reason for leaving. People did move after partition in 1922. A lot of people from counties Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan and so on either moved to Northern Ireland or to Britain, but until then most people seemed to have stayed put to see what would happen. That’s the impression I get anyway. I think economic betterment was a bigger migration driver than Home Rule.
I note that James and Sarah Craig both signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912. So their position on Home Rule was clear enough anyway. You can see their signatures on the PRONI site if you are interested. Sarah appears to have signed on behalf of 3 other ladies who presumably were illiterate (Jane Courtney, Jane Bell & Mrs Underwood). Sarah’s initials appear by their names. Perhaps they were all friends? I can see that the Underwoods were related to the Craigs, from the 1901 census.
