Inquiry re: Laughlin Callaghan

Donaghmore RC records don’t start till 1840 so there is unlikely to be any record of Laughlin’s baptism. The tithe applotment records for Donaghmore (c 1830) haven’t survived so I can’t check them either.  Griffiths Valuation for 1859 lists 4 John Callaghans in Donaghmore. Farmers were generally listed in Griffiths, so if he was still alive then (and his son’s 1857 death certificate in Scotland should say if he was alive or dead) then one of them may be the right family.

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=nameSearch

You are curious as to why Laughlin and his brother left Ireland. The issue was probably simple economics rather than anything to do with landlords.  One of Ireland’s problems has always been a lack of natural resources. No coal, oil, iron ore etc, and so apart from a modest amount of shipbuilding in Belfast and the Belfast linen mills (which mostly only employed women), it did not really get the industrial revolution that benefited England and Scotland where mills, steelworks, ship building, coal mining and all their support industries were major employers creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Much better paid than subsistence farming or weaving. Added to that you had the effects of a massive population explosion in Ireland – up from 3 million in 1750 to 8 million in 1841 (no-one is really sure of the reasons why but reduced neo-natal deaths seem to be a factor) and the famine. So some push factors and some pull factors saw huge numbers of people leave Ireland. Something like 2 million people emigrated from Ireland in the 1800s.

If you look at the Scottish censuses for the Glasgow area in the late 1800s, you will see that about every fifth person recorded there was born in Ireland. Scotland was a particularly popular place to go to work because it was easy and very cheap to get to. Several sailings every day from Belfast, plus regular sailings from Portrush, Ballycastle and Londonderry, not to mention Dublin. The shipping companies main business was cargo and the passengers were just top-up revenue. Competition was fierce and passenger fares very low. People working in Scotland could come home for weddings or the harvest, as well as holidays (Glasgow used to shut down for 2 weeks every July, known as the Glasgow Fair holiday and there would then be a huge exodus to Ireland).  You could also send children back to stay with their grandparents, thereby leaving the wife free to work. You couldn’t do all those things so easily from Australia, America or Canada.

Irish farms were mostly too small to subdivide and the tradition was generally to give the farm to the eldest son. The other sons therefore had to make their own way in the world.

The situation in Donegal isn’t so very different today and a lot of young men and women still go to Glasgow (or Dublin or New York) to find work. 

Tim,

The Scottish certificates were pretty meticulous about recording when a parent was dead. So in this case it indicates John Callaghan was still alive and his wife deceased. If John were also deceased, it would say that beside his name too.

Renting was the norm for farmers in Ireland for many years. It was a source of much resentment that few landlords would sell their land to their tenants (though a few did from time to time). There was pressure and protests all through the 1800s about it, across Ireland.  The Government did introduce piecemeal changes which offered farmers better security and in some case controlled rents. Some could stay indefinitely if they paid their rent. (Fee farm grants). Not all of the farmers were in a position to buy their farm even if they were offered it. Some would always have rented, as some still do today. It was Wyndham’s Land Act around 1903 that allowed many farmers to buy their farms (with a Government mortgage to be repaid over the next 25 years) that really changed things.

You query whether the law allowed children to inherit the farm. It did. (The Penal Laws which had previously restricted Irish land rights had long been abolished by the 1800s). The farmer held a lease and during its life he was normally able to reassign it to anyone he wanted. Hundreds of farmers wills are on-line on the PRONI site. (You might want to check if any of the Donaghmore John Callaghan farmers left one). Most farmers wills leave the farm to a son (normally the eldest) and the widow usually got a life interest, ie she was allowed to stay there till she died at which point the son became the tenant. If the lease expired, the tenant was free to extend it. And they could also sell it if they wished too. (So they were selling the unexpired portion of the lease).

The land in Donegal is quite good farming land in the east of the county and bigger farmers there could make a decent living but further west it’s fairly poor quality and that tended to be more subsistence living. The land around Donaghmore isn’t great and so would not have been highly productive.  The population explosion also meant there was no spare land, so that made it difficult for farmers to acquire more land or bigger farms. Personally I don’t think it made much difference whether you owned the farm or rented it. A small farm could not provide employment and income for a large family. So most young men had to go when they reached working age. That’s still the case there today when the majority of farmers do own their land.

The other factor to consider was that the work in Scotland paid a proper wage, much better than subsistence farming on a mostly barter economy could provide, so even if you did have a farm you might prefer working in Scotland.

I looked at the 4 John Callaghans in Donaghmore in Griffiths. One (in Carrickmagrath) wasn’t a farmer. He only had a house and small garden, so he probably isn’t the one you are interested in. The other 3 had 6, 15 and 5 acres respectively. So all very small farms.

You suggest that having to pay rent left people no choice but to emigrate. However if it were that simple, why did so many stay? I think it likely in this case that Laughlin wasn’t the eldest son and that was essentially why he had to go. No farm and no work.

I am not trying to defend the landlords merely to explain that small farms generally can only support 1 family, and so the surplus men mostly had to leave. There was no other work in the area, no spare land to rent (and not all wanted it anyway) and so the majority had to leave regardless of what the landlords did. Young people in Donegal are still leaving in large numbers today, for the same reason. There’s insufficient work.

Incidentally, the landlords weren’t all British. In many parts of Ireland native Irish families were the landlords. Examples are the Maguires in Fermanagh and the O’Neills in Co Antrim.  

It’s common to blame many problems in Ireland on absentee English landlords – some of whom were undoubtedly dreadful - but that can sometimes be lazy history. The position was a lot more complex. Vast numbers of people were bound to emigrate from Ireland in the 1800s for the simple reason that the island could not support the population it then had. (The population went up from 3 million in 1741 to 8 million in 1841. It’s only 6 million today).

It’s certainly feasible to get a researcher to look at the families I have mentioned and to try and trace them forward.  There might be descendants in the area today. (You can check the 1911 census easily enough to see if any were still there at that time). DNA testing might help too.

I wouldn’t expect many of them to have written their ancestry down. I have rarely seen that amongst farmers. But you might get lucky.

Tim,

There was a tradition of naming children according to the following rules. Both Scotland & Ireland followed the same system:

The 1st son was usually named after the father's father

  The 2nd son was usually named after the mother's father

   The 3rd son was usually named after the father

    The 4th son was usually named after the father's eldest brother

     The 5th son was usually named after the mother's eldest brother

 The 1st daughter was usually named after the mother's mother

  The 2nd daughter was usually named after the father's mother

   The 3rd daughter was usually named after the mother

    The 4th daughter was usually named after the mother's eldest sister

     The 5th daughter was usually named after the father's eldest sister

The problem with relying too heavily on naming patterns is that, apart from the fact that not all families followed it, there are lots of things that can upset it. Common ones that I have encountered are:

when the father and either of the grandparents have the same name. So you obviously can’t really have two or even three sons all with the same name, so a different name is needed though some families did actually use the same name again on the birth certificate, but differentiated with another more informal name for day to day use. So if you had two Georges (as per birth certs) you just called one of them something else eg Simon;

if a child dies young, then it was common practice to re-use the name for the next birth. And if you don’t know about the death, your analysis of who they were named after could be completely wrong;

Or if a close relative had just died and their name was used out of respect.

I have also noticed that many families liked to name the odd child after the local Minister/Priest, schoolteacher or a relative with no children of their own.

Sometimes people were christened with one name, but went by a different one (and would appear in censuses and other records by that alternative name), eg Henry & Harry or Ann & Nancy.

So for all these reasons, whilst tradition says, for example, that the 4th son was named after the father's eldest brother, it isn’t always so.

Ireland introduced a National School system in the early 1830s but there were other schools before that on an ad hoc basis. Some paid for by the church, some by philanthropic bodies. Many parents couldn’t see the point of sending their children to school and often kept them at home to help around the farm. They considered that more beneficial. So their education was often interrupted during the harvest season or for other urgent work. Most children left school by 10 or 11, with an incomplete education but with some reading and writing skills. The Ordnance Survey memoirs for Donaghmore were compiled in the 1830s and will list the various schools in the parish at that time (and who was funding them). The memoirs may also mention when each school was established.

http://www.nifhs.org/resources/journals/ordnance-survey-memoirs/

Tim,

The OS memoirs would give a description of life in the area, and the qaulity of the farms etc. PRONI in Belfast have a copy of the OS memoirs but a personal visit is required to view them. They were reprinted by the Ulster Historical Foundation in the 1990s. You could contact them and see if they can sell you a copy of the Donaghmore Memoirs.

If LDS don’t have them, then here’s a link to the UHF site. They were selling them at reduced prices a year or so back.

 https://www.ancestryireland.com