Longford is in Westmeath. My Morrisons were from Sligo. I do have this:
Of corresponding interest is the story of the Morrisons, who came from the county of Longford in Ireland to what was then the wilderness of the township of Peel in the county of Wellington. Three months with no stops by the way was the experience of Robert Morrison, father of J. J. Morrison, the moving spirit of the U.F.O. movement to-day.
The weary pilgrimage of the first Morrison began, in 1845, with a tramp from the ancestral home in Longford to Dublin, this being followed by a tempestuous voyage in a small sailing craft to Liverpool. Between Liverpool and Quebec six weeks were spent, and then the real hardships of the journey began. From Montreal to Kingston by way of what is now Ottawa, the only means of travel available at that time were open boats, drawn by horses walking on the bank when the rapids were reached; boats in which people sat huddled in discomfort during the day, and that were aliuost. unbearable when sleep and rest were sought with the coming of night.
Nor did relief come even when the long water journey ended at Hamilton. Rather was it merely a change from one form of hardship to another. From Hamilton to Guelph, passage was taken by stage which followed the circuitous route through 0-alt and Preston, over roads on which the jolting of the rude vehicle jarred and rocked muscles cramped and stiffened by the narrow quarters of the old Durham boats on the St. Lawrence. The pilgrimage ended, as it began, on foot. From Guelph, then a mere hamlet, it was a case of tramping over mud or corduroy roads, and finally a mere trail, to the location selected on lot eighteen, concession thirteen of Peel.
"We of the present," said Mr. J. J. Morrison in telling the story, "can form but the faintest conception of all that was involved of physical suffering and mental anguish in the coming to this country of those who arrived here from the British Isles in the 'thirties, 'forties' and 'fifties of the last century. All the associations of home and childhood were forever left behind. The conditions endured in crowded and unsanitary sailing vessels, and the perils faced, were such as those who travel by the palatial ocean liners of to-day cannot possibly visualize. The experiences after arrival were even more trying than those borne during the weary journey across the sea and by inland waterways. The neighbours in the new land, where there were any, were all strange; skill in the use of the tools required in building homes, clearing the forest, and cultivating the newly cleared fields had to be gained slowly and painfully by experience. Stalwart of frame, firm of purpose, and possessed of patience inexhaustible, these pioneers must have been, otherwise they would either have fallen by the wayside during the migration or have perished amid the loneliness of the forest after their arrival."
http://electricscotland.com/History/ontario/ontario9.htm
