Gathering
Your Stories Through The Harp
Pete
Millington has launched a new family and community history feature in The Harp
with an invitation to get involved online
According to official figures reported in the Index of the Irish Census of 1861,
there had been a decrease in the population of Ireland of 4.2 per cent between
1851 and 1861. The largest decrease was amongst the Irish speaking population
of Connaught who had been most adversely affected by the Great Hunger of the
late 1840s.
On the other
side of the Irish Sea, the General Report of the 1861 Census for England and
Wales shows us that 601,634 people recorded in that Census said that they had
been born in Ireland. The highest number were recorded in the counties of
Lancashire (217,320 or 8.9% of the total population), followed by Middlesex
(80,499 or 3.6%) and then Yorkshire (50,664 or 2.5%). Other counties close to
London had high Irish populations (Kent 21,671 and Surrey 22,467), as did
Staffordshire (19,176), Cheshire (28,613), Durham (27,719) and Northumberland
(15,034). Warwickshire was 9th highest with 14,297 residents of
Irish birth in 1861 (2.5% of the total population).
Some of my own
ancestors were among those fourteen thousand Irish born residents of
Warwickshire in 1861. My three times great grandmother Mary Flynn from Galway
was a widow living with her seven children at Northwood Street in Birmingham in
1861. Their ages ranging from 6 to 24. The same family were living at Smith
Street, Newtown in 1871. Another branch of my father’s Irish ancestors were the
Finns who can also be found living in the Newtown area during the middle to
late 19th century.
But whilst many
Irish people came to live in the West Midlands following the post-Famine
decades, many also settled here before then. Thousands of Irish people came to
England in search of agricultural work in the first half of the 19th
century and a lot of these people put down their roots in urban areas like
Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country which were expanding due to industrialisation.
In my own family research I discovered a great, great grandmother named Alice
O’Hagan who was born in Bromsgrove in 1847. Her father was variously listed as
a ‘traveller’ and on another occasion also a salt hawker. The O’Hagan family
settled in the Lee Bank district in the late 1800s, on Wharf Street in
Birmingham’s thriving canal area.
This sort of evidence
can not only help us to learn about our own ancestors but also helps us to
create an early history of the Irish and Irish-descended communities of the
region and I hope that readers of The Harp will contribute to the rich
collective story as this new feature evolves throughout the year of The
Gathering in 2013 and beyond.
I wish to thank
Frank Callery of Piltown, Co. Kilkenny who has already contributed an enquiry
for our new feature. Frank is hoping to trace descendants of his mother’s
uncle, James Halpin, who settled in Birmingham with his wife. The couple may
have had two daughters and a son.
Frank told me
“James was born in 1905 and lived at Dominick Street and 183 Parnell Street in
Dublin. My mother remembers that he worked in a rubber or tyre factory in
Birmingham, which may have been Dunlop.
“Two of the
Halpin brothers were fighting for Irish freedom in 1916, another brother
Christy, was fighting out in France; my mother remembers that he was wounded. Certificates
have just been issued by the Irish Government for John and Francis Halpin, for
their service in 1916 and the War or Independence in 1922. If there are Halpins
still in Birmingham, we would like to send them copies.
If you can help to trace the
Halpin family in the West Midlands, please get in touch with me, Pete
Millington. Frank Callery would like to get in touch as these family history documents
may be of interest to them.
Readers are invited to join our Facebook
page and visit our blog:
Visit the blog at
http://harp-gathering.blogspot.co.uk/
Join our Facebook group at
http://www.facebook.com/groups/420135884725856/
Please send your stories and
photos to Pete Millington at spaghetti.editorial@yahoo.com
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