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The wave of Irish immigration in the mid-nineteenth century was occasioned by
the “Irish Potato Famine,” as it is commonly called in America. The Irish
call it the “Hunger.” They make this distinction: if there is no food, it
is famine; if there is food but you are not getting any, it is hunger.
The “white” potato, known today as the Irish potato, originated in the Andes
Mountains. It is believed that the Spanish brought the potato to Europe in
the sixteenth century. By 1800, ninety percent of the Irish population,
nearly all of them tenant farmers, were dependent on the potato as their
primary source of food. In 1845, 1846 and 1847, a fungus destroyed almost
the entire potato crop. The landlords exported Irish meat and grain to
England, and it is estimated that a million Irish people died of malnutrition
(from dropsy, dysentery, typhus, scurvy and cholera). Many who survived had
no crops with which to pay the rent, and so they lost their plots of land.
Between 1845 and 1851 another million fled the country, 20% to 45% of them
dying aboard the “coffin ships” or shortly after reaching their destination.
These estimates are borne out by figures from the Census of Ireland:
1831 1841 1851 1841-1851
Cork 812,967 854,118 649,308 -204,810
Ireland 7,784,536 8,175,233 6,552,115 -1,623,118
http://www.rootsweb.com/~irlkik/ihm/ire1841.htm
County Cork suffered, by far, the largest population decrease of any county
in Ireland. But the raw data do not tell the entire story. The population
growth rate between 1831 and 1841 was 5.06% in County Cork, and 5.02% in all
of Ireland. Had these growth rates continued, the population in 1851 would
have been 897,352 in County Cork, and 8,585,538 in all of Ireland. From
these numbers are derived the estimates that Ireland lost two million people,
one-eighth of them, a quarter of a million souls, in County Cork alone.
Among these was Jeremiah Hayes, leaving his native Ireland, at age 83, for
the wilds of the Town of Colton in St. Lawrence County, New York, probably
upon the word of his son Daniel, who appears to have left two years before
him. Perhaps some of these refugees hoped to return to Ireland some day, but
surely not Jeremiah Hayes and his wife Johanna, who must have been remarkable
people just to survive the voyage. To these progenitors all the Hayes family
of Colton and South Colton owe their very existence. Through their four sons
they had at least eleven grandchildren and twenty-seven great-grandchildren,
and probably many more whom I have not yet been able to trace.
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NOTE: There were three Hayes clans in St. Lawrence County, New York. The
DeKalb clan descends from Alexander Hays and James Hays, who arrived with
their families in 1827 and 1831, respectively. The Stockholm clan descends
from John Hays and James Hays, sons of Jeremiah and Mary Hays, who arrived in
1845. I have searched the census records through 1900 and the probate cases
through 1930 for as many of their descendants, and those of Daniel Hayes and
Cornelius Hayes of Colton, as I can identify. I will be happy to share this
information with those who can trace their own lineage, with certainty, to a
Hayes (Hays) ancestor in St. Lawrence County a century back in time.
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