Touch your roots

When my father’s grandfather arrived in New York in 1847, he would have been considered garbage from a country that would be currently referred to using scatalogical terms. Many of the people arriving from Ireland during the Great Hunger were weak and ill; the ships on which they fled were called “coffin ships” because at least a quarter of the passengers died on the journey and were buried at sea. 

At the beginning of the Great Hunger, the population of Ireland was about 8 to 8.5 million. It is estimated that one million people died of starvation or communicable diseases and upwards of two million emigrated, over one million of them to the US and Canada. These emigrants left Ireland in desperation, seeking to survive.  

It is not an exaggeration to say that Ireland was a British colony. Although Catholics had gained the right to own land in the late 18th century and to obtain an education, and Catholic men who owned sufficient property had become eligible to vote, the effects of decades of repression persisted into the 19th century. During the widespread potato crop failures of 1845 to 1852, grain and meat were being exported to Britain, as farmers sold them to pay their rent.  

My mother was born on a farm in County Leitrim on the west coast of Ireland. Her father died when she was about a year old. She and her older brother were not welcome in the household after their mother remarried, so my mother lived with her maternal grandmother. When my mother was a girl, school was no longer free for those over age 14, so she then had to find whatever work she could. She emigrated to the U.S. at age 16, sponsored by an uncle.  

I think these stories are a major source of my empathy and compassion for refugees and immigrants. My hunch is that if each of us explored our family’s stories more deeply, we would experience the same. And if each of us got a better sense of who helped our ancestors, who gave them a break and a hand up, we would find ourselves eager to do the same.  

It is not easy to get in touch with what our grandparents and parents experienced. I think that our forebearers wanted the best for us and to shield us from knowledge of what they suffered. 

In addition to getting in touch with our own family stories, I think exchanging family backgrounds, challenges, and triumphs would build networks of solidarity and compassion.  

Maureen Lahiff is a Precious Blood Companion from the Alameda California Group and a member of the province’s Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation Committee.