First Wave

From The Peopling of New York City: Irish Communities

Migration: First Wave | Second Wave | Irish Hunger Memorial

Reasons for Immigrating

Religious Oppression and Social Upheaval

In 1690, Protestant William of Orange defeated Catholic James II in the Battle of the Boyne for control over the English, Scottish, and Irish kingdoms. King William’s victory established the base for continued Protestant supremacy in Ireland and sealed the Catholic faith as inferior. The established Church of Ireland was a Anglican establishment that ruled Ulster, a northern province of Ireland. The Anglican elite wanted to enforced strict religious conformity so they passed the Penal Laws, a series of laws that discriminated against Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters.

These laws:

• Curbed the growth and power of the Presbyterian and Catholic churches by closing their churches and schools
• Prohibited their clergy to officiate weddings or funerals
• Outlawed Catholic schools
• Banned Catholic and Protestant priests and bishops from Ireland
• Prohibited Catholics from marrying Protestants
• Excluded them from the professions (except medicine)
• Forced Catholics to pay tithes to the Protestant Church

The laws also stripped the Irish Catholics of their rights by not allowing them to buy land, vote, practice law, attend school, possess weapons, or hold government office. As you can see, these laws greatly limited the Catholic population of land, civil rights, and positions of influence. Looking for freedom from religious discrimination, many decided to immigrate to America.

Economic Distress

Though religious oppression was a significant factor in driving the Irish desire to immigrate, the economic distress in Ireland was the main factor that propelled many of the Ulster Irish to leave their homeland. The first exodus took place from 1718 to 1729 because of biannual crop failures. Though not as devastating as the Great Irish Potato Famine of the mid 1800’s, these famines still caused as many as 480,000 deaths. Not only were the crops failing, but also rent was rising at alarming rates because land was scarce and valuable. Landlords practiced “rent-racking”, a method in which they raised rent when the lease on a tenant’s land is expired. With such bad harvests, people were unable to keep up with the rising rent rates and the standard of living decreased. Also, the linen industry in Ireland was collapsing due to a decrease in English demand and an increase in competition with other manufacturing countries. Still, not many Catholics immigrated because they were more oriented to Catholic Europe than Protestant America and they viewed immigration as exile from their Gaelic culture.

Where The First Wave Settled

The majority of Irish immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, mainly because of the religious tolerance established by state’s founder Quaker William Penn. This appealed to the Irish Presbyterians in particular. In 1790, there were 100,000 Irish immigrants in Pennsylvania, one-fourth of the total Irish immigrant population. New York seconded Pennsylvania with the largest Irish immigrant population. These port cities were also home to many Irish merchants, lawyers, professionals as well as artisans and shopkeepers. By 1800, twelve percent of the city’s population was Irish born. The Irish also settled along the frontier throughout the Appalachian region from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Kentucky to Tennessee. These immigrants make up almost fifty percent of the white population, making this area greater in Irish culture than in Philadelphia and New York. Here are two maps that show the comparison between the Scotch-Irish and Irish populations in the United States in 2006 according to AncestryMaps.com.

Scotch-Irish Population	Irish Population
Percent of Scotch-Irish Immigrants in the U.S. (2006)	Percent of Irish Immigrants in the U.S.(2006)

As you can see, there are a much higher amount of Irish immigrants here than Scotch-Irish.