- 6 months ago
🌍 *The Great Irish Potato Famine - A Chilling Chapter in History* 🌍
Welcome to Moments In Time! In this poignant episode "Famine to Freedom - The Great Irish Journey, we take a deep dive into one of the most devastating chapters in Irish history: the Great Irish Potato Famine, also known as "the Great Hunger." Spanning from 1845 to 1851, this catastrophic event was triggered by a virulent potato blight that decimated the staple crop of Ireland, leading to widespread starvation and suffering
📉 *The Impact of the Famine:*
Over *1.2 million lives* were tragically lost due to starvation and disease.
Approximately *1.5 million people* were forced to leave their homeland in search of a better life, reshaping the demographics of Ireland and the world.
More than *half a million families* faced eviction from their homes, leading to a humanitarian crisis that would echo through generations.
🛳️ *The Journey of Emigrants:*
Join us as we recount the harrowing experiences of those who embarked on perilous journeys across the Atlantic. We’ll explore the conditions aboard the infamous "coffin ships," where overcrowding, disease, and despair were rampant. Hear the personal stories of resilience and survival that emerged from this dark period, as families sought refuge in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia.
🔍 *Archaeological Discoveries:*
Our exploration doesn’t stop at personal narratives. We’ll also delve into the ongoing archaeological efforts that are uncovering the hidden horrors of the famine. Discover how these findings are helping historians piece together the realities of life during this tragic time, revealing the stark contrasts between the lives of the wealthy and the impoverished.
💔 *A Lasting Legacy:*
The Great Irish Potato Famine not only transformed Ireland but also left an indelible mark on global history. Its repercussions are still felt today, influencing cultural identities and migration patterns.
🔔 *If you enjoy exploring historical mysteries and uncovering the untold stories of the past, make sure to hit the "follow" button on our channel.
Welcome to Moments In Time! In this poignant episode "Famine to Freedom - The Great Irish Journey, we take a deep dive into one of the most devastating chapters in Irish history: the Great Irish Potato Famine, also known as "the Great Hunger." Spanning from 1845 to 1851, this catastrophic event was triggered by a virulent potato blight that decimated the staple crop of Ireland, leading to widespread starvation and suffering
📉 *The Impact of the Famine:*
Over *1.2 million lives* were tragically lost due to starvation and disease.
Approximately *1.5 million people* were forced to leave their homeland in search of a better life, reshaping the demographics of Ireland and the world.
More than *half a million families* faced eviction from their homes, leading to a humanitarian crisis that would echo through generations.
🛳️ *The Journey of Emigrants:*
Join us as we recount the harrowing experiences of those who embarked on perilous journeys across the Atlantic. We’ll explore the conditions aboard the infamous "coffin ships," where overcrowding, disease, and despair were rampant. Hear the personal stories of resilience and survival that emerged from this dark period, as families sought refuge in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia.
🔍 *Archaeological Discoveries:*
Our exploration doesn’t stop at personal narratives. We’ll also delve into the ongoing archaeological efforts that are uncovering the hidden horrors of the famine. Discover how these findings are helping historians piece together the realities of life during this tragic time, revealing the stark contrasts between the lives of the wealthy and the impoverished.
💔 *A Lasting Legacy:*
The Great Irish Potato Famine not only transformed Ireland but also left an indelible mark on global history. Its repercussions are still felt today, influencing cultural identities and migration patterns.
🔔 *If you enjoy exploring historical mysteries and uncovering the untold stories of the past, make sure to hit the "follow" button on our channel.
Category
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TVTranscript
00:00March 6th, 1848, County Roscommon, Western Ireland.
00:10A family of tenant farmers is about to be torn from its heritage,
00:16stripped of its dignity,
00:19banished from the land of its ancestors.
00:24Get out!
00:27Get out! Everybody out!
00:30Oh, God!
00:31Take that picture, sir!
00:33How do you represent absolute loss?
00:37How do you represent one million dead?
00:43During the years known as the Great Hunger,
00:45the Neri family, along with half a million others in rural Ireland,
00:49are forcibly evicted from their homes.
00:52The devastation and the loss of family members
00:56is just almost unparalleled.
01:00The force behind it all
01:01is a deadly biological agent.
01:05This pathogen spread and actually within a month
01:07could take out the potato crop of a whole country.
01:11The disaster launches the first great migration to America,
01:15a story of suffering and sacrifice,
01:18an ordeal lost to history until now.
01:21Today, archaeologists in Ireland uncover this hidden story,
01:27a fragment of forgotten horror,
01:30a relic from a catastrophe that leaves a million dead.
01:33Forget
01:34It's a moment in time that will change the face of the old world
01:43and launch a million immigrants with the strength to build America.
01:47150 years ago, a great famine ravaged this land
02:13and sent a million people fleeing to a new life in America.
02:18But to those who still live here,
02:20it's an unspeakable horror they would rather forget.
02:24The great famine becomes, in a sense, the great silence.
02:27How do you tell a story which is so horrific
02:32that it seems to be outside the bounds of normal representation?
02:36My grandparents on both sides of my family,
02:39on my mother's side and on my father's side,
02:42actually arrived in East Boston in 1848.
02:46For many Irish Americans, like Senator Ted Kennedy,
02:50it's what brought their ancestors to a new land.
02:52The primary reason, as so many other Irish immigrants,
02:57was really motivated because of the potato famine.
03:01For many more American descendants in search of their roots,
03:04the great silence is only now being broken.
03:07Dennis Shanley lives in Los Angeles.
03:09When I was growing up, I knew very little about my Irish ancestry.
03:13My father used to talk about his grandfather, Patrick,
03:17and that was about all I knew.
03:19By a strange twist of fate,
03:22Dennis Shanley's past is linked to that of another family 5,000 miles away.
03:28In Ireland, J.J. Neri and his wife don't have to hunt down their history.
03:33Their past has caught up with them.
03:36By incredible coincidence,
03:38they have bought a house on land
03:40once farmed by J.J.'s great-great-great-grandfather, Mark,
03:44who endured one of history's worst catastrophes
03:47in J.J.'s present backyard.
03:50Well, it was very exciting when we found out
03:53that J.J.'s ancestors actually came from this land,
03:57and we wondered a lot about the family,
03:59and we were anxious to find out more.
04:01Enter Professor Charles Orser,
04:03an archaeologist from Illinois State University.
04:06His specialty?
04:08Probing the stories of forgotten people.
04:10We can really learn in a way that isn't possible any other way
04:16of how the people actually live,
04:18things that are never written about.
04:23A local balloonist helps Orser explore the deserted landscape,
04:28green fields that hide scars of a bitter past.
04:31Since Protestant King Henry VIII invaded this Catholic land in the 1500s,
04:38the Irish had been forced to serve their English masters.
04:44Throughout Europe, landlords oppressed peasants.
04:48But here, to the Irish, the outrage cut even deeper.
04:52Looking down over what they would have seen as their ancestral territory,
04:56there was always there the sense,
04:58this land was ours before it was there,
04:59where this land should be ours again.
05:03By 1845, still under English rule,
05:07Ireland is one of the most densely populated rural areas in the world.
05:13Barred from owning property,
05:14the Irish are regarded as subhuman.
05:18It's the lack of real opportunity,
05:19the lack of hope,
05:21the lack of real chance to develop for yourself and your family.
05:26But 1845 is a time of change.
05:29The rest of Europe teeters on the brink of revolution.
05:33America hurdles towards a war over slavery.
05:38In a village called Ballykill Cline,
05:41over 80 families are fighting their own battle for justice.
05:44They're refusing to pay crippling rents to the English crown.
05:47Their rebellion will turn this forgotten place into a flashpoint for one of the greatest upheavals in history.
05:59In the field behind J.J. Neri's house,
06:02archaeologists search for evidence that his family lived through that struggle.
06:06To your left, two centimeters.
06:13This is a ground-penetrating radar survey in a three-dimensional mode.
06:19Electromagnetic energy is fired into the ground,
06:22and it reflects off features in the subsurface.
06:26We can do a virtual dig on the site before the excavators move in,
06:30and maybe be able to predict what they might find.
06:34Kevin Barton and his team are scouring the seemingly empty field
06:38to hunt for traces of ditches, walls, or debris.
06:40After hours of painstaking work,
06:50ghost images of a place where the past was buried alive.
06:55The first clue, a tell-tale scar running beneath the soil.
07:00Finally, positive proof that the Neri family actually lived here.
07:05The diagonal gash turns out to be a drainage ditch,
07:09part of the foundations of a house.
07:11It's a stunning discovery.
07:15Now Orser can start to reconstruct the place the Neri's called home.
07:20If we were standing here 155 years ago,
07:23we would see two houses behind us.
07:25Probably stone houses with thatched roofs.
07:30After more than a century in the shadows,
07:33the lives of the rebellious Neri family snap into sharp focus.
07:39A lot of activity, people in the fields, smoke coming out of the chimneys.
07:45You'd see a living, vibrant community.
07:47A community built on a single remarkable plant, the potato,
07:52the staple food of Ireland.
07:54That, however, was a disaster in the making.
07:58At first, a humble spud had seemed like a miracle crop.
08:01It arrived from South America in the 16th century.
08:04Packed with vitamins, fiber, and carbohydrates,
08:07it flourished in Ireland's damp climate.
08:11What evolved was a man-made crop,
08:14which is now recognized as one of the most productive crops in the world.
08:19The population went, in a very short time,
08:23from one or two million to eight million.
08:25There was a population explosion.
08:26A population explosion that soon led to disaster.
08:31Dr. Mike Coffey at the University of California, Riverside,
08:35is a leading researcher into the potato
08:37and what went terribly wrong
08:39when the Irish staked their lives on it.
08:42For Coffey, it's a personal mission.
08:45Being an Irish American,
08:47professionally,
08:48what I'm doing is trying to make sure,
08:52as best I can as an individual,
08:53that this never happens again.
08:58What ends in disaster
08:59at first seems like salvation
09:01to the poor Irish farmers.
09:04By 1845,
09:07on this tiny, tiny island,
09:09there were eight million people,
09:10most of whom were desperately poor,
09:13but actually lived a fairly good life.
09:17On a quarter of an acre of land,
09:19you could support a family of 14.
09:21No other crop could feed so many mouths
09:25on so little land.
09:27The Irish become dangerously dependent upon it.
09:31Incredibly,
09:32the average Irishman eats as much as 14 pounds a day,
09:36and the English hate them for it.
09:38It was seen as a lazy crop
09:40grown by lazy people in their lazy beds.
09:43It was seen as something which kept the Irish poor,
09:45which kind of encouraged overpopulation.
09:47But at the Nary House,
09:51Orser discovers evidence
09:53that the family had joined a rent strike
09:55to protest their hand-to-mouth existence.
09:59That's a bank token from the Bank of Ireland,
10:0210 pence bank token,
10:03dated 1813.
10:05Money saved by refusing to pay rent
10:08lifts them a notch above the poverty line.
10:10Thank you, dear Lord.
10:15The Naries are breaking the law
10:17and getting away with it.
10:19Their defiance makes them a prime target
10:21for local rent collectors.
10:22One of them files a report on the troublemakers.
10:26The Naries are reputed to be very solvent
10:28and have encouraged the other tenants.
10:30It is absolutely necessary
10:33that they should be preceded against as intruders.
10:39To crush the rent strike,
10:40the English authorities know
10:41they have to take down the Naries first.
10:44But it's no easy task.
10:48Mark, his sons James and Edward,
10:51and nephew Bartholomew,
10:52are radicals with a bare-knuckle reputation.
10:56What'll I do if they come and I'm alone?
10:57Bailiffs come when they were least expected,
11:03to intimidate the tenants.
11:09Good evening, Missy.
11:11The scenes are horrific and brutal
11:14and rendered all the more so
11:16because they don't become
11:17just a kind of an individual
11:18or exceptional things,
11:20but they become the normality.
11:22Ask him to cope on my office.
11:25The rent, will you?
11:26All right.
11:26Well, I'll have to come back.
11:30After six years of living
11:32with the constant threat of eviction,
11:35one Nary starts to think the unthinkable.
11:39Like thousands of his countrymen
11:41who have already left for America,
11:43Edward Nary faces a painful choice.
11:47There was very little for them to look forward to.
11:51And there was a recognition
11:53that just beyond the ocean,
11:56there really was a land,
11:58and to many,
11:59it was the land of opportunity and hope.
12:02So people were prepared to risk even their lives,
12:07as so many of them lost their lives in the crossing.
12:10Let me see.
12:10It's a decision that pits loyalty
12:12to land and family
12:13against the promise of the new world.
12:16But you need it here, Edward.
12:17Edward, you need it here.
12:25Mark Nary's son, Edward,
12:27has a one-way ticket to America.
12:30He will never see Ireland again.
12:31With Edward gone, the pressure mounts.
12:38Local bailiffs report that maybe the Nary's
12:41can be broken after all.
12:43Come on, get on with it.
12:44We've got three more to do this afternoon.
12:46The story has been gleaned from county records,
12:49contemporary periodicals,
12:50and tales handed down for generations.
12:53Hey!
12:54Get away from my house!
12:56That lock comes off once you pay the rent.
13:01In January of 1844,
13:03rent collectors repossessed the home
13:05of Mark Nary's nephew, Bartholomew.
13:07The sooner you...
13:08Are you leaving?
13:11We'll be back.
13:14We'll be back.
13:15Good luck to you.
13:19Come on, lads.
13:20Let's break this on.
13:21Come on.
13:21Come on.
13:21Come on.
13:21Come on.
13:22Come on.
13:23Come on.
13:23Come on.
13:23Come on.
13:23Come on.
13:24Come on.
13:24Come on.
13:25Come on.
13:25Come on.
13:26Come on, lads.
13:27The Nary's celebrate a rare victory
13:29over the mighty English.
13:31But their joy is short-lived.
13:34A deadly threat is lurking in the fields of Ireland.
13:41One morning in the summer of 1845,
13:45the Nary's wake up to a foul stench.
13:49Farmers across Ireland tell the same horrific story.
13:52They're lovely potato plants, which showed such promise the day before, were all covered over
14:00with black spots and leaves and stalks hanging down as if dead.
14:05The potato blight smell was unbelievable.
14:06The potato blight smell was unbelievable.
14:10You know, it would basically hit you in the face.
14:12You would vomit just in reaction to it.
14:16People would be in agony for hours and hours after they'd consumed this potato.
14:22A family in County Carey remembers the growing panic.
14:29The blight thrives like a demon from hell.
14:33Some potatoes look sound enough on the outside, but as we touch them, they squash into mush.
14:39Dr. Coffey has injected healthy potatoes with the blight to study its early effects.
14:48The bacteria got in very quickly in this instance, and it's already disintegrating the tuber.
14:56You can see it's already a slimy pulp.
14:59Within a week, two weeks possibly, this tuber will completely disintegrate.
15:05It'll be an oozy slime, a foul-smelling mess, just like the Irish faced in the 1840s in the famine.
15:15All of Europe is afflicted by this mysterious and fast-moving disease.
15:20Scientists today believe it first arrived in Europe with seed potatoes, shipped from Mexico.
15:26By 1845, nowhere is as hard hit by the blight as Ireland.
15:30In this little vial is the pathogen which destroyed the Irish potato crop.
15:38It's actually one of the most destructive plant pathogens we know of.
15:43Even to this day, it's extremely difficult to control.
15:47Probably more money is spent on attempting to control this disease, this plant disease, than any other plant disease.
15:55Entire fields are destroyed in a few days.
15:59For Ireland's farmers, it's the end of the world.
16:03I don't think we can exaggerate how profoundly disturbing this thing was.
16:08It looked like a biblical pestilence.
16:11And what was it hitting?
16:12It was hitting the potato, the very staff of life in Ireland.
16:16It was completely ripping out, you know, what made possible the fabric of Irish rural culture.
16:22In the fall of 1845, panic spreads even faster than the blight.
16:34Desperate farmers rush to salvage what they can.
16:37But it's a fatal mistake.
16:39A local farmer recalls.
16:41They allowed too many spotted ones to get mixed up with the good troopers.
16:47With the result that the spotted ones smited the others and most of the good ones went bad.
16:53The disease affected the whole district.
16:55It was all over.
16:56No man's crop escaped.
17:00Under the microscope, we can see the actual spores, which are dispersed in the air.
17:07Literally, trillions of these spores can be produced in a very short time.
17:13They spread over long distances by wind and rain.
17:18By the time the crop of 1846 is ready for harvest, the blight has tightened its death grip.
17:24In Ballykill Climb, the Neri stick to their rent strike.
17:39But now, they face a terrifying new enemy.
17:42Starvation.
17:44Their struggle for land and dignity becomes a struggle for life itself.
17:49By harvest time, 1846, the killer blight ravages the Irish countryside.
18:00Over 80% of the potato crop is inedible or destroyed.
18:07It's the worst thing you can imagine.
18:10The knowledge that if you eat it, you're going to die.
18:13If you don't eat it, you're going to die.
18:15Cut that away, John.
18:16Put the good bit in the bowl.
18:18Pre-joke.
18:19The Neri family is starving.
18:21Same with that, John.
18:22Their landlord threatens eviction.
18:25Don't waste any, John.
18:26That's dinner.
18:28The Neri's are ready to explode.
18:30The Ballykill Climb rebels hit the streets, along with hundreds of farmers from all over County
18:51Roscommon.
19:01Ireland's landed gentry fears for its safety.
19:06An eyewitness describes the mounting tension.
19:08Martyrs look very threatened, last week, a large assembly paraded with a loaf on a pole and a placard, food or blood.
19:18Two orders of dragoons are ordered to Roscommon.
19:21Violence erupts across Ireland.
19:28Shadowy gangs of militants with names like the Molly Maguires and the Ribbon Men hit the landlords where it hurts.
19:34Livestock are destroyed.
19:44Manor houses set ablaze.
19:46Near Ballykill Climb at Strokestown Manor, it's business as usual.
20:01Like most landlords, Dennis Mayen is cut off from the people and intends to stay that way.
20:10The groomsmen would have put the horses in the stable and then they and any other kind of staff or whatever would have been expected to disappear down this discreetly positioned tunnel just to make sure that they couldn't be seen by the gentry from the windows above.
20:24There's a special gallery inserted into the kitchen so that the lady of the house who didn't want to be contaminated by mixing with the ordinary plebs on the floor could literally drop down the instructions every day about what she wanted for dinner or whatever.
20:39And just look at the enormous range of kitchenware and spits and pots and pans used for creating these sumptuous meals for the delectation of the landlord class.
20:49At the very time when the ordinary people themselves were struggling to find enough calories to keep themselves alive.
20:58Soon, all the tenant farmers have left to eat is grass and nettles.
21:05Across Ireland, the great hunger leaves too many dead to count, too many dead to bury.
21:12The experience of one eyewitness still haunts a Roscommon parish priest.
21:16The famine grew more horrible towards the end of December 1846.
21:24Many were buried with neither inquest nor coffin.
21:28The first was that of the father of two very young children whose mother had already died of starvation.
21:37His death became known only when the two children toddled into the village.
21:43They were crying of hunger and complaining that their father would not speak to them for four days.
21:53They told how he was as cold as a stone.
21:58The famine creates tens of thousands of orphans.
22:02A tragedy with an intimate meaning to the thousands of Americans tracing their ancestors.
22:06I know my family's from Ireland, but I want to know where in Ireland they're from.
22:13In America, Dennis Shanley's informal research leads him to believe he came from a part of Ireland where he may have shared the Nary's defiant heritage.
22:22Even in the face of starvation, the Nary family hungers for justice.
22:29I tell you boys, it's not the right time.
22:32I say we go up to the big house tomorrow night and torch it.
22:35We've waited long enough, Dad.
22:36I'm not waiting any longer, do you hear me?
22:38We have to strike while the iron is hot.
22:40We don't know what it is just yet.
22:47In the debris, Orser's team uncovers proof of their defiance.
22:52It's a very tiny object, but it's a powerful object.
22:56It's a political object, really.
22:58On a fragment of a clay pipe are the letters P-E-A-L, for repeal, a battle cry to revoke direct English rule of Ireland.
23:09The Nary's are part of a national struggle.
23:11So when we look at that fragment of the repeal pipe, what we're looking at is one of the great mass democratic movements in the 19th century world.
23:19By 1847, it's survival, not politics, that grips the countryside.
23:34The blight is in its third year, a year that is known to this day as Black 47.
23:44The smell of rotting potato plants is overwhelmed by the stench of death.
23:49One family remembers.
23:56So numerous were the dead and the decaying bodies that the air became putrid with stench and disease and germs.
24:08Fires were lighted in different quarters to purify the air.
24:12Even now, the Nary family is too proud to beg for food.
24:21But their desperate neighbors look to London for help.
24:27Too bad the Englishman in charge of aid to Ireland blames the Irish people themselves.
24:31The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.
24:44The British government at that time was strongly influenced by evangelical Protestantism.
24:51When the blight hits, one of the commonest ways that British kind of culture read it was to say,
24:58well, this must be a judgment of God on the Irish.
25:01The British government forces landlords to foot the bill for famine relief.
25:09But their response only adds to the suffering.
25:21Today, children play outside a monument to misery, a notorious institution called the Workhouse.
25:27This building, and scores like it, held famine victims as virtual prisoners.
25:36In a village near Ballykill Cline, Professor Orser examines a cast iron artifact of despair.
25:43And this was the pot that used to make the soup for the people when they were here.
25:49In the dark days of 1847, three million people, over one-third of the entire nation, line up for a meager bowl of watery barley soup.
26:07One woman recalls her father's ordeal.
26:10There was one large pot resting in stones in the workhouse yard.
26:13And in this huge pot was made gruel to be distributed to a constant stream of starving people.
26:20The people came by every road to the workhouse for their measure of gruel.
26:32More like a labor camp than a refuge.
26:35The workhouse is the ultimate humiliation.
26:38Inmates trade hard labor for starvation ration.
26:40Meals must be eaten in silence.
26:43Break the rules, and you're locked away in solitary confinement.
26:49One account recalls.
26:52The victims preferred to die at home.
26:55Even the destitute refusing to avail of their open doors.
27:00Many see the landlord's miserly charity as a heartless scheme to force them off their land.
27:06If you wanted relief, if you wanted to go to a workhouse, you had to surrender your holding before you could do that.
27:16The workhouse often kills more than it saves.
27:20Cramped and overcrowded, infested with rats and lice, it's the perfect breeding ground for disease.
27:28One resident confides.
27:31Black spots gradually crossed the body.
27:35Lips became bloodless.
27:39It was dreaded more than the actual hunger.
27:43Victims call it famine fever.
27:45But in reality, they are dying from typhoid and dysentery.
27:51Killer infections sweep through a population weakened by years of famine.
27:56The epidemic claims hundreds of thousands of lives.
28:01By the middle of 1847, Ireland's workhouses are swamped by the sick and the dying.
28:14Costs are mounting.
28:16The landlords come up with a cheap fix.
28:19Instead of feeding the starving in the workhouse, they'll just ship them off to America.
28:24On September 5th, 1847, 111 of the Nary's neighbors have no choice but to surrender their beloved land.
28:38A mass exodus begins.
28:42It's a four-day march to Dublin and the sea.
28:46But many don't make it to the Irish capital, let alone to the promised land of America.
28:54One eyewitness reports.
28:57I have seen a never-ending stream of gaunt, dejected-looking ghost-like figures shuffling along the roads.
29:04The elderly and the little children were the first to fall victims to the fatigues of the march.
29:16The heart is ripped out of rural Ireland.
29:24All they have left, the distant promise of America.
29:28One of the sad consequences of the famine was that a lot of the brightest and the most learned and the most talented and the most gifted people either immigrated or died.
29:40But Ireland's loss will soon be America's gain.
29:51The havoc wreaked by famine turns a trickle of Irish emigrants into a flood.
29:56In just five years, a million men, women and children leave for America.
30:00For many, it's the first time they've ventured more than 20 miles from home.
30:07Ahead lies a 3,000-mile voyage into the unknown.
30:15The famine would have still been with them and they would have been spending six or eight weeks tossing around in the North Atlantic,
30:21not knowing where they were going or what was going to happen to them when they got there.
30:25It's a hazardous crossing, sometimes lasting over two months on old leaky ships.
30:35With too many people, too little food and typhoid raging, the workhouse all over again.
30:41On these infamous coffin ships, many, like this survivor, wish they'd stayed at home to die.
30:54Then we'd be buried along with our people in the old churchyard, with the green sod over us,
30:59instead of lying like rotten sheep, thrown into a pit and flung into the sea to be eaten by them horrid sharps.
31:11Well, it was an extraordinary trip over here, and the loss of life was very significant.
31:29Even those that even got here, many died during the crossing.
31:33It was a very hard trip, like all the vale of tears.
31:38I mean, there were so many members of the family that died during the passage itself.
31:45The death toll is highest among those tenants evicted from Dennis Mayen's Strokes Town estate,
31:51right next to Ballykill Cline.
31:52On one of Mayen's ships, 268 people died.
32:01As the coffin ships live up to their name, the farmers' worst suspicions are confirmed.
32:07An Irish activist voices their fears.
32:11Nothing could persuade the people that emigration was not a plot on their lives.
32:15Now rumors spread that another ship, chartered by landlord Dennis Mayen and filled with his tenants,
32:26has sunk without a trace.
32:28Mayen becomes a marked man.
32:34It's dusk on a chilly November day.
32:37Mayen is on his way back to the comfort of his manor house.
32:45The gunshot that kills Mayen echoes across Britain, fueling anti-Irish hatred.
32:57It becomes a huge story, which is reported in massive detail in the Dublin press, the London press.
33:04What has civilization come to when a landlord is murdered in such a barbaric fashion?
33:09That winter, six more landlords are murdered.
33:12The authorities respond with force.
33:17County Ruscommon now becomes the focus of a manhunt for the killer.
33:21The place was saturated with police and army and so on,
33:26and it increased the ability of the estate to actually evict tenants.
33:34At the site of the Neri's home, Orser finds tell-tale signs of wholesale destruction.
33:39We can tell that there was an eviction, that the house was actually physically torn down.
33:49This would be the gable end of the wall.
33:52It's probably been pushed down by the people who had done the evictions to make sure no one could come back and live there.
33:57So it looks as if the walls were simply tumbled down on top of any artifacts that the people couldn't remove.
34:07There's an attempt to erase these people from the landscape, and they were very good at it.
34:11And they were very good at it.
34:18Get the kids!
34:19Get the kids!
34:21Get the kids!
34:22Everybody out!
34:24Oh no!
34:28Yeah!
34:29Let us have our few feet!
34:30You go back, you can!
34:31You make it!
34:32You make it!
34:33Don't go out!
34:34What use?
34:36Get!
34:37You better see that!
34:40Come on!
34:41Come on!
34:42Come on!
34:43Come on!
34:44Come on!
34:45Come on!
34:46Come on!
34:47Come on!
35:09After a decade of resistance, anguish, and death, the last traces of the Neri family are erased.
35:17Across Roscommon, rent collectors finish the job with brutal efficiency.
35:23One even pats himself on the back.
35:26I am happy to say that the leveling of the houses has been done most effectively.
35:31There's not a wall left standing, and the stones are removed to the foundation.
35:38In the words of one rent collector, Bally Kilcline is perfectly untenanted.
35:47Like hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, the Neri's now face a heart-wrenching dilemma.
35:54To risk a harrowing journey to America, or a bleak future in the land of their birth.
36:00The Irish village of Bally Kilcline, in the county of Roscommon, has been wiped off the map.
36:13It's 500 people lost to famine or eviction.
36:16Like the Neri's, the survivors are homeless, wandering down a road to nowhere.
36:25But after a life of struggle, Mark Neri reaches his final destination.
36:33The famine claims a million lives, deaths unrecorded, stories untold.
36:47The famine itself was something that most people didn't want to talk about.
37:07There's certain guilt feelings that some people may have as to why they survived and others didn't.
37:13The potato blight never really leaves Ireland.
37:18But most of those who raised potatoes do.
37:21So the blight never left. It's very much there.
37:25And meanwhile, actually, it's spread all over the world.
37:28So now it's a global issue.
37:31And it's only because of the use of expensive chemicals, of fungicides, that we're able to combat it.
37:37Ireland's landlords no longer have to combat their feisty tenants.
37:42Instead of rebellious peasants, why not placid cows and sheep, who eat grass, not potatoes?
37:52But something else has taken root in Ireland, something dangerous the landlords can't control.
37:57A fierce defiance to English rule.
38:04The first Irish terrorist movement.
38:07The first Irish group committed to violence as a means of getting rid of the British out of Ireland.
38:13That's where it emerges.
38:14If this system allows one million of us to die, you know, what good is it to us?
38:20By 1916, rage and bitterness flare into mass protest and guerrilla warfare.
38:27The Irish finally win independence in 1921.
38:31Today, only Northern Ireland remains under British rule.
38:34Flashback to 1848.
38:47Forget the future.
38:48The Neres don't believe they have one.
38:52For Bartholomew Neri, the outlook at home is too grim.
38:56The lure of America, too strong.
38:59All that's left is to say goodbye.
39:01A million are dead.
39:06Now a million farewells cut a scar as deep as death itself.
39:11Give us another tune there, let's.
39:17If you went from Roscommon to America, you know, that was it.
39:21You didn't come back.
39:31In a new twist on the traditional funeral wave, the family gathers in a ritual known as an American wave.
39:38You see, these rituals actually transferred to the living person.
39:45And it's as if the corpse is actually alive, but that corpse is now the immigrant.
39:49They gathered with their friends before they departed to the new world.
39:58They gathered to celebrate, but also to lament the departure of some of their family and their friends.
40:05You could sum it up this way.
40:17A million dead, a million fled.
40:21That makes one out of every four gone.
40:24You translate those numbers to America today.
40:28And all of California, Michigan, Illinois, and New York State would be emptied out.
40:32Bartholomew Neri sets out towards his last ditch hope, America.
40:43But for him and countless others, a distant dream is about to turn into reality.
40:51Today, one American will take the journey in reverse.
40:54His dream, to find his roots in the green hills of Ireland.
40:57April 17th, 1848, Bartholomew Neri steps off the boat in Manhattan.
41:07And swaps Ireland's abandoned fields for New York's gridlock.
41:12In the next dozen years, a million Irish arrive in New York.
41:17And they keep on coming.
41:19They were facing extraordinary discrimination in my own city of Boston.
41:23I have a little placard that I remember was my mother and father's house that said, no Irish need apply. I still have it in our house. That was something that was very real.
41:37One of the miracles of the famine is that America didn't close its doors.
41:43Some of the poorest, in many cases, disease-stricken people that they'd ever seen pour in, in almost incomprehensible numbers, into New York, into Philadelphia, into Boston.
41:55Boston.
41:56And into cholera-infested slums.
41:58In one New York neighborhood, there's only a single bathtub for every thousand residents.
42:05In one Irish slum, a third of all babies die before their first birthday.
42:11In Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, poverty rules.
42:18But old blood ties carve out new home turf.
42:22One street you will find they're all County Roscommon people.
42:25The next street you'll find they're all County Tyrone people.
42:28They're recreating in America what had been kind of shattered back home.
42:32Ties of kinship and neighborhood come into being.
42:35I think there was a sense of a real kind of hope that everything was going to be better.
42:41But they learned very quickly that the only jobs that were really open to them were the more menial jobs, the laboring jobs.
42:50Bartholomew Neri leaves New York.
42:53By 1850, his name turns up on the census rolls in Rutland, Vermont.
42:58Occupation, laborer.
43:00In Chicago, his cousin Edward also breaks a sweat.
43:05He helps dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
43:09Soon, he opens a boarding house.
43:12And there's no lack of customers.
43:14An army of Irish muscle will pump up the nation and help build the transcontinental railroad.
43:21In Utah, one crew lays 10 miles of track in a single day.
43:26And as trains hurtle west, new cities sprout faster than potatoes.
43:32If you go to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and there's a big Irish population.
43:37If you go to Butte, Montana, it's all Irish.
43:40That's where many of those that have been building the railroads have stopped and actually settled.
43:46You can look at these pockets of Irish all across the country, including many of the great cities, Chicago, San Francisco and the rest.
43:52By 1900, there are more Irish in Chicago and New York than there are in Dublin.
43:59Out of the famine, they bring a hunger for justice and the guts to fight for their rights.
44:04Politics was the venue which the Irish saw that they could emerge to being important forces in terms of the country and its leadership, primarily in the Democratic Party.
44:20A few became misinformed and joined the Republicans.
44:24We can understand that.
44:28Within a generation, both Chicago and New York have an Irish mayor.
44:33And soon, a family of famine survivors becomes America's first family.
44:38It took 115 years to make this trip, 6,000 miles and three generations.
44:47When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things.
45:00A strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty.
45:06He came back and the first night he said, do you want to come back to my house? I had the films of Ireland.
45:13We all went over, the family, about 30 of us went over.
45:15The next night, we were over at my brother Bobby's house.
45:18He said, does anybody want to go back over to my house? I've got a show.
45:21What are you showing? The trip to Ireland.
45:23So that night, there were about five of us who went back.
45:26And then Sunday night, he said, anybody for Ireland? And he showed it again.
45:33It was really, I think, the time that he enjoyed the most when he was president.
45:39In Ballykilkline, the story of another family, this one almost forgotten, finally sees the light of day.
45:49Finding the artifacts is just the beginning of the detective work because that's the first phase.
45:56That's the act of discovery itself.
45:57For thousands of Americans in search of their roots, the act of discovery starts in a very different way.
46:05I believe I found my family, my family heritage.
46:09Thousands of immigrants left Ireland on leaky sailing ships.
46:14Now their descendants return on the wind.
46:16Dennis Shanley, along with his friend Maureen McDermott, has come to retrace the steps his ancestors took.
46:37Dennis and Maureen have lived the American dream.
46:40Now they're tracing their roots back to the home of those who dared to dream.
46:44After a century and a half of separation, the great silence ends the way it began, with an embrace.
46:59My great, great, great grandfather was Mark Neary.
47:03He had three sons.
47:06He had Luke, he had Edward, and he had James.
47:09Edward was my great, great grandfather.
47:11And we believe that James was your great, great grandfather.
47:20For Americans like Dennis, James Neary could be the only link to those who stayed behind.
47:25But he'll have to find him first.
47:27This is James, Edward's and Luke's brother.
47:35James stayed behind.
47:37And he died April of 1860.
47:41You've got to feel some of the engraving, you can't read it.
47:451867, at age 65.
47:47If this is the James, which, it's got to be.
47:52It has to be.
47:54The Neary's are gone.
47:56But they left a message.
47:58A century and a half later, it reaches their great, great, great grandson.
48:04This is the thimble here that we found.
48:05It was at this site.
48:06Yes.
48:07Look at that.
48:08It's beautiful.
48:09Oh, it's brilliant.
48:10I've got goosebumps.
48:11Yeah, it's quite a...
48:12Don't forget me now.
48:13Wonderful.
48:14Touching the thimble was absolutely wonderful.
48:15To know that, most likely, one of my ancestors, most likely my great, great grandmother, had belonged to her.
48:25It's a comfortable, warm, serene feeling.
48:28A sad feeling.
48:32To think about what those people went through.
48:34It's very sad.
48:35It's very sad.
48:36Forget me not.
48:39It just sums it all up.
48:42And it's a beautiful world to think about what those people went through.
48:46It's very sad.
48:48Forget me not.
48:51It just sums it all up.
48:56It's a love of my ancestors.
48:57sums it all up. They have definitely not been forgotten. Definitely not been forgotten.
49:05Across the threshold of memory lies a moment in time of anguish and resistance, starvation
49:12and cruelty. From out of the ashes, a few diehard rebels fought for survival in their
49:19own land and built a new one in America.
49:27For more information visit www.fema.org
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