From County Mayo to America: Famine, Emigration, and the Making of Irish America (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181177383)

On a June morning in 1883, Anthony McManmon stood on the shore at Blacksod with his family and a wooden box, waiting for the rowing boat that would take them out to an emigrant steamer too large to come closer to the land it was emptying.

Few places in Ireland were changed more deeply by emigration than County Mayo. Its population stood at 388,887 before the Great Famine. Then, census after census, for more than a century, the county kept losing people.

From County Mayo to America follows the whole arc: the sea kingdom of Granuaile and the confiscations that broke it; the hidden county of the penal years; the French landing of 1798; and then the catastrophe of blight, Black '47, eviction, hunger, and the coffin ships leaving from Killala, Westport, and beyond.

It crosses the Atlantic with the emigrants: to Grosse Île and the Liverpool cellars, the tunnels and kitchens of New York, the copper mines of Montana, and the American cities where Mayo names took root. It follows the trail from the bricks a Ballina man sold in 1828 to the descendant who, five generations later, entered the White House.

And it follows the road home: Knock, the airport built on a bog, the Choctaw gift repaid after 173 years, a princess at a Drumirla hearth, and a county that, after four centuries of loss, finally began to grow again.

Written for readers with Mayo names, Mayo ancestors, and Mayo questions, this is a narrative history of famine, exile, endurance, and return - closing with a practical guide to tracing your own Mayo family through the records.

Book 1 of the From County to America series. Each volume stands alone.