The Potato Famine

The Potato Famine has been hurting the Irish people and the farmers for many years and times are still very hard. After the potato was introduced, the population exploded, by 1845 it had passed 8 million, double what it is today. The potato had become the staff of life for the Irish peasant. An average adult ate 9 to 14 pounds a day. Then in 1845 came the deadly blight and in 6 years over a million deaths had occurred. More than a million sought refuge in America. Bridget's .... Ellen, Patrick, James and Bernard came here somewhere about 1850/3. The Irish government did not help .....nor the landlords who sold any produce they could get to foreign countries for gain and the clergy backed them. Help finely came from America (mostly from the Irish who had a chance to get established) but that took time. The landlords broke their contracts with their farmers and began raising rents, the displaced had no place to go except the roads and by-ways, better known as the "walking-poor".