Sometimes, when you look at ancient photos of your predecessors, don’t you wish you could ask them some questions? Maybe introduce yourself? You may know their names, where they came from, and a little about them, but you don’t really know them.

Take my paternal great-grandparents – Michael and Ellen (Colbert) Gorman. They had a major role in propagating me – which may explain those dour countenances – but we never met, and they never even heard of me or any of my siblings. I wish we could get acquainted. And I would like to pump them for info about how they survived and managed to make it to America and what happened to them when they got here. It would surely be a fearsome tale of stubborn endurance, stamina and grit.

I know a little about them, thanks to the diligence of the genealogy research of my second cousin Julie Davis; the history of Cedar County, Iowa; old newspaper archives; various publications in that fountain of all wisdom, the internet; and the rest I can only conjecture.

What I know about Michael is that he was born in July, 1830 in County Waterford in Ireland. He was 16 years old in 1846 when he immigrated to America with his widowed mother, Margaret, four brothers and two sisters. It’s likely all eight of them were illiterate, penniless, and malnourished. They didn’t come here to pursue the American dream. They came because they were hungry.

They probably couldn’t even speak English. Most of those emigrating probably only spoke Irish (sometimes referred to as Gaelic). According to Wikipedia “Down to the time of the Great Famine and even afterwards, the Irish language was in use by all classes, Irish being an urban as well as a rural language.”

To understand how they may have communicated, I submitted a couple of sentences to an online English to Irish translator and got this result:

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The widow and her family’s need to emigrate was the 1845 beginning of the devastating potato famine that nearly destroyed the Irish. The following describes the setting in their home county of Waterford.

When Michael’s mother – my undoubtedly stoic great-great grandmother – arrived in New York from Ireland with her five sons and two daughters in tow, we can only guess at how that travel was funded. How would a destitute widow with seven children been able to pay for their passage to New York? Even in the steerage section, the fare was about $15. Unless there was a “cut-rate” for the kiddies, that would have totaled a staggering $120 for the family for the voyage.

They traveled aboard the American packet ship named the George Washington. This is a painting of it that was done 6 years earlier than their trip. It is pictured in Liverpool, the port where the family probably embarked from. In bad weather, sailing ships like this could take several weeks to get to New York. The steamships that began traveling later in 1852 could make such a voyage in two weeks if the weather was good.

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Some of the ships required that the passengers bring their own food and water for the trip, too. How could my indigent great-great grandmother have come up with the fortune to finance the passage and provisions needed for that long desperate journey?

I may have found the answer in various publications that describe the role of the British landlords in Ireland. In the death and despair of the 1840s in Ireland, agents for wealthy British landowners found a way to “clear the property for improvements” by compensating its tenants. If they “surrendered” their holdings in the property they were living on, the company would pay for them to emigrate to another country. And I’m guessing that’s how my great-great grandmother managed to acquire the $120 “fortune” that funded the journey of her family to the new world of America.

After she got her brood aboard the ship, it’s probable that my great-great grandmother would have faced more hardship. Most Irish immigrants traveled in the cheapest section of the ship – below deck in the hellhole called steerage.

Disease thrived in the squalid conditions of steerage travel, where depending on the size of the
ship, a few hundred to 1000 people could be crammed into tight quarters. Wooden beds,
known as berths, were stacked two-to-three high with two people sharing single berths and up
to four squeezed into a double. The only ventilation was provided by hatches to the upper
decks which were locked tight during rough seas and storms.

Since the only bathrooms were located above deck, passengers trapped below during stormy
weather were forced to urinate and defecate (and get seasick) in buckets which would overturn
in the churning waves. The stench was unbearable and the spread of deadly diseases like
typhoid, cholera, and smallpox spread unabated.

Food was also in constant shortage. Some ships required passengers to bring their own
meager provisions, while others provided only minimum rations meant to keep passengers
from starving. A lack of clean water and rancid food resulted in rampant bouts of dysentery.

Once they survived the trip and the red tape and English-speaking customs agents at Ellis Island, the family travelled up the Hudson River to Albany where they lived for five years. After that, they moved to Illinois, and then to Iowa where they settled permanently. I think Michael was in his early 20s by then.

There’s so many questions I wish I could ask. Except for Michael, I don’t know much about the rest of the family. According to the ship’s Passenger List, his mother Margaret, was 36 at the time of the voyage. Brother John was oldest at 19 years old. Michael was next at 16. Then Paddy, 11, Mary 9, Allen 6, Margaret 4, and William 2 years old. The ages of the children tell us a lot about the stark burden their mother must have faced in keeping them alive and safe.

My great grandmother, Ellen Colbert, and her family had to make the difficult journey, too. She was born on June 19, 1835 in County Cork in Ireland. Still a child, she immigrated to the U.S. with both her parents, though it’s unclear when the voyage occurred or whether she had other siblings. Their County Cork was among those that were the most devastated by the famine.

Up until Michael’s family moved to Iowa, he probably didn’t know the girl he was to marry. Ellen was five years younger than he was, for one thing, and the 93 miles separating Cork and Waterford counties was probably like traveling the distance to the moon. So I’m guessing they met in Iowa.

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Michael and Ellen were married on 6/22/1851 at St. Mary’s Church in Iowa City, Iowa. They settled in Pottawattamie County in Iowa where Michael successfully farmed for sixty years. Living the American dream.

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They had ten children, three of whom died in childhood. I believe my grandfather James Gorman was fourth oldest.

In 1910, Michael retired and he and Ellen moved to live on the farm of his son James and his wife Elizabeth (my paternal grandparents). Michael died on 4/7/1916 when he was 85 years old, and Ellen died seven years later on 8/30/1924 at age 89.

While I don’t know them well, I am very proud them. They came to America with nothing but their drive to survive and to succeed, and they managed to do both. For the rest of us who came from their roots, we can be sure of one thing. We weren’t bred from sissies!

In spite of the all-American spirit that drove Michael to succeed as a farmer in the Midwest, if he was anything like the other Irish I’ve known, he probably never gave up his longing for his native land. I’ll leave you with an Irish blessing as Michael might have expressed it to us.

And Oh yes, I hope you have a happy St. Paddy’s Day!

To help celebrate the ”Wearin’ of the Green”, this is for Michael and Ellen: nine of their great-great-great-great grandchildren – the Celtic Cousins – in action at the Seattle Center in 2003.