PROTESTANTS brought a certain work ethic to the US they emigrated Dr Brian Trainor of the Ulster Historical Foundation told the Parnell Summer School at Avondale House in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, yesterday.
Presbyterians who emigrated to the US had faced similar discrimination to that experienced by Catholics, he explained in a paper entitled "Ulster Emigration to North America 1700 to 1900". Presbyterians were referred to as "Taigh Iandish" (as in "outlandish") by the puritan aristocracy.
The main factor drawing Presbyterians to the US was the cheap land on offer and the wide educational opportunities, he said. It was often forgotten that large numbers of Presbyterians were tenants and not landlords.
Dr Trainor mentioned the staunch Protestant judge Ezekiel Stewart whose famous claim that Presbyterian women were of "questionable character" had become legendary among the Irish American Presbyterian community. The same judge had at another time urged Ulster Presbyterians to "leave the Egypt of Ulster" and come to the promised land of America.
He refused to be drawn on the question of whether US president Bill Clinton was a direct descendant of Ulster Presbyterian stock. He did say, however, that he was impressed with how well informed the president had been about Ulster politics and history.
Dr Trainor, a former director of the Ulster Public Records Office, told the audience that there must be a collaborative effort by historians, genealogists and researchers to look farther at the question of emigration. The most important thing now was that research in this area continued with vigour, he added. This included even the mundane work of local genealogy societies, who regularly took down inscriptions from gravestones.
EARLIER in the day, Dr David Doyle of UCD presented a paper on "Diversity in the Irish Diaspora". Dr Doyle said his research in the area had shown much of the story of Irish emigrants to be pure myth. He said his paper was intended to "correct the misapprehension" that Irish emigrants had gone to the US unused to urban life and that they had always ended up in menial employment. He pointed out that Irish emigrants were more used to urban life when arriving in the US than many Americans.
He said the connection with Britain had made Irish emigrants aware of life in cities and it was native Americans who were unsuccessful in adapting to an urban lifestyle. The fact that "Irish women produced on average four to five children in the century after birth rates had fallen in Ireland" showed that Irish emigrants felt more secure than they had back home, said Dr Doyle. Many Irish emigrants were "white collar workers and artisans rather than the low skilled individuals, other research had discovered.
Dr Doyle's paper, which included detailed statistics, made clear the direct correlation between rising wage rates in the US and the lowering of wages in Ireland this was the vital force that drove many emigrants to the US, he added.
