Tea at Trianon: Patrick Hoy's Ireland

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Patrick Hoy's Ireland

Mr. Hoy's story reminds me a great deal of my ancestor Daniel O'Connor's saga which is told in my upcoming novel The Paradise Tree. From Aleteia:

Fleeing poverty in their occupied country, between 1815 and 1845 one million Irish left Ireland— including my family, the Hoys. What truly beggars belief, however, is the horror that came next—the Famine.

In six short years, one out of every eight Irish people starved to death. Between 1845-1851, another million Irish left or were expelled from their native soil. The statistics are astounding. By 1880, Ireland’s population had decreased 30%—a loss unequaled in modern European history.

How Patrick Hoy Escaped

Like the majority of his countrymen, Patrick Hoy was a laborer, toiling the soil and doing odd jobs. He worked for another, and paid rent out of meager wages. Patrick married Catharine, and raised a son, Patrick, born in 1833. Very likely his family lived in a single room windowless mud-and-stone hut.

Somehow, by age 33 Patrick had saved enough to escape with his young family to the New World. In 1836, before the famine was ever imagined, they probably went by way of Dublin to Liverpool, England, one of the main ports to gain passage to America.

Their Journey

The Hoy’s Atlantic passage would have cost between 3-5 pounds; an entire year’s wages to get to America, plus what it cost to get from Dublin to Liverpool.

In Liverpool, the Hoy family would have next had to pass a medical exam certifying that they were free of contagious disease. Then, within a day or so, they boarded the Dalmatia, at Liverpool’s Waterloo dock.

The Dalmatia, a sailing ship of 358 tons, with room for about 150, had George Winsor, Jr. as Master. As this was before the famine, the ship was probably well-built and equipped, and provided a safe journey.

The Hoys’ fellow passengers in steerage on the Dalmatia hailed from Wales, Germany, Scotland, England, and Ireland. They were prepared to work in America; occupations on the Dalmatia’s manifest were listed as laborer, blacksmith, shoemaker, millwright, domestic, tailor....(Read more.)