An American Dream

By Ray Banister

Beginning quite mysteriously in September 1845, healthy green leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black, curled; and then rotted. Then like an uncontrollable wildfire in a wind-swept forest, winds from southern England carried that mysterious blight to leaves of healthy potato plants around the Dublin countryside. As fungal spores they multiplied, cool breezes quickly spread that same unchecked blight to surrounding plants throughout all the potato fields of Ireland. This blight quickly became an imperiling devastation; casting Ireland into a horrifying tribulation. One-third of Ireland's population had become solely dependent on the potato to sustain their livelihood…the Irish potato famine would reduce the already desolate Irish people to penniless dehumanized paupers and homeless outcast…the infamous Irish potato famine had begun. Caught-up in the famine's inescapable grasp was the Andrew and Mattie O'Malley family, innocent Catholic potato farmers with three children: two teen-age sons and a six-year old daughter named Rose. Their survival and existence now at the mercy of English and Anglo-Irish land owners that were loyal members of The Anglican Church of England The British Government defended the vindictive landowners by failing to initiate any reactionary measures to relieve the devastating problems of the Irish people. The effects of not taking measures to address or reconcile those issues, created a host of political, social and economic factors that forever etched irreconcilable resentment and distrust on the English and Irish demographic landscape. But, far worse, was the direct devastation subjected on the helpless Irish people. Over the next six years, more than a million Irish men, women and children would die from mass starvation or from infectious diseases resulting from that mysterious blight and the lack of government intervention. Another million would flee Ireland on questionable sea-worthy disease infested sailing ships dubbed "famine ships" or "coffin ships" to America. This is a story of unrivaled courage shown by an eight-year old Irish girl; orphaned by the infamous Irish potato famine in the 1840's. She came to America alone on a disease infested famine ship during the time of legalized slavery and uncontested bigotry and dedicated her life's work to eradicate both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684565696

Book preview

Chapter One

In late February 1847, an urgent letter from a British soldier in Liverpool, England, arrived at the McKean cotton Plantation addressed:

To the attention of:

Joseph Finney

Chief Cotton Broker

McKean Cotton Plantation

Long Cane, South Carolina

The letter with few details read:

At great risk to my life, as an act of compassion to Mrs. O’Malley and her ostracized family, I am sending you this letter. The family of Mattie O’Malley is in great danger and in dire need of money to rescue them from certain death created by the Irish potato famine now in progress. I am their contact. I am a British soldier keeping order at the departing gates at the Liverpool dock for the departing famine ships.

The letter left lots of unanswered questions to speculate and ponder. Joseph (Joe) Finney had an older sister named Mattie that lived in Ireland with her husband and their three children. Joe had not heard from his sister in quite some time. The McKean Plantation’s cotton brokerage office in Liverpool had made Joe aware of the famine, but his cotton brokers in Liverpool were not aware that Joe had a sister that lived in Ireland; therefore, his Liverpool office never expressed any urgent seriousness to the matter. Mattie (Finney) O’Malley was an older sister of Joseph Finney—husband of Hannah McKean.

Whether the letter was true or hoax, Joe Finney left nothing to chance, he immediately sent a return letter to his office in Liverpool, informing them of his sister’s urgent request and requesting them to look into the matter with haste. Joe attached the soldier’s letter and authorized the Liverpool brokerage office to use their own best judgment as to how best to expedite his sister’s request and secure passage for his sister and her family whatever the financial cost may be—use financial bribes if necessary.

The Irish potato famine that had now entrapped Joe Finney’s sister Mattie and the O’Malley family and cast them into their desperate and helpless situation began long years before 1847. In the mid-1800s, Ireland was an agricultural nation, populated by eight million people who were among the poorest people in the Western world. Their state of poverty was attributed to the (1649–1653) conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell’s conquest confiscated vast portions of Ireland’s agricultural land, which then became the property of the English and Anglo-Irish hereditary ruling class.

After undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, Cromwell became a devout independent puritan with favoritism toward the Protestant sects of his period and became a leader of a campaign for wiping Catholicism from the United Kingdom.

On July 1, 1690, with the armed support of the Irish Army, the English were defeated by a French Catholic army on Irish soil at the battle of Boyne, near Drogheda. In 1695, in revenging retaliation against the Irish Catholics for their armed intervention in support of French Catholics, the English Parliament passed and enacted a series of penal laws against Irish Roman Catholics, the religion practiced by the majority of the Irish people.

The punishing penal laws prohibited Irish Catholics from owning land, from voting, from holding political office, from living in a corporate town or within five miles of a corporate town, from entering a profession, and from attending school to attain even a basic education. The Irish Catholics were prohibited from holding public office or serving in the army or navy. In addition to the penal laws, England’s Anglican Church condemned the Catholic faith and disallowed its practice. The Irish Catholics were forced to convert to the Anglican faith. Catholics who failed to attend Anglican services had to pay recusant fines for nonattendance.

The penal laws were designed and enacted to reduce the Irish Catholics to helpless, powerless slaves of insignificant value except to serve the Anglo-Irish hereditary ruling class. In essence, the enforced British penal laws began the genocide of a defenseless Irish race.

Catholics made up 80 percent of the Irish population but were forced by the English-backed Anglican Church to live in conditions of poverty, disgrace, and insecurity. At the top of the privileged social pyramid was the ascendancy class, the English and Anglo-Irish landlords who now owned most of the confiscated land had unlimited power over their Irish tenants. Some of their confiscated estates were vast: for example, the Earl of Lucan owned over sixty thousand acres.

The ascendancy landowners that held titles to enormous tracts of land were mostly absentee landowners who only set foot on their properties once or twice a year, if at all. Middlemen rented large parcels of land from the landowners on the various estates, subdivided the land into smaller holdings, which they then rented to poor Catholic farmers. Landowners often utilized local agents to actually manage their estates while the landowners themselves lived in lavish luxury chateaus in London, France, or Spain or among the affluent in other parts of Europe off the rents paid by Irish Catholic farmers for use of land their ancestors had once owned.

Catholic farmers considered tenants-at-will could never own their own property but could be evicted on short notice at the whim of the landlord, his agent, or middleman. By law, any improvements the tenants-at-will made, such as building a stone house from stone that literally covered the countryside, became the property of the landlord. That law discouraged any incentive to upgrade their living standards and encouraged at-will-tenants to build mere resident shanties or make-do cottages.

Beginning quite mysteriously in September 1845, healthy green leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black, curled, and then rotted. Then like an uncontrollable wildfire in a windswept forest, winds from Southern England carried that mysterious blight to leaves of healthy potato plants around the Dublin countryside. As fungal spores, they multiplied, and cool breezes quickly spread that same unchecked blight to surrounding plants throughout all the potato fields of Ireland. This blight quickly became an imperiling devastation; casting Ireland into a horrifying tribulation. One-third of Ireland’s population had become solely dependent on the potato to sustain their livelihood—the Irish potato famine would reduce the already desolate Irish people to penniless dehumanized paupers and homeless outcast—the infamous Irish potato famine had begun.

Caught up in the famine’s inescapable grasp was the Andrew and Mattie O’Malley family, innocent Catholic potato farmers with three children: two teenage sons and a six-year-old daughter named Rose. Their survival and existence now at the mercy of English and Anglo-Irish landowners that were loyal members of The Anglican Church of England

The British government defended the vindictive landowners by failing to initiate any reactionary measures to relieve the devastating problems of the Irish people. The effects of not taking measures to address or reconcile those issues created a host of political, social, and economic factors that forever etched irreconcilable resentment and distrust on the English and Irish demographic landscape. But far worse, was the direct devastation subjected to the helpless Irish people.

Over the next six years, more than a million Irish men, women, and children would die from mass starvation or from infectious diseases resulting from that mysterious blight and the lack of government intervention. Another million would flee Ireland on questionable seaworthy disease infested sailing ships dubbed famine ships or coffin ships to America.

The unscrupulous landlords had a British government protected freehand to evict the penniless families from their cottage, reducing them to mere homeless, starving peasants. The penniless outcast was thrown into the defiled stench-filled streets of Ireland to fin for themselves among the thousands of other starving Irish people.

The acts of nature created a devastating potato blight that cast the Irish people into a state of starvation; the British government’s failure to relax penal laws or initiate reactionary measures to elevate hunger created a famine.

Taking defiant matters in their own hands, Andrew O’Malley joined with a group of evicted neighbors with intensions to recruit and rally an Irish army to overthrow the English landowners and reclaim their land. As the self-styled vigilante group grew and gained momentum, a bounty was placed on information that led British soldiers to an in-process vigilante meeting. During the surprise raid, a blast from a shotgun rang out. The British soldiers responded by gunning down all eighteen of the small group of vigilantes. The decisive action of the British not only ended the vigilantes’ threat, but it also put fear into other groups with similar ambitious ideas.

Andrew O’Malley had begun to make plans to leave Ireland and go to America with his family long before the famine began. Mattie O’Malley’s older brother, Joseph Finney, migrated to America from Ireland in 1831 at the age of eighteen to escape British oppression and make a new life for himself in America. He settled in the small community of Long Cane; there he met and married Hannah McKean, sister of Isaiah McKean, owner of the McKean Plantation. Joseph Finney now holds the prestigious position of chief import/export agent for the McKean cotton plantation, one of the larger plantations in the Southeastern United States.

Andrew O’Malley was a man of definitive action, a man who knew well the British penal laws; he also knew the corrupt and greedy human nature of the landlords and local British authorities. Andrew was a shrewd manipulator who knew how to make secret undercover bribes and deals with both the landlords and British authorities that would skirt the laws to line their pockets with unaccounted-for contraband shillings.

Andrew’s unscrupulous dealing with adversaries allowed him an opportunity to skirt strict enforced penal laws; neither party wanted to kill the golden goose or face a witness in court who could testify to such atrocities against them.

Over the past few years, Andrew O’Malley, in violation of existing penal laws, raised hogs and secretly sold them to opportunists’ landlords at half market value and stashed his portion of the money away in an effort to accumulate passage money for him and his family to join Joseph in America. Andrew kept his undercover financial dealings secret from his own landlord; he didn’t risk raising his own rent. Now his widow and three children had been evicted; homeless outcast on their own in the stench-filled streets of Ireland with the mere savings Andrew had secretly accumulated.

The education of Catholics was forbidden and punishable under penal law. Before the penal law was enforced, the Catholic Church provided educational opportunities; after the penal law, education was secretly provided by priests in defiance of the law in hedge schools for the very few who dared to attend.

Andrew O’Malley encouraged his family to continue their education whatever the risk. Andrew always believed that world opinion would in time force the British government to remove the penal laws and return the rule of Ireland to the Irish people.

With no time to mourn her husband’s death or even an opportunity to give him a proper burial, Mrs. O’Malley gathered her family together; keeping no secrets from them, she explained to them, in detail, their dire situation, the difficulties that lay ahead, and what would be expected of them.

She told them, We must stay together and put our trust in God and pray to him for His guidance.

Your father was a good man, she told them, a man who loved his family and was devoted to his faith. He did what he did because he believed that it was right. He did it to help his family, friends, and the downtrodden Irish people.

She then opened the white leather-bound family Bible she had taken from their cottage when they were evicted and began to read.

She read Romans 8:28: We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

She led them as they all quoted aloud in unity, a familiar passage from the Bible they all knew well: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Your father left me some money he had earned and stashed away to buy passage for the five of us to go to America to live in the same town with Uncle Joe. I know your father would want the four of us to go on. First, we must make our way to Dublin then across the Irish Sea to Liverpool where ships sail to America. I believe we have enough money for our ship’s fare. If not, we’ll try somehow to earn what more we need.

Two advantages Andrew O’Malley had given his family were an education and the courage to carry on.

From the outset of their three-day walk to Dublin, they encountered throngs of evicted fellow Irish residents along the way. Frightened homeless, penniless paupers fleeing their estates in ragged clothes and empty hands, ducking into shadows in fear of being imprisoned on their landlord’s hatched-up back-rent charges—charges enforced by government agents and police acting under Anglo-Irish authority. With only the strength of hope for a better tomorrow to bolster their steps, thousands of sick, frail, and despondent people wandered through Irish fields and wastelands searching for eatable roots and berries to sustain their plight toward Dublin. All along the way, they begged for a mere handout or a place to stop and rest—a blanket to them was a rare luxury.

There is no way to ever know just how many thousands of the poorest and weakest peasants died in the stench disease-infested streets and bogs, never reaching Dublin, the first leg of their pilgrimage to the bountiful shores of America. To a land of promise where, by government creed, all men are created equal, and their God-given unalienable rights are protected and guaranteed by that nation’s charter.

It was a pleasant spring morning in early April when the O’Malley family departed Dublin, Ireland, on a packed beyond human capacity, flat-deck commuter boat and crossed the Irish Sea to the Port of Liverpool, England, the port from which they would sail to America. The Irish Sea was especially calm; a refreshing sea breeze gently teased at their backs. The green rolling hills of Ireland seemed greener and more beautiful than ever as the city of Dublin began to slowly fade in the distance, framing Ireland’s shoreline in picturesque beauty. The native flowers of Ireland and the shamrock, Ireland’s symbolic link to St. Patrick, were in full bloom. The clouds had rolled away, and sunshine filled the clear blue sky.

Such a bonny day it is, Mrs. O’Malley said to her children, whose smiling faces were radiantly reflecting joy and happiness.

They were, at last, leaving years of demeaning tortuous treatment behind.

I can’t help wondering, Mrs. O’Malley thought to herself as she raised her head and looked upward toward the heavens, does God not know about all his destitute children living here on earth in misery—sick, suffering, starving, and dying at the evil hands of the British hierarchy? But then, on second thought, perhaps maybe this special day is a sign from God, assuring his people that he is in control of heaven and earth, not the Anglo-English landlords.

As the flat-deck boat, crowded with destitute Irish emigrant’s, approached the docks in Liverpool, they could see the moored three-stack luxurious clipper ships being readied to sail out to sea; carrying well-dressed passengers to ports of call around the world. As the emigrant boat past further on, the silhouette of tall famine ship’s mask came into view. The commuter boat continued to the dock of emigrant embarkation and began unloading its passengers.

An exodus of tens of thousands of Irish emigrants from all the farmlands of Ireland, strangers meeting for the first time, were concentrated within a few square miles area of waterfront—all homeless peasants with a common ambition: the hope of leaving Ireland for America. One hundred fifty years of British punishment under enforced English penal laws had reduced a once-proud and self-reliant people to ignorant, starving, disease-infested paupers. Isolation and total denial of even the basic human rights had created a population of indigent apelike brutes. The landlords, their agents, and English taxing authorities’ insatiable greed to squeeze more profit from the potato farmer had reduced the Irish citizen to toothless savages, then when they could squeeze no more profit, they threw their family into a stench-, disease-infested street for the British authorities to bring before the magistrate court to be confined to debtors’ prison.

Stepping off that boat onto the dock in Liverpool was like being dumped into a garbage pit of disposed humanity. Extreme poverty had dehumanized their body, isolation had stolen their spirit, and the denial of education had reduced them to illiterate buffoons. The only thing they had left was their desire to survive. Concentrated on that stench-infested waterfront dock was a sea of dehumanized Irish citizens—all bearing visible signs of years of neglect and torture: filthy ragged clothes hang loosely from their body. Rickets twisted their legs and hampered their walk. Severe malnutrition, matted hair, and being toothless were common peasant characteristics.

Waiting at the Liverpool embarkation dock were swarms of devious professional predators, waiting to swindle vulnerable new arrival of their meager treasure. They left few unscathed and many totally penniless. Learning the delays in sailing schedules caused by rigging repairs, restocking the ship’s galley, unfavorable weather changes, etc., gave the unscrupulous predators a distinct advantage over those who had just arrived. Well-dressed, distinguished scalpers pretending to be roving ticket agents sold discounted passenger tickets to gullible emigrants. When the emigrant presented their ticket at the time of departure, they were turned away because they had been sold outdated bogus tickets.

Unfortunately, Mrs. O’Malley became a victim to the ticket scalpers. She and her three children were refused passage on their scheduled departure. Devastated and distraught, she covered her face with her hands as she began to weep. She then took the hands of her children and sadly led them away from the crowd of fortunate departing passengers. She then huddled with her children and dropped to her knees on the dock, uncontrollably sobbing.

A young British soldier standing near the ticket agent’s booth directing and controlling the confused crowd of impatient embarking emigrants witnessed the rejection of Mrs. O’Malley’s passenger tickets. He knew immediately what had happened; he had witnessed that cruel, fraudulent ticket-sale deception too many times before. The soldier was emotionally touched by Mrs. O’Malley’s devastation as she cuddled her three children and slowly walked away from the departing passengers, sobbing as she walked away.

The soldier watched the group from his post as they continued sitting on the dock, huddled just outside the line of boarding passengers. He was most impressed by the young golden-haired girl that kept consoling her mother.

After the emigrants boarded the tall famine ship and the ship had departed the dock, the soldier left his post and walked cautiously toward the huddled O’Malley’s as if he were going to instruct them to move on. British soldiers, because of years of strained cultural relations and, by training, could not openly display any compassion for the Irish. Over the years they had become common social enemies.

Would you please stand up, the soldier asked the group. In the event that someone is observing our activity, it will appear more official if I don’t bend down.

Overwhelmed by the soldier’s unexpected politeness, the four of them immediately stood.

"I saw what happened at the ticket booth this morning. You’re not the first. Those heartless, low-life scavengers sell bogus tickets to unknowing, trusting, and gullible emigrants and leave them penniless and vulnerable to the British authorities, who bring them before the magistrate, who immediately returns them to Ireland under the Poor Removal Act.

Do you have any money left? the soldier asked, seeming concerned about their welfare, a rare gesture shown by any British subject.

I have a few shillings left, Mrs. O’Malley replied, but nowhere near enough to purchase even one ticket.

What do you plan to do now? the soldier asked in earnest.

I don’t have a plan. I don’t know what I’ll do. I am a widow with these three children. My husband was killed by—she stopped short of saying British soldiers. Her eyes began to well up with tears, then she began to nervously rub one hand in the other—the reality of her situation had overwhelmed her.

Don’t cry, Mother. Everything’s going to be all right, Rose said with poise and confidence as she hugged her mother around the waist.

Where did your daughter get such confidence and courage? She is calm and in control. I could detect that rare sense of confidence from my post. It was because of her that I came over. I have seen thousands of Irish emigrants come through this Liverpool funnel. Some had just enough money to pay their own fare. Some had their fare paid by their landlord in lieu of paying taxes on them. It was the cheaper way to evict his tenants. But they all appeared insecure and frightened. The legend of the disease-infested famine ships is well-known. Emigrants are well aware of the risk they’re taking, yet they somehow take up the gauntlet and accept the risk for the opportunity to begin a new life in America.

She inherited her self-confidence from her father, replied Mrs. O’Malley. He was a strong-willed man of faith who often said, ‘God created man free from fear. Man instills fear in himself.’

I have a brother who lives in the United States. If I could get you to mail a letter to him, he would send me money. Then, I could pay my fare, Mrs. O’Malley asked the soldier, hoping somehow they could lay aside their long-practiced social differences.

It will take a month or more to get an answer to your letter, lady. Lady, you don’t have a month to wait. The British authorities will return you to Ireland under the Poor Removal Act long before that. The way you Irish are being disbursed, I doubt a letter filled with money would ever reach you, the soldier replied disrespectfully, showing little remorse or interest.

The soldier was becoming impatient and ready to move on.

But wait! Then we can have the money sent to you. We’ll both know where you’ll be, Mrs. O’Malley replied in serious candor.

In desperation, Mrs. O’Malley had quickly conjured up what she hoped would be an enticing and manipulative plan. My brother is the chief import/export agent for the McKean cotton plantation, one of the larger plantations in the Southeastern part of the United States. His name is Joseph Finney. Most people call him Joe. He is a very wealthy man. I’m sure he will send a little extra to pay you for helping us get to America.

Mrs. O’Malley realized the risk of ever seeing the soldier again once her brother sent him the money, but at least her brother would know her family’s situation in Ireland.

In light of Mrs. O’Malley’s new proposal, the soldier’s attitude and interest suddenly perked. Do you know your brother’s address in America? I have a writing tablet. I can write a letter for you. I realize you Roman Catholics have been under penal laws that forbid you an education, the soldier said abrasively, assuming Mrs. O’Malley couldn’t write.

Somewhat offended by the soldier’s demeaning remark, Mrs. O’Malley replied, Yes, I have the address, and thanks to my late husband, I am very capable of writing and addressing the letter. I’ll allow you to read the letter to assure you I have included you as the recipient of the money for the purpose of purchasing a passenger ticket for my three children and me. The only requirement you have is sending and receiving the letter.

I’ll take your word, lady, that you can write with perfect penmanship, the soldier snapped sharply, but I was given this pad to make out and file immigration violations and law-breaking reports. If someone saw you writing in my pad, we’ll both be in deep trouble. Let’s get this letter written quickly. I’ve spent too much time with you already.

The soldier wrote the letter and address dictated by Mrs. O’Malley. He carefully removed the page from his tablet and concealed it inside his uniform.

As the soldier started to depart, he said to Mrs. O’Malley, Let me give you some sound advice. You and your family will not survive on this dock. This dock is the last hope and the fatal point for tens of thousands of Irish who come here in hopes of sailing to America. They are all indiscriminately judged as impoverished, destitute paupers, sick with contagious fevers, dying from malnutrition and starvation. They come here seeking freedom from their heartless landlords, only to be rounded up by health and parish officers and sent to fever sheds or asylums and cast among the feverish and mentally afflicted. Few ever survive that fate.

"Your two teenage sons