Surviving the great famine on Mt Mary, Galway - need history lesson

greenteaicedtea

Hello,

I am Canadian but my dad is from County Galway.

He emigrated to Canada in the 1960s. So obviously his family survived the famine in Ireland.

Here is where I am not too sure about history or details, and I am looking for help just to understand what would have happened.

So the land that my dad's father farmed on, was given back to them after the famine ended, or thereabouts. Prior to that, they lived on Mount Mary in county Galway. The only info I have been able to find about it is on this page, https://www.flickr.com/photos/feargal/7276545460that the Dominicans lived in the area. Now I don't know if my dad's family literally lived in a forest, or if they built a small house, or if that land was not cared about by the English landlords because I imagine being forest, it was not farmland that could be productive and make money, so they may have lived there and no one would have bothered them.

I saw a documentary about the folks who escaped the famine and had a rough journey to Canada and they seemed to have no end of troubles. I have heard about folks who died of hunger in Ireland. However my dad's family... seemed to have managed somehow, and I don't know enough about basic Irish history to know why that is.

Can anyone flesh out this part of history for me? My grandfather was born in the 1890s if that helps with the context of what happened at the time. If you can give me information about that area, great. If you can give me examples of what happened during that time, eg. land being given back to Irish people after the landlords were gone, that's good too.

Thanks!

Fratton Fred

What do you mean "given back to them"?

Was it originally their land and they were off it temporarily?

How much land did they have? Do you know what they were doing during the famine?

greenteaicedtea

The land they were given was not the original land they had initially. I mistyped.

I don't know the exact size of the farms, either before or after.

I screencapped the property that we (my uncle anyhow) own now, from Google maps, and it looks like around 10 hectares (500m x 200m is what I estimated) or 25 statue acres, 15 Irish acres, I guess. Here is the screencap, it was forested by the government because no one was farming it, so it is easy to know the borders of the land.

I have no idea what they did during the famine, I know they lived on Mount Mary, which from what I can tell is a forest, maybe they did some limited farming there with no landlord, however I am just guessing.

Fratton Fred

I still don't get what you mean "given". Given to them by who?

I would guess they saw the famine out living in Mount Mary, but working locally and then after the famine purchased a bit of land from a bankrupt estate.

Have you checked here http://www.findmypast.ie/articles/world-records/full-list-of-the-irish-family-history-records/census-land-and-substitutes/landed-estates-court-rentals-1850-1885

Markcheese

I suppose they could have got a piece of ground to farm post famine -renting it from an estate.. then bought it later after the land wars -or maybe even got it from the land commision later again -
Information passed through generations can be a bit like Chinese whispers...