52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 7 - Outcast
- kathleenachapman
- Feb 13, 2023
- 4 min read
My subject this week is a bit of a stretch for the topic "Outcast". I'm going to describe some of the political, economic, and religious pressures that were swirling through Europe in the mid to late 19th century when several of my ancestors emigrated to the United States. This is a subject I find fascinating and the more I learn about what was happening in Europe at that time, the more I realize I don't know. Obviously the history I describe below is highly simplified.
I cannot say for certain if these specific conditions caused my ancestors to emigrate - they left no diaries, letters, or papers, so this is speculative on my part. These overviews are my understanding of the history and all mistakes are mine.
James McGreal and the Irish Potato Famine
James (1815-1889) emigrated 1851
My 3rd great-grandfather
The Irish potato famine, also known as The Great Hunger, started in 1847 when mold caused the ruination of about half the potato crop. The mold affected the potatoes for the next seven years, destroying nearly three-quarters of the crop. In this time, about a million people died from starvation and related causes and another million fled Ireland. Irish Catholic tenant farmers were impacted the most.
Those refugees likely included James McGreal, his four brothers and a sister. The few immigration records we've found indicate they left Ireland across a multi-year span - the earliest year is 1849 and the latest 1852. Probably the first brother who left was able to send money home, which may have helped the family farm to survive and enabled other relatives to eventually leave.
The McGreal siblings settled in rural central New York mainly as farmers. James' son Anthony H. McGreal moved to the city of Rochester, New York, as a young man, and with his brothers Lawrence and John, owned and operated McGreal Brothers Company, a wholesale liquor dealer. Here's a photo of Anthony McGreal.
Anthony married Mary Louise Fitzgerald in 1903, they had three sons and a daughter. Their second son, Austin McGreal, is my grandfather.
Abraham Wolff and the German Revolutions of 1848-1849
Abraham Wolff (1833-1918) emigrated 1852
My 3rd great-grandfather
I wrote about Abraham Wolff in week 1 of this challenge. He was born 1833 in Hesse, which is now in modern day Germany. The German states, including Austria and Prussia, were bound together in an organization known as the German Confederation. The Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) took hold in both central Europe and North America. Literacy and education increased. Germans emigrated to the United States looking for economic opportunities, along with religious, political and personal freedom. In 1848-1849, a wave of revolutions swept through Europe, with uprisings in France, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Germany, demanding voting rights, freedom of the press, economic opportunity, the abolishment of serfdom, the abolishment of monarchy, workers rights, and similar reforms. Counter-revolutionary forces eventually crushed these rebellions. Many of the uprisings organizers and sympathizers fled to the United States. Some of these Germans settled in Milwaukee and St. Louis, which are still known today for their German communities. Many German men enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War and helped keep the nation together.
Abraham left Germany in 1852, when he was about 18 or 19 years old. He settled in central New York at first, getting married and raising a family. He volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, the family settled in Rochester New York, joining a small but thriving Jewish population that had existed already for about 25 years.
Knowing the conditions in the German states in the mid-19th century helps me understand Abraham's education and political views.
Jacob Cohen and Miriam Millenthaler, fleeing poverty and religious persecution in Russian Poland 1870s
Jacob (1855-1928) and wife Miriam (1851-1903) emigrated around 1873-1876.
My 2nd great-grandparents
The areas I believe Jacob and Miriam are from (Kovno, now present day Kaunas, Lithuania and/or the Suwalki region, in present day Poland) were regions absorbed by the Russian Empire following the Polish-Russian war of 1830-31 and more tightly integrated into Russia after the January Uprising of 1863.
Jewish people in this part of Russia were restricted to an area called The Pale of Settlement. This was an area in the western part of Russia, with varying borders, that came into existence during the reign of Catherine the Great in 1791. At its height, the Jewish population of the Pale was estimated at 5 million. The area within the Pale gradually shrunk under the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855) and life for the Jewish residents became more restrictive.
Life in the Jewish shtetls ("little towns") was hard and poverty-stricken. Most Jews couldn't be farmers due to the restrictions, so they were artisans, merchants, and shopkeepers. A robust system of community Jewish charitable organizations developed, and at the end of the 19th century about one in three Jews were being supported by these organizations.
It was in this environment that Jacob and Miriam left for the United States in the early to mid 1870s. Sadly, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 was falsely blamed on the Jews and led to sky-rocketing anti-Semitism and a series of pogroms from 1881-1884. Two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920.
Jacob and Miriam first settled in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh. They had six children. Jacob was a peddler. In 1886 or 1887 they moved to Chicago, Illinois, and had 4 more children. Jacob was listed as a glazier (glass worker) in the 1900 census. Chicago had a large German Jewish population already when waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe started arriving in the 1870s. These two communities generally remained separate until the mid 20th century due to cultural and religious differences.
Found your summary of the Irish Potato Famine and its affects to be enlightening.
James McGrail (yes - our family also uses McGreal).