Alone in the Land of the Stranger

On occasion small collections that are acquired by the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library lack coherence; they are clearly the remains of a larger collection, now presumably lost, and these can include discrete items selected for preservation for unknown reasons. Perhaps they just survived by accident. One such collection was donated late last year which may have been preserved for its relationship to Kevin Barry who was executed in 1920.

The collection contains material related to Cumann na mBan and Sinn Féin, and a number of old school exercise books. There are letters to Ireland from emigrants to America including one from just after the Famine. The focus of this blog is a portion of the emigrant letters, written in the 1800s. Marcella McCormick from Mohill, County Leitrim, left for America sometime in the mid-1800s no doubt in search of a better life. As previous blogs have revealed, a transatlantic journey in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was seldom without incident. Some who emigrated, like John Campbell, will have made the best of the situation and will have lead successful lives, despite homesickness and scant communication from home. Others, like Mary Anne Blair, will have been overwhelmed by misfortune and tragedy, and will have struggled with the newness of it all. In 1842, a lonely Marcella was living in the ‘slave state’ of Jackson, Mississippi, ‘alone in the land of the stranger’ and to say she was unhappy is an understatement. Her letters to her sister Anne imply that she regretted leaving Ireland, and would desperately like to return. A year and a half later she wrote from Brandon, in the same state. Although respectably employed in the teaching profession, she wrote of her ‘irksome situation’. She was plagued by an ongoing but unspecified illness, and could barely endure the Summer heat of the American South. In 1855 she was living in Pass Christian; after a long silence of ten years she wrote of a husband, and there was no mention of children. She also asked her sister to pray for her husband’s conversion, and hinted at an unhappy marriage. She wrote, ‘I cast my lot among strangers and I have reaped the fruit not indeed the sweetest’ and ‘ give my fondest love to all and to your own dear husband, he must be very kind and affectionate to you. It is such a blessing when a man and wife dwell in peace and happiness together’. The clear implication is that this was not Marcella’s experience.

TCD MS 11512 can be consulted in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library.

Aisling Lockhart