Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

1829. The Port of Oswego NY (US, BNA). “Buffalo's chief rival for the western trade was Oswego on Lake Ontario. The busy traffic at Oswego harbor did not equal that of Buffalo on Lake Erie even when the Oswego Canal connecting Oswego harbor with the Erie Canal was completed by the state of New York in 1828 . One year later, however, vessels arriving and departing Oswego also had access to the lakes above Niagara Falls through the Welland Canal which Canadian interests completed to bypass the Falls in 1829 . The water route from the west to New York City by means of the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, and Oswego Canal was less costly and quicker than taking the Erie Canal route east all the way from Buffalo (Fig. 20). Toll was paid by the mile in the early days and the Welland-Oswego route involved 168 miles less travel by canal and 20 percent less time. As a result of Federal improvement at Oswego beginning in 1827 and its canal connections with the Erie Canal and the upper Great Lakes, the commerce of Oswego harbor grew rapidly. By 1840 it received three-quarter million bushels of wheat through the Welland Canal from the upper lakes, only one-quarter million less than Buffalo received that year from the West. By the early 1850's, Oswego was an even more substantial rival of the Lake Erie Port. In 1852, Oswego received 6,500,000 bushels of western wheat, a million more than Buffalo. Oswego's grain trade declined after 1852 when railroads at Buffalo began to capture much of the grain transport to New York (Larson, 1983). The US Indian Removal Act of 1830 (US) , signed into law by President Andrew Jackson 28 May 1830 , authorized grant lands west of the Mississippi for indigent lands within states east of the Mississippi. Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, who had occupied valuable lands in the Southeast and at times had threatened white settlers, were mostly expelled by 1840. 12-16,000 Cherokee were force-marched to Oklahoma 1838-9 in freezing conditions with the loss of 4,000 lives, an event later named the “Trail of Tears”. 1832. Cholera Epidemic (BNA, US). The first great cholera epidemic of the 19 th century crossed the Atlantic from India via Great Britain causing panic and death in the major North American coastal ports, such as Quebec and New York. In June 1832 , Irish immigrants brought with them a hidden passenger onboard the Carrick : cholera. Having killed tens of thousands in Britain, the disease came ashore at Quebec City and spread rapidly to Montreal and then to Upper Canada. More than 9,000 Canadians — Upper and Lower — died, the highest death rate being 2,000 in Montreal, where one out of 16 Montrealers succumbed (Belshaw, 2020, 10.2, 10.3). The disease passed inland to Canadian and US cities on the Great Lakes. The main tools in management were quarantine and fumigation, but the disease was not understood, and hygiene poorly utilized. Halifax was spared in the 1832 cholera epidemic, only to be hit hard in 1834. Many died, both in Cork and throughout Ireland, and poor migrants, often Irish, in crowded urban areas overseas succumbed. Notable cholera outbreaks would also occur in 1849 and in 1854 (when John Snow determined the disease was due to contaminated water). 1833. The Treaty of Chicago (US). This was the culmination of two US treaties, in 1821 and 1833, with Indian tribes west of Lake Michigan, whereby Indians ceded their territory, including the “Chicago Portage”, in exchange for a cash settlement and land west of the Mississippi. The “Portage” was, as was previously discussed, a natural gap in the Great Lakes-St Lawrence Continental Divide that extended for six miles from Lake Michigan to the Des Plaines River, a tributary of the Illinois River that flows into the Mississippi. Native Americans had used this inter-waterway trail for eons, prior to its use by French explorers and traders travelling between New Orleans and Quebec.

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