Homeopathic Treatments

Catholicism in Ireland was under attack. The English were trying to rid Ireland of Catholics altogether. William of Orange, a protestant, was invited to ascend the English throne, and the wars began.

By the year 1843, we Catholics had been made slaves. We were not allowed to vote or even attend civic events. Irish-Catholic children were not permitted to go to school. My father was a potato farmer, and was able to feed us well, despite being poor and practically enslaved. When we began to think that things could not get any worse for us, the potato blight took everything we had left.

During the potato harvest of 1845 we discovered a strange fungus covering more than half of our crops. We were not alone; this fungus victimized all of the farmers' crops that we knew. This was all any of us had, and we were reduced to half of our normal harvest. By 1846 there was nothing to eat. We had to sell what we were able to salvage; leaving my family with nearly nothing to survive on. The famine was killing almost everyone in our village. The people who were not killed were being forced to move out of their homes. This was not a problem shared only by the members of our small community, it was nationwide. The Gregory Clause was implemented in the same year and anyone owning more than a quarter acre of land was ineligible for government assistance. My family tried to stay in our home, and fight against these new laws, but to no avail. Our cabin was demolished by our cruel landlord in 1847, and we were helpless and homeless.

My father had learned that much of the Irish population was leaving for America to do canal and railroad work. This was our last chance for survival. Two weeks later, we boarded the boats in hopes of a new, freer life. Some of the Irish on our boat had hopes of working the coal mines in Pennsylvania. Whatever we would do there, America had work and prosperity. In October of 1847, we sailed into an American port city named Boston. We were not welcomed with open arms. Upon arrival we had rocks thrown at us and were called names we had never heard of. "Micks", they yelled, "Paddys" and "Bridgets"! There were Protestants here in America too, and Protestants no nicer than the ones we had fled from in Ireland. We wanted to work and nothing more. We wanted to be people again. These Americans did not understand our goal. Some of us were killed by stones and other weapons before even stepping onto American soil. My family, however, was not killed.