The Bourkes and the Famine

The Famine of 1845 - 1848 is a seminal event in Irish history. In the first instance, it was a major humanitarian disaster with an estimated one million people dying and a further million emigrating. The population of Ireland had doubled to over 8 millon between 1800 and 1840, one of the major reasons being the dominance of the potato as a subsistence crop. The suitability of the Irish climate for growing potatoes combined with their high nutrition value meant that very small farms could support large families. However, when the potato crop failed in 1845 and subsequent summers these people were left with no alternative food source.

Patrick Bourke and his family, as we have seen in Griffith's Valuation, were tenant farmers with 64 acres. This was a large farm and as well as potatoes they would have raised cattle. One of Patrick's daughters, Margaret, who was a child of nine at the time gave an account of the family's experiences to her grand-daughter Patricia Fitzgerald when she was in her eighties. My aunt, Sr Maura Burke, managed to get me a copy many years ago. Margaret tells us that her father (Patrick) was "a well-to-do farmer and his family did not suffer as much as less fortunate people as they were well provisioned when the famine began". In addition, the family were successful in saving a crop of turnips and were even able to distribute them to people less fortunate than themselves. The account in full is reproduced below:

"Historians tells us that 1847 and 1848 were terrible years but the printed page can never bring home to us the horrors of that dreadful time as clearly as the words of one who has experienced them. My informant (my grandmother – Margaret) an old lady ‘well on in the eighties’ was nigh in nine years of age at the time and so remembers it clearly. Her father was a well-to-do farmer and his family did not suffer as much as less fortunate people as they were well provisioned when the famine began. But how the people suffered!

The potatoes, their staple food, were destroyed by the blight. The grain crops failed. Even the turnips blackened. As the famine continued the sufferings of the people increased. To quote the old lady, “If they had the weeds itself they wouldn’t be too bad but even the weeds failed that year”. Her father, a thoughtful man, had done his best to save the turnips when the blight was first noticed. He was successful and was able to distribute them to the poor. At last it became a struggle to survive to get to Mass on Sundays. One woman rather than miss the Holy Sacrifice crawled on her hands and knees to the chapel, eating the grass by the roadside as she went, only to fall dead at the door. Along the road staggered men once fine looking fellows but now the merest skeletons, carrying or trying to carry their mothers or others of their womenfolk on their backs. To add to that awful misery cholera broke out.

Weakened by hunger, the unfortunate people dropped dead by the roadside, too weak to even eat the grass that was often found in their mouths. Everywhere were dead bodies and such was the nature of the disease that the bodies turned black after death. Great holes were dug and into them the bodies were flung, shroud-less, coffin-less, without even the last benediction of the Church. Everywhere death, everywhere desolation, everywhere misery. Pestilence, famine and death reigned supreme.
The loads of flour carried from a neighbouring mill were guarded by a military escort but such was the desperation of the women that they would pinch the bags so that a little flour fell on the ground. This they would eventually scrape up and put in the mouths of the children they were scarcely able to carry in their arms. Yet at this time the grain stored at Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford and other sea ports was being exported daily while the people starved.

At last America sent help in the form of quantities of ground maize. But the sailing ships of the period took six to seven weeks to make the journey and the meal had a sour bitter taste. This was served out for the support of the people, a pound a day for each person. Some of the men took ship to America hoping to send their relatives some help from there. During the journey the ship was lost. But death by drowning is at least quicker than the lingering agonies of death by starvation so they were lucky enough.

Such were the sufferings of the famine years. God grant that they may never again be endured in Ireland."

Patrick Bourke and Griffith's Valuation

Very few nineteenth century Irish census records survive either having been destroyed by government order, pulped for paper during WW1 or lost in the Public Record Office fire during the Civil War in 1922. As a result what is known as Griffith’s Valuation is one of the most important genealogical records available, acting as a census substitute for the years after the Famine.

Irelands Valuation office conducted its first survey of property ownership in Ireland between the years 1848 and 1867. It was overseen by Sir Richard Griffith hence its' name and the survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their district. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year.

The record for Patrick Bourke shows him living in the townland of Dollas Lower in the parish of Croom. He is renting just over 64 acres of land from a John Pigott. The valuation for the land is given as £51 (which represents what it would cost to rent it for a year) and the house at £3. This house valuation indicates that the family would have lived in a stone wall house with a thatched roof with less than 5 rooms. Patrick also has a tenant on his land, a lady called Eleanor Cantillon who lived in a house with a valuation of 6 shillings. This indicates that she lived in a one or two room mud cabin with a thatched roof. As she is listed as the head of household she most likely was a widow.

The original entry can be viewed here

The early beginnings - Patrick & Mary Bourke

The earliest ancestors I've found are Patrick & Mary Bourke. Patrick married Mary Clancy form Rosbrien near Limerick City around 1830. They lived on a farm at a place called the Four Gates in the townland of Dullas in the parish of Croom in Co. Limerick. This farm is very close to the Kilmacow farm. They had five children that I know off - John (1833), my great-grandfather, Margaret (c. 1838), Patsy, Bill and another daughter whose name I don't know.

Patrick and Mary are buried in Boherard graveyard in the parish of Dromin-Athlacca. I don't know why they are buried in a different parish to where they lived but Patrick may have originated from there. I visited this graveyard again last year to take some photos.It's a beautiful, peaceful location located down a lane off the main road. This graveyard was used during the famine and, as a result, there are a large number of marker stones in the graveyard. These mark the graves of people whose families were either wiped out in the famine (and so no-one remained to put up a gravestone) or whose families couldn't afford a headstone given the circumstances a the time.



The inscription reads "In memory of Patrick Bourke who died May 1867 and his wife Mary Burke who died April 1868. Erected by their son Patrick and his wife Margaret".

A journey into my past

Back in the late 1980s I became interested in my family history, in particular that of my father's family, the Burkes of Kilmacow. After nearly thirty years I can't remember what sparked my interest.It may have been an interest in history as it was fascinating to find relatives who had been involved in all the events I studied in school, everything from the Great Famine to World War 1. It may have been the appeal of the exotic in that 9 my grandfather's family emigrated to the US and the thought that I had all these relatives living over there that I had never met. The visit every now and then of some of these distant cousins (always referred to as "Yanks") may also have been a factor. In any case I researched the family and wrote a handwritten (pre-laptop days!) account of the family. I was helped by many people on both sides of the Atlantic but was hindered by my age (no car!) and the difficulty in accessing many of the records (no online access in those days). One happy outcome of the project was that I spent a summer in Chicago in 1992 on a student work visa and was guest of honour at the Burke Family Picnic!

In recent years there has been a huge upsurge in interest in family history in Ireland which has coincided with online access to the Irish census records of 1901 and 1911. With my curiosity aroused again I began to read all my old notes and decided to kickstart the project again. The plan now is to pull all the material together over the next two years and then publish a booklet. Maybe even launch it in Chicago! There are many grandchildren of the 13 Burkes still alive so I want to collect all the stories, photos and memories before it's too late. I'd also love to hear the stories of relatives in the US who visited Ireland. What was it like to visit the land of your ancestors?

Over the coming months I'll be posting on this blog updates on my research. If anyone has any material of interest I'd love to hear from you. My email is mike@viva.ie