16 Success 0n the Edge

From 1811 to 1839, about thirty families arrived to form a new settlement, which eventually extended from Nail Pond to North Cape and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence shore to a point opposite Nail Pond. Of these families, at least twenty-one have descendents living in the Tignish area today. A’hearn, Aylward, Christopher, Clohossey, Dorgan, Doyle, Gavin, Hackett, Handrahan, Hogan, Kennedy, McGrath, McHugh, McPhee, Ready, and Shea are among the most common surviving names. Typically a man would arrive first and later send for his family. Most of them came from three of the southern counties in Ireland — Wexford, Kerry and Waterford. These may not actually have been their homes, but certainly would have been convenient places for finding a ship sailing to North America. Much of Ireland’s overseas trade left from these ports. ”One of the success stories of the eighteenth-century Irish economy is the growth of foreign trade,” says historian R.F. Foster. Merchant families in these towns were often linked by ”influential networks of family relationships stretching as far as Spain or the West Indies.” The Conroys, a well-to-do family whose descendents until recently lived near Tignish, had connections in Chile. Networks of this kind were one reason why immigrants settled where they did. Another was the often-attested fact that a desperate man would board the next ship and go wherever it took him.

Why did these Irish settlers leave home? What were they hoping to find in North America? These questions are not hard to answer. Conditions in Ireland were very unsatisfactory. Farms were small - many being under 15 acres - and rents were comparatively high and liable to go up if the tenant made any improvements to the house or land. There was no prospect of a man owning his own farm, never mind enough land to make an adequate living. Ireland, like Prince Edward Island was plagued with absentee landlords. It also seems unlikely that any Irish would have settled there if they had known this fact. The eldest son might inherit what little land there