NOLAN FAMILY REPORT

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A sample comprehensive report (some names have been changed to protect identity.)

5. Ireland in the 18th to 20th century.

In the later part of the 18th century the first movements of a submerged and oppressed people had been felt. The Penal Laws under which Irish Catholic could not sit in Parliament, vote, practice law, go to university, join the army or navy, possess arms, own land or even keep a horse worth more than £5 were deeply resented. Many had tried by different means, rebellion, discussion, and negotiation to overturn these laws. There had been a huge rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, which had been brutally suppressed by the English army.

In the early part of the 19th century the great Daniel O'Connell, know as `The Liberator', lead the Irish in political agitation for the repeal of the Penal Laws or Catholic Emancipation, as it is more popularly known. O'Connell held monster meetings, to which hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers and tradesmen, like Thomas Nolan flocked. This mass agitation lead to the repeal of the repressive laws-Catholic Emancipation-in 1829.

Now O'Connell had another aim, repeal of the Act of Union of 1701, which bound Ireland to the British crown and government. i.e. Ireland was governed from Westminster. O'Connell and his supporters, and these included the majority of Irish people wanted a government in Dublin, under the British crown, that is `Home Rule'. However, other, more impatient wanted more. There was a significant majority who believed that Ireland needed to free herself from all ties with the British crown and do so by violent means.

The battle for the hearts and minds of the people between political agitation for `Home Rule' and rebellion for a Republic of Ireland continued for most of the 19th century. Even while O'Connell seemed to be reaching a political solution in 1848, there was a violent rebellion of those who wanted a rebellion, which was, again, violently put down by the British army.

In the midst of all this political turbulence the tenant farmer struggled to survive. Because tenants could be evicted at will by landlords for non-payment of rent, most of the profit of a farm went to pay the farm and most families survive by planting large crops of potatoes. However, the potato was an excellent crop for survival, it provide most of the basic nutrients for living and the particular type of potato common in Ireland at the time, the lumper, always produced a huge crop. Even the smallest landholder could see his family through the winter on one crop.

In 1845, however, disaster struck. Potato blight struck the crop and the potato's rotted in the ground. Without the potato the people were in trouble. Most people had enough to carry them through until the harvest of 1846, but the blight struck again. Until 1848 the potato harvest rotted in the ground. For these years most of the tenant farmers and tradesmen of Ireland had nothing to subsist on, and they died in their hundreds of thousands of disease and starvation.

Many landlords set up public works, whereby men and women, could get work building walls or roads, in return for a pittance and some meagre food. Many other landlords simply paid to have their tenants shipped off to the New World; it was cheaper to get rid of them than to feed them. There was the small number of landlords to beggared themselves to feed their tenants and help them through the famine.

None of this was enough and the country was devastated. Because the `potato blight' lasted five years, the effect on a weakened and starving people was terrible. It is through that more people died of the diseases associated with starvation, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, famine fever, whooping cough, etc. than of hunger. It is estimated that more than a million people died in the `Great Famine' and that more than one million emigrated in those years.

After the famine the country took many years to recover and hundreds of thousands of people left. Emigration became part of Irish society. The folk memory of the `Great Hunger' was strongly etched in the minds of all and they knew that the land would not support all the family. It now became traditional that most, if not all, members of the family, except one son, who would inherit the family farm or trade, and any daughters who could find husbands in Ireland, would emigrate.

It was also part of that tradition, that entire families, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, in-laws etc, indeed, entire communities, would emigrate together, again perhaps, sometimes, but not always, leaving one son behind to continue the family name. Emigration was like death, indeed people had parties, which were called `American Wakes' before they left. Most knew that they would never see the land or the people they left behind again. And like Daniel Nolan, most of these emigrants lost touch with the families they left behind in Ireland, indeed many only left their descendants in the 'New World' their Irish names and no history of where they had come from.

In the mid to late 1880's men like Daniel Nolan probably took the decision that they would have a better life in Australia and they were probably right. The rest of the history of later 19th and early 20th centuries was as turbulent as what went before, including smaller famines, rebellions, revolutions, civil war, economic depression etc. However, as with many families, the name Nolan or O'Nolan still remains in the land from where your ancestors emigrated, showing the resilience of those who remained behind and the attachment to the land.

The story of Daniel Nolan moves out of Irish records in the late 1800's and it is in America that the rest of the story of this family is to be found. But the family roots lie deeply embedded in the Irish counties of Kerry and Carlow, a history of a proud family, a ruling family at one stage in their illustrious history. It is a proud tradition, full of strength and sorrow and the sadness of departure from a native land. But the family, like so many other Irish families, put roots in their adopted land, while never really forgetting the Old land.

To be included in the appendix's

• Maps of Carlow and the original lands of the O'Nolan's there
• Maps of the Barony of Clanmaurice in North Kerry
• Arms of the O'Nolan Family
• Family tree based on the records of the Nolan family of Derk.