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Date Posted: 04:51:03 09/03/02 Tue
Author: 1850
Subject: Workhouse mail


From : "Failte- Welcome"

Subject: Fwd: Workhouse letter dated 1850
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 19:45:38 +0000

A Chara,

You said your elderly mother was involved in the Mass Graves. Below is a document that came out of my family papers. My family is very large, hundreds of second cousins, etc., and in every family group there was always someone who kept things. There are also a few oral historians. This letter, the original of which we are still searching for, is a letter from my grandfather's nephew (?), who was in the Kanturk workhouse along with his family. Thomas left Ireland in 1827, settled in Iowa in 1830's, when it was still Indian country. This letter was written 23 years later.

I thought perhaps that your mother, or yourself, would be interested in it. There is much between the lines, and it draws a dire picture of Ireland at that time.

Incidentally, I located the "Culm Pits" in a field across the road from where he lived. There were three pits in a triangular configuration. Each pit is about 8 feet across, and still today they are visible due to the 6 to 8 inch depression in the soil. Across the road, according to the Griffiths Evaluation and the Government maps of the day, was a small farm owned by the named Richard Wallace, whose son died in the pit.

I cannot read it without choking up.

Richard


**************START LETTER********************************

Thomas Wallace Kanturk Union Workhouse
St. Patrick Parish, Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland

N. Garryowen, September 6, 1850

Otter Creek, Jackson County, Iowa

USA

My Dear Uncles:

I am again induced to take up my pen, surprised at receiving no answer to my last letters. If you received them and not answered them it was treating me as I would not treat you, nor can I hear that you write to any friends of ours. Oh, my nearest and dearest friends, can you all be dead and consigned to your graves unknown to your Irish friends? And those little children of my Uncle John, that I often so fondly embraced, my dear little cousins, will I ever know you again? Oh, may I live to see the day when I shall receive back that kiss I imprinted on your innocent little cheeks at our parting on this Island of sorrow and poverty.

My dear friends how often have I pondered in gloomy silence over the scenes here before me, and contrasted them with the accounts you sent us from America. How often I looked upon crowded hospitals and workhouse walls crowded to suffocation, the heart shaking pleading of the children deprived of their parents, separated perhaps never to meet again until their bodies may meet in the charmed house of their souls in heaven. Oh, if I could make you one-half sensi­ble of the state of things in this country you would raise your eyes to heaven, strike your breast and thank the Al­mighty for that inspiration that first prompted you to leave this unhappy land of poverty and mendicancy, teeming now only with pauperized inhabitants, tax collectors, workhouses and hospitals. It is very probable that you are not aware of the death of your nephew, Uncle Richard's son, who was killed in the "culm pit" (low grade coal); this destroyed his family so that some of them had to go to the workhouse. My dear Uncles, I entreat you to contrive to get some of us out of this unfortunate country. A little past and I could not entertain the idea of going to America and leaving my mother alive in this country after me. But now I cannot help saying I would go in the hope I could do more for her there than I can here.

Dear Friends, it is principally owing to my own exertions these years that our family in a great measure were able to keep a house, but now I can do so little I am resolved if at all possible to leave this place and go to seek some other country, some time ago my father said you would give him forty acres of prime land on the bank of a river abounding with fish, and within seven miles of the Roman Catholic Church. My dear Uncle Thomas, I hope you will give them to me, if I go to claim them in my father's name. I expect you won't miss them out of your large acreage. Write to me on receipt of this letter, letting me know if you will hold out the same boon to me as to my father, if I go to your lands of the West.

You will state then if you please, could I have any prospects of any public situation, as I am a good deal versed now in public matters. Your answer to this will be very likely to decide my going to America. I entreat of you and my Uncle John, by the affection you both bear for the tomb of your father, whose sight brought many a tear from my eyes, by the sacred relics of your ancestors, where I so often kneeled in prayer, by all the claims of a nephew on his uncles, by the mutual affection between an uncle and his nephew, to lend your heart toward rescuing some of us from this horrible and degenerate country.

Without fail let me know immediately what I can do or would be likely to get. I could fill any kind of cleri­cal situation. It is time that I should request you to give me all the particulars of yourselves and families, condition of health. And also about my dear Mrs. Callahan and family who often kindly told me that I should spend the first month with her in America. Your friends in general are in good health, thank God. I hope you are so too. I would write more particulars now if I could make sure of your receiving this. I will write more minutely the next time. With loose tears and an aching heart, I subscribe myself,

Your nephew,

John C. Wallace

Kanturk, County Cork,

Ireland



****************END LETTER********************************

My great grandfather was able to get many families out of
Ireland at that time, and they settled in Garryowen, Jackson County, and nearby counties, where most of their descendants are living today. The writer of this letter did arrive safely in Jackson County, and is buried in South Garryowen.



Richard Wallace. Chicago ©1997

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