Clann Mhór

 

Ruth-Ann Mellish Harris (1936-2012)


All this wonderful information about some of our Irish railroad workers would not be available to us without the years of work by Ruth-Ann M. Harris.  Her tireless work as researcher and editor of an eight-volume set of books, The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in the Boston Pilot, led to her collaboration with Boston College in making this database of now more than 41,000 records available free to the public.


She was born to British missionary parents in Africa, and was sent to London at the outbreak of World War II, soon to be shipped off to stay with her grandparents in Canada during the bombing of England.  She attended Wheaton College, Illinois and later completed BA, MA and Phd degrees at Tufts University.  Dr. Harris said in an interview “I suppose that’s a major reason why I’ve always been interested in people and why they move.  When you collect immigration stories, having one of your own gives you a certain insight.”


As an author and educator she lived with her family in diverse locations from Africa to Indonesia.  In 1994-95 she was the senior research scholar at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens University, Belfast.  Later she moved to Boston College where she was a Professor of History and Irish Studies until her recent death.  She said the launch of the website “Information Wanted” was her thank you to Boston College and that “it’s always been my dream to get this sort of information into the hands of the public.”


“These ‘Missing Friends’ advertisements provide a window on Irish immigration and the difficulties that surrounded it,” said Dr. Harris.  Indeed, many of the ads placed in the weekly column of the Boston Pilot were from anxious family members in Ireland or America looking for the “lost” immigrants who had spread out across America.  Many were young men who had come over first to work on canals or railroads.  Not having todays many forms of communication, their current whereabouts were not known.  Of course many of these immigrants were never heard from again.  But speaking of these ads, Dr. Harris told the Boston Globe “I don’t see them as sad and miserable,” and she went on to say  “It’s rough to be an immigrant and cope with a new society, but mostly young people were coming, not families. I think this country might have been rather fun for them. There’s a kind of dignity in work. Immigrants work awfully hard, but tend to be optimistic about what they’re doing.”

As we have conducted our research of the many Irish immigrants building the Blue Ridge Railroad through the mountains of central Virginia, we have often wondered what they thought about as they rested after a day’s work.  Surely exhausted, we hope they were indeed optimistic.  While surrounded by many other laborers, they still must have felt alone on the side of the mountain.  Their thoughts must have drifted off across the Atlantic to their families who stayed behind and to their own earlier life growing up in Ireland.  While they had a sore back and a full stomach, many had no family with them.  The “comforts of home” was something they only remembered.  But at the same time, family or friends were thinking of them and reaching out through these ads to find them and reconnect again.  The Boston Pilot claimed that about 75% of the persons in these ads were found again.


Dr. Harris said that she could not verify that claim but clearly saw the importance of these family searches.  Quoting her: “Ties of community and family could be broken, but searches represent the tremendous effort that family and friends made to reconstitute in America what they had lost in leaving Ireland.  The column was critically important in the process of rebuilding lost ties.”


And today, the information in these ads is invaluable to historians and family researchers.  The work of Dr. Harris has certainly given us a few more insights into the lives of some of our Blue Ridge Railroad workers and their families.  We were able to have a few brief contacts with her prior to her death.  Aside from her permission to use some of the information on our website, she showed a warm appreciation of our research project and encouraged us along.  In one email she wrote:


The Pilot had amazingly wide distribution, very early.  It began running the "Missing Friends" column every week, beginning in 1831, and in each edition there's a growing list of distributors in wide-flung places.  I think the column was the cash-cow that kept the paper in the black, although I think the editors were a bit embarrassed at the amount of family breakdown evident in the ads where wives and mothers sought husbands and son who often weren't sending money home.  The Irish were, if not a reading people, they loved a good story -- and the ads were full of stories.  I've lived in Africa and Asia, and I'm always struck at how much people love information, and illiteracy is no barrier to getting the story out if there's just ONE reader around.  Newspapers were the lifeblood for people, and they loved news. 


From all of us of Clann Mhór: Thank you Ruth-Ann Harris and rest in peace.


To listen to an audio recording of an interview of Dr. Harris on NPR’s All Things Considered program, Saint Patrick’s Day 2005, click NPR interview R.A.Harris.mp3


1850

Timothy Healy was living at Brooksville, March 30.

Batt. Malony from Clare was living at Brooksville, Dec. 07.


1851

Daniel Collins from Limerick was living at Brooksville, Feb. 22.

James MacKay from Cork was living at Brooksville, June 28.

Michael Riordan from Cork was living at Brooksville, April 19 and May 29.

Denis Riordan from Cork was a blacksmith living at Brooksville (no date), Ad placed April 19.

William Murray from Cork arrived in 1851 and his destination was the Blue Ridge Tunnel .

Daniel Croghan from Clare was living at Mechums River, Nov. 15.

Patrick Glynn from Clare was living at Mechums River, Nov. 15.


1852

Thomas Flynn from Cork was living at Brooksville, May 29.

Callaghan Gorman from Cork was living at Brooksville, Sept 4.

Henry Peed from Cork was living at Brooksville, July 3.

Patrick Hurbart from Cork was working at Brooksville (no date), Ad placed Nov 6.

Jeremiah Murphy from Cork was living at Brooksville, Oct. 9.

Patrick O’Leary from Cork was living at Brooksville, Mar. 13.

Mrs. Margaret Reardon was living at the Blue Ridge Tunnel, Oct. 9.

Margaret Skane from Dublin was living at the Blue Ridge Tunnel, Oct. 9.

Michael Nelan from Kerry was living at Mechums River, Feb. 14.

Michael McAllan from Clare was living at Mechums River, Mar. 27.

Jeremiah Crowly from Cork was living in Staunton, Augusta County, Jan. 24.


1853

Richard Lane from Cork had been working at Brooksville (no date), Ad placed Dec. 31.

John Walsh from Waterford was living at Brooksville, May 21.

William Callaghan was living at Brooksville, May 21.

Michael Casey from Cork was living in Staunton, Augusta County, June 30.


1854

John Graddy from Cork was living at Greenwood Tunnel, April 15.

Batt Powers from Cork was living at Greenwood, July 1.

Timothy McCarthy from Cork was living in Waynesboro, Augusta County, Jan. 7.


1855

John Abbet from Waterford was living at Greenwood Tunnel, Dec. 1.

John Kelly was used as ad contact and was living at Greenwood Tunnel, Dec. 1.

William Hart was working at the Blue Ridge Tunnel, Feb.

Nagrath Sullivan from Cork was living at Blue Ridge Tunnel, Augusta County, Oct. 20


1856

Patrick McCarthy from Cork was living at Greenwood Tunnel, Feb. 16.

William MacKey from Cork was working at the Blue Ridge Mountains.

John Wholihan from Cork was living at Virginia Mountain Top, Augusta County, Sept. 20

Patrick Duggan from Cork was living at the Blue Ridge Tunnel, Augusta County, March 22.


1857

Mrs. McCarthy was living near Greenwood P.O., Aug. 15.

Mary Ryan from Cork was living in Greenwood, June 2.

Patrick Crowley was working at the Blue Ridge Tunnel.

Jeremiah Murphy from Cork was living in Staunton, Augusta County, Sept. 1857.  Reverend Downy was his contact.

Daniel Murphy from Clare was living in Staunton, Augusta County, Jan. 17.

Robert Connors from Cork was living in Staunton in 1857.


No Date Given

Hannah Shay from Cork lived at the Blue Ridge Tunnel for 8-9 years until 1860 (in Illinois 1860).

Timothy Horgan from Cork worked for Mr. Kelly in Virginia. (no date)

Edmond Joyce from Cork was working in Waynesboro, Augusta County.  (no date)

Michael Horgan from Cork worked for Mr. Kelly in Virginia.  (no date)

Daniel Horgan from Cork worked for Mr. Kelly in Virginia.  (no date)

Edmond Fahey from Cork was working in Augusta County.  (no date)

Jeremiah Collins from Cork was working in Augusta County.  (no date)

John Connor from Cork was living in Staunton.  (no date)



The following ads were found in The Pilot database created by Ruth-Ann Harris.  We can see where the family emigrated from in Ireland, and where and when the Irish worker was living near the Blue Ridge Railroad.

                              The following list was compiled from ads placed in The Pilot. 

The early American newspaper which became commonly known as the Boston Pilot first came into print in 1829, and has been printed as a weekly since that time. A very useful item for Irish researchers is the "Missing Friends" column which was included in the paper from 1831 through 1921. Since the paper grew to national circulation of about 50,000 during the 1850s, it evolved into the best-known Irish newspaper in the U.S. in those early years.

The "Missing" notices were placed by relatives or friends searching for Irish individuals who had emigrated to the US and Canada. Staff workers on the paper assisted in the wording of these ads,  and anecdotal evidence maintains that there was a high success rate in locating the missing Irish who had perhaps moved from place to place in North America or had simply died. 

Researchers have found useful items in these brief notices.  Such items often included were the missing person's name, the departure date from Ireland, the name of the vessel they sailed on, the name of the inquiring person and kinship to the missing individual.

This weekly journal had various titles over the decades, such as The United States Catholic Intelligencer  (in 1831), The Boston Pilot  (1836), and simply the Pilot  (as of 1858).   It had a thorough-going political aspect in the 1800s. When it was named the Pilot, it was called after a Dublin newspaper, The Pilot, which was heavily involved in efforts to break the Act of Union. That legislation was unilaterally imposed on Ireland by the British in 1800, and it became  law in the following year.  



Missing Friends, Tracking the Irish in the Boston Pilot