Did your ancestors come from one of these Irish counties?

Céad Míle Fáilte – and welcome to your Letter from Ireland for this week. Winter is finally loosening its grip here in County Cork, and the first brave daffodils have been making an appearance in sheltered spots around our garden. The farmers are beginning to prepare their fields for spring planting, and there’s a sense of anticipation in the air. The Irish counties are beginning to show their true colors as winter retreats. What a wonderful time of year! How are things in your part of the world today?

I’m sipping on a cup of Barry’s tea as I write, and I hope you’ll join me with whatever you fancy as we start into today’s letter. We’ve been enjoying the noticeably longer evenings over the past weeks and have been making plans to travel out and about shortly. So, today, I want to share something about traveling around Ireland – with a special focus on ancestry.

The Wild “Ancestry” Way

Have you heard of the “Wild Atlantic Way”( WAW)? This is the name given to a 1,600-mile drive along the entire west coast of Ireland. Launched over a decade ago, it covers some of the most breathtaking scenery you’ll find anywhere in the world – and all along the western shores of Ireland!

Over the past several summers, Carina and I have explored different sections of this route (we live just off the Wild Atlantic Way) and have been continually delighted with the new treasures we’ve discovered along the way.

While most visitors are drawn to the route for its spectacular landscapes, we approach our “WAW” journeys with a slightly different perspective. Let me explain.

A Journey through the Irish Counties of Your Ancestors

One of the things we do when you sign up for the Letter from Ireland is ask about the Irish surnames in your family and the Irish counties you believe they came from. Over the years, we’ve gathered about 160,000 names in our database.

The Wild Atlantic Way travels through 8 of the 32 Irish counties – Cork, Kerry, Clare, Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and Donegal. Looking at our readers’ surnames who knew the Irish counties of their ancestors, we see the following breakdown:

• 18% of our reader ancestors came from County Cork
• 7% of our reader ancestors came from County Mayo
• 5% of our reader ancestors came from County Clare
• 5% of our reader ancestors came from County Donegal
• 5% of our reader ancestors came from County Kerry
• 5% of our reader ancestors came from County Galway
• 3% of our reader ancestors came from County Sligo
• 2% of our reader ancestors came from County Leitrim

In total, a remarkable 50% of Letter from Ireland readers have ancestors who came from Irish counties along the Wild Atlantic Way. Why such a high percentage?

It’s true that the “WAW” traverses some of the largest Irish counties. However, beyond the stunning, rugged scenery, this entire region had become densely populated by the 1840s. There was one food source that thrived on the poor land in these western Irish counties, enabling the relocated Gaelic Irish to flourish and multiply – as you might have guessed, I am talking about the potato.

Many of us know what happened next. Successive potato crop failures triggered the Great Famine in the 1840s across much of Ireland (known in Irish as “an Gorta Mór” or the “Great Hunger”). This catastrophic event caused over a million deaths and the emigration of many millions more. The western Irish counties accounted for a significant majority of these Irish Gaelic emigrants. Perhaps your ancestors were among them?

With this history in mind, we approach our travels along the Wild Atlantic Way differently. As we journey through these regions, we explore the folk history of each area, the music and traditions, the towns and family surnames associated with them – all while taking in the incredibly beautiful landscape. Our Green Room members particularly enjoy the in-depth local stories and surname histories we’ve uncovered during these explorations.

It’s a landscape that must have been extraordinarily challenging for our ancestors on which to work and sustain themselves. This is a region that has experienced waves of emigration from the 1840s all the way up to the 1950s and beyond.

Consider County Leitrim as just one example. Today, Leitrim has a population of about 33,470. In the 1841 census, before the famine, the population was approximately 105,000 – representing a decline of almost 70% over the generations.

As you travel the Wild Atlantic Way, you’ll often pass through isolated areas where abandoned cottages and even whole villages dot the landscape. This scenery tells the poignant story of our Irish ancestors – a story impossible to ignore.

This is the narrative we explore every time we journey along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. We’re looking forward to traveling to more locations along the route this coming summer – and sharing these stories and photos with you, with even more exclusive content and virtual tours available for our Green Room members.

How about you? Did any of your Irish ancestors come from one of these Irish counties? Do let us know in the comments section below.

Slán for now,

Mike