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The Life of Patrick McTorville
A story of love and misfortune -
Tough Dessicions
When Patrick McTorville was seven years old, his mother and father left their home in Cork, Ireland and took him to America. Both his parents were Irish nationalists hoping to flee opression by the Brittish government, and possibly start a small buisness in New York, and hopefully intigrate into the largly Irish society. They left their farm and land to their relatives. -
An American in the Family
Once in America his mother gave birth to a daughter, who they named Virginia. -
Bad Luck
After four years of relatively steady business, Patrick's family’s tavern went topside and they had to sell the lot to a shoe store. -
Home, Sweet Home
Utterly devastated, Patrick’s family returned to Ireland in steerage, but found, when they returned, that most of their relatives were dead and the land had been sold. Patrick is now thirteen. -
More Bad Luck
McTorvell's family stayed afloat for four more years, before tragedy struck again. His house was robbed, and his mother, father and little sister were killed. Patrick, who had been living alone at the time of the massacre, and working as a tenant on a small farm, devoted the next two years saving up to move back to American. He no longer had any family in Ireland and was motivated to go to America by the Homestead Act, which promised free land in the west. -
New York, New York
He arrived in New York, where he spent the next year working in a poor house to feed himself, while gathering resources for the trip and for his twenty first birthday, at which point he would be legally eligible to own the land. -
The Real Oregon Trail
Patrick was lucky enough to be hired as a bodyguard for a young couple who intended to brave a voyage to Oklahoma. They travelled for about one month before arriving. -
And He Lived ... Ever After
Patrick bought a hoarse in town and road it in the land race, in which he claimed a long, flat stretch of land. He lived on to raise a plantation on the land, and named it, “Virginia Acres”. One reason he was more successful than other Irish at the time was that he had lived in America for much of his life, and wasn’t recognizably Irish, nor was his accent.
