-
Wave 1
The first movement , so significant as a path opener had as its immediate cause the years of drought; but it was the opinion of Archibishop King and Dean Swift that not even the dire effects of bad crops and high prices would have been enough to make the people move if they had not had the added goad of rack-renting, still such a novel practice that it caused intense resentment. . . . in addition to the 5000 or so who went in 1717, there is no means of knowing how many other Ultermen left in t -
Period: to
The Five Waves of Early Irish Immigration
-
Wave 2
The second wave was so large that not merely friends of Ireland but even the English Parliament became concerned. Parliament appointed a commission to investigate the causes of the departures, for they had reached proportions that portended a loss of the entire Protestant element in Ulster. Letters of immigrants themselves spoke of rack-rents as the cause. The second wave had so well established the Scotch-Irish in the south eastern tier of counties in Pennsylvania that their influence even in p -
Wave 3
Famine struck Ireland in 1740 and was certainly the cause of the third large wave. An estimated 400,000 persons died in Ireland during 1740-41. This wave marked on America side, the first movement of Scotch-Irish in any numbers beyond the confines of Generous Pennsylvania to the southwest following the path through the Great Valley from Pennsylvania through Maryland, Virginia down toward North and South Carolina. (I believe this was the great Wagon Road). -
Wave 5
The fourth exodus had two major causes: effective propaganda from America and calamitous drought in Ulster. A succession of Governors of North Carolina had made a special effort to attract to that province colonists from Ulster and Scotland. -
Wave 5
Leases on the large estate of the Marquis of Donegal in county of Antrim expired, the rents were so greatly advanced that scores of tenants could not comply with the demands and so were evicted from farms their families had long occupied. During the next 3 years nearly a hundred vessels carraying as many as 25,000 passengers , all Presbyterian. The two years after that, nearly 30,000 protestants left Ulster.