​“My grandmother, in particular, spoke to me a lot about the Famine. She told me about seeing the bodies of many people, including babies, lying on the roads and in the fields.” —Janet Boyle, aged 99 in 2010
​County Derry During the Great Hunger​
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By Loretto Horrigan Leary
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The ad was urgent but straightforward, an echo of a sister’s worry sent across the crowded streets of New York. When brothers James and William Cowan, now established carpenters in the city, came across the ad, one word surely leapt off the page: Magherafelt.
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Six long months had passed since Sarah Mackel last heard from her brother, John. The silence weighed heavily until, perhaps spurred by the 1855 census taker’s visit, she took desperate action; she paid for an ad in a newspaper. On November 3rd, 1855, her plea appeared in the pages of the Irish American: “Of John Mackel, of Magherafelt, Co. Londonderry, Ireland, who arrived in New York between seven and eight years since…” It’s even possible that John Mackel crossed paths with the Cowan brothers themselves.
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James Cowan was the first Cowan brother to immigrate from Magherafelt. On July 7th, 1848, the young man, just 17 years old, caught his very first glimpse of New York City from the deck of the Eliza Morrison. In the year that followed, it is possible that his letters home carried bright, hopeful impressions of a bustling city, where work seemed plentiful and the future wide open. Those glowing reports were persuasive. Encouraged by James’s words, his older brother William and William’s wife Mary packed their belongings, said farewell to Magherafelt, and boarded the Canton out of Belfast. On August 4th, 1849, they too stood in New York harbor, staring at the same skyline that had filled James with such promise only a year earlier. William, born in 1825, was a full six years older than James, and so the memories of the Irish Famine in his home county of Derry would be vivid.
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The Magherafelt Poor Law Union came into being on November 25th, 1839, with its first Board of Guardians elected less than a month later. Around that same time, a 14-year-old William earned his living at the loom, a weaver by trade, carrying on one of the North of Ireland’s oldest and most storied crafts. Did he learn it from his parents or the Magherafelt Workhouse? We will never know. But we do know that inside the workhouse, boys were instructed in weaving on two looms purchased from James Armstrong of Magherafelt, with James McElderry appointed as their instructor, working from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. each weekday.[1] A method of upskilling to assist people out of poverty, in essence, helping those who help themselves, and in keeping with the religious ideology of Providentialism.
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In 1861, when William, now 36 and living in New York for 11 years, makes his first deposit of $400 in the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank (EISB), he tells the clerk that both his parents, John Cowan and Margaret McClure, are dead. His brothers John and Alexander are in Canada. James is in New York living with him and Mary, and his siblings David, Mary Ann, Margaret, Betty, and Jane are possibly still in Ireland; he doesn’t share that information, and neither does James, or the clerk simply leaves their locations blank. But now, no longer a weaver, William is a carpenter, like his brother. Both Cowan brothers will visit the bank 38 times over the next 8 years and save $1,216.[2]
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The Cowans represent only 5% of the Irish Famine immigrants in New York. Most will not be able to save money in a bank, but live as they did in Ireland, from day to day, eking out a living whatever way they can. From subsistence farming in rural Ireland to subsistence living in New York City, the leap was not so great for many.
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Some Derry immigrants will do incredibly well, like Hugh Doherty from Templemore, whose 53 trips to the EISB will see him amass a whopping $13,245 from his initial deposit of $200 in just over 53 days. Doherty, a druggist and later a physician, made daily trips to Chambers Street and stood in line to make his deposits. Some depositors from Derry are in the Female Needle Trades, harkening back to the booming linen industry in the North of Ireland. Isabella Dimon (Dymon), a dressmaker from Killowen, and Ann Chambers, a vest maker from Rathnasilly, as well as Mary Cooney of Rathmullen, all have the skills required to create clothes. Others were domestic servants, such as Mary Carr and Mary Dougherty, both from Templemore. Carpenters, like the Cowan brothers, did make a decent living wage, too, and managed to save their money. Hugh Donaghy, of Moneymore, managed to climb the social ladder. From chair maker to tea peddler, to tea dealer, in 26 years, Donaghy eventually owned his own business.
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Regular depositors who trusted the banking system amassed small fortunes in the mid-1800s. But others, like Mullaghmore native Robert Dougherty, made just two visits to the EISB, the first to deposit $50 in June 1853, and the second to close the account and withdraw his $50 in October of that same year. Given that Robert Dougherty’s wife Jane was a dressmaker, he may have amassed a small fortune on his own, without making deposits. His initial trade was as a laborer when he and his wife Ellen Dickson first arrived in New York in 1845. But after 8 years in the city, he is now a Moroccan Dresser—which sounds fabulous, but he is really a tanner of goat skins. Not so glamorous an occupation after all. Yet, these are the lucky ones, because they could leave and earn a wage.
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Influenced by 19th-century ideologies of laissez-faire and Providentialism, the Poor Law system in County Derry’s workhouses during the Irish Famine prioritized economic self-reliance. Policymakers, such as Thomas Malthus, designed harsh, centralized workhouses intended to deter all but the most desperate. Conditions were deliberately severe, focusing on discipline rather than care, with families divided and strict routines imposed, making workhouses lasting symbols of both social order and institutional suffering.[3]
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Magherafelt Workhouse, like all other workhouses in Ireland, separated families upon entry, reflecting Malthusian fears of overdependency on the Poor Law system. The workhouse test was a policy that required conditions in the workhouse to be worse than those of the lowest-paid laborer. Only the truly desperate could seek help within the workhouse walls. And so, the grim corridors of Magherafelt Workhouse separated husbands and wives and boys and girls over the age of seven, and often as young as two, from their mothers. Administrative records from Irish Workhouses generally note that families entering were split up immediately. Families were literally torn apart not only because of starvation, emigration, and death, but also because of the workhouses. Families like the Cowans of Magherafelt were divided among Ireland, Canada, and America, and may never have seen their siblings again.
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The Guardians of the Magherafelt Workhouse met every Thursday at 1 pm, and by the time William and Mary Cowan were packing their belongings to join James in New York City, the workhouse was failing to meet the needs of the locals. The first paupers admitted occurred on March 10th, 1842, indicating early signs of impoverishment in the area. By the mid-1840s, temporary sheds had been added to the six-acre site to accommodate 160 patients, and a 40-bed fever hospital was established in 1847. A second burial site also remained in use until 1941; the first was used between 1841 and 1847.[4] The diseases that Peter Froggart calls the “terrible twins” of typhus and cholera came with Famine. By 1847, not just Famine victims were falling prey to these “terrible twins” but also medical professionals. No doctor may have literally starved to death during the famine, but the toll was still devastating. In 1847 alone, 131 doctors and their apprentices lost their lives to “epidemic or contagious diseases,” almost all from fever, picked up while treating the sick. And the years that followed weren’t much kinder. In that single year of 1847, fever claimed about 4% of all physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries in Ireland. In Swatragh, Dr. Mooney and his wife, Sarah, operated a surgery and dispensary from their home in the mid-1800s. Mooney devoted himself to saving lives, not only tending the sick but also establishing a soup kitchen during the Famine that became a lifeline for the starving.[5] However, preventing death was almost impossible. From January to December 1847, that burial site in Magherafelt Workhouse received an additional 425 bodies.[6] Sixteen-year-old James and 22-year-old William witnessed the deaths of friends and neighbors, and maybe even their own parents, in that infamous year we now call Black ’47.
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A study[7] of how food shaped daily life and survival in County Derry traces the shift from a potato-dominated, nutrient-rich pre-Famine diet to the more varied but nutritionally weaker fare of the post-Famine years. The study demonstrates how laborers consumed staggering amounts of potatoes, up to 10 lbs. a day, supplemented with oatmeal, buttermilk, and salted herring, while wealthier farmers enjoyed meats, eggs, and wheaten bread. Though monotonous, this potato-based diet provided essential carbohydrates, protein, and vitamin C, buffering many against scurvy until the blight struck, devastating crops and triggering illness, hunger, and dependence on austere workhouse rations. When famine struck Ulster in 1845, the linen and weaving trades had also been declining since 1834, causing increased hardship, especially in rural areas and an increased dependence on the easiest and most nutritious crop to grow, the potato.
Out of work and in search of a means to make a living, many people left home, and headed to the cities and ports of Derry and Belfast. During the Irish Famine, Derry emerged as one of Ireland’s chief emigration ports, with thousands from Counties Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, and Cork, both Protestant and Catholic, departing for North America, particularly to New York, Philadelphia, and Saint John, New Brunswick, where census records show they formed over half of the Irish population by 1851. While most emigrants crossed the Atlantic for a better life, some, especially from Donegal, relied on seasonal migration to Scotland’s harvest fields to survive. [8]
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During the Irish Famine, County Derry saw a population decline driven by migration and hardship. In 1834, 2,000–3,000 people left for North America, mainly to Quebec, Philadelphia, New York, and St. Johns. Many emigrants, small farmers, cottiers, and landless laborers could afford their journey by selling tenant rights, especially Presbyterians with emigration traditions. Seasonal migration to Britain involved about 1,200 workers annually from poorer districts, while towns like Derry City, Coleraine, and Limavady grew as rural families sought urban work. The collapse of the linen industry, with hand-spinning vanished and weaving dominated by manufacturers, pushed small farmers and cottier weavers to emigrate. These migrations shifted populations, draining northern parishes and slightly growing the southeast, while undermining subsistence farming and creating new mobility and emigration networks that shaped Derry’s Famine and post-Famine experience.[9] In 1841, the population of Magherafelt was 1,560, and ten years later it was 1,390.[10] If the population declined, so too did nutrition. Following the famine, staples like Indian meal, bread, tea, and sugar became common as laborers bought food instead of growing it, signaling economic and cultural change. Meat remained scarce, and as a result, nutrition in rural areas worsened.
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It’s hard to imagine how bad things were, as roads filled with immigrants, migrant workers, heading to ports like Derry and Belfast, while beggars and the impoverished made their journeys to workhouses across Derry, and corpses, too, lay in fields and on the roadside. In 2010, 99-year-old Janet Boyle recalled, “My grandmother in particular spoke to me a lot about the Famine. She told me about seeing the bodies of many people, including babies, lying on the roads and in the fields.” All we need is a voice like Boyle’s to paint a vivid picture, and suddenly the hedgerows and fields are populated again, with specters of the Famine.
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In contrast to regions that relied almost exclusively on the potato crop, Derry’s more varied economy limited the loss of life compared to other rural areas of Ireland; however, its towns and cities nevertheless underwent significant changes. Certain towns, including Drumsum, Ballykelly, Tamalaght, and Crindle, were declassified and ceased to be recognized as towns, while new settlements such as Ballymaguin and Ballyronan emerged in 1851. Derry city became a destination for individuals escaping severely affected areas, leading to overcrowding and the spread of disease within its workhouse and streets, and prompted the implementation of municipal regulations concerning vagrancy. [11]
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The memories of those harrowing famine years remain woven into the fabric of Derry’s identity. More than a century and a half after the Great Famine, the city was moved to honor its past. In 1996, the discovery and ceremonial reburial of 400 victims from Derry’s old workhouse became a powerful act of remembrance, bridging generations in a shared tribute of dignity.[12]
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At Ballyoan cemetery, a rare interdenominational service gathered Catholic, Protestant, and Methodist leaders. For locals like 99-year-old Janet Boyle, the day brought long-echoed memories to life. The remains, carefully placed in numbered coffins, were mourned not as faceless relics, but as relatives. Wreaths from Derry City Council, history societies, and a touching ribbon signed “On behalf of the common people of the North West” reflected how deeply the famine’s legacy still touches the people here.
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They weren’t just burying bones in Derry in 2010- they were burying their past while keeping the memories of it above ground, to live on and be remembered, no matter how painful those memories are.
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180 years later, Famine memories remain, not as cold statistics but as emotional stories of survival and sorrow. Stories of people like William and James Cowan and other Derry natives in the EISB records, who endured, and those whom Janet Boyle remembers, who didn’t.
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[1] Life in the workhouse – Magherafelt Workhouse (online)
[2] Tyler Anbinder, Cormac Ó Gráda, and Simone Wegge, "Emigrant Savings Bank Depositor Database, 1850-1858," version 3.0, September 13, 2019, accessed via https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/work/0k225b85w
[3] Manifestations of Institutional Reform and Resistance to Reform in Ulster Workhouses, Ireland, 1838-1855 Liz Thomas
[4] The Workhouse in Magherafelt, Co. Londonderry by Peter Higginbottom (online)
[5] Friels open Gorta: Swatragh's Famine Story - Loughinsholin Tourism Cluster Mid-Ulster
[6] Magherafelt Union Workhouse Indoor relief register 1847 James Allistair Bodkin & Ballinascreen Historical Society, 2022 pg. 169
[7] Derry and Londonderry: History & Society, Chapter 20, “Food and Famine: Diet in County Londonderry 1820–1860 by E.M. Crawford
[8] Across the Atlantic - Emigrating from Moville and Derry, Derry and its port, Bernadette Walsh pg. 14
[9] Population Movements in County Derry during a Pre-Famine Year James H. Johnson Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, Vol. 60 (1959/1960), pgs.. 141-162
[10] The Great Irish Famine Online- Geography Department, UCC and Dept. of Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht.
[11] Derry, Co. Derry A city in western Northern Ireland Waleed Karam, New York University, History of Modern Ireland May 10, 2021
[12] 400 Famine victims reinterred in Derry – The Irish Times Thu Jul 18 1996
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