The Darmodys of Tipperary County and the Dolans of Cork County were driven from Ireland by the potato famine of 1845-49 and became Minnesota farmers in the 1860s.

The Irish Potato famine was the worst known to history up to that time.  The deaths resulting from it and the emigration which it caused, were so vast that, at one time, it seemed as if America and the grave were about to absorb the whole population.

The year 2009 is the 162th anniversary of  “Black ‘47,” the worst year of the famine.  After the autumn and winter of 1846-47, terrified and desperate, the Irish began to flee the land they deemed accursed.  Many of today’s American descendants ascribe romantic notions to their ancestors’ lives.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Ireland Lacked Industry

Immigration began to considered in September 1845 when farmers sniffed “a dampish putrid” odor coming from their fields.  Before the month ended, the potato stalks were “black as your shoe and burned to the clay.”   At that time, Ireland wasn’t industrialized and its few industries were moribund.  There was no agricultural employment because farms were too small to require hired labor – over 93 percent were smaller than 30 acres; 45 percent had less than five acres.  Farmers worked only when potatoes were being planted, cultivated, and harvested.  Without a patch of land to grow potatoes, a family starved.

In 1843 the Royal Devon Commission was appointed to document conditions in Ireland.  It visited every part of the land, heard 1,100 witnesses, and its three volume report concluded that the possession of a piece of land was literally the difference between life and death and that the principal cause of Irish misery was the relationship between landlord and tenant.  When the tenant’s lease expired or was terminated, improvements he made became the landlord’s without compensation.  By law, he was a tenant “at will” because a landlord could evict whenever he chose.  Evicted, families wandered about begging, crowding the already swarming lanes and slums of towns.  They put roofs over ditches, burrowed into banks, or lived in bog holes until, wasted by disease and hardship, “they die in a little time.”

According to the report, the Irish suffered more than people in any other country in Europe.  “In many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage is water, and their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather.  A bed or blanket was a rare luxury.  Pigs slept with their owners, manure heaps were outside entry doors, sometimes even inside. Their pigs and manure heap was their only property.”

The census of 1841 graded houses into four classes.  Nearly half of the rural population lived in the fourth and lowest class:  windowless mud cabins of a single room.  In 1837 the approximately 9,000 inhabitants of Tullahobagly, County Donegal, had 10 beds, 93 chairs, and 243 stools.

Families Survived on Half-Acre Plots

Most leases with clauses prohibiting land subdivision were seldom enforced.  Land was divided and subdivided and split into smaller and still smaller fragments until families were surviving on plots as small as half an acre.  As the population increased, parents let their children occupy a portion of their holdings rather than turn them out to starve.  The children in turn did the same for their children and in a comparatively short time up to 10 families were settled on land which could provide for only one.

In West Ireland, subdivision was aggravated by a system of joint tenancy known as “rundale” whereby the land was rented in common and divided so that each tenant received a portion of the good, bad, and medium quality land the farm contained.  For example, in Liscananawn, County Mayo, 167 acres of three qualities was divided into 330 portions – each of 110 persons had three portions.  This desperate competition led to enormous rents.

Day laborers, too poor to rent land, eked out an existence by conacre.  Conacre was a contract, not a lease, to use a portion of land to grow one crop.  No landlord-tenant relationship was created.  The plots were small.  A quarter-acre was common in Tipperary.  The land owner prepared the soil for planting and the laborer-contractor provided the seed, planted it, and cultivated and harvested it.  Rent was high:  £10 to £14 an acre for good ground, £6 for poor.

This system, coupled with the dense population subsisting at the lowest level, created  dependence on the potato.  In a good crop year, the potato generated great quantities of food produced at a minor cost.  An acre-and-a-half would provide a family of five or six with food for 12 months.  To grow the same amount of grain required four to six times as much acreage and some knowledge of tilling.  Planting potatoes only required a spade.

The potato was food for people, cattle, pigs, and fowl.  It was nourishing and simple to cook.  Yet it was a dangerous crop because it did not keep and could not be stored from one season to another.  The nearly 2.5 million laborers with no regular employment lived on starvation rations in the summer when the old crop was eaten and the new not yet harvested.  June, July, and August were called the “meal months” because meal had to be eaten.  The laborers bought meal on credit at exorbitant prices from the scourge of the Irish village, the dreaded Gombeen man.

In Ireland’s backward areas. cooking food other than the potato was a lost art.  In Kerry, Donegal, the country west of the Shannon river, and part of West Cork, the population lived so exclusively on potatoes that no trade in any other food existed.  Ovens were unknown.  There was no means of distributing home-grown food and no knowledge of how to use it.  Economic necessity compelled the small farmer to sell what he grew.  Wheat, oats, and barley were not regarded as food – they were grown to pay the rent, the first necessity of life in Ireland.  It would be a desperate man who ate up his rent because failure to pay meant eviction and death by slow starvation.

Potatoes were suited to the moist soil.  Trenches were dug, beds made, the potato sets laid on the ground, and earthed up.  The trenches provided drainage so crops could be grown in wet ground, the spade made it possible to plant on hillsides where a plough could not be used.  As the population increased, potatoes were grown in bogs and up mountains, where no other crops would have been possible.

Potatoes, Not Money, Determined Value of Labor

The potato, not money, was the basic factor to determine the value of labor.  Farmers and landlords gave their laborers a cabin and a piece of potato ground, or permitted them to put up a conacre.  Wages were not paid in money but were credited against rent at a rate varying from four to eight pence a day.  The laborer’s real reward was the patch of potato ground.

The laborer only dealt with money when he sold a pig for a few shillings and used the money to buy clothing for the family.  The poorest laborers could not afford a pig and were so unfamiliar with money, they did not recognize coins and notes.  Despite this, money was prized in the extreme.  It was used to purchase land which was life itself in Ireland.  However wretched a family, if they had a little money they would hoard it to pay land rent rather than improve their living conditions.

The census of 1851 reported 24 potato crop failure between 1728 and 1839, including complete failures in 1740, 1800, and 1839.  Thus its unreliability as a crop was an accepted fact and the possibility of another failure caused no particular alarm.

Britain’s leading horticultural publication, The Gardeners’ Chronicle and Horticultural Gazette, reported in mid-September 1845 that the potato Murrain had infested the potato.  The crops about Dublin were suddenly perishing.  By mid-October, disastrous reports poured in from all sections of the country.  As digging progressed, the news grew steadily worse.  When first dug, many potatoes were sound but within a few days had become a stinking mass of corruption.

The consequences are not immediate and the first effect is plenty, not scarcity, because people dispose of their potatoes before they become useless.  Famine begins five or six months after a failure.  By then, every scrap of food, every partially-diseased potato, everything edible was consumed.

Famine – An Opportunity to Profit

By spring 1846, people in many districts had begun to starve and local relief commissions had formed committees to raise money to buy food for resale to the distressed.  An Irish Board of Works was formed to create employment in public works and fever hospitals were authorized.  Similar efforts during previous periods of famine had not been successful.  History was to be repeated.

Laissez faire, a theory that individuals should pursue their own interests with as little interference from government as possible, was, almost without exception, the belief held by the politicians and high British government officials responsible for Ireland.  The loss was to be made good by the operation of private enterprise using the normal channels of commerce – in short, famine was an opportunity for profit.

Charles Edward Treyelyan, head of Great Britain’s all-powerful Department of Treasury and watchdog of the nation’s money-bags, was in charge of the various famine relief programs.  He believed the food shortage “would be aggravated in a fearful degree” if traders confined “themselves to what in ordinary circumstances might be considered fair profits.”  When the Marquess of Sligo complained in October that the Commissariat Officer at Westport was refusing to sell food to people who were starving because they couldn’t pay the trader’s exorbitant prices, he was told “we must bear in mind if an article is scarce a smaller quantity must be made to last for a longer time, and that high price is the only criterion by which consumption can be economized.”  Treyelyan regretted the “evil” of an insufficient food supply but believed providing more would be “a crying injustice to the rest of the country.”

Government officials and relief committee members treated the destitute with impatience and contempt.  Sympathy and kindness were not on the agenda in December 1845.  English newspapers pictured the Irish, not as helpless famine victims, but as cunning and bloodthirsty desperadoes.  Punch published cartoons week after week depicting the Irishman as a filthy, brutal creature, an assassin and a murderer, begging for money – under a pretense of buying food – to spend on weapons.  Ireland was a disturbing thought and it was a comfort to be able to believe its people were not starving or, if some of them were, the depravity of the Irish was such that they deserved to starve.

Because many ate seed stock to fend off starvation, about one-third less acreage was planted in 1846.  With their naturally optimistic temperament that plenty follows scarcity, Irish hopes were high.  Weather was warm during May and June and the plants grew strong.  However, by the middle of July, disease was more prevalent in the early crop than in 1845.  By August 3, it was apparent the crop was a total failure.

Reports from Cork to Dublin said the crop was a “waste of putrefying vegetation.”  One report said 32 miles of potato fields “in full bloom” became “scorched black” overnight.  Disaster was universal.  The September 2, 1846 London Times described it as “total annihilation.”  By the end of autumn, all berries, edible roots, and cabbage leaves had been eaten.  The blighted fields had been combed over and over until nothing edible remained.

The fungus phytophthora infestans caused the blight but scientists and farmers were ignorant of the cause so there was no understanding of its nature or any idea of how to treat it.  It was 15 years before blight was acknowledged to be the work of a fungus and nearly 40 years before a spray was developed.  Threatened crops are now sprayed.

M. J. Berkeley of Northamptonshire, England, whose studies on fungi had been published in English Flora in 1836, observed minute fungi on blighted parts of leaves and tubers in the summer of 1845.  In January 1846, in an article in the Journal of the Horticultural Society of London, he described the fungus as a parasite and claimed it caused blight.  The general belief was that “wet putrefaction” and “dropsy” caused blight.  With little evidence to support his theory, it was almost universally rejected and wasn’t accepted until well into the 20th century.

Bitter Cold Winter

William Forster, a minister in Norwich, England and a respected member of the Quaker community, his son W. E., and others went to Ireland to investigate the extent of the famine.  They reported “destitution and suffering far exceeding that which had been at first supposed.”  Children were “like skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger and their limbs wasted, so that there was little left but bones, their hands and arms, in particular, being much emaciated, and the happy expression of infancy gone from their faces, leaving the anxious look of premature old age.”

Forster offered a donation to start a soup kitchen every place he visited.  With the exception of Castlerea the offer was gratefully accepted.  The Catholic priest at Castlerea declined because acceptance would bring the poor from the surrounding country into the town, “by which they would be over-whelmed.”  In January 1847 at Bundorragha in Galway, Forster said all sheep and cows were gone, all poultry killed, only one pig left, and no dogs.  His son, after visiting Clifden County Galway, said men and women were “more like famished dogs than fellow creatures.”   He decried reports in English newspapers that Irish starvation was exaggerated.

As the winter continued with unrelenting severity, frantic appeals for food poured into the government offices at Whitehall, the center of the British government, from all over Ireland.  Money was useless in Limerick because there was no food to buy.  Cork’s Nicholas Cummins, Justice of the Peace, wrote that “unless something is immediately done the people must die.”  The Relief Inspector at Sligo wrote he was unable to adequately describe the desperate circumstances there.  The Commissariat Office at Burtonport, County Donegal, wrote that “the distress of the wretched people is heart-rending; something ought to be done (as) there is absolutely no food.”  A Colonel Jones wrote that the people had reached a state of panic.

February was the worst month of the terrible winter.  Heavy snow falls and fierce gales made roads impassable.  Carts could not be used.  Horses sank in drifts and had to be dug out.  Families without food or fuel took to their beds.  Many died believing it was the will of God.

Soup Kitchens Opened in 1847

Two new government programs were begun early in 1847.  (1) Soup kitchens, a favorite English philanthropic activity, were established throughout the country.  (2) Distressed persons were classified as paupers,  placed under the Irish Poor Law and given “outdoor” relief paid for by local taxes.  Previously, only workhouse inmates were eligible for relief and the capacity of the workhouses determined who could be fed.  By the end of January 31,000 pints of soup were distributed daily to about a tenth of the destitute population in West Cork.  Crowds waited for hours at distribution centers, sometimes all night, and savage struggles took place when distribution began.

By early February private enterprise was finally functioning with supplies of Indian corn and Indian meal beginning to arrive from North America.  Two-hundred-fifty ships carrying 50,000 tons of foodstuffs were in Cork harbor February 26.  But it was to late.  Destitution and disorganization had gone too far; high prices and lack of money put the long-expected food out of reach of the starving laborer.  Ireland was ruined.

Irish “Black Fever”

Fever is a natural consequence of famine.  The government was warned in the autumn of 1846 to expect an epidemic.  It arrived at the end of March in the form of typhus and relapsing fever, filling the Irish with terror.  Rickettsia, the microscopic organisms that cause typhoid, attack the small blood vessels, especially those of the skin and brain.  With blood circulation impeded, the patient becomes all but unrecognizable as the face swells, and the skin becomes a dark, congested hue (giving typhus its Irish name of black fever).  Temperature rises; in severe cases limbs twitch violently; patients rave in delirium, throwing themselves about, and as the fever becomes so intense some jump out of windows or into a river in search of cooling relief.  Additional symptoms include vomiting, agonizing sores develop, some-times gangrene causing the loss of fingers, toes, and feet.  The odor from the typhus patient is almost intolerable.  A medical officer of the Tralee jail where typhus was rampant wrote, “when the door was opened he was forcibly driven back by the smell.”

Relapsing fever is transmitted by a louse which has swallowed blood containing the micro organisms of the disease.  Once infected, progress is rapid.  High fever and vomiting begin within a few hours and continue for days.  A crisis with profuse sweating follows, succeeded by extreme exhaustion.  If the patient survives, the symptoms can be repeated three or four times before the fever leaves.  It is often accompanied by jaundice.  Observers in Cork in 1847 described victim’s skin as “all gaunt, yellow, hideous.”

Outbreaks of Dysentery, Dropsy, and Scurvy

Dysentery was rampant.  Bacillary dysentery, known as the bloody flux is caused by a group of bacilli in contaminated food and the excrement of infected humans and flies.  The bacilli are swallowed with infected food or inhaled from excrement and multiply in the stomach and bowels.  Inflamation, ulcers, and finally gangrene follow, with intense pain, diarrhea, violent straining, and the passing of clots of blood.  It was easy to tell who had the disease by the clots of blood on the ground around their cabins.

Another appalling infectious condition was famine dropsy.  Bennett of the Society of Friends described it in March 1847 as “that horrid disease – the results of long continued famine and low living – in which the limbs and body swell most frightfully and finally burst.”  Scurvy, previously unknown because the potato provided the necessary vitamin C, was prevalent.  Scurvy is painful and revolting.  Gums become spongy, teeth fall out, joints are enlarged causing acute suffering.  Blood vessels burst under the skin, especially on the legs.  In its advanced state, legs turn black up to the middle of the thigh.  The Irish called scurvy black leg.

By the spring of 1847 starvation had so reduced the people that Sidney Godophin Osborne, later one of Florence Nightingale’s helpers in the Crimea, wrote that “the skin had a peculiar appearance, rough and dry like parchment and hung in folds; eyes had sunk into the head, shoulder bones were so high the neck seemed to have sunk into the chest; faces were so wasted (they) looked like a skull; and there was an extraordinary pallor such as (he) had never seen before.  The starving children were skeletons, many too far gone to walk . . . many had lost their voices.”  He never heard a child  moan from pain or shed a tear.  Two, three, or four in a bed “lie and died, suffering, ever silent, unmoved.”

Irish Workhouses

In March 1847, the Central Board of Health sent doctors to inspect and report on conditions of the workhouses of Cork, Bandon, Bantry, and Lurgan.  The Cork workhouse was described as “utterly wretched and deplorable, (with) a death taking place every hour.”  It was over-crowded, lacked ventilation, the drains were deficient, and the stench almost insupportable, even in cold weather.  Bandon was without order and completely chaotic.  One-hundred-and-two boys slept in 24 beds in a ward 25 by 30 feet, in some cases six to a bed; 700 slept and ate in the hall.  There were 45 beds in the convalescent ward for 125 fever patients.  The drains were “revolting” and “disgusting stench lasts all day.”

The wards in the Bantry workhouse were clean and orderly, but “language couldn’t give an adequate idea of (the) state of its fever hospital,” the inspecting doctor said.  “It was appalling, awful, heart sickening.”  He “did not think it possible to exist in a civilized and Christian community.”  Fever patients were “lying naked on straw, the living and the dead together.  The doctor was ill and no one had been near the hospital for two days.  There was no medicine, no drink, no fire; wretched beings were crying out, ‘water, water’ but there was no one to give it to them; the sole attendant, a pauper nurse, was utterly unfit.”

Conditions in Lurgan were equally horrible.  The dead were buried four yards from the fever hospital and the hospital well was in the center of the burial ground.  The Master had died, the Matron was ill; two of the doctors were down with typhus; everything had fallen into confusion; and the Board of Guardians did not seem to know anything except that the workhouse was overcrowded.

Deaths in the workhouses and in hospitals were only part of the total.  Dublin doctors wrote that vast numbers of poor remained at home and never thought of applying for hospital care.  Many deaths were unrecorded because the horror of fever even conquered the bond of family affection.  Parents deserted their children; children their parents.  Neighbors, usually kind and generous, would not enter a cabin where fever was known to exist, and in lonely districts fever-stricken persons died without anyone coming near them, their bodies left to rot.  Families buried relatives in fields and on hillsides, intending “to get church rites for the bones in better times.”  In Clifden, corpses were burned, in other districts they were buried under the cabin floor.  In Leitrim, many were buried in ditches, unknown to anyone.  The total of those who died during the fever epidemics and of famine diseases will never be known, but probably about 10 times more died of disease than of starvation.

They Flee to North America and Great Britain

After the autumn and winter of 1846-47, terrified and desperate, the Irish began to flee.  Emigration was a lifesaver for the man or woman able to afford passage.  The London Times “gloated over the Irish exodus, and gleefully announced that in a short time a Celt would be as rare in Ireland as a red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.”  Of the million Irish who emigrated   They crossed the ocean to Canada and the United States or the Irish sea to Britain. landing at Liverpool, Glasgow, and the ports of south Wales.  Fever went with them and the path to a new life became a path of horror.

The vast majority who left in 1846 went to Canada despite their belief justice and opportunity would be denied them under the Union Jack.  Some considered Canada an Ireland with more room.  They believed the U. S. offered greater opportunity, a belief reinforced by the 1839 report of Lord Durham, Canadian High Commissioner and Governor General, who contrasted the two sides of the border as follows: “On the American side all is bustle and activity; on the British side, with the exception of a few favored spots, all seems waste and desolation.  The ancient City of Montreal which is naturally the commercial capital of Canada, will not bear the least comparison with Buffalo, which is the creation of yesterday.”

To offset the attractions of the U.S., the British made passage to Canada cheaper and gave free passage into the interior for those who declared their intentions to settle in Canada.  The desire to populate Canada was not the only reason Britain encouraged Irish emigration.  It wanted to prevent migration into England.  In 1827, 18 years before the famine, a Parliamentary committee proposed low fares to their North American colonies so the mother country wouldn’t be deluged “with poverty and wretchedness and equalize the state of the English and Irish peasantry.”  But cheaper passage didn’t work.  After reaching Canada, many walked across the border into the U.S.

The first immigrant ship arrived at Québec April 24, 1846.  From early August until the ice closed the St. Lawrence river, an unprecedented number reached Québec.  The 1847 flight, for the first time in history, began in the winter.  Despite it being the most sever winter in living memory, about 30,000 landed in the U. S.  An officer of the Society of Friends described emigrants boarding ships as “joyful at their escape, as from a doomed land.”  A landlord at Tervoe was begged by his tenants for assistance to emigrate as “the greatest blessing he could bestow.”

Three-quarters of emigrants crossing the Atlantic sailed from Liverpool; 95 percent were Irish.  As no passenger could board his vessel until the cargo had been loaded, the emigrant had to spend at least one, generally two or three nights, in the low Irish lodging houses of Liverpool.  The squalor and filth of the houses was notorious and thousands who had escaped typhus infection in Ireland were infected before leaving Liverpool.

“Coffin Ships”

They thought they were headed to the shores of “the best poor man’s country on earth” and up the streets of New York where they believed “every day is like Christmas for the meat.”  More than 85,000 sailed directly from Irish ports: Sligo, Dublin, Baltimore, Ballina, Westport, Tralee, and Killala.  Fewer left from Waterford because access to Liverpool was easier.  Their wild desire to get out combined with utter ignorance of the sea and of geography, caused many to book ships that were overcrowded and which sailed without adequate provisions.  Some were called “coffin ships.”

A typical example of a coffin ship was the 330 ton barque Elizabeth and Sarah built in 1762.  It sailed from Killala, County Mayo, in July 1847, arriving at Québec in September.  The officer at Killala certified 212 passengers; she carried 276.  She should have carried 12,532 gallons of water but only had 8,700 gallons in leaky casks.  The law required seven pounds of provisions be given weekly to each passenger.  No distribution was ever made.  She had 36 berths, four for the crew, 32 shared by 276 passengers who otherwise slept on the deck.  No sanitary convenience of any kind was provided and the state of the vessel was “horrible and disgusting beyond the power of language to describe.”  During the eight-week crossing, passengers starved and were tortured by thirst.  ‘Forty-two died.  The ship broke down and was towed into the St. Lawrence by a steamer.

Few Emigrants Had Technical Skills

Few Irish brought technical skills to their new home.  They were not carpenters, butchers, green grocers, glaziers, masons, or tailors.  For most, their knowledge was limited to the spade-culture of a  potato patch.  The majority drifted into unskilled, irregular, badly-paid work, cleaning yards and stables, unloading vehicles and ships, and pushing carts.

The emigrants who left after the failure of 1848 were of a class Ireland could ill afford to lose.  To deter immigration of the helpless and diseased, fares to Canada were raised so the small ruined farmer couldn’t leave.  Farmers of substance left for the U.S.  Landlords offered to defer their rent for a year if they stayed.  There were few takers.

Half of all Irish immigrants to the U.S. before, during, and after the famine disembarked at New York, a city of 630,000, half immigrants.  Boston was the second most popular port.  The Irish looked upon New York as “heaven’s front parlor” and soon its Irish population was larger than Dublin’s.  Their first view was heavily wooded Staten Island and the spiral of Trinity Episcopal Church.  Horse-drawn street cars moved up Fifth Avenue to 34th Street where “the sticks” began.  Harlem was a country town.  Right off, the immigrant was in for three disappointments.  First, the streets weren’t paved with gold.  Second, they weren’t paved at all.  Third, he would be expected to pave them.

The Irish Quarter

Upon arrival, they went straight to the Irish quarter, called “Irish town,” “Paddy town,” or “The Irish Channel,” and associated exclusively with fellow-countrymen and had no contact with American culture or American ideas.  They took longer to be accepted, longer to become genuinely assimilated, and waited longer for the opportunities offered by the United States.  “Their glimpses of American manners, morals, and religion were few and faint,” wrote an American journalist.

It was a hideous life and the way to forget was to drink.  Whiskey dulled physical pain, disappointment, and bereavement.  Birthdays, weddings, christenings, and national and political festivals were celebrated with whiskey.  The words “Irishman” and “drunkard” became synonymous.  A drunken, fighting, law-breaking man was the Irish image.  United and isolated by clannishness, they were soon exploited by the political bosses.  The vote of the naturalized Irishman was as good as the vote of any New England Yankee and his vote was bought with a glass of whiskey and jobs and favors handed out at political headquarters.

But the newcomers demonstrated incredible generosity and filial love by saving to bring brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents over to join them.  Their frugality became a banking legend.  In the 15 years after the famine they sent home $65 million in Letters from America, as remittances were called.  New York’s Emigrant Industrial bank, founded in 1851 to protect the savings of Irish laborers, remitted $30 million to Ireland in its first three decades.  “Such a beautiful story of un-forgotten affection is unmatched in the world records of human attachment,” said Robert Murray, an unsentimental Scot who was chief officer of the Provincial Bank on the receiving end in Ireland.

T. N. Redington, Under Secretary for Ireland and a Galway landlord, pronounced the famine over at the end of 1849.  There were about a million destitute in the workhouses and on relief at the time.

Kerian Dolan and Patrick Darmody Move to the U.S.

If you were Kerian Dolan and Patrick Darmody, both my great grandfathers, and living in Ireland during the famine years, do you think you would have stayed?

Kerian, believed to be born in County Cork, arrived at the Port of New York 15 October 1849 aboard the DeWitt Clinton from Liverpool.  The passenger manifest identified him as a 23-year-old farmer.  John Dolan, 26, who may be his brother, was listed on the second line below Kieran.  If the manifest is correct, Kieran’s birth year is 1826.

He married Margaret O’Rourke, ca  1858.  She  was born 3 Dec. 1839, probably in Ireland, and died in Minnesota 6 Feb. 1898.  They had five sons and five daughters, Thomas, my great grandfather, born 24 January 1859 or 1860 in New York State, the oldest, and William, probably born in Minnesota in 1886, the youngest.  According to his obituary, Kieran died 18 Sept. 1907 at St. Mary’s hospital in Minneapolis.  He had been a resident of Minnesota for more than 40 years.  The funeral was at the home of his son Thomas at 1514 6th St. N., Minneapolis.   Kerian and Margaret are buried in St. Anne Cemetery in Hamel, Minnesota.

Entry way to Ste. Jesnne de Chantal  Cementery in Corcoran, Minnesota where Didas, Angeline and Flevia (Trudeau) Scott are buried.

Blaine Whipple in St. Anne Cemetery in  at the Kerian and Margaret Dolan Memorial.

The family was in Minnesota by 1866, 15 years after Kieran arrived in New York.  Those are lost years as I have not been able to find him until the move to Minnesota.  They eventually lived in Walnut Lake Township, Faribault Co. where on 1 August 1872,  Kerian was granted a 160-acre homestead in “the west half of the southeast quarter and the east half of the southwest quarter of Section 17 in township 103 of Range 25 in the District of lands subject to sale at Jackson, Minnesota.   Ulysses S. Grant was president.   They moved to Plymouth Township in Hennepin Co. ca 1876.   Antoine LeCount, Plymouth’s first settler, had arrived about 23 years earlier.

My Dolan Lineage: (6) Blaine Whipple-Ines M. Peterson,, (5) Pearl Julia Scott-Blaine Whipple, (4) Ellen Nellie Dolan-Benoni Scott, (3)Thomas Dolan-Julia Darmody, (2) Kerian Dolan-Margaret O”Rourke, (1) Roger Dolan.

Patrick Darmody was born ca 1821 and arrived at the port of New York from Waterford, Ireland 20 May 1850 on the Bark Alert.  His age was listed as 17 on the passenger manifest which would suggest a birth year of 1833.  However, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Osseo, Minn. records his death of brain fever as 5 Dec. 1879, age 58.  If the church records are correct, his birth year was 1821.  His tombstone in St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Maple Grove, Minn. list the place of birth as County Tipperary.

He married Ellen (maiden name believed to be Peters).  According to the 1870 U.S. Census for Minnesota, her place of birth was Ireland.  She was born between 1820 and 1825 and died 14 October 1893 in Maple Grove.  They had two sons and four daughters, including Julia, my great grandmother, born 25 February 1862, all born in Minnesota.  The 1870 census places them on a 120-acre farm in Maple Grove Township.

Maple Grove had large forests of hard or sugar maple. There was an abundance of water with several fine streams and lakes providing a variety of fish for the settlers.  As the land was cleared, the rich black loam topsoil was productive and the farmers prospered.

According the Minnesota State Census of 1869, their farm of 20 improved, 20 unimproved, and 80 acres of woodland was valued at $1,200.  Livestock included 2 horses, 4 milk cows, 3 other cattle, 5 swine, and 1 sheep all valued at $415.  They sold $30 of forest products, slaughtered $145 worth of farm animals, raised 200 bushels of spring wheat, 30 bushels of Indian corn, 150 bushel of oats, 4 bushel of peas and beans, 60 bushels of Irish potatoes, 11 tons of hay, and 300 pounds of butter.  The estimated value of the products was $598.

My Earliest Irish Ancestors Move to Canada

My first Irish ancestor, Andre (Andrew) Scott, emigrated to Canada before 1759.  He and his first wife, Charlotte lived together for a number of years before their marriage was solemnized by the Catholic church.  The record of their marriage performed by Father Mennard is as follows:

“The twenty-third May, 1779, I, the undersigned Pastor of St. Joseph de Chambly, heard the confession and gave communion to the man named Andre Scot of Irish nationality, native of Sligo, son of Jean Scot and of Marie Cracheten, his father and mother of the said parish of Sligo in Ireland and Charlotte Serre dit St. Jean, widow of first nuptials with Michel Barthelot of the parish of Montreal, and on the same day, by a specific and special directive from Monsieur Montgolfier, Vicar General of the diocese of Quebec, without publication of any bann, I received the mutual consent of marriage of the said Andre Scot and of the said Charlotte Serre dit St. Jean, presently living in the Seignneurie of M. de Labruaire, parish of Longueuil, and gave them the nuptial blessing following the rite prescribed by our holy mother the church in the presence of Francois Petrimoulx, captain of the militia, Jean Pairaut, and Charles Genese, residents of this parish, who all signed with us, the spouses having declared themselves unable to sign, and in view of the fact, before their marriage, the said spouses had children together, of whom three are still living, namely Andre, Joseph, and Charlotte, whom they have acknowledged and do acknowledge in the present company and in the presence of the said witnesses as being their own children and their legitimate heirs in the future.  At Chambly the day, month, and year stated.  Signed Francois Petrimoulx, Jean Pairaut, Charles Genest, Mennard, priest.”

Andre married second on 6 May 1790 Lucie Truchon.  Their marriage contract stated Andre Scott lived in the Seiniory of Montarville and was the widower of deceased Charlotte Serre.  Advising him on the contract were his son Andre and friends Francois Treant and Joseph Lacombe.  The bride was identified as Lucie Truchon de Leveille and defunct Marie Denoyon.  She was advised by her sisters Marie Catherine Truchon and Marie Louise Truchon, and her brother-in-law Jean de Thiriagne.

The contract provided that the “future married couple” would openly disclose all their personal property, house and land and any acquired after the marriage and to treat it like “the customs of Paris, followed in the Province of Quebec,” i.e. as community property except property and revenue valued at 350£  sterling and two coppers or shillings, old rate of exchange brought to the union by Lucie.  They agreed that any debt at the time of the marriage was the responsibility of the one who incurred it.  The contract described Andre as an “elderly man” with “weakness” and he agreed to bestow and reward his future wife “for labors and for her full attentions during their life” all of his property, then valued at 900£ sterling, old rate of exchange, after his death.  The contract was read aloud and signed in the notary’s chambers (Maitre S. Racicot, Notary) at Poncherville borough, Montreal “in front of witnesses who signed and the future couple and others appearing who did not know to sign.”  Andre and Lucie each signed with an X. Notary Racicot and Joseph Lacombe signed as witnesses.  Andre and Lucie were married 22 years.  He was buried 10 July 1812, age 99, at Chambly.

The Scotts Leave Canada for the U.S.

Why did the Scotts leave Canada for the U. S?  Interestingly, for the same reason the Dolans and the Darmodys left Ireland:  A failing economy and an inability to adequately support and educate their families.

Chambly is about 50 miles northeast of Montreal.  Other than Montreal and Québec, the  the Province was agricultural and nine out of ten residents lived in this rural environment.  The family farm was the basic unit of production and oriented toward self sufficiency.  Wheat was the major cash crop and the success or failure of its harvest largely determined the prosperity of artisans, mechanics, and small businessmen employed in villages where mills were located.  Peas and potatoes were major items in the diet.

The farmer was inefficient.  He tilled the soil, planted, and harvested according to age-old custom and stubbornly resisted change.  He did not use fertilizer, kept turning the same topsoil with a shallow plow, sowed unclean and unimproved seed infested with insects and subject to  blight, allowed weeds to grow everywhere, and knew little about crop rotation.  Wheat was planted in the same fields yearly until signs of declining productivity forced the farmer to move to the fallow areas.  As one observer wrote, “deprived for 90 years of all means of improvement and devoid of professional teaching, agriculture in Quebec could only end by a degeneration into a deplorable routine.”

By 1838 when the Diocese of Québec only had 178 Catholic schools, few could read and write.  This educational backwardness among a peasant society perpetuated their strong conservatism and resistance to change, even when change was to their benefit.  In 1849, the Québec Parliament studied the relationship between education and agricultural improvement and concluded without education, agriculture would not improve.  But it took many decades before education at the primary grade level was required.  As is evident in both the early Scott families, when signatures were required on records, the priest and/or the Notary who wrote the document found it necessary to add the phrase “ils n’ont su ssigne,” meaning they could not write – not even their names.

Simultaneously, land had become scarce and increasingly expensive.  Under the seigneury system, absentee landowners did not pay their taxes and ignored their responsibilities toward the construction of roads, bridges, and drains, and authorities seldom repaired roads that were in deplorable condition much of the year.  Since the area was unable to support a growing population and farmers lacked capital to purchase tillable land, the French-Canadians began leaving in large numbers about 1840.   Substantial numbers settled in the Upper Mid West.  In 1851, the Illinois Canadian population of about 8,000 grew to about 20,000 by 1859.  Wisconsin and Minnesota attracted a large number.

THE FIRST SCOTT TO EMIGRATE TO THE U.S.

My great great grandfather Joseph was born in Chambly between 1815 and 1821 and died of dysentery 17 May 1872 in Corcoran, Minn. He married Flevia Trudeau 12 January 1841 in Chambly.  A  daughter of Toussaint Trudeau and Marie Monty, she was born in Chambly in 1821 and died in Corcoran 15 October 1906. The family, which included 5 daughters and 2 sons, moved to Illinois by 1850.  They were among the first settlers to arrive in Corcoran in 1855.  Corcoran is in the northwestern part of Hennepin Co., bounded on the north by Hassan, on the east by Maple Grove, on the south by Medina, and on the west by Greenwood.  By section lines, it is 12 miles west of Minneapolis and five miles north.  Benjamin Punder, the first settler, also arrived in 1855 as did  R.B. Corcoran and on 11 May 1858, at a meeting in Corcoran’s house, the town was organized and by common consent took his name.  The town was entirely agricultural with no village or large settlement and no thoroughfare other than the State and town roads.  The timber was gradually cut and comfortable farm houses replaced settler’s cabins.

In 1855 the family included Joseph, 40, Flevia, 35, Joseph, Jr, 13, Didas, 11,  Sedaly, 9, Matilda, 8, and Elizabeth, 5; all born in Canada except Elizabeth who was born in Illinois.  Joseph acquired a 120-acre farm in Section 29 and began his farming career.  The land was heavily timbered with maple, oak, elm, and linden.  Interspersed among the timber were low lands of natural meadow.  The topsoil was heavy, black loam and produced grain, Indian corn, potatoes, hay, small fruits, and vegetables.

The farm was valued at $960 in 1869 and included 25 improved, 55 unimproved, and 40 woodland acres.  Personal property was valued at $421, livestock at $366.  He owned 2 horses, 4 milk cows, 2 other cattle, 4 sheep, and 3 swine.  His machinery was valued at $85 and his farm production:  16 pounds of wool, 150 pounds of butter, 900 pounds of maple sugar, seven gallons of molasses, 10 tons of hay, 150 bushels of spring wheat, 200 bushels of oats, 100 bushels of Indian corn, and one bushel of peas and beans at $430.  They sold $20 worth of forest products and slaughtered farm animals worth $40.

According to the 1870 U.S. Minnesota census, Joseph, Joseph, Jr., and Didas had become U.S. citizens.  Joseph and Flevia were recorded as “unable to read or write.”  Didas worked as a farm hand for his father and at the time of Joseph’s death, the farm passed to him.  Joseph, Jr. had previously acquired and was farming the adjacent 120 acres.  The census of 1880 and 1900 show that Flevia was living with Didas and his family.

My great grandfather, Didas was born 27 Nov.1844 and died 27 April 1929 in Corcoran of apoplexy.  He married Angeline Hamel 23 Nov. 1868 and they raised 8 sons and 4 daughters, all born in Corcoran.  Angeline, daughter of Lange Charles Hamel and Eugenie Moffett, died 2 May 1915.  Lange was farming in what became Hamel, Hennepin Co. early in 1855.  After building a log cabin, his wife, 7 sons and 6 daughters joined him in 1856.  They emigrated from St. Eloi Parish, Quebec.  St. Anne’s Catholic Church and Cemetery were built on the edge of their farm and the railroad depot on land owned by their son William.  They are buried in the cemetery.

Blaine Whipple at Hamel grave site.

Contemporaries   remember Didas as a  successful farmer, a gregarious, friendly fellow, quick to tell a story, and a good neighbor.  French was his native tongue.  He never spoke English, and could not read or write.  In 1873, at 28 and with a wife and three children to support, he had to cope with the financial panic of that year as well as with a severe blizzard.  While still reeling from those two setbacks, he was faced with the grasshopper plagues of 1874 and 1876.  He, his wife Angelina, and mother Flevia are buried in the French Corcoran Cemetery, Ste. Jesnne de Chantal.  A large tombstone marks their grave.

My Scott Lineage: (9) Blaine Whipple-Ines M. Peterson,, (8) Pearl Julia Scott-Blaine Whipple, (7) Benoni Scott-Ellen Nellie Dolan, (6) Didas Scott-Angelina Hamel, (5) Joseph Scott-Philomene (Flevia)Trudeau, (4) Andre Scott-Sophie Demers, (3) Andre Scott-Marie Ursule Trahan, (2) Andrew Scott-Charlotte Serre, (1) Jean Scott-Marie Cracheten.

The move to America by my three sets of Irish ancestors resulted in a far better and healthier life for them, their families, and descendants.

Nellie Dolan, my grandmother (1884-1953), whose mother was Julia Darmody (1862-1899 ) and who married Ben Scott (1882-1935) united our three Irish emigrant families.  She and Ben had 14 children — 7 sons and 7 daughters.  Two of the daughters died young:  Lydia at about age 2 and the first Alice Irene of bronchial pneumonia three days after birth.

Picture taken in Underwood, McClain  County, North Dakota in the mid 1930s.

Front row:  Robert (B0b), Nellie, Alice.

Second row:  Clara, Edwidge (Tuts), Pearl Julia, Margaret (Babe).

Last row:  Arthur (Bud), Donald, John (Jack), William (Bill), Gordon, Leonard (Pete).

15 Generations of Whipples is outstanding for it abundance of family information and the scope and richness of its historical content.  One can hardly imagine a more thorough or carefully written family history.

Volume 1 is an edcation in itself as it traces the Whipple story over nearly 500 years of English and American history.  Each of its 18 chapters includes end notes that add depth and flavor as well as detailed family records.

Volumes 2 and 3 contain an astounding amount of genealogical information organized by generations.  Included are approximately 24,000 individuals, 4,500 surnames, and 3,200 places beginning about 1510 in England and ending in 2005 in the United States.  Included are 250 pictures and illustrations and voluminous end notes with detailed sources and definitions.

Volume 4, includes 865 pages of both genealogical and historical indexes which helps readers easily find their way through the first three volumes.  It also includes a massive bibliography of sources.  Malone’s Schryer Center for Historical and Genealogical Research is fortunate to have this resource available for family researchers.

Thomas would have been about 34 when Henry VIII assumed the throne and lived during the years England separated from the Catholic Church.  His son Thomas lived during the reign of Edward VI when massive changes, including translating the Bible into English and holding services in English were adopted.  He was also alive when Queen Mary tried to return the Church to the Catholic faith.  Matthew grew up when Queen Elizabeth returned the English Church to its new Protestant teachings.

Matthew Jr., and John were there when English Puritans made their political emergence in the 1600s – the same time period they began their epic migrations to the New World. Here were a vibrant, spiritually energized, hopeful people determined to set a new agenda for their English Church. They worked to see their beloved English kingdom move forward into the Biblically enlightened Reformation sweeping western Christendom. They were the movers and shakers of their time.

Our Whipple ancestors lived during the years of the Reformation adapting to the significant, continuous, and contested changes in the practice of religion in England.  Following is a brief history of those years.

Henry VIII  The English Church Separated from Papal Authority

When Henry VIII (1509-1547) broke with Rome, there was a professing Church of Christ in the land.  It had great wealth and was run by an army of Bishops, Abbots, Friars, Priests, Monks, and Nuns. But for any useful and soul-saving purposes it was practically dead.  Except for a few scattered copies of Wycliffe’s translation of the Vulgate (the principal Latin version of the Bible, prepared in the 4th century and later adopted as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church), there were no English Bibles so priests and people knew scarcely anything about God’s truth and the way to be saved.

The clergy did little more than say masses, offer up pretended sacrifices, repeat Latin prayers, and chant Latin hymns (which the people did not understand), hear confessions, grant absolution (a formal declaration by a priest that a person’s sins are forgiven), give extreme unction (anointing the sick, especially when administered to the dying), and take money to get dead people out of purgatory (a place or state of suffering by the souls of Catholic sinners who are atoning for their sins before going to heaven). Preaching was happenstance. Quarterly sermons were prescribed but not insisted on. While mass were said every Sunday, sermons might be omitted for twenty Sundays in succession, and nobody was blamed.

Henry is known for his political struggles with Rome which ultimately led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and establishing himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.  Royal support for the English Reformation (a 16th century movement for the reform of abuses in the Roman Church, ending in the establishment of the Reformed and Protestant Churches) began with his heirs, the devout Edward VI and the renowned Elizabeth I, whilst daughter Mary I temporarily reinstated papal authority over England.

Edward VI, the Boy King Who  Enabled the English Reformation

During the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553), England’s first Protestant King,  the Reformation movement grew in strength.  The Anglican Church was transformed into a recognizably Protestant body with reforms that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and the mass and required compulsory services in English. The architect of these reforms was Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose Book of Common Prayer has proved lasting.   The English Great Bible was issued in 1536.  In 1543, the government ordered that a Bible chapter was to be read in English in the daily services.  The Epistle (a book of the New Testament in the form of a letter from an Apostle) and Gospels (the record of Christ’s life and teaching in the first four books of the New Testament)  were ordered to be read in English in 1547. An English Litany (a series of petitions used in church services, usually recited by the clergy and responded to by the people) was issued in 1544, and “The Order of the Communion” in 1548, which restored the cup to the laity (lay people). All this led to the first English Book of Common Prayer in the year 1549.

Queen “Bloody” Mary Restored Roman Catholicism in England

Queen Mary (1553-1558) restored England to Roman Catholicism after succeeding Edward VI.  In the process, she had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in The Marian Persecution (the persecution of religious reformers, Protestants, and other dissenters for their beliefs).  The  excesses of this period were recorded in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs published in English in 1563.  Foxe is author of the epithet “Bloody Mary.”  Her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her successor and half-sister, Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

In January 1549 the Book of Common Prayer was introduced accompanied by an Act of Uniformity.   It moved away from the medieval liturgies (public worship) and eliminated most of the unscriptural practices.  Written in English, it could be used by everybody and its comparatively small bulk made it far more usable than the previous ponderous volumes. The simplicity of its arrangement and the more continuous arrangement for the reading of Holy Scripture (the sacred writings of Christianity contained in the Bible) made it more of an open book. The large amount of Scripture included in the Lessons (a passage from the Bible read aloud during a church service), Epistles, Gospels, Canticles (hymn or chant forming a regular part of a church service), and Psalms showed how the religious feelings of the Reformers found their natural support in the Word of God. The omission of old superstitious customs and the elimination of such doctrines as the Invocation of Saints (asking (praying) to saints and angels for their prayers) was welcomed by the Reformists.

In the those days when Church and State were identical terms men welcomed a book which created a uniform type of service and thus tended to develop a national feeling.

There was also opposition to its use. Peasants disliked any change in religious customs or teaching and some Reformers objected to the appearance of Lutheranism in the Holy Communion Office.  Others disliked it because it was little different from the mass. Also it presented the structure of the Holy Communion Office in a way that could be interpreted in two completely opposite ways:  In a way that any upholder of the Reformation will agree with, and in a manner agreeable to those who are entirely opposed to the Reformation.

Examples:  The title of the Office of Holy Communion refers to the service both as the “Holy Communion” and as the “mass.”  The clergy could use a “vestment,”(a robe) i.e., the Chasuble (a sleeveless outer vestment worn by a priest when celebrating mass), which symbolized the old doctrine of the mass, or “a cope,” (a long, loose cloak worn by a priest or bishop on ceremonial occasions), which had no doctrinal significance. The Holy Table was described as the “Altar” and also as “God’s board.”  Hence the different interpretations. Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556 burned at the stake by Queen Mary) and those responsible for its issue, interpreted it in a Protestant manner while Bishop Stephen Gardiner (1493-1555) and others used the service with the old ceremonies and interpreted it in the old way.

There followed three significant steps leading up to a truly reformed liturgy.   First, the order was made to destroy stone altars and replace them with wooden tables. Secondly, Cranmer issued his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament in which he set out his understanding of the nature of the sacrament and refuted the errors that had grown up contrary to scripture.   Thirdly, work progressed on the new Articles of Religion which were finally published in 1553.

When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, she was the only sovereign Matthew and Joan had known.  Under her reign, except for the time of the Armada, they knew nothing but peace.  So there was great excitement in their home when Janis VI, King of Scots, was announced as James I, England’s new King.  Other royal pomp the family may have witnessed was the investitures of Henry and later Charles as Prince of Wales.

King James I (1603-1625) and the King James Bible

After it was published in 1611, the King James version of the Bible may have become the family’s favorite book.  It was full of people, beasts, fishes, birds and of war, horror, love, death, and miracles.  Its stories were about Kings and Princesses; about soldiers and shepherds and beggars; about the rich and the poor, the sick and the healthy, and the proud and the humble.  It told of splendid feasts and bitter famine; of present joy and perennial sorrow; of the hopes of heaven and the horror of hell; of sowing and reaping; of good and bad harvest.  It if hadn’t been for things like the desert, the Red Sea, cedar and olive trees, plants, people, and places with outlandish names, the Bible’s countryside could have been England.  What happened in the Bible could so easily happen – and did happen – to its readers.

But were the children awed by the luminous quiet in St. Mary’s Deanery church in Bocking as they stood in the center aisle staring at the great leaded windows, tinted in jeweled greens, blues, and golds, deepened here and there by spots of translucent crimson?  Or was the family already committed to the Puritan creed and considered the beautifully colored windows an idolatrous bauble left from the old days?

The Whipple children probably studied the shivery woodcuts of tortures and burnings during Queen Mary’s time in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, the most widely circulated book in England after the Bible.  If the family didn’t own a copy, they read it at St. Mary’s as it and the Bible were two of only four chained books in all cathedrals and parish churches in the land.

But how did they resolve the religious questions of that time?  If Papists were bad, were all Protestants good?  How could this be since there were two kinds of Protestants: those who had candles and a cross like in St. Mary’s and who bowed at the name of Jesus and who kept Saints’ days and Christmas; and Puritans who hated all those things and who relied only on the Word of God, and who worshiped several days a week in private homes.

Everyone talked religion.  It was the subject in broadsides and newsletters.  An individual might not approve of a particular religious group but he would not be indifferent.  Almost everyone had a religious affiliation and defended it with all the warmth and vehemence that an age of religious controversy breeds in its people.

Charles I.  39 Articles of Religion for  All Englishmen

Early in his reign, James’ son Charles I (1625-49) caused the Articles “for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true religion” agreed to in 1562, be reprinted.  As Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church, he acted to conserve and maintain the Church in the “unity of true religion” and to eliminate “unnecessary disputation, altercations, or questions which may nourish faction both in the Church and Commonwealth.”

He claimed the 1572 document (The Bishop’s Bible Revised) contained “the true Doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God’s Word” and required “all our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof.?”  While denying anyone the right to vary from the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, he acknowledged “curious and unhappy differences” throughout the land.  All were to submit “in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Articles, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense.”

Puritanism was widespread by this time and its followers were enraged.  Many determined they could no longer tolerate the restrictions on their right to freedom of religion and vowed to leave the land of Charles I.  Following is what King Charles required of all residents of England:

The 39 Articles of Religion that the Whipples and all other Englishmen were to follow:

1.  Of Faith in the Holy Trinity.  There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.  And in unity this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost.
2.  Of the Word of Son of God, which was made very Man.  The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal blessed Virgin, of her substances; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, and whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us; and to be a sacrifice, hot only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.
3.  Of the going down of Christ into Hell.  As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also it is to be believed that he went down into Hell.
4.  Of the Resurrection of Christ. Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; where with he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.
5.  Of the Holy Ghost.  The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal of God.
6.  Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation. Holy
scripture containth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.  In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
Of the Names and Numbers of the Canonical Books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, The First Book of Samuel, The Second Book of Samuel, the First Book of Kings, the Second Book of Kings, the First Book of Chronicles, the Second Book of Chronicles, the First Book of Esdras, the Second Book of Esdras, The Book of Esther, The Book of Job, The Psalms, the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or Preacher, Cantica, or Songs of Solomon, Four Prophets the greater, Twelve Prophets the less.
And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following: The Third Book of Estras, the Fourth Book of Estras, The Book of Tobias, The Book of Judith, The rest of the Book of Esther, The Book of Wisdom, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, The Song of Three Children, the Story of Susanna, of Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses, The First Book of Macabees, The Second Book of Macabees.
All the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them canonical.
7.  Of the Old Testament.  The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man.  Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises.  Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, or the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called moral.
8.  Of the Three Creeds. The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’ Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.
9.  Of Original or Birth-sin.  Original Sin standeth not in the following or Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit: and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.  And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the list of the flesh, called in Greek , phronema sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of flesh, is not subject to the Law of God.  And although here is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.
10.  Of Free-Will. The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
11.  Of the Justification of Man.  We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deserving: Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only in a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, and more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.
12.  Of Good Works. Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a  lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.
13.  Of Works Before Justification.  Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.
14.  Of Works of Supererogation.  Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God’s Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as such as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants.
15.  Of Christ Along Without Sin. Christ in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he was clearly void, both in his flesh and in his spirit.  He came to be the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world, and sin as Saint John saith, was not in him.  But all we the rest, although baptized, and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
16.  Os Sin After Baptism.  Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost and unpardonable.  Wherefore the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after Baptism.  After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given and fall into sin and by the grace of God we may arise again, and amend our lives.  And therefore they are to be condemned, which say, they can no more sin as long as they live here, or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent.
17.  Of Predestination and Election. Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.  Wherefore, they which he endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season:  they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely:  they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy  then attain to everlasting felicity.
As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love toward God: So for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.
Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.
18.  Of Obtaining Eternal Salvation Only By the Name of Christ.  They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature.  For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.
19.  Of  the Church.  The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.  As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.
20.  Of the Authority of the Church.  The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another.  Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.
21.  Of the Authority of General Councils.  General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes.  And when they be gathered together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the “Spirit and Word of God,) they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.  Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.
22.  Of Purgatory.  The Romish Doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, Worshiping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, if a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scriptures, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.
23.  Of Ministering in the Congregation.  It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same.  And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.
24.  Of Speaking in the Congregation in such a Tongue as the people understandeth.  It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of Primitive Church to have public Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.
25.  Of the Sacraments.  Sacraments ordained by Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will toward us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him.
There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.  Those five commonly called Sacraments that is to say Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such  as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures; but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.
The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.  And in such only as worthily receive the same they have a wholesome effect or operation: but they that receive them unworthily purchase to themselves damnation, as Saint Paul said.
26.  Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.  Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in the receiving of the Sacraments.  Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men.
Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that enquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offenses; and finally bring found guilty, by just judgment be deposed.
27.  Of Baptism. Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or new Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly, signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by the virtue of prayer unto God.  The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.
28.  Of the Lord’s Supper.  The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves to another but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but it is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.
The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.  And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshiped.
29.  Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper.  The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they  partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.
30.  Of both Kinds.  The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both are parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, out to be ministered to all Christian men alike.
31.  Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross. The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is no other satisfaction for sin, but that alone.  Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.
32.  Of the Marriage of Priests. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, are not commanded by God’s Law, either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage; therefore it is lawful also for them , as for all other Christian men to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness.
33.  Of Excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.  That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church, and excommunicated, ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as in Heathen and Publican, until he be openly reconciled by penance, and received into the church by a Judge that hath authority thereunto.
34.  Of the Traditions of the Church.  It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and man’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word.  Whatsoever though his private judgment, willingly and purposely, doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like,) as he that offendeth against the common order of the church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.
Every particular or national church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only my man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.
35.  Of Homilies.  The second Book of Homilies, the several titles whereof we have joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the former Book of Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and therefore we judge them to be read in churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be underrstanded of the people.  Of the Names of the Homilies: 1.  Of the right Use of the Church.  2.  Against perils of Idolatry.  3.  Of the repairing and keeping clean of Churches.  4.  Of good Works: first of Fasting.  5.  Against Gluttony and Drunkenness.  6.  Against Excess of Apparel.  7.  Of Prayer.  8.  Of the Place and Time of Prayer.  9. That Common Prayers and Sacraments ought to be ministered in a known tongue.  10.  Of the reverend estimation of God’s Word.  11.  Of Alms-doing.  12. Of the Nativity of Christ.  13.  Of the Passion of Christ.  14.  Of the Resurrection of Christ.  15.  Of the worthy receiving of the Sacraments of the Body and Blood of Christ.  16.  Of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost.  17.  For the Rogation-days.  18.  Of the state of Matrimony.  19.  Of Repentance.  20.  Against Idleness.  21.  Against Rebellion.
36.  Of Consecration of Bishops and Ministers.  The Book of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops, and Ordering of Priests and Deacons, lately set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth, and confirmed at the same time by authority of Parliament, doth contain all things necessary to such consecration and Ordering: neither hath it any thing, that of itself is superstitious and ungodly.  And therefore whosoever are consecrated or ordered according to the Rites of that Book, since the second year of the forenamed King Edward unto this time, or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the same Rites; we decree all such to be rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated and ordered.
37.  Of the Civil Magistrates.  The King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction.
Where we attributed to the King’s Majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended; we give not to our Princes the ministering either of God’s Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers.
The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.
The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offenses.
It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons and serve in the wars.
38.  Of Christian Men’s Goods, which are not common.  The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast.  Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.
39.  Of a Christian Man’s Oath.  As we confess that vain and rash Swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ, and James his Apostle, so we judge that Christian Religion doth not prohibit, but that a man may swear when the Magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the Prophet’s teaching, in justice, judgment, and truth.
The Ratification.  This Book of Articles before rehearsed, is again approved, and allowed to be holden and executed within the Realm, by the assent and consent of our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth by the grace of God, and England, France, and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, &c.  Which Articles were deliberately read and confirmed again by the subscription of the hands of the Archbishop and Bishops of the Upper-house, and by the subscription of the whole Clergy of the Nether-house in their Convocation, in the Year of our Lord 57.
A Table of Kindred and Affinity wherein whosoever are related are forbidden to the Church of England to marry together.  The list was included in the Articles.

TO BE CONTINUED WITH A DISCUSSION OF PURITANISM