Jim Beard – How did my Irish ancestors survive the Potato Blight and Famine years (1845-1852) ?

Jim Beard and his mum Kathleen May Beard (nee Stack) circa 1946

 

Biographical  Introduction

My mother, Kathleen May Beard (nee Stack) was  born in Philadelphia, Pa at the start of WWI in 1913 to  Richard Stack and Jane Moore Sayers.  Richard  b:1881 was born in  the Townland of Newtownsandes, County Kerry, the first of nine children.  In the 1901 census he is shown living with the Kissane family as a farm servant on the same street as his parents.  His father , Richard Stack b:1856 is also a farm servant to the Kissanes.  He probably left the one room house of his father when he came of age to make room for some of his younger siblings as did his brother Daniel Joseph.

Probably with little hope for the future in Ireland he emigrates to New York City USA aboard the  Italian ship Umbria out of Queensland in 1907. He arrived with $10 in his pocket and made his way to Philadelphia Pennsylvania to stay with his cousin Dan Mulvihill.  He next went to Berks County Pa where he found work at the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane.  There he met his future wife Jane (Jennie) Sayers, 12 years his senior, from Northern Ireland, County Antrim who also worked  at the asylum.    In 1910 they married and move back to Philadelphia where he obtained a job with the Pennsylvania Rail Road. ( I now possess his railroad pocket watch that he paid for with his garnished wages and  my son wore that watch at his wedding.)    He and Jennie raised four children:  my mother, Kathleen, my aunt Peg, my aunt Vida and his only son Richard, my uncle.  Uncle Richie had no children so this branch of Stacks has ceased.

My GF became a US  citizen in 1922 and managed to own his own home on Hirst Street in SW Philadelphia.  My family moved from Philadelphia to the country in 1951 and I would visit my GF (called “Pop”) and Aunt Peg in Philadelphia in the summers.  My GM Stack died in 1948.  One fond memory I have was my walks with Pop and his dog in Cobbs Creek park.  He carried a briar walking stick and smoked his pipe. On our return to his house he would occasionally stop at a taproom ( archaic name for a bar back then) and get his Jameson whisky and talked to the bartender while I sipped a ginger ale and played shuffle board.

My GF and Aunt Peg also moved to the county  and lived directly in back of our house in Maple Glen, Pa..   Another of my fondest memories was Pop, on the hot, humid days of summer would come into Aunt Peg’s house for afternoon  tea after hilling up his potatoes.  Tea was always brewed from loose tea.  He had  finally got  his own  “new world sod”.  He referred fondly to Ireland as “the Emerald Isle”.  He never told any stories about his likely hard life in Ireland.  He used to tease me about the “little people” in the forest, Leprechauns I guess.

Pop had two of his brothers and one sister follow him and settled  in Brooklyn New York.  In the 50’s he made two return trips to Ireland aboard the SS America and her sister ship the SS United States.  He died in 1968.  He was a gentle soul and I now wish I would have talked to him about the family Stacks.  His story is one of many happy endings for a poor Irish immigrant.

In my later years in retirement I had the time to do some research of my Stack family’s genealogy.  I was able to get back to the early 18^th century as far as my GGGF, Richard Stack and his wife Hanora Riordan.  They lived and had children before and after the Potato Blight and Famine period , 1845 to 1852.  They had one child in 1844 and  their second (living ?) child did not arrive until 1853.    Did the Blight and Famine period have an impact on their lives and their children?  That is my Stack Story that follows.

Read Jim’s story here Potato Blight and Famine