An Irish Passenger, An American Family, And Their Time
200
Years! 1807
-- 2007
Here
dear reader you will find: the arrival of THOS.
and
family (born 1807) to the NEW WORLD in 1847 with Colour
images----fleeing the
Great
STARVATION; their embarkation from the port of
LIVERPOOL;
specifics of the PACKET-SHIP on which they
made their arduous journey;
the cargo among which they found themselves making HOME for 34 days
of summer; the
prior and subsequent delivery of RELIEF to
their former countrymen by
said Vessel; the THOUSANDS of their fellowes delivered to New YORK by
aforementioned vessel; its FATEFUL
voyage in which its BOWSPRIT was CARRIED AWAY and TWO MEN LOST at
SEA;
the DEATHS of ELEVEN SUFFERING POOR; said Vessel's distinguished
and urbane MERCHANT-CAPTAIN; the lives of
its
owners: the New York
MERCHANT KINGS and so-called
"philanthropists;" Herman
Melville; Prophet Joseph SMITH and Odd Fellows;
BUOYS and COASTERS;
President DELANO Roosevelt; BRIBERY and OPIUM; the
great age of ARCTIC exploration; a
PORTRAIT found drifting at sea; BELCHERTOWN,
Massachusetts (current
residence of AUTHOR); the
pestilence and QUARANTINE
the tribe may have avoided; their
settling, at last, in the CITY
OF BROTHERLY LOVE; and their
DESCENDANTS MIGRATING
to
points
West, South and North.
List of Contents
The Voyage----in good speed; in sunlight and humidity; with minimal death, comparatively.
The Ship----named for great orator; American
built and owned; one of the most profitable.
The Captain---seen with a Shantung silk umbrella lined with green; liked his rum; bird-watching with John James Audubon.
A Passenger---laborer of the ancient O Cairealláin (Carolan) sept with two sons of the blacksmith trades in 19th-century Philadelphia; begetting hundreds.
The Voyages---many and swift of the ship named after the great American orator; with lists of all aboard.
The Cargo---tins and bales; bars and bundles; kegs and barrels.
The Company---Preserved Fish; Sir John Franklin; wealth, prosperity, and philanthropy.
The Relief---bushels, biscuits, and beans for the tragic victims of the worst disaster from which the family fled.
The Author and His Sources.
The Captain---seen with a Shantung silk umbrella lined with green; liked his rum; bird-watching with John James Audubon.
A Passenger---laborer of the ancient O Cairealláin (Carolan) sept with two sons of the blacksmith trades in 19th-century Philadelphia; begetting hundreds.
The Voyages---many and swift of the ship named after the great American orator; with lists of all aboard.
The Cargo---tins and bales; bars and bundles; kegs and barrels.
The Company---Preserved Fish; Sir John Franklin; wealth, prosperity, and philanthropy.
The Relief---bushels, biscuits, and beans for the tragic victims of the worst disaster from which the family fled.
The Author and His Sources.
The
The
packet ship PATRICK HENRY, Joseph Clement Delano,
master, arrived at
New York
on 27 July 1847, from Liverpool 23 June, with merchandise
and 19 cabin
and 300
steerage passengers,
to Grinnell, Minturn & Co.
"July 2, lat 49 15, lon 23 16, exchanged
signals with ship Samuel Hicks, Bunker, hence, for Liverpool; 7th, lat 44 03, lon 39 15, passed Br[itish]
bark Emigrant of Cork bound East; 14th,
lat 42 20, lon 54 40, passed a ship steering West with a cross in her
foretopsail."
[
It
does not appear the ship was quarantined on arrival, though 20,000
fellowes died that year en route across the Atlantic or subsequently in
American emigrant hospitals, according to Immigration and the Commissioners of
Immigration of the State of New York (Frederich Kapp, NY: The
Nation Press, 1870.) For more, click here.]
The
Maritime
Herald,
LIVERPOOL—Ship
PATRICK HENRY—Captain H Tuckett and lady, G Ward, Mr Baker, Mr Ellison,
Mr
Allendier, Miss Jordin, Mr Fowler, Messrs Morgan, Culbertson,
McGlashan,
Ashton, Connell, Miss Hey, Miss Lator, Master Ward, Mr Atkinson, Mr
Abraham,
and 288 in the steerage.
Arrival of
Strangers in
Astor
House. Capt. Delano-ship Patrick Henry
Other occurrences
July 27: Passengers Arrived. London-Ship
The
PATRICK HENRY was a 3-masted, square-rigged sailing ship
built at
It has been
said that the vessel, under the command of Joseph
C. Delano, of
New Bedford, Massachusetts, was a remarkably fine sailer and "made more
money than any other ship belonging to her owners."
The transatlantic sailing packet of white oak carried wealthy
industrialists, the poorest of
poor Irish emigrants, and tons of food and relief supplies
to
Ireland and
England.
She made more than 45 documented voyages
and served more than 10 different captains in her years of
service at sea in the Swallowtail Line of Packets owned by Grinnell,
Minturn & Co.
She
registered at
Packet
Columbia
II
Built
1846, Black Ball Line, 1050 tons
What
better name for a vessel full of the oppressed of England? For it
was
the passionate and fiery lawyer-orator and governor of Virginia
(1776-78: 1784) Patrick
Henry, who, seven decades before, had spoken out against England
at a time when most in the colonies wanted to wait and avoid the
REVOLUTION. Without the "liberty" made possible by
the PATRICK
HENRY,
those aboard may well have faced "death" while the British waited idly
by
during the failure of the potato crop and after years of what many call
a slow genocide of the Irish people. The PATRICK HENRY mirrored the namesake in her radical nature. "She is the ne plus ultra, or will be, until another ship of her class shall be built," said famed American politician and diarist Philip HONE, who, in October 1839, toured the "splendid new ship" with Henry Grinnell, one of her owners. For five years, the HENRY was the largest packet ship among New York's eight packet lines. She sailed in the Blue Swallowtail Line (Fourth Line) of packets (flag shown above) between New York and Liverpool from 1839 until 1852, during which period her westward passages averaged 34 days, her shortest passage being 22 days, her longest 46 days. In 1851, she was owned by: Henry Grinnell (3/16), Moses H. Grinnell and Robert B. Minturn (8/16), Capt. Sheldon G. Hubbard (1/16), Capt. Joseph Rogers (2/16), and Capt. Joseph C. Delano (2/16). In 1852, she was transferred to Grinnell, Minturn & Co's Red Swallowtail Line of packets between New York and London. During this time, her westbound passages averaged 32 days, her shortest passage being 26 days, her longest 41 days.
Perhaps one
of her more difficult voyages, she set out for New York December 24,
1853 from Liverpool. On the 18th of January, in
latitude 47", longitude 34 degrees, while hove to, the PATRICK HENRY
was
"struck by a sea which CARRIED AWAY the BOWSPRIT and the knight heads
and all the rigging attached." At the same time, washed overboard
was Matthew Barnabb, a seaman, who was LOST. Two hours later,
Louis Barroch, another seaman, was clearing away
the bowsprit, fell
overboard and DROWNED. Then
William
Wallace, another crewmember, fell from the fore yard and was injured
severely.
"It was blowing a gale at the time," reported Captain John Hurlburt to the New York Times, who brought her to port February 4, after a 40-day passage. "And impossible to save them." According to the maritime tome, Merchant Sail, the ship was not alone that uncommonly rough winter on the Atlantic. The packet-ship Rosicus was 51 days making the crossing; the Mary Annah 88 days, and the Celestial Empire took 60, with the loss of a seaman and ten passengers. On the following voyage of the PATRICK HENRY, October 1854 (New York Times), Captain Hurlburt carried 403 passengers, breaking the law of one passenger per three ton of weight, and 11 passengers died at sea.
Still, "The PATRICK HENRY was considered by writers of the period to be one of the best and most dependable packets built in the 1830s and one of the most popular and highly esteemed transatlantic sailing lines during the 1840s and 50s was the Swallowtail," according to Merchant Sail .
The vessel's best homeward crossing of 22 days was better than the crossings of either of the grander packets: the Swallowtail's Cornelius Grinnell (1,117 tons, built 1850) and the Black Ball Line's Great Western (1,443 tons and built in 1851, twelve years after the PATRICK HENRY). Her longest run in the London-Portsmouth run at 41 days was even better the Grinnell (48 days) or the New World (42 days), one of the largest Swallowtails at 1,404 tons.
In 1851, Captain S.E. Hubbard is listed as her master and in 1855, Captain John Hurlburt. In 1860, Captain William B. Moore became her master. (Queens) After 25 years of packet service, the PATRICK HENRY was "sold British" in 1864 (Londonderry) due to the Civil War.
Her final voyage may have been from Pensacola, Florida on June 26, 1871 to Liverpool, arriving August 19th. According to the American Neptune (Peabody Essex Museum magazine), Clipper Dreadnaught, built 1853, 1,414 tons. 34 crew. she was hulked or broken up in 1884. That year the ship is listed under Master T.E. Sargent and registered at
One
of the PATRICK HENRY'S favorite seamen was Peter
Ogden, steward of
the ship in the 1840s, and who, as a member of the Liverpool lodge of
the English Odd Fellows, pursuaded his excluded African American
brethen to apply for a charter from his order.4.1
Another
of her famous passengers was cousin to the Prophet of the
Church of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith. George A. Smith sailed
from New York to Liverpool with Captain Joseph Delano on March 9, 1840
with five brethren, and, contrary to all other reviews of Delano's
commandeering, had this to say:
"After
a rough and disagreeable passage of 28
days, landed on the shores of Protected by waist high bulkheads painted green on the inside, the PATRICK HENRY and ships of its class had clear decks save for "the stern where, wheel in hand and binnacle containing the compass before him, stands the helmsman. Forward are two hatches for cargo with the ship's boat on top. Around the boat stand our future meals---a milk cow, pigs, ducks, hens and sheep!
We know that 'Tween decks,' at the bow, is the forecastle. In the center section, if there is no Packet Montezuma, among the 5 fastest packets across the Atlantic, with Patrick Henry
fine freight, huddle steerage passengers. It is not a happy sight to look down on them because there,
crowded in a common dormitory for 38 days, each cooks his fast dwindling supply of food.
If our ship
has one bath,
it is in the cabin section. The steerage
passengers' bath at best may
be a
bucket of icy seawater, dashed over them on deck. Perhaps
the plague
breaks out
and no Doctor is on board. The ship's Captain does what he can but that
is
little. Below is the usual hold for bulkier freight.
Toward the ship's stern is a stairway leading down to the 'Tween Decks.' A great halt forty feet long spreads out before us. Here are handsome mahogany tables with sofas on each side, carved pillars, sometimes mahogany, sometimes cream colored ornamented with gold.
Rich crimson or gold and white draperies catch the eye. On either side are staterooms, each about eight feet square, with latticed window and door, the upper half of which also is latticed to admit air. Bird's- eye maple woodwork inlaid with curiously grained woods is polished to satiny finish."4
Montage of sketches depicting life on board an emigrant ship showing immigrants embarking at the London docks, scrubbing the decks, watching a passing ship, dealing with heavy seas, catching an albatross, and queueing at the surgery. The Illustrated New Zealand Herald , 9 April, 1875.
The safety, sturdiness, dependability, and efficiency of the New York transatlantic sailing packets can be gathered from the tribute of the New York Herald to a retiring packet, a ship that experienced every conceivable kind of weather and seas in by far the most difficult trade route of the globe: "For twenty-nine years she battled with the Atlantic gales, making 116 round passages without losing a seaman, a sail, or a spar. She brought thirty thousand passengers to this country from Europe, and her cabins have witnessed fifteen hundred births and two hundred marriages." Enthusiasm aside, it was also said that "it took a man every inch a seaman to reach an American port from Europe with spars and sails intact and keep his ship off the Long Island and New Jersey coasts in midwinter gales of thick snow and sleet."4
The
master of the Patrick
Henry
on the above passage was Captain Joesph Clement Delano (1796-1886), born in New
Bedford into the
prestigious DE
LA NOYE family,
after a 19-year-old Huguenot Pilgrim of the
name
arrived at Plymouth in 1621 on the ship Fortune. JOSEPH's paternal uncle was great grandfather of President Franklin DELANO Roosevelt, who said in 1944: "What vitality I have is not inherited from Roosevelts ... Mine, such as it is, comes from the DELANOS."
Captain DELANO was a favorite with the passengers (seasoned travelers often chose the vessel on which they sailed by the name of the master), distinguished for his intelligence, culture, and urbanity as well as for record-breaking passages.
"A fine
figure he was,"
remembers Captain Ezra Nye, famed commander of the Grinnell, Minturn
& Co.
vessel
Henry Clay, known
in her day
as the "monster of the deep." "[Captain
DELANO]
had mutton chop whiskers, a closely cropped beard
and
mustache, a white stock at his throat, and often a DELANO arrived during the night of April 16, after--it is claimed--a record westbound passage of only 15 days and 18 hours during which the Columbia's average speed was 8 1/2 knots. She passed the Sandy Hook lighthouse at 6 a.m., Saturday, the 17th, and DELANO established a westbound speed record that stood for 16 years.
"There was a fine following wind all the way, as both ships (the Black Baller Caledonia) plunged through the seas with every sort of spare sail set to catch the welcome breezes," writes Robert Albion in Square Riggers on Schedule. "Travelling the celebrated sea lane faster than any packet had yet done, the Columbia was off Sandy Hook by dawn on April 17."
The Caledonia (built 1828 by Brown and Bell, 647 tons) sailed from Liverpool the same day as the Columbia and arrived off Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, about the same time (in the middle of the night) after a run reported at 15 days, 22 hours out from Liverpool. The actual time, port to port, was 17 days for both vessels, but who is counting anyhow?5
Joseph DELANO'S first wife, 20-year-old Alice Howland went to sea with her new husband onboard the COLUMBIA in January 1827, a month after their extravegent wedding. According to Hen Frigates: Wives of Merchant Captains Under Sail, packet-ship commanders not only had to drive the ship "like the very devil, but were expected to charm gentleman, tycoons, dowagers and debutantes in the after cabin as well, and so for a man like Captain Joseph DELANO, a personable, fashionable wife could prove very useful."4
In
1831, Captain
DELANO hosted the
famed natualist and bird-painter John James AUDUBON on several Joseph Delano and Alice Howland, 1827
voyages of the Columbia, during which Audubon,
among others, shot two dozen PETRELS. On another venture, AUDUBON spotted and recorded sketches of hundreds of PALAROPES along a bank of sea-weeds and froth, 60-miles off the coast of Nantucket.
In 1842, Presbyterian clergyman and popular religious writer Theodore Ledyard CUYLER sailed with Captain DELANO to Liverpool on the Patrick Henry. DELANO was a "gentleman of high intelligence and culture," Cuyler wrote inRecollections of a Long Life. "After twenty-one days under canvasa and the instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of the ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the steamships."
In 1845, CAPTAIN DELANO bought the big stone home whose grounds covered a full block in
In 1846, between passages, he joined Joseph Grinnell, one of the founders of Fish, Grinnell & Company, in starting a new cotton mill. In 1847, the year the CAROLANS sailed, he become one of the original directors of Wamsutta Mills, the first cotton mill established at New Bedford. DELANO's interest in trade, transportation, and manufacturing further were whetted by his directorship in this cotton mill. He withdrew as Captain of the PATRICK HENRY in 1848 (although he commanded the Patrick Henry on one passage in 1849) and was said to have retired from sea.
However,
Captain DELANO did commandeer the
Packet-ship Albert Gallatin (Grinnell
Minturn) in 1851 and was an
outspoken proponent for a standardized American harbor BUOY
system.
He wrote to the Light House Service in November that year
complaining that "Ignorant men,
pilots, captains, coasters, anybody, in fact, are employed by contract
to place
the buoys, and they are seldom placed alike for two successive
years....
It
often happens that a black buoy will be found ... where the chart calls
for a
white one, as the person who superintends this operation disdains
reference to the
coast survey, most likely because he could not understand it."
In 1859, Joseph DELANO brought over bog head coal from
the family
The DELANO family has a long and prosperous legacy in the exploring, shipping and international merchant trades. Joseph's brother, John Allerton DELANO (1805-1883), commanded several Grinnell vessels throughout the 1850s to the 1870s, including the PATRICK HENRY, the GALLATIN, and the CORNELIUS GRINNELL, named for a later owner of the firm. He was first mate to his brother on the PATRICK HENRY in 1845.
Joseph's
cousin,
Franklin H. DELANO---namesake
of the President---married an Astor and
became a partner in Grinnell,
Minturn & Co. Another cousin, and grandfather to FDR,
Warren Delano II
(1809-1898), was among the merchant-captains, who along with
British counterparts, bribed Chinese officials in the early- to-mid
nineteenth century to allow chests of opium from British-ruled India
into the
lucrative Chinese black market, starting what were known as the Opium
Wars (1839-1842). Joseph
and his these two cousins, Franklin and Warren, together
formed
the Riverside Cemetery Corporation in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.4,5 
Another
seafaring relation was Amasa
DELANO
(1763-1823), who
at age fourteen was a private in the Continental Army, a privateersman
at sixteen, and a master shipbuilder at twenty-one. He and his
brother, Samuel, built the sealers Perserverance
(200 tons) and the smaller Pilgrim.
He ecame the first to circle the globe three times and the first
to copy
down an account from the mutinous survivors of the H.M.S.Bounty. In 1810 the authorities
of St. Bartholomew, West Indies, tried to seize the Perseverance for an alleged violation
of the revenue laws, but he
put to sea under fire of their batteries and escaped.
Warren Delano II
His experiences at sea in the days of New England supremacy were recorded in
Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Comprising Three Voyages Round the World (1817). This was the basis for Herman Melville's other masterpiece, the short story Benito Cereno (1856), a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship.
It was these ancestors---who overcame misfortune with stoic perserverance, kept up appearances befitting a proud old family, and shunned no risk to get to the top---from whom President DELANO Roosevelt took his "vitality." Biographers of FDR cite his fascination with the history of the seafaring DELANO ancestors and their sagas (he sought the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy) as providing him the strength of character and moral fortitude to stand his ground during the most difficult hours of his presidency.
Two New Yorkers:
Editor and Sea Captain, 1833
Article about
Captain Joseph DELANO
J C Delano Letters, 1812-1818
Captain
Joseph DELANO on board Ship
Arab, Ship
Virginia, and Ship Ladoga.
Less than a month before the Carolans embarked for America, the Patrick Henry had just delivered, "for distribution to the famishing poor," provisions worth $1,166 to Ireland---the irony being the vessel's hold contained food on one passage and, less than a month later, contained the very people for whom the food was for. "We hope that our mite may arrive in time to alleviate the miseries of a few of the many sufferers of your devoted countrymen," wrote the Brooklyn New York Irish Relief Committee on May 11.6
The Carolan family first had to travel to an Irish port city and cross the Irish sea to Liverpool on a steam ferry. There, they likely purchased their entire passage on the Patrick Henry for less than $20. The Carolans were lucky. A month before they departed the Cork Examiner published the following:
SUFFERINGS OF EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK--The paupers who have recently arrived from
Europe give a most melancholy account of their sufferings. Upwards of eighty individuals,
almost dead with the ship fever, were landed from one ship alone, while twenty-seven of the cargo
died on the passage, and were thrown into the sea. They were one hundred days tossing Michael Carolan, 1845-1906
to and fro upon the ocean, and for the last twenty days their food only consisted of a few Philadelphia, circa 1900
ounces of meal per day, and their only water was obtained from the clouds. 19 May 1847 --New York Sun.
The ratio of sick per one thousand passengers that year was 30 on board British ships and about 9 passengers on board American ships (Kapp, 1870). The Carolans sailed June 23 and arrived 34 days later at the South Street Seaport in New York on July 27th with mostly Irish passengers and much merchandise. Newspaper accounts and passenger manifest show discrepancies of 13 passengers, who likely died on the voyage. The Carolans lost their two daughters Elizabeth (age 13) and Ann (age 01) on the voyage or shortly after, while daughter Catherine (age 4) survived.
A small child
died aboard the ship. The boys were distressed by the even and thought
their parents would prevent the burying of the body in the ocean. They
apprehensively watched the burly sailors cut and sew a small canvas
coffin. The child was placed in the middle of it, sand was poured in
around the body and the coffin was sealed. Then they placed it in a
larger canvas coffin, filled the remaining space with sand and sealed
it up. A plank was extended over the
water off the side of ship. A solemn
crowd
gathered as the crew hoisted the heavy package onto the plank's end and
the
Captain lifted the inner end of the board and rolled the child's body
into the
sea. Thomas and Elizabeth went to Moreland Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a rural community north of Philadelphia, where Thomas worked as a farm laborer. There, the couple had six more children in the early 1850s.
Heading into the East River, New York.
Illustration from The Famine Ships, by Edward Laxton
The Carolan
surname survives through
the family's two sons, Michael and Thomas Spencer
(1854-1915),
both blacksmiths who owned shops within miles of each
other in north Philadelphia for most of their lives.
Michael
married an Irish girl named Anna Lawrence (1853-1901) in 1869
and had 18 children, six of whom lived
into adulthood: Elizabeth (McDonald) (1873-1919); Matthew William
(1871-1942); Emma Mary (Roth; Merritt) (1875-1958);
Helen "Nellie" Ann (Heidenfelder) (1875-?); Anna
"Nan" (1879-1950); and
Caroline "Carrie" Veronica (McGrath) (1883-1946).
Their
son Matthew married
Wilhelmina
Koenig (1879-1963) in 1901. They had three
children:
Ann Marie
(1902-1997), Matthew George (1904-1994), and Walter Charles
(1908-1969).
Walter Charles married Verna Mae Rose (1910-1956) in
1929. He was one of the first Carolans to
leave
Philadelphia when he moved to Kansas City in the early 1940s.
Their
sons,
Walter Jr.
and William
George, my father, live in Kansas City. Their son Robert
(1939-1979) grew up there as well. Ann Marie married John Carroll Moerk (1898-1989) in 1933. Their children, Alice and John Jr,. live in Florida. Ann Marie's son, Jack Robinson (1925-1943), from a previous marriage, died in World War II. Matthew George married Eleanor Tompkins (1906-1968) in 1938. Their daughter Constance lives in Connecticut and son Jack lives in Missouri. Matthew George married Hattie Gertrude "Trudy" Felt (1916-2001), my maternal grandmother, in 1970.
Thomas
Spencer Carolan, presumably Michael's younger brother, was born near
Hatboro in Moreland in 1854. When
Thomas Spencer was 16-years-old, he lived with Michael in Abington
Township, Montgomery County, according to the 1870 census. Around
1880, he married Elizabeth Evans
(1854-1902), with British parentage. He ran
the carriage house and blacksmith shop for a large estate, said to be
part of Widener University, and bought a large house on the corner of
Washington Lane and Limekiln Pike. The house was not far from
where his brother Michael lived in Fitzwatertown in Montgomery County
and then Franklinville near Rising Sun Avenue in Philadelphia.
Thomas built and owned housing for other Irishmen along the Pike.
After Elizabeth died in 1902, Thomas
remarried Sarah Tobias, said to have been born in England.Thomas and Elizabeth's son, Harry Spencer (1892-1952) married Mary Elizabeth Hesson (1895-1970), around 1913. They had six children, several whom are still living. James Joseph Carolan (1932) is a professor of mathematics living in Wharton, Texas, and Ann Marie (1921) lives in Warminster, Pennsylvania.
Third from left, Thomas Spencer Carolan (1854-1915),
boy in foreground: Harry Spencer Carolan (1892-1952)
Limekiln Pike and Washington Lane, Philadelphia, "Helltown," 1894
Several hundred descendants of Thomas Carolan (1807-1870) from the Patrick Henry live in the United States today. We are at work tracing the family to a specific county in Ireland. Please email mcarolan@charter.net.
LIVERPOOL —
(except where
noted; bolded have passenger lists available through the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild
website)
Arrival Date Captain
5/27/1840 DELANO, JOSEPH C
9/27/1840 DELANO, JOSEPH C
1/16/1841 DELANO, JOSEPH C
5/24/1841 DELANO, JOSEPH C
9/24/1841 DELANO, JOSEPH C
2/3/1842 DELANO, JOSEPH C
5/28/1842 DELANO, JOSEPH C
9/24/1842 DELANO, JOSEPH C