The most prominent fact about American history is that the ancestors of everybody who lives in the U.S. initially came from someplace else. That includes even the Inuits and other Native Americans, whose forebears first crossed from Siberia to Alaska on a land bridge that now lies beneath the icy Bering Sea.
From its colonial beginnings, the history of America has mainly been the tale of how immigrants from the Old World dominated the New. The common characteristics of Irish migration to colonial America are obvious and comparatively undisputed: it was largely of Ulster origin; the mainstream sailed for the Hudson and Delaware valleys; and the departures peaked at three points: 1717-20, 1725-29, and throughout the nine years prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution. As such, when the passenger trade resumed after the Treaty of Paris (1783), it did so within structures that were well established and recognizable as well as down shipping lanes that were managed by money-making networks and families that often spanned the Atlantic.
(Faye E. Dudden) But the afterward migrants also sailed throughout a time of more coordinated passenger travel, while the agents who managed the business favored to engage paying passengers rather than indentured servants. Thus American independence not only redefined political relationships between the old and new worlds, but it also marked a restructuring of the traveler trade between Ireland and America. (Faye E. Dudden)
Disaster hit in 1845 when a vague fungus migrated to Ireland and consequently caused a roughly absolute collapse of the potato crop, which led to the biggest famine in Irish history. The potato, recognized in Ireland as "the only property of the poor," was destroyed, and the crop yielded 20% of its pre-famine years. Potatoes were consumed at almost every meal, as other foods were too costly.......
