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The first Irish immigrants came to this country the 1700's, and were Scots-Irish, or Scottish people who immigrated and settled in Ireland. These people were relatively well off, and were mostly men seeking to make a name for themselves in this new world.
The next and larger wave came throughout the 1800's. This trend grew from the terrible living conditions and level of poverty in Ireland at the time. It reached it’s peak starting in 1845 and lasting approximately six years. This point of Irish history is known as the potato famine. At the time, Ireland’s economy relied mostly on agriculture, more specifically potatoes. Most poor Irish families were potato farmers, and would live off diets consisting almost completely of potato’s, which was possible due to their abundance of protein carbohydrates and vitamin C. Starting in 1845 there was a terrible blight that inflicted almost all of northern and eastern Ireland, killing off the crop of potato’s, and leaving families with no food, or crops to sell for money to buy food. Over the next six years about 1,000,000 Irish peasants died, and another 1,000,000 fled to other countries, such as the United States.
Most Irish immigrants settled in New York, as after arriving here they had little money to go elsewhere. Once they were here however, the living conditions were awful. They took the worst paying, most dangerous jobs, and smallest houses with no heat or running water, which cause them to resort to alcoholism, violence, and crime.
In the infamous slum of New York known as “The Five Points” the first documented American gang was formed. They called themselves the Forty Thieves. They used a grocery store as a cover front to sell moonshine and stolen goods. After the Forty Thieves were founded, Irish Gangs popped up all over the slums of New York, along with other cities that had received a lot of immigration, such as Boston, and Philadelphia.
These gangs were the backbone behind city Politian’s, and were used in many incidents to get Irish Politian’s elected to office. From here, the Irish used their stereotyped gift of eloquence to further their political careers, and to this day we have many Irish Politian’s in office and in our history.
My great-great-great grandfather left Ireland for Montreal during the Potato famine, in the second wave of Irish Immigration. They were potato farmers in Ireland, after moving to this country they were… potato farmers. My great-grandfather, Patrick Windle, was the only male sibling in a family with many children. This meant of course, that the farm would fall in to his hands. However, he had a different idea of what he wanted to do with his life. To escape the fate of farming he ran away at the age of 14, and hitchhiked his way from Montreal to New York, where he got a job in the business world. He was a salesman when he met his future wife. Unfortunately, she died giving birth to my grandfather. Patrick Windle raised my grandfather, Ed Windle, on his own - which was practically unheard of for a man in the early 1900’s – until Ed was four years old when he married the woman my mother calls grandma. He worked as a salesman and managed to send my grandfather to college. However, he dropped out to enlist in the military during World War II. He was actually turned down by the military, on account of his poor vision, and reliance on glasses. This did not deter him, he obtained a copy of the military eye chart, memorized it, and went back to enlist this time passing the vision test with flying colors. After getting out of the war he met my grandmother, who was Welsh. They settled down in the New York area, and had four kids including my mother Susan Windle.
