Book One: Famine and Farewell, 1847 to 1858

Book One begins there, on the night before a young man sails.

The years, 1847 to 1858

Brigid O'Donnell keeps the letters. Her husband died of the fever in the spring of 1847, so it is Brigid alone, a widow in Ballycastle, who takes up the pen when her son Seán sails for New York that October. She is the first voice in the whole century of letters, and the one everyone who follows writes back to.

Three things from these years are worth knowing before you read them.

The American wake. The night before an emigrant left, the family and the townland gathered for a send-off that looked and felt like a funeral. There was music and dancing and food, and there was open grief, because the crossing was almost always a parting for life. They keened for the living. It is where the first letter opens.

Black '47 and the workhouses. The Ballina and Westport workhouses were built for a fraction of the people who now crowded them. Fever spread in the close quarters. To enter was often a last resort, and the letters name the neighbours who went in and did not come out.

The coffin ships and Castle Garden. The Atlantic crossing took weeks in the hold of an overcrowded ship, and enough died on the way that the vessels earned a grim nickname. In August 1855 New York opened Castle Garden, America's first proper immigration depot, which made the landing a little safer and a little kinder for those who followed Seán across.

The family in these years

Brigid writes to Seán as the harvests fail and slowly, painfully, begin to recover. A remittance arrives from New York, the first "American money," and it changes what is possible at home. The census of 1851 counts the cost in empty houses. By the last letter, eleven years have passed, and an older Brigid looks back across an ocean she will never cross.

Moments from the twelve letters

• October 1847. The American wake held for Seán, and the morning he walked to the road and did not turn back.
• August 1850. A few dollars folded inside a letter from New York, the first American money, and what it meant to a family with nothing.
• 1851. The census year, and Brigid counting the houses in the townland that stand empty now.
• August 1855. Word that Castle Garden has opened, an easier landing for the next of the parish to go.

Your county in Book One

The O'Donnells are the Mayo edition, the first written. Every county has its own edition and its own family, because the Famine and the road out fell differently on each county. Choose your county and Book One opens on its own townland, workhouse and emigrant port. See how the county personalisation works.