The Doyle / Connaughtons of Kiltulla, The Great Famine and the Land War

At the beginning of the Great Famine in Ireland, around 1845, Ireland had a population of about 8 Million people, of whom two-thirds depended on agriculture to make a living.  Almost all the land was owned by English aristocracy who were absentee landlords, relying on agents to collect annual rents from mostly poor Catholic tenants.  Most of these tenant farmers could only afford small farms, hoping to grow enough crops to survive.  65% of these farms were less than 15 acres with more than a third of those being less than five acres.  At the time, the only available crop that could possibly be grown profitably on such small farms was the potato.  In good years, the potato was a staple food but was also used as fodder for farm animals, either sold to ranchers or to fatten the family pigs.  When the potato blight hit for several years in a row, farmers didn’t have enough food to feed their family, much less to sell any potatoes to ranchers or to pay their rents.  Landlords had their agents enforce the payment of rents as best they could but demanded eviction for those who could not pay in full.  It is estimated that a half million people were evicted between 1845 and 1854 with many more “voluntarily” giving up their farms.  With no income or roof over their heads they starved or were sent to workhouses which were basically prisons for poor people who had to earn their keep.  If they could raise enough money for passage, they emigrated from Ireland with England, Scotland, Wales, America, Canada and Australia taking in almost a quarter of Ireland’s population.  It should also be noted, with sadness, that despite the famine, Ireland was still a net exporter of foodstuff during most the famine years, primarily to meet English demands.

For those farmers that stayed and managed to survive, there wasn’t suddenly any cheap land on the market.  The aristocracy just consolidated these recovered lands into large grazing ranches and brought in people to manage new herds.  The tenants were still stuck on their tiny, unsustainable, rented farms.  Between 1854 and the next time a blight hit the potato crops in 1879, many farmers were agitating for land reform. In the late 1870’s, the Irish National Land League was formed to try to abolish the tenant system and allow farmers to own their land.  In the late 1890’s the United Irish League (UIL) was formed as a political party with the principal aim to compel large grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution to the small Irish farmers, particularly in the fertile areas they exclusively held in west central Ireland around Galway and Roscommon.

Although the UIL was a political party, they also fought for farmers’ rights through agitation, boycotts and demonstrations.  Throughout the UIL’s existence, until a younger, more militant splinter group, Sinn Féin, overtook it, the UIL had a strong following in the small parish of Kiltulla, Galway.  That is where the Galvins, Connors, Connaughtons and Doyles lived… and sometimes “agitated”. 

Michael Doyle, a second cousin of my great-grandmother Mary Ann Galvin [Michael (1852-1937) was the grandson of William Connaughton and son of Mary Connaughton (1819-1891) and Patrick Doyle (1808-1879)] had a price put on his head by the English and was eventually caught and imprisoned in Wales.  Newspaper reports also mention Kiltulla residents William Connaughton, T. Connor and J. Galvin having attended their massive rallies.

Even though Uncle Larry was on our Smith side, he would have been very proud.