TIGHE, DANIEL & CATHERINE
Publication
28 February 2023Born, Lisonuffy Parish, Roscommon, Ireland, 1838. Died, Ste-Croix, QC, Canada, 1898.
Author: Mark McGowan
The stories of siblings Daniel and Catherine Tighe touch one of the greatest tragedies of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852). The Tighe children were among nearly 1,700 Famine orphans who arrived between 1847 and 1848 in the ports of Canada and New Brunswick. Daniel and Catherine were among five children born to Bernard Tighe and Mary Kelly, a tenant family tending to a few acres on the estate of Major Denis Mahon, at Strokestown, County Roscommon. When the potato crop in Ireland failed for the second consecutive year, in 1846, the Tighes were left destitute and unable to pay their rent. The family’s situation was made more desperate when Bernard died, leaving Mary to fend for her children alone and penniless.
Despite efforts to erect a soup kitchen, offer loans to his tenants, and distribute free maize to those in need, Major Mahon’s 12,000-acre estate could not sustain the more than 11,000 tenants who resided in its 62 townlands. Mahon inherited the estate in 1845, the first year of the blight, with a debt of £35,000 which hampered his efforts to improve lands and conditions at Strokestown. Upon the recommendation of his estate agent, John Ross Mahon (no relation), an emigration scheme was hatched. Tenants who volunteered to leave the estate and topple their cabins, would have their debt erased and would be compensated for their chattels, livestock, and other crops. Mahon would then provide free transportation and provisions from Strokestown to Liverpool, and then to Quebec, where it was anticipated they would begin new lives in Upper Canada (now Ontario). Mary Tighe opted for the scheme and joined her brother William Kelly, who took charge of the Tighe’s and joined them on board the Naomi, one of the four ships chartered by Mahon, to take 1,490 tenants (241 families) from Liverpool to Quebec.
The 56-day voyage of the Naomi across the Atlantic was terrifying. Nearly half of the ship’s 421 steerage passengers died at sea or in quarantine at Grosse Ile, Quebec. Of the 350 passengers on the Naomi from Mahon’s estate, 126 did not survive to see Quebec City. Decades later, Daniel recounted to his grandson Leo the tragedy of his passage, who related it to historian Marianna O’Gallagher: “In 1847, Mary, widow of Bernard Tighe, left Ireland with her five children and her younger brother… The voyage was a long nightmare of eight weeks. Drinking water ran low and food was reduced to one meal a day. Comfort and hygiene were non-existent. Typhus broke out on board, and the ship was ordered to stop at Grosse Île. Of Mary Tighe’s family, only two children survived: Daniel (12), and Catherine (9). When the children left the ship, they never saw the other family members again, nor did they have any word about them.” Daniel and Catherine were left alone in Quebec City.
Like other Irish orphans, the Society of Charitable Catholic Ladies of Quebec took the Tighes to their orphanage, where they were kept until placements could be found for them. Encouraged by the Archbishop of Quebec, local parish priests came to the orphanage and collected children to be “adopted” by families in their parish. Father Edward Faucher collected Daniel and Catherine, with eleven other children, and headed to Lotbinière, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, southwest of Quebec City. As he was depositing Daniel at the farm of a childless couple, François and Marie Coulombe, Catherine, fearing separation from her brother, put up such a commotion, that the Coulombes agreed to take them both. Daniel and Catherine laboured on the 168-acre farm, and when Daniel turned 18, the Coulombes had a notary prepare papers that would permit him to inherit the farm. Catherine remained with her brother for over fifteen years. She never married but left the farm to become housekeeper for Reverend E.P. Coté, and his elderly father at the nearby parish of Ste-Croix. She died in 1898.
Daniel never lost sense of his Irish heritage but quickly assimilated into French-Canadian rural society. He Frenchified his name to Tye, married Marie Virginie Labrecque, and took care of widowed François Coulombe. The Tyes had eleven children, three of whom, emigrated to California and set up businesses outside of Los Angeles. A fourth son, Alphonse remained on the farm and worked it with his father. During these years, and before his death in 1924, Daniel was able to impart the story of his emigration to his grandson Leo, who became the steward of the family’s Irish past. Leo imparted the story to his son Richard, who became the fourth Tye generation to work the farm. In 2013, Jim Callery, proprietor of the Strokestown Park National Famine Museum, invited Richard to come to Ireland for the “Gathering” of the diasporic Irish. Richard’s visit to Roscommon would bring the story of the Tighes full circle from their departure in 1847 to the homecoming 166 years later.
The stories of Daniel and Catherine Tighe represent the lives of so many Irish emigrants to Canada who lived ordinary lives without garnering much public attention or recognition. Their experience as surviving Famine orphans, however, was extraordinary, when compared to hundreds of other children who landed in Quebec. Famine orphans were never adopted because no legal adoption existed in British North America. Siblings were often separated; orphans were simply placed in French Canadian and Irish homes where they were used as domestic workers and manual labourers. Rarely was it reported to census takers that these children were considered family members. Some married into Quebecois families, but most fled their placement at the first opportunity, seeking better lives elsewhere in Canada or the United States. Daniel and Catherine, however, remained sedentary, contributed to their communities, and, in Daniel’s case, raised children and grandchildren who appeared to be French-Canadian, but never lost a sense of their Irish roots.
Further Reading
Jason King, “Remember your Soul and Your Liberty: Childhood Memories of the Tighe and Quinn Famine Orphans,” in Mark G McGowan, Jason King, and Christine Kinealy, eds., Hunger and Hope: The Irish Famine Migration from Strokestown, Roscommon, in 1847. Cork: Cork University Press, and Hamden CT: Quinnipiac University Press, 2023.
Mark G. McGowan, “Rethinking the Irish Famine Orphans in Quebec, 1847-1848,” in Christine Kinealy, Jason King, and Gerrard Moran, eds., Children and the Great Hunger in Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, and Hamden CT: Quinnipiac University Press, 2018.
Marianna O’Gallagher, “The Orphans of Grosse Île: Canada and the adoption of Irish Famine Orphans, 1847-48”, in Patrick O’Sullivan (ed), The Irish World Wide: The Meaning of the Famine, 5 vols, London and Washington: Leicester University Press, 1997.