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My Great Childmother And Irish Grandmother

Decent Essays

As a fourth generation Irish citizen, my family emigrated from Ireland to the United States in approximately 1870, during the post-famine wave of Irish immigration. During this time, more females came to the new land without the fetters of a husband, seeking a better future for herself and marrying a man of whom has established himself in the U.S. In the case of my family, my great grandmother traversed the Atlantic on her own terms in search of a higher standard of living and ultimately an opportunity for advancement, marrying an established Irish man in Baltimore, eventually moving north to Philadelphia, where she and my great grandfather raised my grandmother and her four brothers. Interestingly enough, my great grandmother’s story is similar to that of many female Irish immigrants of her time. As previously stated, my grandmother immigrated to the United States during the post-famine wave of Irish immigration, which constituted for more female migration who married men with land in America. Despite this wave having considerably more single female migrants, many more men came to the U.S. than women in search of work. These men generally worked industrial jobs; building the transcontinental railroad, mining, and home-steading (Metress and Metress 2006, 9). Many women, such as my great grandmother, worked as either factory girls or maids, vastly improving the Irish’s visibility in society, and eventually their social status. Maintaining a presence and working alongside

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