Irish Origins and the Shaping of Immigrant Life in Savannah on the Eve of the Civil War

Abstract

WE DO NOT KNOW WHY CHARLES J. WHITE DID IT. Perhaps he was a particularly meticulous gentleman. Perhaps he was curious. Perhaps he anticipated the interests of future generations of historians. Perhaps he simply misunderstood his instructions. These directions, distributed to the thousands of census takers who began compiling the eighth decennial census in June 1860, directed White to record the state of birth for anyone born in the United States or the nation of birth for anyone born abroad. But White, a twentyeightyearold whose active support of the Democratic Party had likely led to his appointment as the deputy United States marshal for the southern district of Georgia, did not follow his instructions. If respondents told White that they were nativeborn Americans, he insisted on knowing their exact birthplace within their native state and duly recorded the information. If “Ireland” was the response he received, he asked in which of Ireland’s thirtytwo counties the immigrant had been born. This was the procedure White followed for every one of the 13,875 white inhabitants of Savannah (including 3,145 Irish immigrants) and the 705 free people of color he tallied in the summer of 1860. For Savannah’s 7,712 slaves, however, White did follow instructions, recording only their age, gender, skin color, and the name of the owner, not that of the slave. The Savannah census of 1860 is unique. In no other major American city did an antebellum census taker record such detailed birthplace data for all of its residents. Historians can therefore ask, and answer, a number of questions about the Irish in Savannah on the eve of the Civil War that they can for no other city. We can examine, for example, a question that for decades has puzzled historians on both sides of the Atlantic—from exactly where in Ireland did the immigrants who emigrated in the wake of the Great Potato Famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s originate? We can also consider the extent to which an immigrant’s Irish birthplace affected his or her employment opportunities. Finally, we can reconstruct