HTW Live: Busting the Myths of Irish Immigration — Recorded at the Tenement Museum

Summary

HISTORY This Week — Live: Busting the Myths of Irish Immigration

Recorded at the Tenement Museum
Host: Sally Helm
Guest: Tyler Anbinder, historian and author of Plentiful Country
Date: March 16, 2026

Brief Overview

This special live episode of HISTORY This Week, recorded at New York’s Tenement Museum, explores the real story behind Irish immigration during the Great Potato Famine. Host Sally Helm interviews historian Tyler Anbinder about his groundbreaking book Plentiful Country, which challenges long-held beliefs about the so-called “Famine Irish.” Together, they dive into new research that paints a more nuanced and hopeful picture of Irish immigrant life, upward mobility, and their lasting influence on American identity.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Myth of the “Famine Irish”

• Conventional Narrative: Irish immigrants from the famine era are perceived as universally destitute, uneducated, trapped permanently at the bottom of American society, and socially immobile.
  • Anbinder: “The widely held belief about the Famine Irish was that they come to America so poor, so uneducated, so discriminated against... they are stuck at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder for their whole lives.” [09:02]
• Challenging the Myth: Anbinder’s research, particularly the newly available records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, reveals many Irish immigrants achieved significant upward mobility, with only about a quarter remaining in manual labor jobs by the end of their lives.
  • Anbinder: “By the end of their adult lives, probably only a quarter of the Famine Irish are still doing manual labor, like O’Donnell. So about half the people who start out as day laborers have moved up the ladder.” [13:13]

The Potato Famine and Flight from Ireland

• Potato Famine Overview: By the 1840s, half of Ireland’s population relied solely on potatoes. The arrival of a devastating blight led to catastrophic starvation and mass emigration.
  • Anbinder: “Ireland was so poor by the 1840s that about half the population ate nothing but potatoes.” [14:35]
  • Impact: Approximately 1 million died, and another 1.5 million emigrated—many to America.
• Who Emigrated?:
  • Not the absolutely poorest, but the lower-middle classes, as travel required money and surviving relatives.
  • Anbinder: “The poorest people in Ireland aren’t coming to America... it’s really kind of the Irish middle to lower-middle-class people...” [16:43]

Arrival in New York: Myths and Realities

• No Ellis Island Yet: Immigrants simply walked off ships onto Manhattan’s docks; health checks targeted only visibly ill passengers, who were sent to Staten Island quarantine. [19:56]
• Nativist Sentiment: The Famine Irish encountered intense anti-Catholic hostility, but the Know-Nothings (anti-immigrant party) did not demand limits on migration due to America’s labor needs. [20:35]
  • Anbinder: “...even the Know Nothings never said we should limit immigration or stop immigration.” [20:45]
• Cultural Integration: Irish immigrants established cultural traditions in their neighborhoods (e.g., dance halls, music, and new sports).
  • Anbinder: “Tap dance is invented supposedly in Five Points by Irish and African Americans living side by side and kind of showing off their best dance move. And combining that.” [22:10]

Research Breakthroughs: The Immigrant Savings Bank

• Methodology: Anbinder used digitized census data and the highly detailed records from the Emigrant Savings Bank, which required extensive personal information for identification. [24:07–25:39]
• Historical Detective Work: This granular data allowed tracking individuals and family outcomes, revealing that many Irish immigrants moved up the social and economic ladder.
  • Anbinder: “Literally, my database was about 8,000 people... that was the way in which I came up with the stories that went into the book and... the extent of upward mobility was much more than we had imagined.” [26:01]

Economic Ladder of Irish Immigrants

• Rungs of Mobility (as outlined by Anbinder):
  1. Day Laborers (lowest)
  2. Peddlers (controversially placed above laborers; many did surprisingly well financially and often later opened businesses) [27:44–28:34]
  3. Skilled Artisans (watchmakers, craftsmen—ex. Jonathan Dillon, watchmaker for Abraham Lincoln) [29:33–32:39]
  4. White-Collar Workers
  5. Business Owners
  6. Saloon Keepers (most successful among famine Irish; key community leaders and political connectors) [33:59–36:02]
• Saloon Keepers’ Importance: Not just barkeeps—they served as social and political power-brokers in their neighborhoods.
  • Anbinder: “Saloon keepers are respected in the neighborhood... in a way the most respected people in the neighborhood, even more so than the Catholic priests.” [35:28]

Notable Life Stories

• Bartholomew O’Donnell:
  • Immigrant laborer who became a local celebrity by staging long-distance walking feats but remained poor—his story is typical of many who did not “rise.” [03:24–07:18]
• Barney Woods:
  • Rose from immigrant laborer to saloon keeper to tenement owner and entrepreneur, exemplifying the possibility of upward mobility. [36:10–37:03]
• Jonathan Dillon:
  • Watchmaker who inscribed a message inside Abraham Lincoln’s watch, later confirmed by the Smithsonian—illustrating how even “ordinary” immigrants have brushings with history. [29:33–32:39]

Defining the American Dream

• Irish as Archetype: The Famine Irish changed how Americans thought about “making it” in America, helping shift the American Dream from group-specific to universal.
  • Anbinder: “They become proud of that. They’re like, we’re that great that even these impoverished, ignorant Irish can succeed. And so I feel like that’s a really important building block in kind of finishing the edifice of the American dream.” [38:13]

Lessons for Today

• On Immigration Myths and Policy:
  • The Irish were once seen as outsiders, yet they became integral to American culture—a reminder against assuming new immigrants “can’t become Americans.”
  • Anbinder: “Even though the Irish seem as American as any other group today... 150 years ago, people didn’t think that at all.” [39:37]

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The people who lived in Five Points had a lot more money in their bank accounts than I expected. And I couldn’t figure out why that was...” — Tyler Anbinder [09:35]
• “You die all the time in New York, especially if you’re coming from the Irish countryside where you haven’t been exposed to a lot of communicable diseases.” — Tyler Anbinder [13:13]
• “It is a wooden contraption with a handle... that you use to carry heavy things up ladders. Everything you see on a construction site today that is moved by machinery was moved in 1850s New York by an Irish immigrant with a hod on his shoulder...” [12:46]
• “Tap dance is invented supposedly in Five Points by Irish and African Americans living side by side and kind of showing off their best dance move.” — Tyler Anbinder [22:10]
• “Almost everybody has fifteen minutes of fame. And thanks to the digitization of all these New York newspapers, you can find so many of those minutes of fame of these immigrants in ways that... I never ever would have believed.” — Tyler Anbinder [32:45]
• Barack Obama’s quote: “The Irish did more than help build America. They helped to sharpen the idea of America, the notion that no matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is in this country, you can make it.” [37:05]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:07–08:34: Introduction and Bartholomew O’Donnell’s story; context for the “Famine Irish” myth
• 08:34–14:08: Busting myths with Tyler Anbinder; why it matters
• 14:08–17:52: The Potato Famine’s devastation and who actually emigrated
• 19:26–23:35: Entry into America: Lack of processing, attitudes toward Irish immigrants, nativism, and cultural integration
• 24:07–27:20: Historical method: Tracing Irish upward mobility with Emigrant Savings Bank records
• 27:20–33:06: The six-rung job ladder, focusing on peddlers and skilled artisans (Jonathan Dillon’s Lincoln watch story)
• 33:59–36:02: The role and prestige of saloon keepers
• 36:10–38:13: Saloon keepers as community leaders; Barney Woods’ story
• 38:13–39:20: How the Famine Irish helped define the “American Dream”
• 39:20–40:28: Lessons for present-day immigration debates
• 40:28–end: Closing applause and gratitude

---

Conclusion — Takeaways for Listeners

• The history of Irish immigration is richer and more complex than persistent myths suggest; many Irish immigrants succeeded despite facing extreme prejudice and hardship.
• Historical research, enabled by digitized records, uncovers individual stories of resilience—reminding listeners that the “American Dream” was proven by the Irish experience and can apply to all newcomers.
• Attitudes toward immigrants have always been fraught, but the arc of integration and achievement is surprisingly consistent across generations—a vital lesson in today’s immigration debates.

Transcript

[A]

One thing you learn pretty quickly making history this week is that the quality of work lives or dies with the people behind it. Research, editing, sound design. Every role matters, and hiring the wrong person slows everything down. If I had to hire someone for the show tomorrow, I wouldn't want to dig through a pile of resumes that sort of fit. I'd want someone with the right experience who actually understands what we do and can jump in right away. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs Hiring Indeed is all you need. Sponsored Jobs help your posts get seen by quality candidates who meet your specific criteria skills, certifications, location so you're matching with people who can actually drive results. Here's a stat worth paying attention. Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you only pay for results. It's a smart boost. Wherever you need to find quality talent. Spend less time researching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it [e-mail] htw just go to indeed.com htw right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com HTW terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with Indeed.

[B]

Father. Or should I call you Steve? Since it's a new year, maybe we should start cooking fresh with fewer smoke alarms this time. Your cooking's improving, but I can see the stress in your eyes. Anna's mom used this Blue Apron assemble and Bake thing during our playdate. Pre chopped ingredients, over 40 grams of protein and just one pan to clean up. She just tossed it in the oven and boom plating like she's got followers. So go to blueapron.com Steve make 2026 the year you win dinner. Blue Apron get $50 off your first two orders. Free shipping with code stir 50 terms and conditions apply. Visit blueypring.com terms for more.

[A]

The History Channel Original Podcast Hey History

[C]

this week, listeners, this week we have something special for you. It is our first ever live event, which was recorded at the Tenement Museum on New York City's Lower east side. It is a conversation between me and historian Tyler Annbinder about his book Plentiful country, which explores the lives of Irish immigrants who came to New York during the Great Potato Famine. So after our opening scene, you'll hear something A little different. I loved this conversation with Tyler and I think you will too. History this week, March 18th, 1879. I'm Sally Helm. A crowd has gathered around an indoor track in Brooklyn to witness something extraordinary. A man named Bartholomew o' Donnell has promised that he is going to pull off a bizarre feat of strength. He is going to walk 80 miles on this track in the next 20, 26 hours. He'll start promptly at 8pm and finish tomorrow at 10 in the evening.

[D]

It's not a super long track, so

[C]

he'll have to circle it 2,240 times. And not only that, as the newspapers have been eagerly reporting, Bartholomew O' Donnell is 80 years.

[D]

The gathered spectators are pretty sure that he's not going to be able to do it.

[C]

But when the clock strikes eight, they cheer and old Bartholomew o' Donnell starts walking. Bartholomew has a secret. He is not in fact 80 years old. As he has been telling the newspapers, he's probably in his early 60s. But he needed to drum up some excitement for this stunt because Bartholomew o' Donnell needs some cash. He's been doing manual labor and odd jobs in New York City for the past 30 years. He first arrived in January 1849 as an Irish immigrant fleeing the great Potato famine. His family moved to Five Points, an overcrowded slum in lower Manhattan packed with other Irish immigrants. And they took up residence in a notorious the Old Brewery. One newspaper called it the wickedest house on the wickedest street that ever existed in New York and possibly all the world. Thirty years later, Bartholomew has made it out of the Old Brewery. He's been providing for his family, but. But things are still tough. And this winter, as construction work grinds to a standstill, he decides to try something different. And he's heard about this sport that is actually a big phenomenon in the US at this time. It's called pedestrianism. It's basically just long distance speed walking. The top pedestrians are international celebrities. At the most famous tournament, the prize money is the equivalent of about $800,000 today. Now, Bartholomew O' Donnell can't compete at that level. He is not a young man, but he knows how to spin a good story. So he decides to become the octogenarian pedestrian. That's what the newspapers started calling him after his first speedwalking attempt about a month ago in February, he spread the lie that he was this 80 year old attempting to walk this long distance. He sold tickets and it didn't work out.

[D]

With just under two hours left on

[C]

the clock, he still had 13 miles to go. So he gave up. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, with much regret and much against his will. Ticket sales didn't even cover the cost of the venue. But today, March 18th.

[D]

Today is different.

[C]

By now, he is a local celebrity. Reporters from Manhattan have come down to see his second attempt. Another Irish immigrant has offered to let him use this social hall for free. And Bartholomew is flying around the track. He's smoking a pipe between laps. I'm also sipping scalding hot tea brewed by his wife Jane.

[D]

And whatever he's doing, it's working.

[C]

By noon on March 19, he's completed 45 miles. And by 9:30pm, half an hour ahead of his deadline, he completes his 2,240th lap with energy to spare. The New York Times reports, after leaving the track, he danced an Irish reel, stepping as lightly as if he were 40 years younger.

[D]

Of course, that reporter doesn't know that

[C]

Bartholomew is in fact younger than advertised. He's been weathered by a life of hardship and he gets away with the lie. But his accomplishment does not bring the financial windfall he'd hoped for. Bartholomew o' Donnell remains poor, living in a crowded Brooklyn tenement with his daughter Margaret until his death in 1889. For nearly a century, historians have thought of this kind of story as typical of the Famine Irish. They've been seen as a generation trapped at the bottom of American society, no matter how hard they tried to get ahead. But newly accessible evidence recovers more details about the lives these immigrants lived and tells a more complicated story. Today, a conversation with historian Tyler Annbinder about how to see these long ago lives more clearly. How did Tyler use novel research methods to uncover Irish immigrant stories? And how did the Famine Irish shape America's sense of itself? Hello, everyone.

[D]

Welcome back to the present here. Tyler, first of all, hello.

[E]

Hi. Thanks so much for having me. It was great to hear something. It's very rare that an author gets something from one of their books made to come alive like that. So that was really thrilling to hear.

[D]

Your book is in many ways a myth busting book. You're looking at this sort of gloomy story that has been told about the Famine Irish for many years. We're going to bust the myth. But tell me the myth.

[E]

Well, the myth, and maybe myth is even too strong a term, but certainly the widely held belief about the Famine Irish was that they come to America so poor, so uneducated, so discriminated against once they get here that they are stuck at the bottom of America's socioeconomic ladder. For their whole lives, that they are kind of unique in America in that they just didn't have any chance for socioeconomic upward mobility. And that was the story that historians had told about them ever since historians had started writing about the Famine Irish. And I didn't actually start out intending to bust that myth. My intention was just to tell the story of the Famine Irish. And so I was actually surprised. In fact, in my first book, that's kind of tenement museum adjacent about Five Points, I perpetuated the myth. I said this was this terrible neighborhood and everybody was poor, and they stayed poor. Although then at the very end of doing the research on the book, the records of the Immigrant Savings bank, which was this bank in New York that was open just for Irish immigrants, those records came open in 1999. And I went to look at them, and I found that the people who lived in Five Points had a lot more money in their bank accounts than I expected. And I couldn't figure out why that was. But the book was going to press, and so I. I changed a few paragraphs, maybe a few concluding sentences in a few paragraphs. And then I said, I'll have to think about this later. And my intention was just to write an article. But then it eventually turned into a whole book.

[D]

Once you discovered that the myth was a myth or that the story wasn't what you had thought, why did it feel important to clarify?

[E]

On the one hand, it was just because when you're a historian, you find something people are getting wrong, you want them to get it right. That's like a thing. But then I also thought it was really relevant today, because every generation of Americans tends to look at the current generation of immigrants and say, they're completely different than any other immigrant group we've ever had. They can't succeed like my grandparents succeeded, like all the other immigrants succeeded. And so I thought the fact that the Famine Irish were looked at that way and that they succeeded despite all those obstacles really tells us something about not just the Irish, but immigrants in America generally.

[D]

We started today by getting to know Bartholomew o', Donnell, and I want to bring him up right away again, because his life story is that story that historians had repeated. He starts as a laborer in New York City. He ends his life in a pretty similar situation. Why was it also important to include those stories in the book?

[E]

You know, sometimes when people write books that are kind of going against the generally told story, they go too far the other way. And so I thought it was really important to give the whole Story, which is that there are plenty of people like Bartholomew o' Donnell, who never really does improve his status. He's always living kind of pay envelope to pay envelope right to the very end of his life. And so I thought it was really important to not deny that there are tens of thousands of stories like that among the famine Irish, too. I wanted to tell the whole story, not merely the news story.

[D]

What are kind of the percentages? How many people were able to make a climb through the ranks and how many weren't?

[E]

About Half the famine immigrants, when they get to New York or wherever they're going in America, are starting out in day labor jobs, manual labor jobs, jobs that require no training at all, just that you show up and that you have a strong back and you're willing to wield a pickaxe or a shovel or a hod. So about half the famine immigrants.

[D]

Wait, sorry, what's a hod?

[E]

Ah, a hod is this. It's hard to. Like I could show the people here, but then the. So it is. It is a wooden contraption with a handle on it that you put on your shoulder and that you use to carry heavy things up ladders. Everything you see on a construction site today that is moved by machinery was moved in 1850s New York by an Irish immigrant with a hod on his shoulder climbing up rickety wooden ladders.

[D]

Wow.

[E]

All the brick buildings in this neighborhood, for example, the bricks would have been carried up ladders by Irish immigrants, and the mortar would have been carried up ladders in those hods by the Irish immigrants to the skilled masons who would then put up the walls. So about half the Irish men start in that kind of work after about 10 to 20 years in America, those who are still alive, because keep in mind, there's no antibiotics, there's no antivirals. You die all the time in New York, especially if you're coming from the Irish countryside where you haven't been exposed to a lot of communicable diseases. But by the end of their adult lives, probably only a quarter of the famine Irish are still doing manual labor, like o'. Donnell. So about half the people who start out as day laborers and have moved up the ladder to some extent, and that's usually within 10 or so years.

[D]

I do feel like, to understand this ladder climb that we're talking about and what happened to these immigrants once they arrived in New York, we do need to talk about the potato famine, because to my mind, it's sort of one of those phrases that people have heard like in their middle school social studies class. And you maybe just sort of gloss over it in your mind, like, oh, the Irish potato famine. And so I'd love for you to really remind us, what was this potato blight and what impact did it have in Ireland?

[E]

Ireland was so poor by the 1840s that about half the population ate nothing but potatoes. Potatoes for breakfast, potatoes for lunch, potatoes for dinner. And that's because their farms were so tiny, because the island was so overpopulated, that if you have only a half an acre, a half an acre of potatoes will feed your family a lot more than a half acre of anything else. So then when this mysterious blight comes with the seed potatoes that come from the Americas, it's kind of a fungus like disease, and it destroys the crop. The plants that are above the ground start rotting. You pull the potatoes out of the ground and you hope maybe these will be okay. And they look okay initially, but within a few weeks, they rot. And so there is all these people who have nothing to eat.

[D]

And do they have a sense of why? Like, do they know why the potato plants are suddenly dying?

[E]

No, they have no idea. And so you have starvation. You know, it's famous, the fact that there's still being food exported from Ireland during the famine because there are farmers who are growing things like oatmeal, and they sell that to England. And so it's not as if there had to be mass starvation. It's kind of a decision made by the English that this is God's will. Ireland's overpopulated. This will teach them a Protestant work ethic. All these things factor into why the English decide we're not going to do anything. And then the world outcry is so great after 18 months of this that they actually open soup kitchens. And the soup kitchens stop the starvation. But then after nine months of soup kitchens, the English decide, we gotta teach the Irish to get back on their own feet. So they closed the soup kitchens, and the starvation returns. And so in those first couple years, about a million of the 8 million Irish inhabitants die and another million and a half come to America. It's really hard to convey what was happening to these Irish bodies. And the thing that was used to describe them always was walking skeletons.

[D]

So some people were able to make it out of that horrifying situation. Who actually made it from Ireland to the United States.

[E]

That's one of the most interesting things I found in the book, is that the poorest people in Ireland aren't coming to America during the famine because they're too sick, they're dying. Plus, it's expensive to come to America. The voyage on the ship takes five weeks and you have to bring your own food. And so someone who's starving doesn't have the money to buy five weeks worth of food. So it's really kind of the Irish middle to low lower middle class people who are working people and they're doing okay, but their savings is starting to go down. And as the famine goes on, they're like, I don't want to stay here because I could turn out like them. Who knows how long this will last? Because even if they're like a shoemaker, their customers are dying. And if they're a farmer, their crops are failing year after year. So it's kind of more of a middle class immigration than we realize. But to Americans who are so wealthy, the Irish middle class, having been through a few years of famine, look terribly poor. So when they get here, the Americans say, oh, Ireland's sending us the poorest of their poor. But that's not really the case.

[F]

Hey, Sal. Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.

[D]

Buy your car today on Carvana.

[E]

Delivery fees may apply.

[B]

It is not hard to destroy a college.

[G]

Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more.

[E]

And now Campus Files is back for another season.

[F]

There's a guy screaming into his phone.

[E]

He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk

[D]

get assassinated right in front of me.

[E]

Every week is a new episode and a new story. It was so chaotic, it's almost like

[D]

a university under siege.

[G]

Listen to and follow Campus Files, available now wherever you get your podcasts. She loves it hot, he loves it cool. The Pod by eight Sleep is a smart mattress cover that fits on your bed and keeps each side at the perfect temperature all night long. By staying comfortably warm or cool, the pod helps you sleep deeper and wake up feeling more rested. Every morning, you get daily health insights and a sleep fitness score. Get up to $350. Off with code DEEP [e-mail].

[C]

Welcome back to history. This week live, let's pick up discussing what exactly it looked like to immigrate to New York City in this era, the mid-1800s.

[D]

Well, I'll say one thing that surprised me in your book is that Ellis island was not open when the Famine Irish arrived. So you write that the ships arrived in New York and people just kind of walked off the ships and straight into the city. There was no big checkpoint. There was no, you know, you didn't have to talk to an official.

[E]

So in the 1840s and early 50s, the ship would just go up to whatever dock it wanted to go to on the east river and people walked off the ship. And that was how you entered America. The only thing that happened was when the ship was still in the Narrows, a doctor would come on board and do a cursory look for anyone who looked really sick. And if you looked really sick, they took you to Staten Island.

[F]

And

[E]

yeah, as you can imagine, the Staten Islanders didn't like that. They took you to Staten island and either you died there and they buried you or you got better and then they let you come to Manhattan and that was how that worked. Was there another part to your question? No.

[D]

I wondered, were there efforts to keep the Famine Irish out? You said there was a sense, oh, they're sending the poorest of the poor. Were people kind of lobbying to say, let the Famine Irish come here?

[E]

No. And that's one of the most interesting things. So this is the period of the Know Nothing Party, the most successful anti immigrant political movement in American history. And even the Know Nothings never said we should limit immigration or stop immigration. Now, of course, the United States at that point had under 30 million people and the territory was about the same size as today. And so even Know Nothing said the country is huge, we need lots of people. You know, it's after the Civil War you start getting the first movements that limit anyone and that's the Chinese.

[D]

What were the kind of prevailing attitudes towards the Famine Irish when they landed in America?

[E]

The prevailing attitudes were not good in the sense that America is overwhelmingly Protestant at this point. Right. More than 90% Protestant. And so having a million and a half Catholics kind of dumped as Americans saw it in the United States was horrifying to them. It goes from the extreme of the nativists who said this is going to ruin America, that Catholics can't become good citizens. And then others just found it scary in terms of poverty. The United States had never had such apparently impoverished immigrants, though, as we talked about, they're not as impoverished as they appeared. So there's a lot of discrimination, there's a lot of vile thoughts and vile words about their Catholicism.

[D]

What was the sort of anti Catholic they can't become good citizens. What was the argument there? What were they saying?

[E]

The argument was and is that they have a foreign allegiance and that even if they swear allegiance to the United States, you can't trust them because Catholics will always put the Pope above everything else and their religion above everything else. The same thing you find after 9, 11, same thing said about Muslim immigrants that you can never trust them. Same thing was said about the Irish. You know, the immigrants bring everything to America. I talk in my Five Points book about how tap dance is invented supposedly in Five Points by Irish and African Americans living side by side and kind of showing off their best dance move. And combining that sports was a big thing that also was brought. And that's part of why, you know, native born Americans are alarmed. They're like, why aren't they becoming Americans? And they forget that their own parents or grandparents brought their stuff to America too. And that assimilation is a very slow process. Not the kind of thing that happens overnight like a lot of people expect or want.

[D]

Are there specific places where that kind of recreation is happening? Is it just in people's homes or are there like dance halls or.

[E]

Oh, dance halls everywhere. A dance hall might be a space that's 12 by 15ft and you put your fiddler in the corner, you'd have a bar over here. And then, you know, you could have 12 or 15 people dancing and that's your dance hall in your tenement.

[D]

One thing that you do so beautifully in the book is show what happened once they arrived in the US and that's where you're able to figure out that this myth is a myth and show that people were able to rise up the ladder. But you had to sort of do some historical sleuthing to figure all that out because there maybe were six Bartholomew o' Donnells who arrived in New York around the same time. You used these sort of novel methods on these newly released sources from the Emigrant Savings bank to do this work. So tell me a little bit about that. How did you have to piece these

[E]

stories together to give you a sense of what we're dealing with here? There would not have been six, there would have been 60 or maybe 600. Bartholomew abode. Wow, okay. That's what you're dealing with. So the reason nobody in the past could really track the famine Irish and see how they did was because if you've ever looked at Irish immigrant names, right? So men are all Patrick and Michael and Bartholomew and The women are all Marys and Margarets and Elizabeths and then their surnames, you know, so many Sullivans and Murphys. And so for every name there are literally hundreds of, you know, there are probably several thousand Patrick Murphy's in the United States who come just in the five years of the potato famine. You know, one person I looked up was Peter lynch. And I found there were 30 Peter Lynches born in Ireland right about the time in the 1820s that would have brought them here in the 1840s during the potato famine. But what I was able to take advantage of was the digitization revolution that has brought about Ancestry.com and things like that. So for one thing, I can look at the census records and find all, you know, 60 or 600 Bartholomew O' Donnells or 60 Peter Lynch's. The other thing that was part of that digitization was ancestry.com buys all sorts of records. And one thing they bought were the records of this immigrant Savings bank that I mentioned before. And the Immigrant Savings bank was really worried that with so many Patrick Murphys and Mary Kelly's in New York that they might give someone's money to the wrong person.

[D]

They had this problem back then.

[E]

They did. And so when you open an account at the immigrant bank, they required you to give them all sorts of very detailed biographical information, including your maiden name, your mother's maiden name, exactly where in Ireland you were born, the names of all your brothers and sisters in their birth order, the names of your children in their birth order.

[D]

It's like a captcha thing or like a mother's maiden name question.

[E]

No, the Emigrant Savings bank was literally the first business we know of to use mother's maiden name as an identity test. And so they used that when you came to get your money to prove that you were really who you said you were. But that was a great resource for me because then I could look at all the Bartholomew Donalds and say, okay, the one who opened this bank account when he lived, he actually lived not so far south of here in the fourth ward is the same one who lives in Brooklyn in 1870 and Brooklyn in 1880, because I know his kids names and their birth order and they're still living with him and in 1870 and 1880, and his wife is still with him. And so in that way I'm able to know that the Bartholomew O' Donnell who lived in the Old Brewery tenement in 1850 is the Bartholomew O' Donnel who walked around the track, you know, 30 years later, that process several thousand Times over. Literally, my database was about 8,000 people. Was the way in which I came up with the stories that went into the book. And then the data that allowed me to see the extent of upward mobility Was much more than we had imagined.

[D]

So you organize the second part of the book around that upward mobility. You have this six rung ladder of jobs. You know, we've actually talked a little bit about rung number one, which is the laborers. That's where Bartholomew o' donnell started and ended his life. So given that, why don't we start with rung number two? Tell me about the peddlers. If you were a little bit above laborer, you were a peddler, what would life have been like?

[E]

This is one of the more initially controversial things I said. By ranking peddlers above day laborers. Because most historians said, well, peddling, that's an occupation of last resort. That's what you do when you're super desperate. But this is where the bank records were so interesting. Cause there were hundreds and hundreds of peddlers who had accounts at the immigrant savings bank. The peddlers have a lot of money in their accounts. And I don't mean just a little more than the day laborers. And that's why I put them second. But they have more money than the skilled workers. And they have more money than most white collar workers. And they have just about the same amount of money as people who run brick and mortar businesses. With the exception of saloon keepers. Saloon keepers are earning the most.

[D]

We're gonna get to that.

[E]

And so that's why I rank them above. And yet there's Their jobs are. You know, you look, on the surface, they don't seem like much.

[D]

And so they're selling goods in the street.

[E]

They make that much money in a couple of ways. So first, you know, a big business in an irish neighborhood where so many people are dying of these untreatable diseases, Is you buy the clothes from the widow who's like, how am I gonna make ends meet? Oh, you're here to give me a few dollars from my husband's clothes. Great. And then you go to the next tenement and you say, here's some clothes. Wouldn't you like to buy them? And you double or triple the price that you paid the bereaved widow for them. And so if you're entrepreneurial, if you've got a good business sense, you can make a lot of money as a peddler. And about half the peddlers end up opening brick and mortar shops in the end because they do so well. But even those who don't have a lot more money in their bank accounts than almost every kind of Irish immigrant.

[D]

Okay, so we have the day laborers. Controversially, peddlers are second. And then we have the skilled artisan class. You have an amazing anecdote about one particular watchmaker in the book, Jonathan Dillon, who fixes the watch of a very important person in the country. Can you just tell me about him and about that watch?

[E]

Jonathan Dillon comes from County Wexford, which is a relatively prosperous part of Ireland. His family, you know, like so many of these famine immigrants, is well off. They own a jewelry shop in their town in Wexford. You know, he's not the first son, so he's not going to inherit the business, but he's learned watchmaking from his family. And so he comes to America and he works as what's called a journeyman watchmaker, which means you work for somebody else in their watch establishment, either making watches or fixing watches.

[D]

Does it have a journeying element? I feel like I've heard the word journeyman, and I never exactly know why.

[E]

So I always thought that, too. I always thought you had to go from place to place looking for work. Turns out it doesn't come from that. It's derived from a French word. I was very embarrassed. It was at a talk like this once where I said that, and then somebody raised their hand and said, no, no, no. And I learned. So this is why the Q and A part is always good for me, because I always learn stuff. So he works in New York as a watchmaker. When the Civil War starts, the New York economy sags very severely because New York did a lot of its business with the South. And so Dylan, for reasons we don't know, goes to Washington, D.C. where certainly lots of people were pouring in because of the war, so maybe it made sense that way. And we're soon a watch shop, and one day, whose watch is brought into the shop to be repaired but Abraham Lincoln's? And being in D.C. where there was slavery, a couple of the other watchmakers in the shop say, I'm not touching that abolitionist watch. And so Dylan says, I'll fix it. And so he repairs the watch, and then he wants to leave some record of this historic encounter he has. And so he etches inside the watch his name and the date.

[D]

And I think the date is the date the first shot is fired. And so we have to have it on the day.

[E]

The date that the watch is finished is the date that the news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter gets to Washington. And so he writes that inside the watch, hands it back to his boss, boss gives it back to Abraham Lincoln,

[D]

who presumably has no idea that there's

[E]

a little message, but has no idea that there's a message in it. And then years later, Dylan was kind of like Bartholomew o', Donnell, a gregarious kind of person. And he goes to jury duty, even though he's well above the age where he can get out of it, but he wants to go anyway and have an audience. And he tells all these stories. And one is the story about how he fixed Abraham Lincoln's watch.

[D]

And the he's just at jury duty telling his watchmaking saga.

[E]

And because it's the courthouse, there are reporters there. And New York Times actually runs a little story saying watchmaker says he wrote a message in Abe Lincoln's watch. And so Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd reads about this and then takes the watch, which he has, to a watchmaker and says, open this up and see if this is true. It turns out it is true. And then nothing ever comes of it until the watch goes to the Smithsonian. And then Dylan's descendants read about the story when they're doing their own genealogical research. They get the Smithsonian to open it up. And the Smithsonian then rediscovers this message.

[D]

Amazing. You must have been so excited to find that whole record. I mean, this is not just Jonathan Dillon, one of 600 Jonathan Dillons.

[E]

The amazing thing in working on this book is to learn that Andy Warhol was really right. Almost everybody has 15 minutes of fame. And thanks to the digitization of all these New York newspapers, you can find so many of those minutes of fame of these immigrants in ways that, you know, I never ever would have believed.

[D]

Bartholomew o' Donnell getting another six minutes of fame here today.

[F]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for

[B]

3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail].

[D]

As I've promised, we have to talk about saloon keepers. And saloon keepers actually are the pinnacle for this famine Irish generation. Few of them became professional class doctors or lawyers, although many of their children did so tell me about saloon keeping. Why was it this pinnacle job you write in the book? It's about more than just slinging liquor at the bar?

[E]

Well, on the simplest level, saloon keepers make more money than pretty much any other kind of business owner in New York among the famine Irish, certainly. Then it also makes you kind of a big man in your neighborhood. The saloon is not only a place you go to recreate after a hard day's work, it's a place you escape from your tenement, which could be very hot or very cold. You can't really have your friends over to your tenement apartment because it's just too small. Everyone has a warm feeling in a tenement neighborhood about their saloon. The other thing about the saloons is you wouldn't just go to any random saloon on your block. You know, if you are from, say, like o' Donnell from Limerick, you'd go to the saloon where the people from Limerick hang out, and the people from Kerry would go to the saloon where the people from Kerry hung out. And then the other thing that happens in the saloon is the saloon keeper is kind of your conduit to the greater city because the saloon keepers are always very connected politically. It's almost a requirement for the job. And so if you're having a hard time making ends meet as a day labor, you could go to the saloon keeper and say, hey, the next time one of those city jobs opens up, can you put in a good word for me? The saloon keeper, though, might say, all right, I'll do that for you, but you need to go put up 1,000 posters touting my candidacy for running for alderman next month. And that was the kind of quid pro quo that you might do. And so the saloon keepers are respected in the neighborhood. And then, you know, if you're really down and out, you might go to the saloon keeper for a loan. If the saloon keeper hears you're sick and can't afford a doctor, the saloon keeper might send one. And so saloonkeepers in Irish neighborhoods in this period are in a way the most respected people in the neighborhood, even more so than the Catholic priests.

[D]

Very often we do actually have a saloon keeper who intersects with Bartholomew o'. Donnell. Tell me about Barney Woods.

[E]

Barney woods is one of these immigrants who just really goes from the bottom to the top in this way that you don't expect to find very often. He moves almost immediately to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is very, very sparsely populated in those days. And he works as a day laborer on the docks, and he saves up his Money and opens a saloon in the very tenement he lives in. Because your saloons, the ground floor spaces would have been commercial. He opens a saloon and. And as Williamsburg becomes more populated, more and more people are coming to his saloon. He makes enough money from the saloon that he buys the tenement in which his saloon is located, and then he buys more sports space. He calls it Woods Athletic Grounds. And it's kind of an indoor space where you could have boxing matches, you could have union meetings, and you could set up a small track and have a pedestrian race.

[D]

You sure could.

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

It's interesting that Barney is an example of the trajectory that you uncover in the book of a person who really just rises up through the ranks from the bottom rung to the top. And in your closing chapter of your book, you have a quote that I'm going to read. It's from Barack Obama, who you note has Irish ancestry himself. And he says the Irish did more than help build America. They helped to sharpen the idea of America, the notion that no matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is in this country, you can make it. I think both that quote and the Barney woods story that we just told, they're almost like the Irish potato famine in that your mind can gloss over them a little bit. You can sort of say, oh, the American dream, I've heard of it before. And you don't really stop to think about what that is. And I was interested to read that the term American dream, the idea had been around since early in the country, but the term actually postdated the Irish famine generation. And yet it seems like they really do embody it. So tell me, how does that group of immigrants help define that idea?

[E]

The famine Irish play a really important role in creating the idea of the American dream as we think about it today. As you note, the idea was kind of around before, but before it had been. Typically, you talk about your own group, like the Puritans used that sense in a way, but they were really only talking about themselves. They didn't think it applied to anybody else. And so what happens with the famine Irish that's so interesting is they get to America, and most Americans say, these people can't make it. They don't have the work ethic we have. They're blighted by their Catholicism. They've never had to do a hard day's work in Ireland. Now they admit it's because there was no work in Ireland. Often for them to do that, unemployment was so bad. But they say these People can't possibly succeed. And then they do succeed. And then Americans say, wow, I guess anybody can succeed in America. They become proud of that. They're like, we're that great that even these impoverished, ignorant Irish can succeed. And so I feel like that's a really important building block in kind of finishing the edifice of the American dream, which then the term is coined, you know, a generation later.

[D]

Tyler, I'm going to end here with a really big one. Obviously, we're talking about immigration at a moment when it's really one of the most consequential and contested issues in the country. What do you think that we should be taking away from the Famine Irish story now, almost 200 years later?

[E]

I think what we should take away from the Famine Irish story is the knowledge that not only can any group succeed in America, but immigrant groups today are really very similar to immigrant groups from the past, like the Famine Irish. And so sometimes we look at immigrant groups today and we say, well, they're just so different. How can they possibly become quote, unquote, Americans? But I think it's really important to remember that even though the Irish seem as American as any other group today, that 150 years ago, people didn't think that at all. People thought that the Irish could never be true Americans. And the fact that that was how they were treated then, I think should enlighten us about how we ought to think about immigrants who are coming here today, even if they seem very foreign to us.

[D]

I think that's a great place to end. Let's get a round of applause for Tyler and Minor, everyone.

[C]

Thank.

[E]

You. Foreign.

[C]

This Week is a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things history this week, Sign [e-mail] and follow us on Instagram at History this Week podcast. If you have any thoughts or questions, you can send us an email at History this [e-mail] Special thanks to our guest, Tyler Annbinder, professor of history at George Washington University and author of Plentiful the Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York. And a very special thank you to Katherine Lloyd and the entire team at the Tenement Museum for making our event such a special evening. Also, big thank you to the History this Week listeners who made it out to the event. It was so wonderful to meet you. This episode was produced by Lyric Bowditch and sound designed by Ben Dickstein. It was also produced by me, Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next week.