The Fabric of Memory, Identity and Diaspora: An Irish Needlework Sampler in Australia with United States and Canadian Connections

Abstract

Irish emigrants generally brought some material possessions with them from the ‘old world’ of Ireland to the ‘new world’ destinations of the Irish diaspora, but relatively few of them survive in museum collections or in private hands. Considering the modest economic status of most emigrants and the restricted circumstances of their journeys, this is hardly surprising. Typically, their physical baggage was not extensive, as we may see from ship passenger lists of the nineteenth century. For example, the 162 passengers on the Barque Fanny, which sailed from Londonderry to Philadelphia on 12 May 1845, had between them only 106 baggage items: fifty chests, twenty-nine boxes, fifteen trunks, nine barrels and three bundles. More than half (thirty-eight males, forty-five females) were travelling singly, rather than in a family group, and without any baggage at all.