Family members with ties to Grand Forks region find their roots with trip to Ireland

Jul. 1—GRAND FORKS — When Patrick and Margaret Doyle O'Toole boarded a ship in Ireland to immigrate to Canada, they probably had no idea that 175 years later, approximately 50 of their descendants would return to the same place to commemorate their departure.

It took several O'Toole family members more than 25 years to discover the exact date and place their ancestors began their journey: May 17, 1848, from the port of New Ross, Ireland, said Peter O'Toole, of St. Paul, Minnesota.

O'Toole is a 1973 graduate of Valley-Crystal-Hoople (North Dakota) High School and member of the family that has farmed in the Crystal area since before North Dakota became a state.

"I believe it is rare for any Irish family who left during the Great Potato Famine to be able to trace their roots back to the exact time and location (of their departure) as we were able to do quite recently," O'Toole said, noting that since many records are now online. "It has become much easier to trace one's ancestry than it was just 25 years ago, when we started this effort to connect to our distant past."

In May, about 50 O'Toole cousins, all descendants of Patrick and Margaret O'Toole, traveled to Ireland from Canada and a handful of states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Connecticut and Texas.

Their two-week trip to Ireland included a visit to the original family tenant farmstead in County Wicklow, one hour south of Dublin.

"The local Irish community was very welcoming," he said. "It was amazing."

The O'Tooles were there to learn about early family history, but the historians among them already had uncovered insights about their ancestors' emigration to the U.S.

After nearly 30 years as farmers renting land in Ontario, Thomas O'Toole — one of Patrick and Margaret O'Toole's children — and his son Patrick immigrated to Pembina County in northeastern Dakota Territory around 1879, ten years before North Dakota statehood. They homesteaded in Crystal.

"The O'Toole family still thrives in this North Dakota community," Peter O'Toole said.

Family members are still farming there. They were unable to attend the reunion in Ireland because the date conflicted with planting season. The farm has grown to several thousand acres.

Dick and Keitha O'Toole, Peter O'Toole's uncle and aunt who live in Grand Forks and Crystal, did not attend the reunion, but their son Jaime O'Toole, of San Antonio, Texas, did.

"They had a wonderful time," Keitha O'Toole said.

Family members were able to see a replica of the ship upon which their ancestors embarked, "which I thought was amazing," she said.

The original homesteader, Thomas O'Toole, is buried in St. Patrick's Catholic Church Cemetery in Crystal, North Dakota, Peter O'Toole said.

Peter O'Toole, 68, said the English landlords who owned the estate — where his great-great-great-grandparents were tenant farmers — likely paid their passage to Canada, which was less than to the United States.

The landlords were incentivized to do so by English Poor Laws, enacted during the Great Potato Famine, a period from 1845 to 1852 that brought starvation, disease and poverty and caused many to emigrate. Under these laws, landlords were assessed by the government to support a system of poor relief; the assessment was based on the number of tenants.

The Fitzwilliam estate offered their tenants — including Patrick and Margaret O'Toole — an option to emigrate to Canada with paid transportation, Peter O'Toole said.

Not all landlords were as generous. Some tenants were forced to leave — often with no hope and nowhere to go — after their thatched-roofed cottages were burned, O'Toole said. The common term for such action was "the clearances."

O'Toole also believes the estate would have provided the couple with oats and other provisions for their journey. They walked 40 miles, with their five children, from their home near Tinahely to board the sailing ship, Jessie, in New Ross.

"They would have prepared a small chest or box with all their belongings, and (traveled) on a pony cart" to New Ross, he said. "Several thousands came that way."

Their journey across the Atlantic lasted six weeks; they arrived in Quebec in late June 1848.

It is estimated that the famine caused about one million deaths between 1845 and 1851, either from starvation or hunger-related disease, O'Toole said. Another one million Irish people emigrated.

A highlight of the family reunion in Ireland was a visit to the site of Patrick and Margaret O'Toole's tenant farmstead in County Wicklow. It was a single-level structure that included three dwellings — on one end, the couple's home had been demolished, but the remaining structure still stands and is inhabited, Peter O'Toole said.

He took a handful of dirt from the site, a piece of family history he eventually mixed into the soil of a potted Oxalis, a shamrock plant, in his St. Paul home, he said.

"I was awestruck that we were all there and all having descended (from this couple) ... and were standing on that soil," he said. "The weather was perfect. The hospitality was exceptional."

The O'Tooles planted a Canadian maple tree there and were entertained by an Irish singer, who sang traditional music. At a restaurant in County Wicklow, they enjoyed an elaborate 19th-century banquet.

The Fitzwilliam estate his ancestors left dates back to the era of King Henry VIII, O'Toole said, and was once said to span 92,000 acres. The same family owned it for two or three hundred years. The estate was eventually sold to tenants and turned into a golf course.

The area was "green, lush, idyllic — there were hedgerows to show the property lines," he recalled. The scenery was not only pretty, he said, but he was impressed by "the warmth and friendliness of the people, they were so hospitable. They knew the U.S. O'Tooles were in town."

The O'Toole family was aided in the search for their Irish roots by Kevin and Eleanor Lee, who created a website called the Coollattin Canadian Connection. Maps and ship lists kept at Coollattin House enabled the Lees to bring people back to the cottage or field where their ancestors once lived, according to the New Ross Standard newspaper.

"We are the first family, or one of the first families, to come back to see where the family came from," O'Toole said. "They're as excited about our connecting with our roots as we are, and they want other people to connect."

The O'Toole family story "is a nice wholesome story," Peter O'Toole said. It's a story "that can be replicated" all across the country, in many families, whether their roots are in Norway, Ireland, English or Germany.

For him, to visit his ancestors' tenant farmstead in Ireland, imagine their life there and their decision to leave 175 years ago, was "an extraordinary feeling, unlike any other," he said, "because it was shared. Everybody was gobsmacked."

The reunion in Ireland, he said, was meant "to honor them."