Folklore: ship 'Jeannie Johnston'

Subject: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:27 PM

Any songs concerning this ship? I just got a packet of info from a cousin and our cousins in Ireland say that our ancestors could likely have come on this ship. I am not in a place where I can google right now but I have read about a replica being rebuilt I think...

They would have come from Dingle and one possibly from Tralee...it sailed from Ireland I know and I think to Quebec which could be why I didn't find them in New York ship records...I read briefly that it was a model of shipmanship and they never lost a passenger...

Any records of passengers that anyone knows of? There would have been four brothers, Pat, Dan, John and Tim and perhaps Maggie Lyons came too on that ship...she was from Tralee...mg

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:54 PM

http://www.sailor.lib.md.us/MD_topics/gov/Bal_city/jeanie.html

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:57 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanie_Johnston

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 10:10 PM

She's a beauty, too. I saw the reproduction a-building outside Tralee.

My wife's father's folks are from Dingle, by the way.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 18 Jul 07 - 11:16 PM

Go to www.theflyincolumn.com and check out the song bytes for The Jeannie Johnston on The Flyin' Column Once Again

Don

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 12:05 AM

JEANIE JOHNSTON



Chorus: Sail away from the Emerald Island,
where death is all around.
Get aboard the Jeanie Johnston
There you'll be safe and sound
There you'll be safe and sound.

When the famine was so merciless
in the madness of those times
The Irish fled their home land
to escape those terrible crimes.

Her neighbors could have saved the day
but no one seemed to care.
They closed their eyes, and turned their heads,
but Ireland didn't despair.

Chorus: Sail away from the Emerald Island,
where death is all around.
Get aboard the Jeanie Johnston
There you¹ll be safe and sound
There you¹ll be safe and sound.

She took those persecuted.
Her spirit matched her role
She crossed the Atlantic sixteen times
And never lost a soul.

Captain Attridge said, "Come sail away with me
To a land that'll treat you fair.
We'll sail off to America,
And Jeanie will get you there".

Chorus: Sail away from the Emerald Island,
where death is all around.
Get aboard the Jeanie Johnston
There you'll be safe and sound
There you'll be safe and sound.

My friends if trouble comes to you
And you need help along your trip
Go find a Jeanie Johnston
to be your saving ship.

Repeat Chorus:

©Jim Maloney
Feb 10, 2003
138 W. Molloy Road
Mattydale, NY 13211
315-455-1473


Also, you can hear it sung at the same site the lyrics were taken from:
http://www.focuskerry.com/jeanie/jeanie_song.html

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 12:22 AM

Thanks for finding the words Bruce,

That is the complete version. I forgot we put that out on the Focuskerry site. Jim is a nice guy. Mainly a poet but he put
together some nice words for The Jeannie. There are a few semi problematic words. But what the heck, its a folk song, run the process and see what you get.


Bill Delaney is the main tune smith on this song but we all had a hand in the final product as far as the melody is concerned.

Don

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 12:24 AM

That should have read:

"Bill Delaney is the main tunesmith on this song but we all had a small hand in the final product as far as the melody is concerned."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 12:31 AM

Anyone here look familiar to y'all?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 01:24 PM

Thanks...would anyone be able to point me to a passenger list? I have been googling but I am at work and can't do it too much.home computer is broken. Ihave ancestry.com but couldn't find it there at least quickly... Years started 1848 and I think they were here at least by 1855 and probably earlier as they worked on the canals..Don, John, Pat and Dan Garvey. mg

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 01:34 PM

Oops..Don should be Tim. mg

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 01:40 PM

I'll dig into this site. But I want to link it now before I get lost and forget.

http://www.cyndislist.com/ships.htm#Lists

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 01:48 PM

What family name are you trying to find, Mary?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 02:38 PM

Garvey...although if there were a Maggie or Marget Lyons in there that would be great. I know I have come across ship passenger lists before..lots and lots..and tried to find people but have never found anyone...I am wondering if they came through Canada....it is quite an interesting saga...mg

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 03:02 PM

Mary, one last question. About what year would this have been?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 03:09 PM

Sorry, Mary. Just checked an earlier post and the year is between 1848 and 1855.

The famine drive them away from Ireland?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 03:16 PM

From

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Mo8SEN8l1iMJ:www.kelticountry.com/feeney.html+%22jeanie+johnston%22,+passenger+list,+1848&h

Between 1848 and 1855, the Jeanie Johnston made 16 heroic voyages to North America, sailing to Quebec, Baltimore and New York. She carried over 2,500 Irish people across the Atlantic on the first step in a brave new adventure.
Unlike many of the emigrant ships of these times, no crew or passenger lives were ever lost onboard the Jeanie Johnston, a remarkable record.
On average the length of the journey between Tralee and Quebec on the Jeanie Johnston was 46.75 days.
Many Irish emigrants travelling across the Atlantic were stricken by disease and died. It is estimated that at least 30% of the 100,000 who left for Canadian ports in 1847 contracted typhus, of whom two-thirds died at sea or following arrival in Canada.
During the Famine years, almost 3,000 voyages were made across the Atlantic to America, carrying over 650,000 Irish people.
The Famine killed an estimated one million people as it ravaged Ireland in the mid-1840s and led to 1.8 million people taking the emigrant boat to England or America.
By 1860, about one quarter of New York's population of 800,000 were Irish-born!
The original Jeanie Johnston was built in Quebec in 1847 by noted Scottish-born shipbuilder, John Munn. A year later, the prominent Tralee, Co. Kerry hardware merchant, Nicholas Donovan, purchased the ship to use it on the North Atlantic route as a cargo vessel. The dire circumstances of the starving Irish soon altered his plans and the ship made its maiden voyage to Quebec on April 24, 1848, with 193 emigrants on board in search of a new life as the effects of the Famine ravaged the land.
The transatlantic fare on the Jeanie Johnston was £3 10s (in our currencies €4.50 euro or $4.50). However, in famine times, this represented close to a half years wages for the average laborer. In those harsh times, the cost of the fare had often to be subsidised by a family member who had already emigrated. In this way a system of chain migration was set up to the extent that it was estimated in 1850 that one million pounds had been sent back to Ireland from America to encourage further emigration.

James Attridge, the captain of the Jeanie Johnston, was from Castletownsend in Co. Cork and had first gone to sea as a fifteen year old in 1820. By the time he joined the Jeanie Johnston in 1848 he had been at sea for twenty-eight years, twenty of them as a captain. Attridge retired from the sea in 1862, having served on the Wilson Kennedy (wrecked in 1856) and the Georgiana. He became the Deputy-Harbourmaster in Passage in 1864. He died in 1885.
A complete passenger list for the Jeanie Johnston voyage to Baltimore in 1849 exists. Farmers and labourers figure prominently and many of the passengers travelled in family groups, a feature of Irish emigration during these times. Julia Finn, aged 15, and her husband Pat, aged 17, are a reminder of what young age people married at, a practice that disappeared after the Famine.
The largest group of passengers on the Jeanie Johnston Baltimore passenger list were single women, the majority of them between the ages of 16 and 30. In the early part of the 19th century men made up about two thirds of the emigration from Ireland.
It was estimated in 1850 that one million pounds (€1.3 million or $1.3 million), a fortune in those times, had been sent back to Ireland from America in the form of remittances to encourage further emigration.
Daniel Dowd also arrived in Baltimore in 1849. He bought a 150 acre dairy farm in Rockville County, Maryland, and by the late 1850s he also owned a row of buildings in Washington DC. His descendant is John Kudlik, a professor of history in Pittsburgh. Amazingly, John's wife Susan is also descended from Jeanie Johnston passengers, the Babbingtons of Castleisland, near Tralee. They arrived in Quebec in June 1854.
On the day before the Jeanie Johnston was due to leave Tralee, a baby boy was born on board the Jeanie Johnston. To mark the unusual surroundings of his birth, the parents - Daniel and Margaret Ryal from Tralee - named the child after both the ship's owner, Nicholas Donovan, and the ship, and consequently Nicholas Johnston Ryal was added to the passenger list.
James Stack, a passenger on the ship in April 1851, lost his farm during the Famine. He became so destitute that he and 11 members of his family ended up living in a mud cabin built against a ditch on the farm that he had once owned.
Advertisements such as the following in the Boston Pilot give us a glimpse into the lives of the passengers: "Information is wanted of Denis Mahony, native of Beehenough, parish of Kilgobbin, sailed from Tralee 3 years last April in the ship Jeanie Johnston; when last heard from he worked in Pleasant Valley, Nicholas County, Kentucky. Any account of him will be thankfully received by his wife and 2 children. Direct to Ellen Mahony, care of Wm Garnett, corner of Genesee and Clinton St., Syracuse NY."
In April 1853, 65 tenants from the Earl of Kenmare's estate in Killarney emigrated on the Jeanie Johnston.
The Jeanie Johnston was blown out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence twice in October 1853 and eventually had to put into St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Fifty seven passengers remained in St. Andrews, induced by promises of work on the railway line. The work turned out to be less than they had hoped and most of them eventually walked to Portland, Maine in the middle of winter in search of work.
The Jeanie Johnston's doctor, Richard Blennerhassett, spent all of his adult life at sea. As a graduate of Edinburgh, then one of the most prestigious medical colleges in Britain and Ireland, and with a well-connected family, Blennerhassett would have had a whole range of more comfortable career options available. He was born in Dublin in 1818 and grew up in Dingle. His reputation and popularity were so great, that one of the first questions asked before taking a berth by an emigrant was, "does Dr. Richard Blennerhassett sail in the ship this voyage?". He left the Jeanie Johnston in 1853 and died of cholera, which he contracted on board an emigrant ship called the Ben Nevis, in 1854. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Cobh (formerly Queenstown), Co. Cork.
Almost all of the Jeanie Johnston's crew lists and agreements survive. The sailors on the Jeanie Johnston came from all points on the globe, one of them from as far away as Valparaiso. There were usually seventeen crew members on board, including at least two apprentices.
In 1855 the Jeanie Johnston was sold to William Johnson of North Shields in England. In 1858, en route from Quebec to Hull with a cargo of timber, the Jeanie Johnston became waterlogged. The crew climbed up to the main-top, and after nine days clinging to a slowly sinking ship they were rescued by a Dutch ship, the Sophie Elizabeth. The following is taken from Lloyd's List 13 December 1858: The Jeanie Johnston, from Quebec to Hull, with timber, has been abandoned at sea, water-logged; crew taken from the maintop, after being there nine days, by the Sophie Elizabeth (Dutch Brig), arrived at New York.
It is estimated that blight destroyed 80% of the potato crop – the staple diet of the Irish people – in 1848. The blight, which flourished in mild, damp conditions, led to Ireland's Great Famine.
Most transatlantic voyages from Ireland took place in the Spring and Summer months to avoid the worst weather conditions. The fleeing Irish were so desperate in the Famine era, however, that they were prepared to encounter the perils of trips very late in the year – ships were recorded leaving Tralee as late as November.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 03:35 PM

It seems they left the famine...which surprised us because we had somehow thought our Garvey ancestors were here before the famine...and were from NOrthern Ireoand perhaps..based on nothing more than something we would see on tea towels where the various families were from. It is so not talked about..although I knew my father's grandmother was a child alone who came possibly from CLonmel..but one married a Fitzgerald and the Fitzgeralds said they stayed because they were fishermen and could eat..the Garveys were farmers and had to leave for lack of food...it haunts us though to this very day..we were never allowed to eat food until it was almost rotten..like blue spots on the bacon etc...bruised fruit..couldn't eat it till it went bad..

Anyway, here is a song I might have posted before..I never can remember..these men would be the fathers to the Railroad Garveys.

Tim and John and Dan and Pat
There's no work here we all know that
Nor food enough to feed a rat
My young and handsome sons

Chorus:
Sail away from Dingle now
Leave behind your useless plow
You'll find a way I don't know how
My young and handsome sons

Leave behind the dear old songs
The girls that you have loved so long
Leave now while you still are strong
My young and handsome sons

Ash to ash and dust to dust
Don't look back do what you must
Keep always to the fair and just
My young and handsome sons

Hail Mary full of Grace
Have pity on our Irish race
The workhouse soon is what we face
My young and handsome sons

Dingle's soft and Dingle's fair
Dingle's rocks and salt and air
Put miles betwixt yourselves and there
My young and handsome sons

Subject: RE: Folklore: Jeannie Johnston
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 09 Apr 21 - 10:06 PM

Where can one find the tune to the last song? Would love to sing it..
Thanks- J

Subject: RE: Folklore: ship 'Jeannie Johnston'
From: mg
Date: 10 Apr 21 - 01:18 AM

i had totally forgotten about it. i don't think it ever had a tune. i will see if i can put one to it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: ship 'Jeanie Johnston'
From: Felipa
Date: 10 Apr 21 - 08:08 AM

The lyrics could probably be fitted to some existing tunes.

Do you know about the Jeanie Johnston tall ship floating famine museum?
https://jeaniejohnston.ie/

The museum management would probably like to receive copies of the two songs posted in this thread, if they don't have them already,

Subject: RE: Folklore: ship 'Jeannie Johnston'
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Apr 21 - 11:12 AM

List of emigrant ships leaving Tralee 1828-1867

Passengerlists of ships that left Blennerville/Tralee like this one, of the Jeannie Johnston are available