The head of Ireland, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, this week launched at Cork City hall a website containing online records of almost 100,000 people and families who migrated from Southeast Ireland to Newfoundland between 1750 and 1850.
The website, called the Mannion Collection, contains a digitized version of extensive records held by Dr. John Mannion, a Galway-born retired professor of geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and his wife and research partner, Maura.
The Mannions’ research is recorded on handwritten notecards, which were digitized by the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency in St. John’s.
In his biography on the website, Dr. Mannion wrote, “The Irish migrations to Newfoundland, and the associated salt provisions trade, represent the oldest and most enduring connection between Ireland and Canada.”
The Mannion Collection includes information on some 7,500 immigrants who are identified by town, parish, townland or county of origin in Ireland. Probably five times that number of Irish immigrants, not identified by specific place of origin, are also listed.
The chairman of Newfoundland & Labrador Irish Connections, Councillor Ralph Tapper, said the value of this record set cannot be underestimated. “These are records from pre-Famine times that simply don’t exist elsewhere and are now available for researchers at home and abroad to fill in the gaps in their family history.”
The project is a joint venture between Memorial University and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Major funding was provided by the Emigrant Support Program, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Ireland, with additional support from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Dr. Mannion’s book, The Peopling of Newfoundland: Essays in Historical Geographical has been digitized and is available on Memorial’s website. A search of Mannion on the university’s website produces 299 results, and there are a number of items worth reading, including the article, The Irish in Newfoundland.
