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71 3 Resettling in Rutland { Nothing struck me more, in Burlington, than the great number of Irish emigrants. They have filled the British provinces to the brim, and still continue to ascend the St. Lawrence, in infinite tribes, overflowing by every outlet into the States. . . . Such is their multitude, in comparison with any possible demand for their services, that it is difficult to conceive how a third part of them should earn even a daily glass of whiskey. —Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Inland Port,” 1835 I bought so much land for $250 that you couldn’t cross it on horseback in a day. —Immigrant John Hanley, writing home to Ballykilcline in 1844 Nathaniel Hawthorne described the bustling port of Burlington just as John and Sabina Brennan Hanley arrived in Vermont from Ballykilcline and as their relatives and neighbors at home began their rent strike. The couple may have been part of the “infinite tribe” that mesmerized Hawthorne , though no information on the Hanleys’ route has survived. Hawthorne might have been surprised to find them as landowners and farmers only nine years later when Hanley boasted about their new property in a letter home (Hannon 1986, pp. 50, 51). No information has come down that tells why the Hanleys left home when they did, though undoubtedly the views expressed in another Roscommon emigrant’s letter captured at least some of their reasons for leaving: “Guernsey, July 12, 1847. I have purchased a neat cottage and excellent garden loaded with fruit of all kinds, for three hundred pounds; and I am more independent than ever I was, having no rent to pay—no juries to attend—nor no master to control me, and am in the midst of plenty; and what is better still—among a rational people, when my life at least is not in danger, and that’s a great matter you will allow” (Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, July 17, 1847). The Hanleys likely followed or traveled with friends to Rutland. McGuires and Colligans arrived there about the same time (Vandenburg communication, 72 Chapter Three 2002; Butler letter, March 12, 1969). As early as 1830, a John Carrington lived in Rutland, and that was the name as well of a farmer in Ballykilcline whose son and namesake went to Rutland in 1847 as an evictee (U.S. census , Vermont, 1830), but their connection is not known. In 1850, just after dozens of evictees from Ballykilcline arrived in Rutland , the town was a busy community where friends and relatives could help them find homes and jobs and introduce them to life in America. Rutland’s landscape must have looked familiar to the Roscommoners, something like Kilglass except that they saw Otter Creek instead of the Shannon, Bomoseen Lake instead of Kilglass Lake, the Green Mountains instead of familiar Slieve Bawn. And if sheep had become a threat to their way of life in Kilglass, one can only wonder at their reaction to the extensive Merino herds grazing on the hills of Vermont, which by 1840 was feeding 1.7 million of the animals. The industry declined a few years later because of competition from western farmers after the Irish built a network of railroads. That effort changed the market and cut prices, which greatly distressed Vermont’s sheep farmers (Vermont History website). On the other hand, it must have heartened the Irish immigrants to learn that the biggest crop in the state, at nearly five million bushels, was the familiar potato. Vermont land was valued then at $19.09 an acre (Vermont Business Magazine website). Central Vermont had an advantage of place for the Irish because its new rail lines linked it to the leading Atlantic port of arrival in New York. If relatives followed the emigrants out of Ireland and landed in the Northeast , they could easily get to Vermont, a comparatively short trip from New York or Boston. In addition, some of the nearly five hundred Mahon evictees who had survived the coffin ships to Grosse Ile in 1847 must have scattered across southern Canada and northern New York and Vermont. If they wanted to reunite with family and friends who had settled in Rutland , they would not have had to travel far to do so. The evictees’ Rutland location too would have given them exposure to an event then playing out around Albany and Troy, New York, which were closely bound to Rutland by rail, commerce, and markets: they would have learned about the...

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