Abstract
I grew up in Ireland with parents three generations removed from The Great Famine of 1845-1852. The Famine was devastating to the poorer classes, leaving more than one million dead from starvation and related diseases, and another three million fleeing, many of them in the steerage compartments of coffin ships. Further losses were produced by the severance of social linkages and genealogical filiations due to the erasure of the Irish language.