Migration, Arrival, and Settlement before the Great Famine

The Irish Catholic migration to Prince Edward Island differed in both its timing and its regional origins from the patterns established in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. P.E.I.’s earliest Irish settlers were Anglo-Protestant military and civil officials who came to direct the life of a colony – then known as the Island of St John – that was subdivided into sixty-seven lots held by absentee landlords. Perhaps because the prospect of tenancy acted as a deterrent, Irish Catholic migration to the island was not significant until after 1810. Situated in the middle of the principal trade routes between the Atlantic colonies,

P.E.I. then became a haven for Irish Catholic “two boaters” from Newfoundland, who either remained on the island or moved on to the Miramichi region of New Brunswick. Though early Irish Catholic settlers in P.E.I. represented at least two-thirds of Ireland’s counties, a second principal source of migrants was from southern Irish ports between Cork and Waterford. Between 1817 and 1840, 950 migrants to the island had sailed from Waterford, 300 from Cork, Limerick, or Dublin, and 600 from a variety of unknown ports. By the 1830s, however, migration had shifted from the south to Ulster, and specifically the port of Belfast. Between 1830 and 1850 at least 4,000 Ulster Irish migrated to P.E.I., most of whom were Roman Catholics recruited by local priests. The most notable county of origin for these migrants was Monaghan. To this day Monaghan place names still dot P.E.I.’s landscape. In total, between 1767 and 1850 some 10,000 Irish – the majority Catholic – migrated to P.E.I., and this number accounted for approximately 25 percent of the island’s population.

Prior to the 1840s, individual families settled on the island to engage in lumbering and farming or just to be close to relatives who had previously migrated. Predominantly a rural people, most were able to lease or purchase land from local proprietors in the sparsely settled interior. Others merely settled on undeveloped land, cleared it, and anticipated winning title to such properties through “squatters’ rights.” By 1848 about two-thirds of the Irish lived in Queen’s County, while the rest were evenly distributed between King’s and Prince counties. In Queen’s there was a significant Irish Catholic presence in Charlottetown. Linguistically, most Irish Catholics migrants to P.E.I. were from Irish counties where English had firmly displaced Gaelic as the language of the majority. It has been suggested, however, that Irish Gaelic may have been spoken by a cluster of migrants from Connaught who had settled in the Lot 7 and Tignish areas of Prince County. In general, the demographic dispersion of Irish Catholics across the island, in addition to their English-language capabilities, allowed pre-famine immigrants to blend in with other settlers.