MADISON, Wis. (WRN) — Focusing on the Irish in Wisconsin for St. Patrick’s Day.
Farming for Irish settlers in Wisconsin was quite different from their homeland experience. Marquette University Associate Professor of Irish and British History Timothy McMahon says Irish immigrants in the state had far more on their plate when farming here.
“They might be responsible for a budget on a plot of land that grew food for their family, and here they’d be managing 100 acres or 200 acres and had to use different equipment as opposed to hand spades. They might have to be engaged in planting of different crops than they were used to. There was a lot of adaptation in those first couple of generations,” McMahon said.
McMahon adds that many of them were tenant farmers in Ireland who became farm owners for the first time when moving to Wisconsin.