Waxwings to Philadelphia

This page supports volunteer research from Celticknot, Carleo and Waxwing as set out in more detail elsewhere in this site. Much of the posts appear under the name of site-administrator but all of it is in fact a fully shared effort. The research is into the circumstances of all the emigrants who set off from the port of Derry in the Summer of 1832 for  Philadelphia. Their fates are broadly unknown, apart from the putative murders at Duffy’s Cut of the fifty seven labourers on board the four ships – the John Stamp, the Prudence, the Asia and the Ontario. The brief of the project however is much wider than the Duffys Cut labourers. It is a large scale exploration of more than 160 emigrants, something never attempted before, in the hope that this will shed light on the difficulties that family researchers encounter when looking for ancestors.

Newcomers to the site should please note that the posts are in the order of newest first. Therefore to follow the Waxwings project in chronological order they should scroll to the bottom of the page and work upwards. The choice of Waxwing(s) as a nom-de-plume is a reference to the distinctive markings of a bird that is rarely found in Ireland, more commonly to be found in North America. These birds, like the Irish emigrants from Derry in 1832, and despite their distinctive characteristics, continue to be hard to trace which is the major challenge of this project.