Container 12 - James Martyn et al. petition

44pp

This petition is filed under CO 384/11, pp. 796/1601-2 in the Colonial Office papers in the British Public Record Office of the National Archives in Kew, London. The CO 384 series contains thousands of Irish (and British) petitions for assisted emigration and colonial land grants written 1815-ca. 1850.

The James Martyn et al. petition consists of a single petition from 1825. This petition was addressed to the British Colonial Office in London on behalf of nearly 600 self-described poor small-farmers and craftspeople in the baronies of Coonagh and Owneybeg, County Limerick, begging the government for assisted passage to, and free land grants in, Upper Canada (now Ontario). The author is not known with certainty, but John Martyn is the first name listed and may have written it. The document itself is undated but was received by the office on 10 December 1825, and represents a period of transition where people in the Irish south were beginning to emigrate in larger numbers but still attempting to do so as familial or communal groups, and were therefore requesting aid. This petition, however, was not successful. The collection includes typed transcriptions and a photocopy of the document, Kerby A. Miller's research notes and photocopies of relevant pages from the 1836 Poor Law Reports, and Flight from Famine (1990) by Donald McKay.