Irish Traveller Americans
Irish Traveller Americans are Americans who are of Irish Traveller descent. There are an estimated 30-40,000 Irish Traveller Americans. Irish Travellers are an ethnic group with origins in Ireland; they may or may not consider themselves to be Irish or Irish American.
Most Irish Travellers are in South Carolina and Texas. Irish Traveller Americans consist of both people originating from them from immigrants who came to the U.S. before the 20th century, and some who came later during the 1900s and 2000s.
History[edit]
An estimated 10,000 people in the United States are descendants of Travellers who left Ireland, mostly between 1845 and 1860 during the Great Famine.[1] However, there are no official population figures regarding Irish Travellers in the United States as the US census does not recognise them as an ethnic group.[2][3] While some sources estimate their population in the US to be 10,000, others suggest their population is 40,000. According to research published in 1992, Irish Travellers in the US divide themselves up into groups that are based on historical residence: Ohio Travellers, Georgia Travellers, Texas Travellers, and Mississippi Travellers. The Georgia Travellers' camp is made up of about eight hundred families, the Mississippi Travellers, about three hundred families, and the Texas Travellers, under fifty families."[2][3]
The largest and most affluent population of about 2,500 lives in Murphy Village, outside of the town of North Augusta, South Carolina.[4] Other communities exist in Memphis, Tennessee; Hernando, Mississippi; and near White Settlement, Texas; where the families stay in their homes during the winter, and leave during the summer, while smaller enclaves can be found across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.[5]
Social issues[edit]
While the Irish Travellers' community consists of people on various levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, likewise that of the community in Ireland, social issues such as crime, promiscuity, poverty, and reckless/negligent deaths have been documented in Traveller communities across the U.S. In Tarrant County, Texas, where a Traveller community exists, several major incidents have occurred in the 2000s. Five Travellers boys, ages 13-14, were killed in a car accident; the pickup they were riding in flipped over a median on Interstate 30 in west Fort Worth and landed upside down on another truck. In 2002, Irish Travellers made national news when a Traveller woman with Fort Worth ties was caught on video beating her 4-year-old daughter outside an Indiana store. Pete “Blue” Daley, a 73-year-old Houston Irish Traveller with local ties, was fatally shot outside a motel near Atlanta, Georgia. His murder remains unsolved.[6]
Notable people[edit]
Category[edit]
- ^ Casey, Dan; Casey, Conor (September–October 1994). "Irish Travelers of Aiken County". Irish America. Vol. 10, no. 5. pp. 44–47. ISSN 0884-4240. ProQuest 211244286.
- ^ a b Mary E. Andereck (21 February 1992). Ethnic Awareness and the School: An Ethnographic Study. SAGE Publications. pp. 22–. ISBN 978-0-8039-3886-1.
- ^ a b Andereck, Mary E. (1996). "Irish Travelers". In O'Leary, Timothy J.; et al. (eds.). Encyclopedia of world cultures. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 162–164. Archived from the original on 2015-01-14. Retrieved 2011-12-21 – via encyclopedia.com.
- ^ "Who are the Irish Travellers in the United States?". Pavee Point Travellers Centre. June 2005. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
- ^ License To Steal, Traveling Con Artists, Their Games, Their Rules – Your Money by Dennis Marlock & John Dowling, Paladin Press, 1994: Boulder, Colorado
- ^ Boyd, Deana (March 23, 2015). "Travellers have long history in Tarrant County". Star Telegram.