The Irish migrations to Newfoundland, and the associated provisions trade, represent the oldest and most enduring connections between Ireland and North America.
As early as 1536, the ship Mighel (Michael) of Kinsale is recorded returning to her home port in County Cork with consignments of Newfoundland fish and cod liver oil. A further hint of what one scholar has termed a diaspora of Irish fishermen dates from 1608, when Patrick Brannock, a Waterford mariner, was reported to sail yearly to Newfoundland. Beginning around 1670, and particularly between 1750 and 1830, Newfoundland received large numbers of Irish immigrants. It was a substantial migration, peaking in the 1770s and 1780s when more than 100 ships and 5,000 men cleared Irish ports for the fishery.
The exodus from Ulster to the USA excepted an increase in Irish immigration, particularly of women, between 1800-1835, and the related natural population growth, helped transform the social, demographic, and cultural character of Newfoundland. In 1836 the government in St. John's commissioned a census that exceeded in its detail anything recorded to that time. More than 400 settlements were listed.
The Færeyinga Saga, the Norse saga of Faroemen, is the story of how the Faroes were converted to Christianity and became a part of the Kingdom of Norway. It was written in Iceland shortly after 1200. The first man to settle in Faroe is, according to this text, Grímr Kamban, a man with a Norse first name and an Irish last name. The first settlers may have been Irish monks, probably in the middle of the seventh century, seeking a tranquil refuge in these remote islands throughout the Manx Viking Age, making the Faroe Islands a central part of the Viking settlements along the coasts of the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea. The Saga of the Greenlanders attributes the first sighting of America to Bjarni Herjólfsson who had emigrated with Eiríkr the Red to Greenland, although Bjarni didn't actually set foot on Vínland; the Saga of Eiríkr the Red, on the other hand, says that the discovery was made by Leifr the Lucky, Eiríkr's son. According to one saga, he was then commissioned by King Olaf I to convert the Greenlanders to Christianity, but he was blown off course, his ship was blown to the Hebrides, missed Greenland, and reached North America. The earliest date given for a Viking raid is 787 AD when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a group of men from Norway sailed to Portland, in Dorset. The journeys to Vínland continued into the Middle Ages, but apparently only to obtain raw materials for the Greenland colony. DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY THE IRISH
The vast majority of Irish came from the southeast counties of Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Cork, and Waterford. The only notable pocket of migration outside the southeast was around Dingle, in distant Kerry. No other province in Canada or state in the USA drew such an overwhelming proportion of their immigrants from so geographically compact an area in Ireland over so prolonged a period of time. Waterford city was the primary port of embarkation. Most migrants came from within a day's journey to the city, or its outport at Passage, six miles down river in Waterford harbor (South Munster) . They were drawn from parishes and towns along the (Chester) main routes of transport and communication, both river and road, converging on Waterford and Passage. New Ross and Youghal, Derrynassagart, Roundstone and Cloyne were secondary centers of transatlantic embarkation- New Netherlands. Old Somerled and Melrose River ports such as Kells- Carrick, Donegal, Briefne, Cavan, and Clonmel on the River Suir, Inistioge and Thomastown (1247AD) on the River Nore, and Graiguenamanagh/Stanley on the River Barrow were important centers of Galwegian recruitment. So were the rural parishes along these navigable waterways. The term Scotch-Irish (or Scots-Irish) is usually used to designate descendants of immigrants from Ulster whose ancestors originally came from Scotland.
The population almost doubled between 1785-1835, the main period of emigration. Central to their lives and culture to the Irish was their religious faith; institutional religion served as the pivot for a great deal of Irish life in Newfoundland. Several of the leading Irish merchants and propertied men were Protestants and brought the traditions of the Orange Order to their new home. However, the majority of the Irish were Roman Catholics and many sought to recreate in Newfoundland the institutional Roman Catholicism which they had known in Ireland to New France. As a result, the institutional church which emerged over the next 50 years became the single most important ethnic, social and cultural institution for the Irish in Newfoundland, and its various clergy and leaders were the de-facto leaders of the Irish community in Newfoundland.
Irish place names are less common, many of the island's more prominent landmarks having already been named by early French and English explorers. Nevertheless, Newfoundland's Ballyhack, Cappahayden, Kilbride, St. Bride's, Port Kirwan, Duntara and Skibbereen all point to Irish antecedents. Newfoundland is the only place outside Europe with its own distinctive name in the Irish language, Talamh an Éisc (Land of Fish).
In the mid 1830's Wiltshire and the West Midlands was in the grip of a severe economic depression that was worse than the one to come 100 years later. Crops were poor from 1828-1830. In 1830, riots swept Southeast England (West Saxon Dorset). Labourers protested the introduction of new threshing machines, which jeopardized their livelihood. Along with many other farms in the county, machines in Downton, Whiteparish and West Dean were destroyed. Downton is an agricultural village located in the county of Wiltshire. It is located in the Avon river valley in the south part of the county, near the bordering county of Hampshire. It is 8 miles south of the historic cathedral city of Salisbury. It is 20 miles from Stonehenge onto the downs and the Lake District.
In early May of 1835, the first group of people left for Canada. They probably caught the weekly wagon from Salisbury to Southampton from where they caught a sailing vessel to Portsmouth to be placed on the American ship Louisa. From the Torridge Valley, Newton Ferrers and Hemyock by the east of Plymouth included Torr and fishing from Antrim to Southampton and the Westcountry. The manor of Newton anciently belonged to the Ferrers family, whose co-heiress carried it in marriage to Lord St. John (Southill). It afterwards passed to the Bonville, Copleston, Hele, and other families.