Irish Settlers in Argentina

Introduction

This list includes 4,348 Irish settlers in the country. The major source used to compile the list was Eduardo Coghlan's Los Irlandeses en la Argentina: Su Actuación y Descendencia (Buenos Aires, 1987), a genealogical catalogue detailing the origins in Ireland, as well as the immigrants' descendants in the River Plate or elsewhere. Entries in Coghlan's book are arranged alphabetically by male immigrant (3,667 family heads). Major Sources: Coghlan (1982), The Southern Cross, The Standard, Handbook of the River Plate, The Story of the Irish Race (MacManus, Seumas, New York: 1921), The History of Ireland from the earliest period to the present time (Haverty, Martin, New York, 1857), Irish Pedigrees or the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation (O’Hart, John, New York, 1923), Irish families; their names, arms, and origins (MacLysght, Edward, New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), More Irish families (MacLysght, Edward, Galway: O'Gorman, 1960), Murray (1919), and Registro de Marcas de Hacienda de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Parle, Estevan, Liverpool: Brown & Rawcliffe, 1885), as well as wills, church and civil records, family private documents and interviews. Eduardo Coghlan (1912-1997) was the most notable Irish-Argentine genealogist, and Los Irlandeses en la Argentina is his masterpiece.

To select the entries of this list, several criteria have been used. The list includes those persons who were born in Ireland and who emigrated temporarily or permanently to Argentina or Uruguay, independently of the country where they died. Unless otherwise stated by Coghlan, persons bearing forenames in Spanish are excluded as they are presumably born in the River Plate (not included if English equals Spanish, e. gr. David, Julia). If included by Coghlan, the spouse's family name has been added (83% of occurrences). Record repetitions have been eliminated from this table, and cross-references are included in the source database for consultation. Place names, both in Ireland and Argentina, have been standardized to allow demographic counts.

What is the difference between this list and the Irish Passengers to Argentina 1822-1929? Theoretically, a majority of the immigrants in the list of Irish Settlers in Argentina (4,348 records) should be included in the list of Irish Passengers to Argentina (7,159 records). However, there are several exceptions due to the lack of arrival information in the Argentine public records. Conversely, many immigrants in the Irish Passengers to Argentina list who settled in the country are not included in the Irish Settlers to Argentina list. The major reasons for this are that, to a certain extent, Coghlan included in his 1987 genealogical catalogue those Irish settlers who (i) were recorded in 1869 or 1895 censuses, and (ii) who had children. As Patrick McKenna explains, his book 'records only those migrants who left some record of their presence in their new country. It is a record of residuals. From a Darwinian perspective, Coghlan records only the fittest who went on to reproduce' [McKenna, Patrick, Nineteenth Century Irish Emigration to, and Settlement in, Argentina (St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare: MA Geography Thesis, 1994, p. 36].

Alphabetical List Sorted by Last Name

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Demographic Profiles of the Irish Settlers in Argentina

The source database used to build the list of Irish Settlers in Argentina allows some demographic analysis, which will be summarily described below. Since the database is not a representative sample of the universe of immigrants, the results of this analysis should not be extrapolated to the entire population of Irish emigrants to Argentina. Such a procedure would generate invalid assumptions. During the nineteenth century, forty to forty-five thousand Irish emigrants arrived in Argentina, and it is estimated that about twenty thousand of them settled in the country, while the others re-emigrated to North America, Australia, Ireland, or other destinations. Among the twenty thousand settlers, ten to fifteen thousand died without issue or broke their links to the local Irish community. Therefore, the nucleus of the Irish-Argentine community was developed with only four to five thousand settlers. 'While Coghlan records cover about 15-20% of the total estimated Irish emigration, it is not a random sample of the emigrants who originally left Ireland for Argentina in the nineteenth century, many of them only settling there for a short period before moving elsewhere in the Americas' [McKenna 1994, op. cit.]. Hence, the following demographic analysis is valid for this segment only.

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