It happened in the late summer of 1845. September, specifically. Imagine a farmer in Wexford or Mayo pulling a plant out of the ground, expecting the usual dusty, reliable tuber, only to find a black, slimy mess that smelled like rotting meat. That is the moment. That’s the answer to when did the Irish famine start, but if you stop there, you’re missing the actual tragedy. It didn't just "happen" because a fungus showed up. It was a slow-motion car crash that had been building for decades.
History books like to give you a clean date. 1845. But if you were a cottier living on a half-acre of rented land in 1844, you were already living on the edge of a knife. You were one bad week away from starving even before the blight arrived.
The First Signs of the Great Hunger
The "Blight"—Phytophthora infestans—didn't actually originate in Ireland. It hitched a ride across the Atlantic, likely on ships carrying cargo from North America or perhaps Belgium. It hit the United States first in 1843. By the time it reached the shores of the Isle of Wight and eventually Dublin in 1845, it was a biological wildfire.
People saw it. They wrote about it. The Gardeners' Chronicle published a frantic announcement in August 1845 about a "fatal malady" among the potato crop. But here is the weird part: initially, many people thought it was just a localized fluke. They’d seen crop failures before. Ireland had experienced smaller famines in 1740 and 1800. They figured they could hunker down and wait it out.
They were wrong.
The 1845 Harvest: A Deceptive Beginning
When the harvest began in September 1845, about one-third of the crop was lost. That sounds bad, but it wasn't a total apocalypse yet. Most families had enough "clean" potatoes to get through the winter. The real horror started when they opened their storage pits a few weeks later. Potatoes that looked fine on Monday were a puddle of black goo by Friday.
The fungus was systemic. It breathed. It spread through the air in damp, misty weather.
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Why 1846 Was the Turning Point
If 1845 was the warning shot, 1846 was the execution. This is the year when the question of when did the Irish famine start takes on its most lethal meaning. In 1846, the blight didn't just take a third of the crop; it took almost everything.
The weather that summer was unusually hot and humid. Perfect for a fungus. By August, the entire country smelled of decay. A priest traveling through Cork wrote that he walked for miles without seeing a single healthy leaf. This was the moment the "Great Hunger" or An Gorta Mór became an existential threat to the Irish people.
Prices for grain skyrocketed. Because the Irish poor were almost entirely dependent on the "Lumper" potato—a high-yield but genetically identical variety—they had zero backup plan. They couldn't afford bread. They couldn't afford meat. They were selling their clothes to buy a handful of yellow meal (Indian corn) that the British government began importing.
The Politics of Starvation
We have to talk about Charles Trevelyan. He was the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury in London. He basically ran the relief efforts. Honestly, his approach was cold. He believed in "moral providence." He thought the famine was a way to "discipline" the Irish and fix their "lazy" habits.
Under his watch, the British government stopped providing direct food aid and insisted on "Public Works." Imagine being a man who hasn't eaten a solid meal in three weeks, and you’re told you have to break rocks on a road to nowhere just to earn enough money for a bowl of watery porridge. People died on those roads. They died with the tools still in their hands.
The "Black '47" and the Peak of the Crisis
By 1847, the blight actually subsided a bit. But it didn't matter. Why? Because the farmers had eaten their seed potatoes the year before just to stay alive. They had nothing to plant.
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This is the year known as "Black '47." It is the deadliest year in Irish history.
It wasn't just hunger anymore. It was typhus. It was "famine fever." It was scurvy because they hadn't seen a vegetable in two years. People were being evicted by the thousands because they couldn't pay rent. Landlords, facing their own financial pressures, hired "crowbar brigades" to tear the roofs off the cottages so the tenants couldn't crawl back inside.
- 1845: The Arrival. 33% crop loss.
- 1846: The Total Failure. Nearly 100% loss.
- 1847: The Year of Death. Disease takes over.
- 1848-1851: The Long Tail. Repeated failures and mass emigration.
Common Misconceptions About the Start
One of the biggest myths is that there was no food in Ireland. That’s just false. While the potatoes were rotting, Ireland was exporting massive amounts of cattle, grain, butter, and honey to England. The ports were guarded by the British army to make sure the food left the country.
If you ask a historian like Cormac Ó Gráda, they’ll tell you that Ireland produced enough food to feed itself during those years. The problem wasn't a lack of food in the country; it was a lack of access to that food for the people who grew it. It was an economic and political failure as much as a biological one.
Another thing: people didn't just "start" dying in 1845. The death toll really started to climb in late 1846. By the time the famine "ended" around 1852, one million people were dead. Another million had fled on "coffin ships" to New York, Boston, and Liverpool.
How to Trace Your Ancestry from the Famine Era
If you’re looking into this because you think your family left during this time, you’re looking for a specific window. Most "Famine Immigrants" arrived in North America between 1847 and 1851.
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- Check the Griffith’s Valuation: This is a huge land survey from the mid-1800s. It’s the best way to see where your surname was concentrated right after the famine.
- Look for Parish Records: Many were destroyed in the 1922 Four Courts fire, but some Catholic parish records survived. They often list "starvation" or "fever" as causes of death in the late 1840s.
- Ship Manifests: Search the Castle Garden database (pre-Ellis Island). If your ancestors arrived in the 1840s, they went through here.
Practical Steps to Understand the History
The Irish Famine isn't just a dusty chapter in a book. It’s why there are more people of Irish descent in America than in Ireland today. It changed the English language, the Catholic Church, and global politics.
To get a real sense of the timeline, start by looking at the 1841 and 1851 Irish Census data. The drop in population is staggering. In some counties like Mayo or Sligo, the population fell by nearly 30% in just one decade.
Visit the National Famine Museum in Strokestown Park if you’re ever in Ireland. They have the actual papers of a landlord who was assassinated during the famine. It gives you both sides—the desperate tenants and the panicked landowners.
The Great Hunger didn't just start with a fungus in 1845. It started with a system that made an entire nation dependent on a single root. When that root died, the system collapsed. Understanding that timeline helps us see why the scars are still there, over 180 years later.
For those researching family ties, prioritize searching the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) for passenger arrival lists from 1846 to 1851. Focus on the ports of New York and St. John, New Brunswick, as these were the primary landing spots for those fleeing the initial waves of the 1845-1846 crop failures. Mapping these dates against the specific blight outbreaks in Western Ireland provides the clearest picture of why and when your ancestors likely made their move.