Irish Family History

In 1822, the British Parliament agreed to spend £30,000 to finance the emigration of poor Irish families to Canada.  Peter Robinson, a politician from Toronto was put in charge of the scheme.

Over 50,000 people applied to take part in this government-assisted scheme which saw two groups of emigrants travelling from Cork and Kerry to Ontario.  The first group of over five hundred emigrants arrived in 1823, while a second group followed them in 1825. 

You can find out more about the scheme by viewing an online exhibition:The Robinson Emigration to Canada on the Peterborough Centenial Museum and Archives website.

Interested to find out who was on the ships?  The Ships List have transcribed the emigrants’ details into a database.  Access the Ships Lists’ Database of Peter Robinson Settlers.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Migration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.