Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities

Book excerpt: Emigrant Worlds and Transatlantic Communities gives voice to the Irish, Scottish, English, and Welsh women and men who negotiated the complex and often dangerous world of emigration between 1815 and 1845. Using "information wanted" notices that appeared in colonial newspapers as well as emigrants' own accounts, Errington illustrates that emigration was a family affair. Individuals made their decisions within a matrix of kin and community - their experiences shaped by their identities as husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings and cousins. The Atlantic crossing divided families, but it was also the means of reuniting kin and rebuilding old communities. Emigration created its own unique world - a world whose inhabitants remained well aware of the transatlantic community that provided them with a continuing sense of identity, home, and family.