County Clare in the Famine Years: Hidden Bonds Companion Piece
County Clare in the Famine Years
Before they were scattered across America—before the Kentucky O'Bryans and the New York O'Briens lost touch for 150 years—two teenage boys lived in County Clare, Ireland. They walked the same roads their ancestors had walked for a thousand years, in a land where their family name once commanded armies and crowned kings.
Then the blight came.
To understand what Terrence and Patrick O'Brien fled, you must understand the place they came from. This is that story.
The Land of Kings and Chiefs
County Clare occupies the western edge of Ireland, bounded by the wild Atlantic to the west, the River Shannon to the south and east, and Galway Bay to the north. This was Thomond—the ancient kingdom of the Dalcassians, from whom Brian Boru rose to become High King of Ireland in 1002.
For eight centuries after Brian Boru's death at the Battle of Clontarf, the O'Briens remained the dominant family of Clare. They built castles at Bunratty and Dromoland. They held the title Earl of Thomond. Even after the English conquest stripped Catholic O'Briens of their lands and titles, they remained—tenant farmers now, where once they had been lords.
The O'Briens
Descendants of Brian Boru. Once ruled all of Clare. By the 1840s, the Catholic O'Briens were tenant farmers, their ancient lands confiscated under the Penal Laws.
The O'Loughlins
Ruled the rocky limestone landscape north of Corofin. Known as "Kings of the Burren" into the 19th century. Neighbors and marriage partners of the O'Briens for generations.
Clare was divided into ancient territories, each dominated by a ruling family. The O'Loughlins held the Burren—that stark, beautiful limestone landscape where flowers bloom in rock crevices. The McNamaras held the east. The O'Deas held the center. But the O'Briens were paramount, their influence touching every corner of the county.
The Marriage Patterns
For centuries, these families intermarried. O'Briens married O'Loughlins. O'Loughlins married McNamaras. The bloodlines wove together across generations. When Patrick O'Bryan of Kentucky married Mary McNamara, he was following a pattern his ancestors had established a thousand years before—O'Brien and McNamara, united again.
The Triangle: Corofin, Ennis, Ennistymon
In the heart of Clare lies a triangle of towns that defined O'Brien country. These were market towns, pilgrimage stops, and administrative centers—the places where tenant farmers paid their rent, where children were baptized, where the rhythms of Irish Catholic life continued despite centuries of persecution.
Ennis — The County Town
The largest town in Clare and its administrative center. Home to the county's biggest workhouse, built to hold 800 inmates. The courthouse where eviction orders were signed. The market square where farmers gathered. If Terrence and Patrick's family conducted any official business, they likely did it here.
Corofin — Gateway to the Burren
A village at the edge of the limestone country, where O'Brien territory met O'Loughlin territory. The Barons of Inchiquin—the Protestant branch of the O'Brien family—held lands here. The Catholic O'Briens who remained would have known both the splendor of their cousins' estates and the bitter reality of their own dispossession.
Ennistymon — The Falls Town
Built around a dramatic cascade on the Cullenagh River. By the 1840s, it was the center of a Poor Law Union that would become synonymous with Famine devastation. The Ennistymon workhouse, built to hold 870, would see nearly 5,000 deaths between 1847 and 1851.
These weren't distant places for a Clare family. A man could walk from Corofin to Ennis in a morning, from Ennis to Ennistymon in an afternoon. The O'Briens of this region would have known all three towns, moved between them for markets and fairs, heard the news that traveled from village to village.
When the Blight Came
In the summer of 1845, a fungus called Phytophthora infestans arrived in Ireland. It attacked the lumper potato—the single crop on which millions of Irish tenant farmers depended for survival. By September, half the potato crop had rotted in the ground.
The following year was worse. The year after that was catastrophe.
Clare's Famine Statistics
County Clare suffered grievously. The rate of excess mortality placed Clare in the top quartile of all 32 Irish counties. But it was the evictions that set Clare apart. More people were thrown off their land in Clare than in any other county in Ireland.
The effects of the famine raged in County Clare until 1850—longer than in many other regions. While other counties began to recover, Clare continued to hemorrhage people through death, eviction, and emigration.
"The land is still there, in all its natural beauty and fertility. The sparkling Shannon, teeming with fish, still flows by their doors... Why are these starving people not allowed and encouraged to plant their potato gardens on the wastes?"
— London Illustrated News, reporting from Kilrush, Clare, 1850The Workhouses of Clare
The workhouses were supposed to be a safety net. Built in the early 1840s under the Poor Law system, they were designed to provide basic shelter and food to the destitute—but only if applicants surrendered everything else. Families were separated. Dignity was stripped away. The workhouse was meant to be so unpleasant that only the truly desperate would enter.
By 1847, the truly desperate numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Ennis Workhouse
The largest in the county. Admitted its first inmates in 1841. By the worst years, it held far more than it was designed for.
Ennistymon Workhouse
Nearly 5,000 died within these walls between 1847-1851. The union lost almost a quarter of its population.
Kilrush Workhouse
"Few places suffered more from the misery of the famine." 40 deaths per week by 1850. 15,000 evicted in a single year.
Corofin Workhouse
Constructed after the worst years—too late for those who needed it most.
The Orphan Boy at Ennistymon
On the freezing cold morning of February 25th, 1848, a barefoot orphan boy was found at the Ennistymon workhouse door. Pinned to his torn shirt was a note. He had been left there in the night—one of thousands of children whose parents had died or disappeared, who had no one left in the world to claim them. The memorial erected outside Ennistymon in 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the Famine, commemorates this boy and all the unnamed children who passed through those doors.
What Two Teenage Brothers Witnessed
Patrick O'Brien was born around 1830. His younger brother Terrence was born around 1833. When the blight first appeared in 1845, Patrick was fifteen years old. Terrence was twelve.
They were old enough to understand. Old enough to remember.
The Brothers During the Crisis
| Year | Patrick | Terrence | Events in Clare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1845 | 15 | 12 | Blight appears; half the crop lost |
| 1846 | 16 | 13 | Total crop failure begins |
| 1847 | 17 | 14 | "Black '47" — peak deaths and fever |
| 1848 | 18 | 15 | Young Ireland Rising fails; orphan left at Ennistymon door |
| 1849 | 19 | 16 | 15,000 evicted in Kilrush Union alone |
| 1850 | 20 | 17 | Clare still suffering while other counties recover |
What did they see? The "tumbling" of houses—landlords' agents knocking down the walls of cottages so evicted families couldn't return. Neighbors dying of typhus, cholera, dysentery. The workhouse queues stretching through town. The coffin ships departing from the Shannon, from Galway, carrying those who could scrape together passage money.
They would have known families who lost everything. They would have attended wakes for children dead of fever. They would have watched the population of their townland shrink, year by year, as people died or fled.
And they would have heard the stories—passed down from parents and grandparents—of a time when the O'Briens ruled this land. When their ancestors commanded armies. When the name O'Brien meant power, not poverty.
The Decision to Leave
Sometime around 1849-1850, Patrick left. Whether he traveled alone or with others, we don't know. He made his way eventually to Kentucky, where he would marry Mary McNamara—herself likely from Clare stock—and raise a family as "O'Bryan." Terrence followed, settling instead in New York. The brothers' paths diverged. Their descendants would not reconnect for 150 years.
What They Left Behind
The Clare that Patrick and Terrence knew is gone. The population of County Clare in 1841 was over 286,000. By 1851, it had fallen to 212,000. Today it stands at around 127,000—less than half what it was before the Famine.
The townlands they walked are still there. The limestone walls still crisscross the Burren. The River Shannon still flows to the sea. But the people—the dense web of O'Briens and O'Loughlins and McNamaras who had inhabited this land for a millennium—were scattered to the winds.
Some went to Liverpool, the first stop for many emigrants. Some went to Canada, to Australia, to the factories of Manchester and the slums of Boston. Some died in workhouses or in ditches by the roadside or in coffin ships that never reached port.
And some—like Patrick and Terrence—made it to America, where they would rebuild their lives and raise new generations who would carry the O'Brien blood forward into the 20th century and beyond.
"They share the genetic signature of the Royal House of Thomond. They carry the blood of Brian Boru. They are the living proof that a family scattered by catastrophe can be reunited by science."
— Hidden Bonds: EpilogueThe DNA doesn't lie. When Barbara, Michael, and Miles O'Brien tested their ancestry in 2023, they carried markers connecting them to County Clare—to the O'Briens of Thomond, to the ancient bloodlines that once ruled this land. The boys who fled the Famine carried their heritage in their blood, and their descendants carry it still.
The Famine tried to erase them. It failed.
Continue the Hidden Bonds Story
Prologue: The Blood of Kings 1,000 years of royal blood from Brian Boru to the Great Famine Episode 1: The Irish Boy Who Built an Empire Terrence O'Brien arrives in Jamaica, Queens Episode 8: The Kentucky Brother Patrick O'Bryan's story and the DNA discovery Epilogue: The DNA Reunion When science proved what documents couldn'tWant to Know When New Stories Are Published?
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