Irish Famine refugee's story of arrival in America

What we know from literature about what Irish Famine immigrants encountered upon their arrival in North America.

So, having survived the traumatic journey, the nativists and scam artists, there is one more thing the Irish developed in the U.S. – a concern for the land they had left behind. This devotion to Ireland would infuse many of the institutions the Irish would come to dominate in the decades which followed the famine – the Catholic Church, City Hall, big-city fire and police departments.

Having risen from the docks to Wall Street, the Irish began building a bridge across the Atlantic. This monumental project is still underway, though its origins stretch back 150 years, to traumatic voyages across the sea, and subsequent simple questions such as the one James O’Rourke is asked by a fellow Irishman in John McElgun’s novel: “How is things [in Ireland] now; any better? … [T]he people an’t [sic] starving as they wor [sic] when I left there?” 

​
Nster.com