My grandmother’s name is Mairead (pronouced “Muh-rade”). I grew up listening to her tales of life in Dublin, her thick Irish accent vocalizing between sips from an ever-present cup of Lipton tea. Her speech is peppered with the words “grand” and “lovely,” and she addresses everyone as “love.” The first time she ever asked me to turn on the “telly,” I confidently picked up my family’s telephone and pressed the call button before realizing that she meant the television, which, in retrospect, made much more sense. Aside from our linguistic differences, my grandmother’s foreign origins were something that I took for granted, that I was used to. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized just how remarkable her decision to leave Ireland as a young woman was. Though I often listen to scattered anecdotes, mostly humorous, it occurred to me that I had never heard my grandmother’s complete, chronological immigration story. In addition to its personal appeal to me as a granddaughter, I realized that my grandmother’s migration holds historical significance, representing an journey common among Irish people, yet unique in its own right. I wanted to learn more.
Sitting at my desk in my college apartment, I text her to ask if she is ready for the phone call we have planned. She responds that she is, punctuating her text with a shamrock emoji.
***
“What drove you to leave Ireland and come to America in the first place?”
“I got married. I came the day I got married.”
Mairead and her future husband Peter met when he returned to Dublin to visit his family. The seventh of fifteen children, Peter had emigrated from Dublin to Red Bank, New Jersey. There, he rented an apartment with a group of men, all fellow Irish immigrants, and worked as a bartender at a local restaurant.
Mairead was twenty when she met Peter. Peter Morris, she thought, was the nicest name she had ever heard. The young man had dark hair, green eyes, and a great sense of humor: he could make a room of people laugh with ease.
Though she was dating an engineer named Bill Doyle when she met Peter, she agreed to go out for coffee with him.
“I thought he was all right. You know, I wouldn’t sell the farm for him.”
Despite Mairead’s rather apathetic view of Peter, one coffee date turned into multiple, and the two “went dancing and stuff like that.”
When his two weeks of vacation were over, Peter prepared to return to the U.S. He asked Mairead, simply, “would you like to go to America?”
Had Mairead continued dating Bill Doyle, he likely would have bought a house in Dublin and Mairead would have led a comfortable, ordinary life. Going to America, however, was exciting, “like going to the moon.” Mairead had only known one Irish girl who immigrated to America. When they were eighteen, her friend Angela had moved to California to work as a nanny. Once settled, Angela had urged Mairead to come join her and mind children, as well. Though Mairead liked the idea, she declined, too afraid to venture to America alone. Peter’s offer, thus, was an ideal scenario, guaranteeing Mairead a knowledgeable travel companion.
I wanted real adventure to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
–James Joyce, “An Encounter,” Dubliners
“I hardly even knew what he looked like,” my grandmother jokes. Yet, despite having known Peter only two weeks, Mairead told Peter that she would love to go. America, to her, was paradise. She envisioned the luxurious beaches described by Angela: “And I’m not even one for a beach. You know, I get all burnt.” Seizing this opportunity, Mairead was careful not to get her hopes up. She half-expected Peter to return overseas and forget about her, resuming his life as usual.
But Peter returned to America and exceeded Mairead’s expectations, writing to her every day and visiting Dublin every few months.
Where young Mairead saw opportunity, her mother, Lilly, saw risk. “Oh, god, you’re buying a pig in a poke!” she warned, “You don’t even know him.”
Lilly was not particularly fond of Peter. After he came over for tea (“no such thing as going for dinner over there; you get tea and cake,” my grandmother explains), Mairead’s mother concluded that Peter talked too much. “My mother thought he was the worst pick of the litter,” my grandmother recalls. “She thought he was the worst.”
Mairead concedes that Peter was a know-it-all. However, Mairead’s determination to reach America overshadowed any concerns about this unappealing quality. Despite Lilly’s objections, Mairead and Peter were soon engaged.
On a stroll down George’s Street, a popular shopping area in Dublin, Mairead glimpsed a beautiful engagement ring on display in a shop window: three square-shaped diamonds set in a simple gold band. The store’s sign read “Appleby Jewelers” in bold letters. Still in business today, Appelby’s has long been a well-known establishment among Dublin residents for purchasing engagement and wedding rings. When the time came for Peter to purchase an engagement ring, Mairead promptly “dragged him to Appelby’s.” Her heart was set on the particular ring she had seen, though she did not admit this fact. “I never said that I had my eye on this one. I tried on rings, but this was the one I knew I was going home with.” As seen in her determination to reach America, when Mairead had a goal in mind, she was persistent.
Peter continued to visit Dublin regularly over the course of a year. Peter did not possess American citizenship. At the time, an immigrant was required to hold a green card for eight years before they applied. Still, as the soon-to-be spouse of a green card holder, Mairead qualified for a visa.
Visas shall next be made available, in a number not to exceed 20 per centum of the number specified in section 201(a) (ii), plus any visas not required for the classes specified in paragraph (1), to qualified immigrants who are the spouses, unmarried sons or unmarried daughters of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.
–H.R. 2580 (89th): An Act to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act, and for other purposes (1965)
The wedding was set for April 11th, 1964. Lilly was heartbroken that her daughter was relocating to America. At one point, she hyperbolically threatened to drown herself in the city’s Grand Canal if Mairead moved to America. Though Mairead knew this exclamation was an empty threat, Lilly’s opposition cast a shadow over Mairead’s decision.
Lilly was from a small country town in County Wicklow, Ireland. She received schooling in her local one-room schoolhouse, then moved to Dublin to find work. Lilly, having always been bright, decided to become a nurse. At the time, one needed to travel to England to attend nursing school. By the time she began to consider this career path, she was in a serious relationship with William Delaney. With an air of skepticism, my grandmother recalls, “Her story was that my dad said he wouldn’t wait for her.” Lilly abandoned her dream of becoming a nurse and married William shortly thereafter.
Whether or not William truly imposed such an ultimatum on the aspiring nurse, her decision is significant. Presented with a choice between remaining in a comfortable situation or venturing into the unknown, Lilly chose the former, shying away from risk and uncertainty. The same anxieties that prevented her from traveling to England and beginning a new career likely influenced her reaction to Mairead’s plans to move to America. Facing a similar decision to her mother one generation later, Mairead favored the opposite choice, embracing adventure.
Mairead reassured her mother with a “bullshit story,” telling her that she and Peter would return to Ireland in two years, that they planned to work in America to save for a house in Dublin.
With time, Lilly came to grudgingly accept Mairead’s decision to marry Peter. The ceremony took place at St. Michael’s, a Church of Ireland church on High Street. Mairead wore a dress that, like her engagement ring, she had seen in the window of a shop on George’s Street: Colette Mode’s, a popular women’s fashion company in Ireland. The dress was made of lace, with rose detail on the back and a train.
The wedding reception was held at the Art Deco-style South County Hotel, in the southern Dublin neighborhood of Stillorgan. While their wedding guests enjoyed an evening of laughing, drinking, and dancing, Mairead and Peter had other plans.
“I must have been out of my mind. I came from the reception. We disappeared from the reception,” my grandmother exclaims. “That was our plan because I couldn’t [bear to] say goodbye to my mother. It was ’64, and I was twenty, and that was my opportunity to get ahead.” Though Mairead was soon to take up residence in a country to which she had never been and knew no one, her biggest fear was a goodbye.
Irish culture traditionally equated emigration to America with funerals. Farewell parties for those going abroad were called American wakes.
– Linda Dowling Almeida, Irish Immigrants in New York City, 1945-1995, 28.
It did not take long for the reception-goers to realize that the guests of honor had vanished. When Mairead’s family realized that she had departed for America. Eilish, Mairead’s nineteen-year-old sister, was so upset that she attempted to slip out through the women’s bathroom window to follow Mairead. Her plot failed when her mother caught her in the act, halfway out the window, legs dangling.
Mairead and Peter raced to the nearest train station to embark on the first part of their journey: they were headed to Glasgow.