Asenath Nicholson

American visitors to Ireland in the 19th and early 20th century frequently made headlines, but perhaps none more so than Asenath Nicholson who visited Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine traversing the country in the process. Her account of life in Ireland provides a real-life glimpse of the condition of the poor. In 1974 the Irish Examiner retold that story:

WHAT an extraordinary sight Mrs. Asenath Nicholson must have presented during 1844 and 1845 as she trudged the Irish countryside, knocking at doors, seeking shelter which was always there for her. She was alone in the world and from New York in May 1844 she had sailed for Ireland, her object, as she said, to seek truth by sharing the hardships of the Irish peasants, to learn what she could about their religion and then (but not till then) to become a Bible missionary among them.

STRANGE APPEARANCE

Nearly 50 years old, recently widowed, fresh-coloured and wearing what was then called the conventional dress of the American tourist, Asenath Nicholson arrived in Dublin with only the scanty knowledge she had of Ireland. Over that fair landscape hung a dark curtain of desolation and death. So, wearing her conventional tourist dress she set out to meet the Irish and if possible to help them. Conventional to the American tourist her dress may have been, but in the Irish countryside it sent many a child into hysterics. Alfred Sheppard described her. Middle age, absurdly clad, with a bonnet and bearskin muff that sent mountain children into shrieks of terror; often penniless, strapped round with carpet bags and parcels; with an Irish testament or Bible in one hand; blind as a bat without her spectacles; often fanatical; using a parasol as an alpenstock when she climbs desolate and dangerous mountains against advice and so muddle headed that wallet, tickets, money, spectacles, brooch, comb, parasol, shawl are lost and found and lost again, and lost and found. Her story was published in London under the title "The Bible in Ireland". She missed meeting Daniel O'Connell, who was in prison, but she met Father Theobald Mathew….

For more information on Nicholson search the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )