PAUL SWIFT continues his series on US towns with Irish names

 

In Sante Fe province in Northwest Argentina there is small town with a population of 4,000 named Murphy. It is called after Wexford-man John James Murphy who emigrated in 1844.

Murphy was not the first Irish man to arrive on the Argentine shores. That feat belongs to the Farrell brothers, John and Thomas, who were part of the Mendosa Expedition in 1536 which saw 13 ships and 2,000 men arrive in South America and resulted in the eventual founding of Buenos Aires.

It is estimated that there are about 650,000 people in Argentina of Irish decent and they make up the fifth largest Irish Community in the world and the largest non-English speaking Irish community anywhere.

The number of Irish emigrants heading to Argentina would likely have been much greater but for an event known as the ‘Dresden Affair’. The Irish had a reputation as hard workers with experience in agriculture and sheep herding. In 1889, using dodgy agents in Ireland, the Argentine Government managed to attract 1,774 emigrants, mostly poor Irish, from the counties of Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

They were shipped in terrible conditions to Argentina on a steam ship known as the ‘City of Dresden’. Many didn’t survive the 19-day voyage. Once they arrived, the country was ill-equipped to handle the remaining passengers, especially because the once-profitable sheep industry was in decline. They had no food or water and their luggage, which had been sent ahead, was lost.

Some 800 of the immigrants were sent to the area of Bahia Blanca to set up the Irish colony of Napostá, but they discovered that the coastal area is one of the few regions of the country that was unfavorable to agriculture. To this day, the fates of many of the 1,774 people who were on the SS Dresden are unknown.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own