Blessings from the Irish Potato Famine

•October 21, 2026•

by Janet Roney

How can there be any blessing found in the death of a million Irish by starvation during the devastating Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1851? Those famine deaths were tragic and awful, but it caused another million Irish to emigrate to the United States, including Edward Bresnan who found his way to Dora Township, Moultrie County, Illinois by 1858. Bresnan was a professional peat digger in Ireland, but he soon discovered the “swamp monster” lurking below Dora’s surface that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a part of “Dora’s Vitality”, a story I wrote about Dora Township and Bresnan fifty years ago for the Moultrie Heritage, the historical society’s quarterly publication. I was really waxing eloquently back then, even though my one-year-old daughter Cynthia was sitting in my lap and helping me type!

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