13/06/2026
On this day (13th June) in 1818, over 40 families from Cloughjordan and its surrounds set sail for Quebec, Canada on an organised emigration scheme that would become known as the Talbot Expedition.
This scheme was named for Richard Talbot, an officer in the Cloughjordan Yeomanry who assembled a party of 183 people from this parish and beyond to accompany him to Canada, where, courtesy of a new scheme from the Colonial Office, they would receive a land grant of 100 acres per male settler and free transport to Canada.
In early April 1818, the Talbot party left Cloughjordan full of hope for a new life in Upper Canada. However, it would not be a straightforward journey and their troubles began almost immediately.
Although they reached Cork on 4th May, no ship was waiting for them. Thanks to a combination of poor planning and Colonial Office bureaucracy, the settlers were forced to wait for six frustrating weeks before they could finally depart. During these six weeks, precious savings were spent on food and accommodation, while for the many farmers in the Talbot party, the prospect of missing the Canadian growing season became a real concern.
On 13th June, the Talbot party finally boarded the ‘SS Brunswick’. Their journey across the Atlantic would prove difficult and tragically, 12 children died during the 43-day voyage. The settlers finally arrived in Quebec on 29th July and spent several days there while officials attempted to persuade them to settle in Lower Canada. Unfamiliar language, customs and religion to the English-speaking, primarily Protestant party convinced them to continue westward instead.
Their journey took them by steamer to Montreal and then onward toward York (modern Toronto). However, it was at this point in the journey that 15 families decided they had travelled far enough and accepted land grants along the Ottaway River, settling in Goulbourn, Ontario. The remaining families continued with Talbot toward what was then the western frontier.
In a long journey beset with challenges, the last leg of the journey would prove the most challenging of all. After travelling across Lake Ontario and overland to Lake Erie, the Talbot party’s boat was driven onto rocks on the American shore. Although everyone on board survived thanks to the quick thinking of Talbot's son and a servant, who swam ashore with lifelines, most of the settlers' possessions were lost. Forced to rely on the kindness of local farmers in New York, they spent weeks recovering before resuming their journey.
After six months of travel, hardship, delay and loss, the settlers finally reached London Township in Upper Canada. There, each family received a 100-acre land grant and got to work building homes and clearing land in the wilderness.
What seemed at times a disastrous expedition would ultimately leave a lasting legacy, helping to establish further waves of Irish migration to Upper Canada for decades to come, with hundreds more Tipperary families of both Protestant and Roman Catholic faith choosing to make the journey across the Atlantic. Indeed, the second major boat to make the journey after the Talbot party arrived the following year in 1819 and the party consisted of primarily Catholic settlers.
The legacy of the chain emigration brought about by the Talbot expedition and similar enterprises around Ireland is palpable in some notable place names of Ontario, such as Killaloe and Cashel. Furthermore, the township of Biddulph, where the largest unsolved mass murder in Canadian history took place and in which both the victims and the alleged perpetrators were settlers from this parish or surrounding parishes in North Tipperary, was named after the Biddulph family, who owned Congor House outside Borrisokane.
Perhaps the most striking legacy of the chain emigration that followed the Talbot Expedition is the strong present-day links between the people of Cloughjordan and the many descendants of these emigrants who travel to Cloughjordan every year to engage with their ancestry. The picture below shows Charles Corbett, a descendant of Patrick Corbett, a shoemaker who belonged to the Talbot party and settled in the Ottawa Valley. Charles and his daughters, Jane and Dianne, travelled to Cloughjordan in 2018 to join in the bi-centenary commemorations of the expedition.
With special thanks to Clifford Guest’s very informative written piece on the expedition, which appears in ‘Cloughjordan Heritage Volume 10’ (2018) and was the primary source for this post.
