ABSTRACT
Jane White's letter from the quarantine station at Grosse Isle, Quebec to Eleanor Wallace on 29 June, 1849 is part of a collection of 17 letters between them from 1849-1860 held by the Public Record Office, Northern Ireland (D.1195/3/5, 8B, 9-15). According to Stephen Davison, Jane White's letters 'comment on a wide range of matters including: the voyage from Belfast, the quarantine station at Grosse Isle; the first impression of the country'. 1 Her correspondence is also reproduced in Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth's Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement: Patterns, Links, and Letters (1990). 2 They observe that:
Jane White was a proper young lady, an only child, suitably schooled in County Down in the late 1830s in the niceties and haughtiness of bourgeois respectability. She was eighteen when she waited with her parents for the medical examination at Grosse Isle emigration quarantine station. The family had left Ireland at the beginning of May 1849, toward the end of the Famine, 'the time of the potato rot' Jane called it, and they travelled in relative comfort as cabin passengers on the Eliza Morrison from Belfast. In their luggage was Jane's piano, and they were accompanied by a servant. The journey had taken eight weeks through gales and rough seas, but passengers and crews arrived safely and in generally good health. Their boat passed inspection, and Jane, instead of being isolated in quarantine - the lot of thousands of less fortunate people was allowed to go ashore on Grosse Isle for a picnic and a ramble in the woods. She also found there the time and peace to write her first letter home to a friend, Eleanor, in Newtownards, County Down. 3
I am glad to inform you that we are so far on, in our long tedious journey. We are anchored at Grose Isle about 36 miles below Quebec. It is an island in the St. Lawrence; the quarantine station is here and I assure you the passengers all feel very discontented at being kept here. We have been detained since our arrival on Saturday evening and it is now Wednesday. We have had fever and smallpox on board so that is the reason. The sick persons were taken on shore in a boat to the hospital. There are a great many sheds erected in the island that have been very useful for 182sick persons. There was a doctor here on Sunday from shore who examined the ship and was convinced there was not any sickness among the cabin or poop cabin passengers, which is a very great blessing for us. My Mama's health is pretty good. She was very very ill since we left home greatly owing to the extremely severe heaving of the ship. No one could have any idea of the inconvenience but those who have felt it. One is so tossed about and sometimes cannot keep on their feet. There are two families from Co. Antrim in the poop, besides ourselves. One room is boarded in so we are comfortable in that respect. There are two nice girls here who have kept me in company since I came here.