Podcast Corner: A Famine-era journey from Ireland to America
A Family History of the Irish Famine.
Launched in March, is a weekly podcast built around monthly themed series that bring major moments from Britain and Ireland’s past to life through the stories of real families.
Its opening four‑part series, , explored the life of Edna Bourne, born in Birmingham in 1911 as Europe braced for war. Her granddaughter Lucy, a historian, helps piece together her story, asking what childhood looked like for a girl growing up in Britain’s industrial heart as it transformed into a wartime powerhouse.
“I really like the stories of people who aren’t important in their lifetimes,” Lucy says. “It’s nice to remember and honour them.”
The next four‑parter, , is led by genealogist Jen Baldwin and Fiona Fitzsimons, family and social historian at Trinity College Dublin and founding member of the Irish Family History Centre at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum.
They focus on Archibald McKenzie — Baldwin’s maternal fourth great‑grandfather — whose life, like Edna’s, only becomes visible when things go wrong.
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During the Famine, Baldwin says, “his world is shaped by pressure and deepening scarcity and the decision ahead is nearly impossible: Do they stay in Ireland, or face an uncertain future across the sea, abandoned by a government that turns their back on the people?”
Archibald eventually emigrates to the US via Wales, taking the lesser‑known “chain‑migration” route.
Baldwin and Fitzsimons draw on census records, parish registers, crime and court files, passenger lists, and contemporary newspapers — including the then
In the early stages of the Great Hunger, we’re told, newspapers focused on the causes of the Famine and offered practical advice to farmers in a bid to minimise the damage.
They point to an article from September 10, 1845, which advised farmers to dig up any of the affected crops and feed them to their pigs before they become ‘useless’, even as food for swine.
“Exploring the Famine through my own ancestor has made history feel incredibly intimate,” Baldwin says. “The scale of the tragedy is hard to comprehend, and so many individual stories remain hidden.
"Archibald’s life shows how ordinary people were pushed to the edge, how communities fragmented, and how survival sometimes demanded impossible choices.”
Episode two of is out on Tuesday.
