Foreigners living in ireland before 1900s?

Question

In fiction, was it possible to have a foreigner in Ireland before the 1900s who married there and had a family?

Answer 1

sure! I met an eastern european jew the other day who had been here for forty years...it was just really uncommon thats all....there are loads of vietnamesse boat people who've been here since the americans invaded them

Answer 2

The Danes settled here in the 900's AD. After that we got French and Spanish and millions of English.

They all intermarried.

Answer 3

There were many foreigners in Ireland before 1900, mainly in Dublin and Belfast.

Answer 4

Sure. The country was run by brutal Brits. and that was as foreign as you could get in Ireland!

Answer 5

Yes, My great great grandfather was Ukrainian, we have no idea how or why he made his way to Ireland in the 1880s, but he did. He married my great great grandmother, and his name was changed from Cwiren to a similar sounding local name.

There aren't very many older online records for Ireland, but if you go to ancestry.com you can view Census records for the UK going back to at least 1861. Anyone who got as far as the UK wouldn't have had much trouble getting to Ireland.

Answer 6

Of course, but not perhaps as many as some countries. However, the majority of people in Ireland, according to dna studies, are descendents of the original hunter gatherers who came there from the Basque region after the last ice Age. Another large group descend from neolithic farmers--this crowd came from the Near East and could well be accountable for your 'black irish.'

   As for the 'celts'-well, there no real evidence than any celts from mid-Europe arrived in about 500 BC save a few traders. certainly no invasion. it is looking more likely that the celtic language actually arrived in the neolithic.

Answer 7

Ireland was all British before then and only after 1920 did part of it become Irish. So its not really had foreigners ever.

Answer 8

Sure. There have been many foreigners who gradually assimilated into the general population. Like the Vikings, and later the Normans, who became the English, who became the British. During the 1700s there was a large influx of Germans from the Palatine region of Germany, many of whom settled in County Limerick. And during the Middle Ages many merchants from Spain, Portugal and Morocco had homes in Galway and the west of Ireland, and their descendants here have the pale skin and dark hair and eyes, we call them the Black Irish. Many Irish families have Jewish ancestors who left Spain and Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition, and settled in Ireland. And many German kids were brought to Ireland as refugees during WWII.