Title: Marriage – The Largest Irish City in the World: New York 1880
Headings: The Largest Irish City in the World: New York 1880
The Largest Irish City in the World: New York 1880
Marriage
Overview
Trends in Marriage Among Irish Immigrants in New York, 1880
2. Irish-born residents do not cluster geographically according to marital status.

Content: 1. Evidence suggests that Irish-born New Yorkers do marry fairly late – the average age hovering around 25 and 29 for women and men, respectively. Why? Many young Irish-born women went into domestic service at the time, often an all-consuming, live-in occupation which best fit single women without the responsibilities of caring for her own home and children. On the men’s side, “given the explosion in work opportunities for unskilled men on railroad or canal building projects, Irish male newcomers in particular who disembarked in New York may have left immediately.” 2 It would make sense for these young adults to delay marriage and children until they had established savings and were able to settle down in their own community. However, these average ages are noticeably younger than those provided by Clear in the quote above concerning average ages of marriage in Ireland. Whereas impartible inheritance and limited resources in Ireland made it difficult for new couples in the famine era to start a life on their own, a rapidly expanding New York provided many more opportunities for young people to support themselves. So while the average age at which these immigrants married might be on the older side for the time, it decreased from the average in Ireland thanks to the greater availability of housing and jobs in New York. 2.