The season's first episode of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., exceeded my (already high) expectations because there actually was an Irish connection on the show! Writer Stephen King was found to have an ancestor who emigrated from Ireland after the famine of 1741. I haven't yet tracked any of our own Irish family history back beyond 1800 so I'd read little about the 18th century famine. Here's a summary from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Famine_(1740–1741): The Irish Famine of 1740–1741 (aka Bliain an Áir, “The Year of Slaughter”) in the Kingdom of Ireland was perhaps of similar magnitude to the better-known Great Famine of 1845–1852. Unlike the famine of the 1840s, which was caused in part by a fungal infection in the potato crop and, separately, extreme government regulations, that of 1740–41 was due to extremely cold and then rainy weather in successive years, resulting in a series of poor harvests. Hunger compounded a range of fatal diseases. The cold and its effects extended across Europe, and it is now seen to be the last serious cold period at the end of the Little Ice Age of about 1400–1800. As many as 400,000 Irish people died of starvation, fever and plague during this time. The country's population was less than 2 ½ million, making the famine of 1740-41 more intense and proportionately more deadly than the Great Famine a century later. The 1740-1741 famine renewed the impetus for emigration to North America, particularly from Ulster where perhaps the weather and famine were the worst. Ships bringing flax seed from America returned loaded with emigrants. Stephen King's ancestor landed in New Bern, North Carolina, where many emigrants came after 1740-1741.