The Lumper Potato (which I lifted on July 14, 2014) played a central role in the story of the Great Famine in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. First recorded in 1808, and soon considered a good livestock feed, this variety was the most widely cultivated and eaten potato in Ireland in 1845. Other popular varieties were closely related to the Lumper.
A family could live off of an acre of potatoes for a year, which is why this was the crop of choice for Irish families living under colonial British rule and renting small plots of land from absentee British Protestant landlords. There was a lot of food grown in Ireland at the time - not just potatoes - but it was grown for market in England, sold at prices most Irish could not afford. So, given that the Irish grew only this potato and its close relatives, when Late Blight hit (yes the same Phytophthora infestans that plagues our tomato crops most years) it wiped out all the potatoes, none of which had a resistance to the disease. This is why genetic diversity in our crops is important.
But the bigger reason for over a million deaths due to starvation, and over a million or (maybe 2?) people fleeing the country was the death sentence of British colonial rule. England continued to extract agricultural commodities, even as so many were dying of hunger, and barely offered aid, despite a world-wide effort to do so. For example, smaller donations (yet with huge sacrifices) came from the Choctaw nation in Oklahoma (just after the Trail of Tears), southern black churches (during slavery), Sing Sing Prison inmates. Larger donations came from many, including the Ottoman Empire, Irish Americans, the Pope, and Quakers. Rarely are so-called ‘natural disasters’ really that.
Epilogue: the Lumper has hardly been seen since the famine, but has been cultivated in Irish and Scottish museum collections. It is making a comeback among seed savers - not for its taste or nutrition (neither are terrific), but for its important history. (Thanks to Chris and the internet for a lot of this info).
This is Mary (Lenihan) Taylor - my great grandmother. She was born in 1885, a couple generations after the famine in Galway, Ireland, where her family had a farm that grew potatoes, carrots, turnips, and cabbage - and they fished in Galway Bay. The farm couldn’t feed 12 people (lots of siblings) so she left for England at 17, met and married her silversmith husband William Taylor by 18, and they moved to the US a year later.
Anyways, I’ll bet she didn’t grow up on the Lumper, but her grandparents must have. I’m so curious how this potato impacted her life and the lives of my English ancestors. Got this info from a 1992 letter from my paternal Grandpa Bob, who had visited the farm.
