Hundreds were rushing from their homes and country, not with the idea of making fortunes in other lands, but to fly from a scene of suffering and death. Within five years, through death and emigration Ireland lost more than two million people. By 1900, two-and-a-half million more left Irish ports to cross the Atlantic. When they emigrated they had a period of intense homesickness, loneliness, and humiliation. Emigrants were generally employed as menials. Boys and men did the hardest manual labor and girls and women did domestic services. They gradually recoiled themselves to life abroad and found opportunities for success that in their own homeland they had never known. Henry Ford was the grandson on one such emigrant from Ireland. The great grandfather of President Kennedy was another emigrant. Some emigrants found in America, Australia, and Canada only a grave, but other rose to positions of power and influence. Some large-scale emigration predated the famine in the 1840's, but the peak rate of emigration was in 1851 at 250,000 Irish (Foster, 1988).