There are just two Movilles in the world, but do you know where the 'other one' is?

As husband and wife, John B and Martha McDermott, sailed down the Foyle in an emigrant ship in 1848, they must have assumed all association with their native Moville had come to an end.

In 11 years, during and after the Great Famine, over two million people left Ireland, a forced exodus that was felt in every corner of the country. Between 1841–1851, the Inishowen peninsula was hit by famine-related emigration – the population dropping by over 7,000 in that period.

In 1847 alone, 12,385 people left Derry port, including many from this peninsula. A year later, the McDermotts joined the exodus. However, John B McDermott would survive and prosper to claim his own particular footnote in American history – naming a town in Iowa after his birthplace in Moville, Ireland.

Moville, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was home to many families by the name McDermott. The Tithe Applotment, which sets out the tenants or owners of land in each townland, shows a number of families by that name residing in Moville Upper in 1828, specifically in Drung, Cullineen, Ballyargus, Ballyrattan and Tiryrone. These include a ‘John McDermott’ in Tiryrone and a ‘John McDairmott’ in Drung – it is possible that one of these men is the father of John B McDermott. An indication of the prevalence of the McDermott surname in Moville can also be seen in the Griffith Valuations (1857), which reveal 24 families by that name residing in the parish of Moville. Even today, the surname is prevalent in the area.

The Great Famine proved the final straw for many poor people in Moville – historian Seán Beattie has produced figures that reveal the population of the parish dropped by 1,372 people between 1841–1851. It is not known if John and Martha McDermott left Moville as a direct result of the famine but it appears likely.

Although Inishowen was not the worst affected area of Donegal – nor hit particularly hard by emigration when compared to other areas of the county and country – the potato blight did strike the peninsula early on, triggering a period of great hunger and distress. Between 70% and 80% of families in the Moville district were reckoned to be dependent on their own manual labour around this time so it is highly likely the McDermotts felt some effects.

Why else would they decide to leave Ireland at the height of the most pivotal event in modern Irish history and gamble on a perilous Atlantic crossing at a time when the mortality rate on board ships often ran above 20%?

The dreaded Famine fever struck Carn Workhouse in the winter of 1847 and, by 1848, meal depots had been established at centres around Inishowen, including Moville. Seán Beattie tells of a man from Moville parish who died of starvation during the Famine even though he had a stack of corn in his garden. It was said he owed it to a landlord in payment for rent. Little wonder so many Moville people chose to leave. Those living in the parish were well used to witnessing Atlantic-crossing ships on the Foyle at this time – a visible means of escape from the grinding poverty of Ireland. The fare to America in 1848 amounted to £5 per passenger. At some point during that year, John and Martha McDermott made their way to Derry quay, secured passage to New York, and departed down the Foyle for a new life in America.

The McDermotts' first footsteps on American soil occurred some six weeks later at the quarantine station on Staten Island, from there they made their way to the docks along the southern tip of Manhattan Island, before crossing the East River to Brooklyn. The hustle and bustle of 1840s Brooklyn must have come as a huge culture shock to the Moville couple. Although it was predominantly Irish at the time, Brooklyn was everything Moville was not – a town growing into a city with smoking factories along the river, gaslights illuminating the public streets, a public school system, and an impressive city hall.

It took wits and luck for those Irish stepping off the boat not to become swamped in places like Brooklyn. In America, Empire of Liberty, David Reynolds writes: “Once ashore, many wandered around aimlessly – dodging the pigs and rabid dogs that roamed the streets – until they ended up, penniless, in the city almshouse. Or in the Five Points area, the prime site for murder, robbery and prostitution in New York.” Thankfully, the McDermotts survived Brooklyn.

Away to their west, beyond the hustle and bustle of the cities hugging the east coast, America was in the process of becoming America: a place of “savage” Indians and cowboys, settlers and desperadoes, the open range and cattle drives, wagon trains and pioneers.

As the McDermotts settled in Brooklyn, 2,500 miles away in California, gold was discovered, triggering a famous gold-rush. The famous Oregon Trail was in its pomp and the Mexican-American war, which secured Texas for the United States, had only just ended. The American Indians were being hounded off their territories and the news on the street was that lands, tens of thousands of acres of it, was still unsettled in the west. It must have seemed to the McDermotts that they had traded a country on her knees for a country in the process of being born.

The McDermotts later departed Brooklyn and headed north to St. Lawrence County, also in New York State, on the U.S. border with Canada. It is not known if the McDermott’s farmed in St. Lawrence County but they seemed to have spent the majority of the 1850s there. The couple had 11 children in all, of whom only six lived to maturity – namely William, Michael, John B Jnr., Sarah, Mary and Martha.

By 1860, the McDermotts were on the move again, west this time, over 1,200 miles to Cherokee County, in Iowa. Like hundreds of thousands of others, it is likely they were enticed west by the lure of land. A year later they relocated 25 miles to the south west, to Correctionville, a rural area some thirty miles east of Sioux City.

1861 was a significant year in American history – Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States and the American Civil war began. Iowa and the McDermotts escaped the ravages of war and in 1865 – the year Lincoln was assassinated – they moved to Arlington Township in Woodbury County, where John bought a parcel of land known as Allendale Farm, one mile south of the modern-day town of Moville. The McDermotts had crossed 4,000 miles of ocean and land to arrive at this spot.

The state of Iowa, in America’s prairie midwest, is today regarded as one of the most agriculturally rich regions of the United States and is part of the “bread-basket” or “Corn Belt” of America. In 1865, it was a farmer’s dream. The McDermotts had swapped the bogs of Inishowen for one of the richest farming regions on earth. Their timing was good – by the time they arrived in Iowa in 1860, the population of the state was exploding: 674,913 people called it home in 1860, but just ten years later that figure had grown to 1,194,020.

The advent of the railroads changed America. Journeys that previously took days took mere hours. But when John McDermott purchased Allendale Farm, the railroad had not yet fully extended across Iowa. The era of the stagecoach as a means of transport was still in its heyday – particularly in isolated rural areas where the railroad system had yet to extend. The stagecoach was considered the finest passenger vehicle of its time. Drawn by as many as six horses, the coach travelled at an average of just five miles per hour and the horses were changed at stations every 12 miles. As many as nine or ten passengers were transported as well as parcels and mail.

As it happened, the thoroughfare east and west through Woodbury County dissected Allendale and the farmhouse was already established as a stage station by 1865 –serving as the stopping place for the stagecoach that ran between Fort Dodge and Sioux City. The McDermotts had also operated a stage station in Correctionville and were thus accustomed to running such an establishment.

In Our History, Our Community, Our People: Moville, Iowa, a brief description of McDermott’s station stop at Allendale is provided: “Mr McDermott built a barn alongside the road, and he also provided a well for travelers and a water trough for animals passing along the way. The farm was the only station stop between Sioux City and Correctionville for the stagecoach that ran between Fort Dodge and Sioux City. The first store in this part of the county was located here, and it was well patronized since it was a four hour drive by team to Sioux City.”

In 1868, John McDermott and T.J. Jones, together with interested parties from Sioux City, established a post office in the McDermott residence on Allendale Farm. Because it was in his house, McDermott was given the liberty of naming the post office. The name he chose was ‘Moville’, in memory of the town of his birth in Inishowen. In time, a town would establish itself less than a mile north of Allendale, and it would retain the name ‘Moville’.

Even today, more than 150 years later, there are only two Movilles in the world – Moville, Inishowen and Moville, Iowa.

Again we turn to Our History, Our Community, Our People: Moville, Iowa, for a description of the post office established by the Inishowen man: “The post office was located in a small room adjacent to the dining room in his home. Patrons were served from a porch window. A trap door in the room led to the basement, and an exit from there led up to the far end of the porch. Mail was dropped off on the porch and taken through the basement to the trap door.”

The McDermotts were on the move again in 1878, heading west to Sioux City, where John would die in 1898. His wife Martha outlived him by five years, passing away in 1903. They had sold Allendale farm in 1883.

In their absence, Moville continued to flourish. The North Western Railway was extended to Moville in 1887 and four years later the line was extended west to Sioux City.

An influx of businesses and other establishments followed the railway and a new town – Moville, Iowa – was born. General stores, hotels, hardware shops, livery barns, lumberyards, banks, draperies, a jail, churches and schools all sprang up. Hoteliers, wagon makers, lawmen, bakers, blacksmiths, hog dealers, grain merchants, drapers, shoemakers, barbers, newspaper men, teachers, clergymen, doctors and many more – all rolled into town. Over a century after the town of Moville, Inishowen, came into being, John McDermott’s Moville, Iowa, was fast shaping into the town it would become.

Perhaps only in America, and only in a town’s infancy, could an entire town physically move but that’s what happened in the early 1890s when a devastating flood hit Moville. Ten acres of land were purchased nearby on higher ground and buildings were moved there. Within a year, the town was going strong again although the years ahead weren’t without challenges: tornados, a diphtheria epidemic, a number of fires and several floods all testing the resovle of Moville folk.

Many descendants of the McDermotts still reside in Moville, Iowa. John and Martha’s lineage made their mark in local politics and society. A grandson, Joe McDermott, became well known in baseball circles and scouted for the New York Yankees.

Unlike Moville in Inishowen, which perches on the slopes of the Foyle, Moville, Iowa, sits on level ground and is laid out in neat symmetrical blocks. The natural landscapes of the two Movilles could hardly be more different, prompting one resident of Moville, Ohio, to remark: “We are surrounded by corn and soy beans whereas you [Moville, Inishowen] are surrounded by water.”

Weather differences between the two Movilles are also markedly different. Iowa, geographically positioned on the eastern edge of what is known as “tornado alley,” is no stranger to tornadoes. Indeed, the state experiences an average of 48 tornadoes per year, not to mention hundreds of severe thunderstorms. Two people were killed and eleven injured in Moville in June 1973, when a killer tornado struck the town.

Today the population of Moville, Inishowen, stands at 1,500. It’s namesake 4,000 miles away in the American Corn-Belt, is home to 1,618. The American Moville celebrated its 125^th anniversary as a town in 2012, its very existence a tribute to the pioneering spirit of John and Martha McDermott and the Moville of their birth.