Ballymahon

Ballymahon, in south Longford, marks one end of the core Irish-Argentine sending district. Patrick McKenna's 1994 thesis found that about 61 per cent of permanent Irish settlers in Argentina came from his "Westmeath" area of Westmeath, Longford and north Offaly, with the core region lying between Ballymahon and Ballymore. He says the merchant Thomas Armstrong recruited labourers from the Ballymahon, Ballymore and Mullingar district, and that an unusually high share of labouring-class emigrants came from the Ballymore Poor Law district, which took in Mullingar and Ballymahon. Edmundo Murray lists Ballymahon, Abbeyshrule and Edgeworthstown as the Longford home parishes.

The Westmeath emigrant John Brabazon, writing in 1842, described Ballymore men fighting Ballymahon men with sharpened sticks at the rural tavern, a sign that parish loyalties crossed the ocean.

The Duggan brothers came from Ballymahon in 1859, according to an Irish Argentine Historical Society page. Thomas Duggan was christened in Shrule parish in 1838. Duggan station, near San Antonio de Areco, opened in 1882, and the family set up a Shorthorn stud in 1888. The place-name scholar Brian Ó Doibhlin links the Ballymahon area to the Duggans of San Antonio de Areco. The historical novelist Alfred Duggan was Thomas Duggan's grandson.

Emigrants from the Midlands could reach Dublin by the Royal Canal, whose Longford branch opened in 1830. In 1845 six passengers drowned when an overcrowded boat capsized in Longford harbour. In August 2025 Ballymahon library hosted a Heritage Week talk on the counties' Argentine emigration oral-history project.