The 1641 depositions are in many respects an archive of survival stories. Imbedded within individual depositions are narrations that shed light on the ways that settlers saved themselves during the rising and provide clues about the fate of many other settlers who remained behind. This chapter focuses on several sets of depositions that are especially full in detail. They present information on a wide variety of survival strategies implemented by deponents and those with whom they interacted with in the provinces. In many cases, the stories that deponents told reveal confusion, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and often manipulation.

A microhistorical view reveals detail and specifics about local circumstances, for example ties of kinship and neighborhood that facilitated some settlers' survival. In especially well-documented cases, it is possible to reconstruct the steps that individuals took and the social networks that individuals moved through as they attempted to secure their safety. A microhistorical approach to the depositions also reveals the existence of a ‘dark figure’ of survivors. We know quite a bit about those who fled into Dublin in the early 1640s thanks to the 1641 depositions. The depositions also, however, refer to a number of settlers, English in ethnicity and Protestant in religion, who for various reasons stayed on the plantations. Many of these individuals never made a deposition, and their experiences and actions are therefore only preserved through the words of other deponents.