So far as is currently known Kilkie family members who emigrated did so to Scotland. Other destinations common to emigrants, ie England, US and Canada did not seem attractive to the small number of Kilkies who moved.

Although reasons for moving to Scotland are not recorded it is likely that the two families who moved to Scotland in the 1850s and 1860s did so as emigrants from the famine and its economic consequences.

There is some evidence that there was some back and forward movement between Glasgow and Derry within Kilkie families over the period 1850 to 1910.

In Ireland tenant farmers held short-term leases that were payable each six months in arrears. If the tenants failed to pay their rent, they were jailed or evicted and their homes burned.

During the time of the Great Hunger (1845-1847), approximately 500,000 people were evicted, many of whom died of starvation or disease or relocated to mismanaged and inadequate poor houses. The alternative to eviction, poorhouses, or starvation was emigration, which pre-dated the Potato famine, but rose to over two million people from 1845-1855. In 1851, the largest number of emigrants, a quarter of a million people, left for overseas destinations. The emigration continued through the 1850s and into the 1860s, with an average of an eighth of a million people. Emigrants tended to follow along family routes, which were found mostly in Great Britain, United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.