In the mid-1800's Michael Walsh immigrated to America from Ireland during a time of great turmoil and hardship. He was born in Glin, County Limerick, to Thomas and Catherine Walsh. This information was included in the 1939 obituary of his son, Michael Elias. The 1880 U.S. Census also lists Michael's birthplace as Limerick. There is further confirmation of this in a note which Michael Elias asked his niece, Verona Walsh Stouch, to record during one of her last visits to him in the 1930s. Michael Elias was the chief family historian and the final word in the note was 'Limerick' for Michael's place of birth.

Michael had several brothers who also left Ireland during the time of the "Irish Famine." According to stories handed down, the oldest brother was John, who immigrated to Minnesota. Another brother, Thomas, supposedly traveled to Australia, discovered a diamond mine, and was never heard from again. Patrick, the youngest, is said to have never married, and reportedly died during the time of the Civil War and is buried in Richmond, Virginia.

According to Michael's granddaughter, the late Mary Walsh Witte (daughter of Charles Stewart Walsh), Michael is said to have landed in the United States with no money and to have "walked from New Jersey to Reisterstown, Maryland, carrying his trunk.'' This trunk, bound in horsehide, was destroyed when Charles Stewart's house burned in the 1920s.

Michael was employed, like many other Irish immigrants, in building a railway, which was a section of the Western Maryland line that ran from Owings Mills in Baltimore County to Westminster in Carroll County. Work on this section of the railroad began in 1858 and was completed and opened in July 1861, during the Civil War.

The new railroad went through Carrollton, a small village five miles east of Westminster. In 1860 Michael met Mary "Polly" Houck, daughter of an established local family, and they were married. While Michael worked on the railroad, the couple lived in a private railroad car where Polly cooked meals for the men who worked with her husband. Michael supposedly cut wood for the railway for some years after their marriage.

The couple moved to a property south of Hampstead, near the present skating-rink, called the Beam Farm. Michael walked from his home to Carrollton to quarry stone for the house he was building. After the house was completed, Michael lived there for the rest of his life. The farmhouse still exists and is located on Houck Road, just east of Carrollton. The present owner is Lester Houck. The land for the farm originally came from a tract called "Brown's First Attempt." The land presumably belonged to the Houck family before Michael arrived and remained in Mary's name.

Michael and Mary had eleven children who lived to adulthood and one who died in infancy. The youngest was born when Michael was sixty years old and all were brought up in the Roman Catholic Church. The children attended Brown's School on Neudecker Road near Hampstead, which burned down about 1897. Several of the children also attended Wesley School, which was located beside Wesley Church, about two miles east of Carrollton.