Podcast: Catherine Garvin & The Search For Her Disabled Son in 1860s America
The new Forgotten Irish Podcast is now live. It is a story that may be familiar to some of you, that of Catherine Garvin and her son Con, which also features as the first chapter of my latest book. In...
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Illiterate Letters to the Clachan: Revealing One Family’s Emigration Story in...
James McDevitt was born into a large Irish family around the year 1845. His home was in a small cluster of houses– known as a clachan– which operated an infield and outfield farming system known as...
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“It Was Not For To Be Soldiers We Came Out”: Recruited Straight Off The...
Back in 2015 Brendan Hamilton and I published a piece on the site entitled Recruited Straight Off The Boat: On the Trail of Emigrant Soldiers From the Ship Great Western. The work was based on...
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Reorienting Perceptions of Irish American Service– A Case Study of New York...
Historically, we have tended to view the Irish American experience of the Civil War through the lens of ethnic formations such as the Irish Brigade and Corcoran’s Irish Legion. Yet of the c. 250,000...
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A Sacrifice to the “Demon of Death”: A Mother Parts with an Image of Her Son
My primary area of research relates to wartime letters written home by soldiers and sailors, and which widow’s and dependents parted with in order to provide the Bureau of Pensions with evidence to...
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Ellsworth’s Zouaves & the Gallant New York Fireman Who Saved the Colors of...
I am delighted to have an opportunity to share another guest post with readers, this time from Meg Groeling. Many of you will know Meg as a regular contributor to the Emerging Civil War blog and as an...
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The Story of a Tyrone Widow, a Misremembered Death, and a Letter from the...
In 1865 Ellen McCann of 87 Mulberry Street in New York’s infamous Five Points district went in search of a pension. She was not a typical widow. By the time her husband Francis had elected to join the...
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Life & Limb: Exploring the Consequences of Non-Amputation for Five Irish...
Amputation, as one historian has noted, is the “symbolic wound” of the American Civil War. One estimate places the number of wartime amputations at 60,000, three-quarters of all the operations...
View ArticleSearching for Irish Family at Christmas 150 Years Ago: “Information Wanted”...
In 1869 the New York Irish-American Weekly came out on Christmas Day. As with every week’s issue, a portion of the paper was given over to “Information Wanted” advertisements. Most often placed by...
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Document Focus: Michael Corcoran in the Revenue Police
Brigadier-General Michael Corocoran was one of the most famous Irish Americans of the 19th century. He led the 69th New York State Militia at Bull Run, and in the months of captivity that followed he...
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