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‘Our Orphan Children Will Not Soon Forget Him’: The Death of General Michael...
150 years ago, on the evening of Tuesday 22nd December, 1863, a stunned Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Reed prepared to send a message that promised to send shockwaves through New York City. The commander...
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Bowld Soldier Boys: The Return of Irish Brigade Veterans to New York, January...
150 years ago, as 1864 dawned, the veteran volunteers of the Irish Brigade came home to New York. These men had come through some of the toughest battles of the war but had taken the decision to carry...
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Looking into the Face of a Dying Irish Soldier
Around late April or early May of 1865 a photographer in Harewood Hospital, Washington D.C. exposed a photograph of a wounded Union soldier. The man, who still wore the beard he favoured on campaign,...
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‘Flags of Old Ireland for One Cent!’ and ‘All’s right- Dad’s Sober’: New...
What was St. Patrick’s Day like 150 years ago? What type of groups marched in the Parade, and what types of imagery did they use? We are fortunate that the full line up of the 1864 New York Parade...
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A 150 Year Old Missing Persons Case- In Search of a 19-Year-Old Irishman
On 5th November 1862 ‘Arthur Shaw’, a 19-year-old Dubliner, stepped off the decks of the Great Western and into the hustle and bustle of New York City. From that day forward, his family never heard...
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‘I Feel Very Lonely and Downhearted’: Isolation, Idealism and Kindred in the...
Widow’s Pension Files are among the most remarkable records that survive relating to the American Civil War. Filled with fascinating social information, they often also contain primary sources from...
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‘If You Ever Want To See Him Alive…Come Immediately': A Race Against Time For...
Felix Mooney was 53-years-old when he enlisted in what became Company D of the 61st New York Infantry on 12th August 1861. Wounded at the Battle of Malvern Hill on 1st July 1862, he was taken prisoner...
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‘Your Likeness Was Buried With Him': A Letter to An Irish Soldier’s Wife...
The second day of the Battle of Gettysburg was a tough one for New York’s Excelsior Brigade. Although not an ethnic Irish formation, many of the brigade’s regiments- such as the 70th New York Infantry-...
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Gangs of New York: Recruiting the Irish ‘Straight Off the Boat’
One of the best known scenes in Martin Scorcese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York is that which depicts the enlistment of Irish emigrants ‘straight off the boat’ into the Union army. The seemingly...
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‘The First Time the Old Corps was ever Whipped': A Letter from Ream’s Station
This year we are remembering the 150th anniversary of the 1864 campaigns of the American Civil War. 1864 looms large in many of the pension files relating to Irishmen and their families that I have...
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The Civil War Letters of Captain James Fleming: Part 1
In 1832 James Fleming was born to Malcolm and Ann Jane Fleming in Islandbawn, Co. Antrim. The family would later move to nearby Larne when Malcolm established a nursery there, and it was here that...
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‘The Hard Industry of My Own Hands': Three American Civil War Widows in...
On the face of things, Irishwomen Honora Cleary, Eleanor Hogg and Maria Sheppel had little in common. For a start, they were from different parts of Ireland; Honora hailed from Cappoquin, Co....
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Remembering James Sharkey: The Final Letters of an Irish-American Boy
As regular readers of the blog will know, I spend a lot of time looking through Civil War Widow’s & Dependent’s Pension Files. Many of these files contain original letters written home by soldiers...
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The Civil War Letters of Captain James Fleming, Part 2: With Hawkins’ Zouaves...
In the first of the James Fleming letters the man from Larne, Co. Antrim described his emigration to Canada in 1857 and the first weeks of his new life across the Atlantic. We join him nearly four...
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A Visual Look at Irish Veterans in the G.A.R.: Thomas Francis Meagher Post...
The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was a Union veteran organisation originally founded in 1866. It would eventually become a significant lobby group with major political clout, particularly when...
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‘I Hope…To See You Once More And Then I Would Die Contented': An Irish Mother...
Bridget Burns married her husband William in Ireland on 18th August 1840. When her husband died eight years later, he left Bridget a widow and their only child, Henry, fatherless at the age of six. By...
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Dependents: Portraits of 50 Irish People in New York Poorhouses, 1861-1865
On 4th August 1865, an Irish emigrant woman from Cork City gave birth to a baby girl in New York. The child -Mary- had been dealt a tough start to life. Her mother was a pauper, and Mary had entered...
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Celebrating Thanksgiving Aboard Union Ironclads, James River, 1864
In November 1864 a number of Union Ironclads were to be found on the James River in Virginia, supporting Federal ground operations there. A large number of the men on board the vessels of the James...
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‘God Has Called Your Husband to the Other Shore': The Letters that turned...
Few historic documents intrude on the intimate emotional experiences of past people quite like the letters that brought them news of a loved ones death. To read them is to at once imagine that first...
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The Civil War Letters of Captain James Fleming, Part 3: With Hawkins’ Zouaves...
In the third instalment of letters from James Fleming of Antrim (Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here), we join the young Irish officer of the 9th New York “Hawkins’ Zouaves” at Hatteras Inlet, North...
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