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‘In Account Of We Being Irish': A New Irish Brigade Letter After Fredericksburg
As some readers will be aware I am currently working on a long-term project identifying and transcribing the letters of Irish and Irish-American soldiers contained within the Civil War Widows &...
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‘In the Midst of Sorrow': An Irish-American Sailor’s Fate, Christmas Eve, 1864
The Christmas period tended to be a tough one for working-class New Yorkers in the 1860s. The seasonality of many laboring jobs and an increased cost of living caused by heightened fuel consumption saw...
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‘Strange Soil Your Doom': Advice on How to Prepare for Emigration in 1863
In the Spring of 1863 the Reverend John Dwyer of Dublin penned a series of three letters to the New York Irish-American newspaper. Entitled ‘Hints to Irish Emigrants’, each was themed to provide advice...
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Stuck for Last Minute Christmas Gift Ideas? Some Suggestions & Advice From...
Today is Christmas Eve, and for many of us that means a final dash to the shops as we seek out those last few gifts. If you are struggling for ideas, why not take some of the suggestions and advice...
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In Search of Con: The Remarkable Story of the Hunt for the ‘Idiot’ Boy Sold...
In late 1863, details of a sensational case began to emerge throughout the newspapers of the Union. It was a story that would be told and retold for decades to come, and was ever after remembered by...
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‘A Deep Blow to Your Heart': Patrick Clooney’s Newly Uncovered Description of...
On 16th September 1862, 33-year-old Ann Dunnigan appeared before an Albany judge to begin the process of claiming a widow’s pension. Her husband Patrick had been mortally wounded in the Irish Brigade’s...
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‘One of Our Brave Men Twice Wounded': An Image of Corporal William Kelleher,...
In the first of a couple of guest posts coming up on the blog, friend of the site Brendan Hamilton brings us the story behind a fascinating image of a young wounded Irishman. Brendan has spent a lot of...
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‘For God Sake Dear Son Write To Me': An Irish Mother’s Desperate Plea in the...
I have come across hundreds of letters written by Irish people during the American Civil War in the Widows and Dependents Pension Files. In reading each one, I always do so in the awareness that the...
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Speaking Ill Of The Dead: Eulogies & Enmity For An Irish Brigade Soldier
On 18th October 1862 the New York Irish-American published an article on the ‘gallant fellows’ of the Irish Brigade who had recently given their lives at the carnage of Antietam. One of them was...
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‘I Trust the Almighty Will Spare Me My Life': Charles Traynor & the Battle of...
In March 1865, Charles Traynor wrote home to his mother Catharine in New York. A veteran of some of the most famed Irish Brigade actions of the war, he was still at the front as the conflict began to...
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‘As Good A Chance to Escape As Any Other': A Cork Soldier’s Aid to His Family...
Occasionally, I am asked why any Irish impacted by the American Civil War should be remembered in Ireland. After all, the argument goes, these people left our shores, and they weren’t fighting for...
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The Madigans: Famine Survival, Emigration & Obligation in 19th Century...
Each pension file contains fragments of one Irish family’s story. They are rarely complete, but nonetheless they often offer us rare insight into aspects of the 19th century Irish emigrant experience....
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Edward Wellington Boate: The Andersonville POW Who Came to the Defence of...
Waterford’s Edward Wellington Boate belongs to the large cohort of Irish journalists who ended up fighting, or in someway participating, in the American Civil War. His story is undoubtedly one of the...
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The Civil War Letters of Captain James Fleming, Part 4: With Hawkins’ Zouaves...
The fourth instalment of letters from James Fleming of Antrim (Find Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here) joins the 9th New York in North Carolina with the Burnside expedition of 1862. In the first...
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Meagher’s ‘Drunken Freaks’& Old Abe ‘Astonished’: The Last Letters of John...
Corporal John Doherty of the Irish Brigade wrote a series of letters home to his family from Virginia and Maryland in the summer of 1862. Transcribed here for the first time, the letters detail John’s...
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‘Goodbye For A While’: An Irish Soldier’s Last Letter Home, Found on his Dead...
On the 8th June 1864 Captain Dexter Ludden and his men from the 8th New York Heavy Artillery were picking their way through corpses. They had been assigned the unpleasant task of burying some of the...
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‘His Death is an Uncertainty:’ Two Irish Women Search for Missing Husbands...
As I am currently on a few days leave I have been taking the opportunity to catch-up on some reading. A book I am particularly enjoying is John J. Hennessy’s Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle...
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Book Review: Patrick Henry Jones, Irish American, Civil War General and...
In September 2011 I had the great pleasure of meeting Mark Dunkelman and his wife Annette in Cork, Ireland. Many readers will be aware of Mark’s exceptional and inspiring work on the 154th New York...
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Tired of the Killing of Men: An Irish Family’s Story of Assisted Emigration,...
The nature of the Widow’s and Dependent’s Pension Files means that the stories they tell are most usually ones of sorrow. The experiences they relate generally pertain specifically to the Civil War,...
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Four Years of the Irish at War in Poetry & Song
As we discovered in the excellent recent guest post by University of Edinburgh scholar Catherine Bateson (see here), poetry and song could be extremely important methods for Irish-Americans to...
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