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Imagining the Horrors of Death: An Irishwoman Learns of Her Husband’s Death...
The battlefields of the American Civil War claimed thousands of Irish Famine emigrants. The families of some were fortunate, in that comrades took the time to write to them of their loved one’s final...
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A Walk Among Storied Tombstones: Some Irish Dead in National Cemeteries
In 2014 I was fortunate enough to walk a number of the Eastern Theater battlefields of the American Civil War. I took the time to visit some of the National Cemeteries along the way, at places like...
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War Prices! War Prices! Advertisements Aimed at Irish Soldiers & their...
We live in an age of seemingly incessant and increasingly intrusive advertising. In a world where algorithms monitor our online browsing to offer us individually tailored ads, it is easy to consider...
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“A Few Spoke Nothing But Gaelic”: In Search of the Irish Language in the...
In Philadelphia on 13th February 1868, Owen Curren and Mary Curren gave an affidvait relating to the case of Farrigle Gallagher. Gallagher, a member of the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry, had died a...
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“Our Ironclads on the James River”: The Collected Correspondence of “Garryowen”
During the Civil War, newspapers frequently published correspondence written by soldiers and sailors at the front. Some servicemen took the opportunity to act as quasi-reporters for particular...
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“I Sprung from A Kindred Race”: George McClellan Cultivates the Irish Vote, 1863
The Irish of the North overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party during the period of the American Civil War. Many had little time for Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, and in the 1864...
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Portraits from the New York Irish-American Weekly: 1861
Every week the New York Irish-American brought it’s news to Irish readers not just in The Empire State, but all over the United States. Many Irish soldiers at the front remained loyal readers of the...
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‘Beyond the Power of My Feeble Pen’: The Fate of a Limerick Octogenarian’s...
Limerickman Patrick Vaughan had lived a long life by the 1860s. He was born sometime around 1783, the year that the conflict between the American Colonies and Britain had finally drawn to a close. When...
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‘Pro Patria Mori’: The 94th New York Memorial & the Irish of Oak Ridge,...
I have just returned from a visit to the Gettysburg battlefield, a journey that will be the subject of a number of posts over the coming weeks and months. While there I had the opportunity to stay in...
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“Mother many a good man wint acrost the river but never come back, it was...
I am currently working through the New York unit casualties at Gettysburg to draw together all those of Irish-birth or Irish ethnicity who lost their lives as a result of that engagement. Four men of...
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Time to Move Beyond the Irish Brigade? The Problems with Studying Ethnic...
When we think and examine the Irish of the American Civil War, we often consider first and foremost ethnic units; formations such as the Irish Brigade, Corcoran’s Legion or regimental level contingents...
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“Tell Poor Mama”: Draft Riots & Texas Prisons– Letters From The Gulf Blockade
In 1895, thirty years after the end of the American Civil War, Ann Nugent went in search of a pension. The 75-year-old Irish emigrant had lost her son James to the conflict in 1864. A Second Class Boy...
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Picturing the McNamaras: Images of the Irishman whose final letter home was...
On 2nd June 1864 Hubert McNamara of the 155th New York Infantry, Corcoran’s Irish Legion, prepared a letter for his wife. He was aware that the following morning he would be going into action; he was...
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“She Hates Men”: An Interview With A Troubled Irish Famine Emigrant
Perhaps the greatest value of the Widow’s and Dependent Pension Files is in what they can tell us about the lives of female Irish emigrants in the 19th century. There is surely no other source that...
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Looking into the Face of a Maimed Irish Soldier
At the close of the American Civil War, a photographer of the Johnson & D’Utassy company paid a visit to De Camp General Hospital on David’s Island in New York Harbor. He was there to capture...
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Johanna Barry: The Story of an Emigrant Domestic in Ireland & America, 1836-1916
On 17th September 1862, 27-year-old tailor Denis Barry from Dunmanway in West Co. Cork ventured into Antietam’s West Woods with the 19th Massachusetts Infantry. He never came out again. One of the...
View ArticlePodcast: 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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