When we think of the Irish at Bull Run, our minds turn immediately to the 69th New York State Militia. When we consider the Irish in the Civil War, it is the Irish Brigade that springs to the fore. Just as these are the two formations that attract the most attention today, they were also regarded as the most influential representatives of Irish ethnicity at the time. However, our tendency to focus on ethnic regiments when considering Irish participation serves to mask the majority story of the Irish experience. Far more Irish American men served outside ethnic units; far more Irish American families scanned the casualty lists of non-Irish regiments for news of their loved ones. When we consider the scale of Irish involvement this is unsurprising. My latest estimates indicate that upwards of 250,000 Irish Americans served in Union forces during the war. Only a few thousand did so in ethnic regiments. One way to demonstrate the breadth of the Irish story–and how devastating the conflict was for Irish America–is to explore a single battle through the lens of men in these non-Irish units. The post that follows seeks to do this, taking Bull Run as its focus. The fragments of those lives which are revealed represent only a minuscule proportion of the totality of Bull Run’s impact on Irish America. The post is arranged in loosely chronological format, ordered by the time these men’s regiments saw major action on 18th and 21st July. It is one of the most sweeping pieces (in terms of numbers of families discussed) thus far attempted on the site. I hope it serves to demonstrate the truly immense scale of Irish involvement in the conflict– an experience only paralleled in modern Irish history by the First World War.

From the moment of the first clashes between the Union and Confederacy at Blackburn’s Ford on 18th July, Irish Americans began to fall. Among the ranks of the “Chelsea Volunteers”–Company H of the 1st Massachusetts Infantry– was Private James H. Murphy. The 23-year-old was an important financial support for his Irish emigrant parents back in Boston, particularly since his father suffered from ailments that restricted his ability to work. As with many other Irish Americans, James had to leave school early in order to contribute to the household. He had begun to earn a wage at age 14, finding a position as an errand boy. From there he graduated to a printing office, then to a shoemaking apprenticeship, and finally to the Oil Mill in Chelsea where his father had been before him. By the time war came, James had risen to foreman. Given his position, patriotism must have played a large part in his decision to enlist in May 1861. Unfortunately for both himself and his family, he would not survive his first contact with the enemy. He fell to the fire of Virginians defending the ford over Bull Run, in the skirmish that presaged what was to come on 21st July. In the 1990s, the burials of some of the 1st Massachusetts men who fell with him were uncovered near Blackburn’s Ford (see here). (1)

The Battle of Bull Run proper came on 21st July. Federals manoeuvred across the Run, seeking to outflank the Confederate left. Their march, and the Rebel response, dictated that the first major contest of the Battle would be fought out around Matthews Hill. Shortly before 10am men of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry acting as skirmishers encountered Confederates on its slopes. Among their opponents were soldiers of the 1st Special Battalion of Louisiana Infantry, which counted a number of Irishmen in their ranks. Marching with the Rhode Islanders who faced the New Orleans Irishmen that morning was Corporal Thomas J. Kelly of the 2nd Rhode Island’s Company I. The 26-year-old tinman had been a soldier for a little over a month, having left behind his 23-year-old wife Mary Ann (née Gallagher) and one-year-old baby Emma Louisa in Woonsocket. He did not live to see the evening. His company Captain Captain Peter Simpson would later recall that he visited the area where the regiment’s dead and wounded had been gathered at around 2pm on the 21st, and there he saw Thomas’s corpse. Tragically, his young widow followed him to the grave within months, dying in February 1862. Their orphaned baby girl went to live with Thomas’s Irish emigrant parents.

Another Irish emigrant’s son in the 2nd Rhode Island was Private William McCann of Company K, whose father had been a manufacturer in Newport. The young operative was just 20-years-of age when he enlisted. Wounded in the fight, he was probably among those seen by Peter Simpson on the afternoon of the battle. Like most of the other injured Federals near the field, he was captured when the Confederates pushed the Northerners back across Bull Run. A few days later he was a prisoner in Richmond. Knowing his end was near, he gave another wounded comrade, Andrew Bashford, “some rings and other mementoes” which he asked him to pass to his mother. William died at around 4pm on 27th July. These incidents were later related by yet another Irish American in the regiment, Timothy C. Sullivan, who lost his arm as a result of the battle. William McCann would also have known John Riley, a member of Company K. John, was from Cloone, Co. Leitrim, and was some years William’s senior, being in his 40s at the time of the battle. The laborer had married Rosanna McCabe in Ireland in 1840 prior to their emigration to America. First settling in New York, they eventually came to make their home in Rhode Island’s Valley Falls. The last of their four children, William Henry, had just turned one by the time of the battle. John’s exact fate would never be known. Badly wounded during the fighting, he fell into the hands of the Confederates, dying at some point between the battlefield and Richmond. His wife died in 1867. (2)

Rhode Island’s position as an important manufacturing centre meant it had a large Irish community. As a result, few of the state’s units marched to war without a healthy Irish American contingent. The 2nd Rhode Island were soon joined in the fight for Matthews Hill by their compatriots in the 1st Rhode Island. Among their number was Thomas Harrington of Company F, a 24-year-old native of Co. Kerry who had emigrated to Newport in 1858. The recent emigrant had almost certainly been a chain migrant to the state, joining fellow Irish from his Kerry locality in Newport. Facing into the unknown not far from Thomas was James Dougherty of Company H. The 24-year-old jeweller from Co. Tyrone had left Ireland with his family around the time of the Great Famine. When war came, he still lived with his parents and nine other siblings in Fall River. Matthew Quirke was from Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. He marched in the ranks of Company K, and was old enough to be his fellow Irishmen’s father. Matthew was around 45-years-old when he started to ascend the slopes of Matthews Hill, and had adult children of his own. A laborer before joining up, he had taken a classic route to the United States, having moved as a step-migrant through Canada. North America had been his home long before the Famine; he and his wife Catherine Fleming had married in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1833, and indeed it appears his family may have still been there when Matthew enlisted. All three men had taken different routes to America, but their journeys united them in the ranks of the 1st Rhode Island and on the Bull Run battlefield–where each of them met their end. (3)

The Federals successfully pushed the Confederates back from Matthews Hill during the mornings fighting, but their early success would founder against the new Rebel position at Henry Hill. Among the first units to move across the valley of Young’s Branch towards Henry Hill was the 8th New York State Militia, inappropriately decked out in uniforms whose colour matched their name, the “Washington Greys”. Their advance went quickly awry, and most of their men who fought later in the day would do so by attaching themselves to other units. One of those who set off across the valley was 25-year-old Private Michael Carney of Company D. He had left behind his 22-year-old wife Margaret, two and a half year-old daughter Jane and one year old son Philip in order to defend the Union. His failure to return from Bull Run set in train a sequence of events that impacted the family for years to come. Baby Philip died of scarlet fever only a few months after his father’s death. Margaret then entered into a relationship with another Irish American, with whom she had a daughter in 1866, but he subsequently abandoned her and left for California. Ultimately, she would be pursued by the Pension Bureau for falsely claiming a minor’s pension for her deceased son, and for claiming a widow’s pension after remarriage (though it is unclear if she had in fact remarried). (4)

Another of the regiments that went astray early on while crossing the valley was the 14th Brooklyn. But by that afternoon they were back, one of a number of regiments offering support to the batteries of Ricketts and Griffin. Those artillerymen had been given the fateful orders to advance and set up their pieces in the teeth of the Confederates on Henry Hill. One of the Brooklynites was Private Charles Kelly of Company F, a baker whose family were from St. Canice’s Parish in Co. Kilkenny. His father had died in 1858, and Charles’s death in the fight for Henry Hill represented a major emotional and economic blow to the family. Another of the “Red Legged Devils” was Private William Stapleton of Company G. He had only married his wife Margaret on Christmas Eve 1860. When William began ascending Henry Hill, he did so in the knowledge that his wife was 6 months pregnant with their first child. He must have longed to make it through to see his child born. He did not. The daughter he would never meet–Margaret– was born on 26th October 1861. (5)

Across much of the afternoon that followed, regiment after regiment were fed into the maelstrom that developed around Griffin’s and Ricketts’s batteries and the Robinson and Henry Houses. Among them were the 38th New York–the 2nd Scott Life Guard–which had a heavy Irish contingent. Cork native Private James Flynn of Company F who marched in it’s ranks was the sole support of his widowed mother Eliza– his father Owen had died in Ireland in 1846, during the Great Famine. One of James’s friends in the regiment, John Maxwell, later remembered being in the ranks near James when “a ball…entered his forehead and passed through his head.” James O’Rourke was “directly behind” the Corkman and “saw him fall”, remembering he “died almost immediately…having been shot through the head.”

James’s Captain in Company F was Irish-born Hugh McQuade, who also went down under Rebel fire. Struck in the lower left leg, the limb was amputated by a Confederate surgeon in Richmond. Sisters of Charity wrote to his mother to inform her of his progress, but a fellow prisoner revealed his fate:

He received a wound in the lower part of the left leg, which rendered amputation necessary. The operation was performed in Richmond, by a surgeon of the name of Peachy, I think. The flap was a very good one, but, in consequence of inattention, the inside flap entirely mortified, so that they had to cut it completely off, leaving the bone protruding from one and a half to two inches. Inflammation set in, and extended up the limb, and in this condition he was taken down to the tobacco ware-house at mid-day, his face exposed to the hot sun, and the result was, what might have been look[ed] for, his death.

You can read a more detailed account of Hugh McQuade here. (6)

Another of the units making its way to Henry Hill were the rookies of the United States Marines, some of whom had barely learned how to fire their guns. John Reilly, an Irish American from Philadelphia, had enlisted as a Marine just 49 days before the battle. Still under training in the capital’s Marine Barracks, up until almost the very moment they were sent on the march these Marines had no idea they were to be involved. Only days earlier, John had been writing home talking about how long it would be before he was sent aboard ship. Instead he met his end on Henry Hill. Another of the Irish Marines, William Barrett, recalled how the men “fell like hail stones”, among their number a few of the “Irish Volunteers” who had recently joined to Corps from Pittsburgh (you can read more John and William’s story here). (7)

The 11th Massachusetts also saw hard fighting on Henry Hill, charging up the height in an effort to recapture Ricketts’s battery (which they briefly did), and coming under a galling fire. In Company E marched 33-year-old Corporal Michael Rice from Co. Louth. Michael had been enrolled in Boston a little more than a month before the battle, on 13th June. The Irish laborer had wed fellow emigrant Mary Kelly in Boston in 1851. The couple already had a daughter, Mary Ann, born before they got married. By the time of Michael’s enlistment she had been joined by Rose (b.1854), Ellen (b.1855), Catherine (b.1857) and William John (b.1858). Though appearances suggested Michael was a new soldier, in fact he was an old hand. Between 1852 and 1857, he had served out west with the 8th U.S. Infantry. Mary had been with the regiment as a laundress, and their daughter Ellen had been born in Texas. Despite his previous experience, the march to Henry Hill proved his last. Mary outlived him by 40 years, receiving a pension until her own death in 1901.

In Company B of the 11th Massachusetts was Thomas Greene. Thomas had lied about his age to be at Bull Run, and may have been as young as 15 during the action. He had come from Ireland with his parents around the time of the Famine, but his father had afterwards abandoned the family. As a result Thomas had been forced to leave school early, earning a wage in a Boston Dry Goods Store before the war. Thomas was wounded at Henry Hill, and wrote to his mother telling her about it:

[I] got a wound on the right shoulder. Our regiment was drawn up into line when we got the order to fire I just pulled the trigger and fired, and just as I was turning around to load the ball struck me in the shoulder the ball glancing down my arm. Just then we got the order to retreat and everything was thrown into confusion. Our own cavalry running over our own wounded men….

Thomas survived, only to find himself back on the same ground a year later. He was not so fortunate on his return to Bull Run in 1862, when he was again struck by Rebel fire–this time fatally. (8)

Of all the Federal units that took part in the Battle of Bull Run, Irish Americans were most frequently found among those that hailed from New York. Though principally remembered for the horrific Draft Riots of 1863, the Irish working classes of New York were also over-represented in the Union military, suffering by far the greatest losses of any Irish community in the United States. It was practically unheard of for any urban New York outfit not to count at least some Irishmen among their numbers. Unsurprisingly then there were sizeable contingents to be found throughout the New York regiments that struggled for control of Henry Hill. The most famous on the field were the 11th New York, the “Fire Zouaves” that drew many of their men from the city’s fire companies (which were themselves heavily Irish). Daniel Divver from north-west Ireland (probably Donegal) was a 22-year-old Second Lieutenant in Company G. Before the war he had worked as a Morocco Dresser, and was a member of Eagle Engine Company No. 13 based out of Duane Street in Lower Manhattan. Like many Irish firemen, his family were active in political circles– his brother would later be an operative for Tammany Hall. His final moments charging Henry Hill were later remembered by his comrades:

On the march to the battlefield of Bull Run he divested himself of all superfluous garments, entering the field with his gallant comrades in his shirt sleeves, and they rolled above the elbows, sword in hand, and, with the familiar yell of the old engine company, “Get down, Old Hague!” he rushed forward to his death. When the excitement of the charge (the Rebels being driven back into the woods) was over, Lieutenant Divver was found on the field, his life blood ebbing away from over a dozen fatal wounds. He was carried off by some of his faithful comrades and was taken into a wheelwright shop by Paul Chappell and others by direction of Surgeon Gray of the regiment, where he expired almost immediately. (9)

You can read a more detailed account of Daniel Divver’s life and family here.

Sherman’s brigade, of which the 69th New York State Militia formed a part, were the last major group to be committed to the struggle for Henry Hill. Among their compatriots in the brigade were the 79th New York State Militia. Though ostensibly an ethnic-Scottish formation, the 79th contained large numbers of Irish Americans. In Company B was David Donohue, who like so many others had a young baby at home in New York– his daughter Mary was then a little over 7 months old. She lived with his wife (also Mary, née Burns) and his 10-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. They were left to fend for themselves when David, severely wounded in the fight, died in captivity on 2nd August. 34-year-old Private Charles Breen in Company F had married his fellow Irish emigrant Elizabeth Field in the Five Points in 1851. Before he left for Virginia, he had given his step- sister the family prayer book for safe keeping, no doubt hoping to reclaim it on his return. It recorded the birthdates of his children: Sarah (b.1851), James (b.1853), Charles (b.1854) and Susan (b.1858). Unfortunately his demise was only the start of a series of tragic events that afflicted the family. Charles’s widow Elizabeth died a little over a year after Bull Run. Young Susan followed in 1864, succumbing to water on the brain when only five-years-old. Their eldest son James also died tragically young, at the age of just 22.

Another honorary Scotsman was John McClery of Company G. The cooper was a native of Killane, Co. Cavan, where his father had died before the family emigrated in 1853. While John marched off to war with the 79th, his mother Nancy was living in Canada, another example of the step migration so common among Irish emigrants. Wounded and captured during the fighting, John was taken to Richmond, where his journey came to an end. 22-year-old William Geary’s decision to join the 79th can be explained by his pre-war employer. The first of his siblings born in the United States after the family left Ireland during the 1830s, he actually worked for James Coulter, who became Captain of Company H. He died under the gaze of his former employer at Henry Hill. (10)

Also brigaded with the 69th New York State Militia was the 2nd Wisconsin. In Company B was Irishman John Donovan, who was literally riddled with bullets as his regiment battled the enemy on Henry Hill. After the fight–in which he was captured–he recounted his experiences, including a claim that he was struck no less than six times:

…on reaching nearly to the brow [of the hill] I was struck by a rifle ball in the calf of my right leg, outside, passing through to the skin on the other side…After firing three times, another ball hit me in the left heel, glancing up along near my ankle joint…a third ball struck me in the right side, which still remains somewhere within me…I was struck in the right arm (while in the act of firing) about midway between my elbow and shoulder joints, the ball running up towards my neck…I then left the fence to get behind a tree standing some two hundred and fifty yards off, and picked up a revolver which lay on the ground, just after I left the fence, at which time a bullet struck on my right wrist glancing off from the bone. I went a little further towards the tree, when some twelve or fifteen Confederate soldiers came out of the woods directly towards me. I fired the revolver at them three times, and just as I fired the third barrel, a bullet fired by one of this company struck me just below my left eye, going into my head. I knew nothing more until about noon the next day (Monday). (11)

You can read John’s full account of his experiences here.

Aside from the Militia and Volunteers, there were also United States Regulars fighting at Bull Run. The Regular service had long been favoured by Irish Americans. Indeed, as the war commenced, Irish-born servicemen tended to outnumber the American-born within its ranks. One of the professionals on Henry Hill on 21st July was Private Owen McGough from Co. Monaghan. A member of Charles Griffin’s famed Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery, by 1861 he was an old soldier. He had first enlisted as a 25-year-old laborer in New York on 5th September 1853, and returned to the military on 24th May 1859, having spent a few months as a teamster after his first term expired. A witness to the disaster that saw the Federal guns fall into Confederate hands, his efforts to save one of the pieces would see him awarded the Medal of Honor decades after the guns fell silent. His citation reads: “Through his personal exertions under a heavy fire, one of the guns of his battery was brought off the field; all the other guns were lost.” (12)

Eventually the Union forces spent themselves in their efforts at Henry Hill, and their retreat from the field soon turned to a precipitate rout. One of the regiments that had not crossed Bull Run that day, the 2nd New York State Militia, found themselves engaged near the Stone Bridge. They had been suffering under Rebel artillery fire, and now found themselves facing bullets as well. The 2nd was filled with Irishmen: among the four largely Irish companies were the “Emmett Guard” and the “Irish-American Guard”. One of the men gunned down was Patrick Carraher from Co. Armagh. Patrick was part of a large chain migration network from his part of Armagh to New York, which brought many of his friends and relatives to Manhattan in the 1840s and 1850s. He had landed in America at the height of the Famine in 1848. A member of Company A, Patrick had elected to serve under the alias John Carrier. Those who knew him said he went by the name John before his service because of anti-Irish prejudice, as “at the shop where he worked there was a large number of young men Americans and English who would keep calling him Pat and Paddy so he gave his name into the shop as John.” Patrick’s wife Margaret died in 1864, leaving their three children John, Thomas and Francis orphans.

Not everyone who died as a result of Bull Run fell to a bullet or shell. Jeremiah Bressell of the 2nd New York’s Company F was among them. Sergeant Michael Blake remembered that Jeremiah “was well and doing duty…prior to the march to Bull Run, that on said march near Centreville…the whole brigade made a long charge over a ploughed field when [Blake] saw…Bressell take sick…” Martin Winters of the regiment was with Jeremiah during the retreat, and said that “Jeremiah got very wet and very much fatigued that the regiment was very much scattered in said battle…[I]…rejoined it on July 24th when it was in camp on 7th Street near Washington…Jeremiah came into camp on the same day and was sent…almost immediately to Georgetown Hospital…he was very pale and weak…he told [me] of getting wet by falling into the water on the night after the battle.” His exposure on the retreat cost Jeremiah his life. He died on 10th September Union Hotel hospital in Georgetown. (13)

In the months after Bull Run, the lists of the dead continued to grow. One of the wounded was 20-year-old Private Hugh Gillon of the 11th Massachusetts Infantry’s Company B, the “Paul Revere Guards”. Hugh had been born in Ireland, and worked as a mill hand before the war. The Gillons had come as step migrants through Britain, and Hugh’s father had died in Renfrewshire, Scotland, before they moved on to Lowell. Hugh fell into Confederate hands after the battle, but was eventually paroled to Union lines on the James River on 17th January 1862. His freedom was short-lived– he died in Fortress Monroe on 10th February 1862. Another of the 11th Massachusetts wounded was Private John O’Shea of Company C, the “Clark Light Guard”. The 27-year-old Irish carpenter, shot in the chest at Bull Run, was taken to the Sudley Church where the regiment’s surgeon Dr. Luther V. Bell cut the ball out from just below his shoulder. As the Rebels closed in, John managed to get to his feet and walked back to Washington. He was discharged due to disability on 16th September 1861, and there his official story in the military records ends. But his fight for life did not. Although his wound healed, he developed tuberculosis. For months he struggled on, perhaps driven by the knowledge that his death would leave his young children Thomas (b.1853) and Catherine (b.1855) orphans, as his wife had died in 1860. Slowly the months turned to years. In the end John O’Shea died as a result of his Bull Run wound just after Christmas Day, 1863, almost 18 months after the battle. (14)

As John’s story illustrates, men continued to die for months and even years after the lists of Bull Run casualties had been finalised. Some had even managed to restart their lives before the long, lingering death sentence they had been handed on 21st July 1861 came for them. Patrick Kilroy was an 18-year-old Irish laborer in Company K of the 2nd Rhode Island at Bull Run. During the fight he was shot in the right side, an injury that led to his discharge on 2nd April 1862. Patrick felt he had a future. He started a relationship with Bridget Gill after he left the army, and when she became pregnant the couple married in June 1862. Their son John was born three months later. But Patrick’s wound never released him. The damage the ball had done to his lungs caused inflammation and haemorrhaging, killing him on 1st October 1863–over two years after the engagement when the fatal gunshot was fired. Bridget died in 1866, adding young John to seemingly ever growing list of Irish American Bull Run orphans. (15)

The Civil War continued long after Bull Run, an engagement that would be dwarfed in scale by the battles to come. The handful of stories presented above gives only a tiny indication of the immense impact those engagements had on Irish American communities; communities whose sons, husbands and brothers were spread across hundreds of different Federal formations. What is truly sobering is the realisation that in July 1861, such miseries were only beginning–before long these horrors would be shared in by tens of thousands more Irish emigrants to America.

If you are interested in the 69th New York State Militia and the Irish at Bull Run, consider our tour in Spring 2019. You can find out more about it at Bull Runnings here.

If you have enjoyed this and other posts and resources on the website, please consider supporting my work on Patreon. You can do so for as little as $1 per month, and gain access to exclusive content. You can find out more by clicking here or visiting https://www.patreon.com/irishacw. 

(1) Murphy Widow’s Certificate, 1870 Federal Census (Boston Ward 2), Cudworth 1866:15; (2) Hennessy 2015: 56-69, Kelly Widow’s Certificate, 1865 Rhode Island Census (Cumberland), 1850 Federal Census (Cumberland), Woodbury 1875: 410-411; 1850 Federal Census (Newport), McCann Widow’s Certificate, Woodbury 1875: 417, 1865 Rhode Island Census (Cumberland), Woodbury 1875: 418; (3) Woodbury 1862: 154-168, 1860 Census (Fall River), Quirke Widow’s Certificate; (4) Hennessy 2015: 78, Carney Widow’s Certificate; (5) Hennessy 2015: 91, Kelly Widow’s Certificate, Stapleton Widow’s Certificate; (6) Flynn Widow’s Certificate, New York Irish American 23rd November 1861, A-G Report 1902, Joint Committee 1863: 473; (7) Reilly Navy Widow’s Certificate, 1860 Federal Census (Boston Ward 7), Pittsburgh Daily Post 31 July 1861; (8) Hennessy 2015: 108-109, Hutchinson 1893: 11-12, U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, Greene Widow’s Certificate, ; (9) Divver Widow’s Certificate, Costello 1887: 590,730, 1860 Census (Manhattan); (10) Donohue Widow’s Certificate, Breen Widow’s Certificate, McClery Widow’s Certificate, Geary Widow’s Certificate, 1850 Census (New York Ward 19); (11) New York Irish American, 9th September 1862; (12) U.S. Army Register of Enlistments; (13) New York Irish American 4th May 1861, Carraher Widow’s Certificate, Unknown Captain 2nd New York State Militia (via Bull Runnings), Bressell Widow’s Certificate; (14) Gillon Widow’s Certificate, Gillon CMSR, 1860 Federal Census (Lowell Ward 1), O’Shea Widow’s Certificate (15) Kilroy Widow’s Certificate;

References

1850 U.S. Federal Census

1860 U.S. Federal Census

1870 U.S. Federal Census

1865 Rhode Island Census

U.S. Army Register of Enlistments

Widow’s Certificate for Private James H. Murphy

Widow’s Certificate for Corporal Thomas J. Kelly

Widow’s Certificate for Private William McCann

Widow’s Certificate for Private Matthew Quirke

Widow’s Certificate for Private Michael Carney

Widow’s Certificate for Private Charles Kelly

Widow’s Certificate for Private William Stapleton

Widow’s Certificate for Private James Flynn

Widow’s Certificate for Corporal Michael Rice

Widow’s Certificate for Private Hugh Gillon

Widow’s Certificate for Second Lieutenant Daniel Divver

Widow’s Certificate for Private Thomas Greene

Widow’s Certificate for Private David Donohue

Widow’s Certificate for Private Charles Breen

Widow’s Certificate for Private John McClery

Widow’s Certificate for Private William Geary

Widow’s Certificate for Private Jeremiah Bressell

Widow’s Certificate for Private Hugh Gillon

Widow’s Certificate for Private John O’Shea

Widow’s Certificate for Private Patrick Kilroy

Navy Widow’s Certificate for Marine John Reilly

Compiled Military Service Record of Private Hugh Gillon

New York Irish American 4th May 1861

New York Irish American 24th August 1861

New York Irish American 9th September 1862

Pittsburgh Daily Post 31 July 1861

Unknown Captain, 2nd New York State Militia, On the March to Manassas, the Battle, and the Retreat (via Bull Runnings)

New York Adjutant General 1902. Annual Report of the Adjutant-General of the State of New York for the Year 1901

U.S. Government Printing Office 1863. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War

Augustine E. Costello 1887. Our Firemen: A History of the New York Fire Departments.

Warren H. Cudworth 1866.  History of the First Regiment (Massachusetts Infantry).

John J. Hennessy 2015. The First Battle of Manassas” An End to Innocence, July 18-21, 1861.

Gustavus B. Hutchinson 1893. A Narrative of the Formation and Services of the Eleventh Massachusetts Infantry from April 15, 1861 to July 14, 1865.

Augustus Woodbury 1862. A Narrative of the Campaign of the First Rhode Island Regiment, in the Spring aand Summer of 1861. 

Augustus Woodbury 1875. The Second Rhode Island Regiment, A Narrative of Military Operations.