There is only one week until our free tour of the 69th New York State Militia at the Battle of Bull Run. I have arrived Stateside, and will be spending this week researching Union Irish at the National Archives in...

Popular perceptions of 19th century Irish emigration imagine a tearful farewell from home, as emigrants departed never to be heard from again. But in reality those who left usually maintained close ties with their home communities– ties of obligation and...

Although proportionately very few Irish veterans of the American Civil War returned to Ireland after their service, hundreds did choose to do so. Up and down the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries those who had served...

Thoughts of the 69th New York State Militia’s leadership at Bull Run immediately conjures images of Michael Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher. Yet there were many others who held important command positions in the regiment on that fateful day in...

The majority of the statistical knowledge we possess on United States volunteers during the American Civil War owes its origins to the Statistical Bureau of the United States Sanitary Commission. During the conflict the Commission painstakingly gathered information on both...

Longtime readers will be familiar with my ongoing work regarding Irish recipients of the Medal of Honor. Most recently, I devised and curated the Irish Medal of Honor exhibition on behalf of the Irish Veterans Charity, which is currently on...

The Widow’s and Dependent pension files allow us reconstruct elements of the lives of working class 19th century families in unparalleled detail. In some cases, these individuals had never even set foot in the United States. Such is the case...

The new post shares another of the brief podcasts that was originally prepared for Irish Community Level Patrons. Here we hear the first-person affidavit of Donegal woman Mary Doherty, who emigrated from Carndonagh, Co. Donegal to Boston in the 1840s....

The 1913 Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg witnessed the largest Civil War veteran’s reunion that ever took place. Although thousands of former Union and Confederate soldiers attended the event, the numbers of those who had fought through the war...

While I have read vast numbers of letters preserved in Federal pension files over the last number of years, very few of them were written on the day of an engagement. There are numerous reasons for this, but perhaps chief...