As regular readers of the site will know, I have spent many (maybe too many!) years studying the Widows and Dependents pension files of Irish immigrants. For successful applicants, the most important document they possessed was their Pension Certificate, the...
On October 15th, 1861, as the young Army of the Potomac was busy preparing for future campaigning, Brigadier General John H. Martindale rode out to Hall’s Hill, Virginia, to inspect a regiment that had recently been added to the brigade...
Irish in the American Civil War has a long-standing interest in Civil War-era tattoos and markings. Brendan’s new post is the latest instalment in a series focused on the topic- you can check out some of the others via the...
This is the second part in a series of articles by myself and several guest contributors, chronicling the lives of several related Hamilton emigrants from County Tyrone. While Part 1 explored the emigration and early career of William Hamilton, Part...
This is the first part in a series of articles by myself and several guest contributors, chronicling the lives of several related Hamilton emigrants from County Tyrone. While our first subject, William Hamilton, fought in the American Civil War, the...
The U.S. Bureau of Pensions was in a bind. They were unable to verify–or even approximate–the age of one Richard Ewing, a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who previously served two years in the 25th New York Volunteer...
To the police of Albany, New York, the Small brothers were well-known troublemakers. The two boys, Henry and Stephen, were born in Albany to Irish immigrant parents in the 1840s. Their mother Hannah died when they were little, leaving them...
In the first of what I hope will become a series of posts about Irish Americans who were executed during their Civil War military service, we take a look at documents relating to the story of Private Robert Kerr, an...
Within the files of Irish Americans who died during the American Civil War, certain engagements crop up again and again. As a general rule, the very worst battlefields of the war for Irish Americans were those that took the greatest...
One of the aims of the Andersonville Irish Project is to use the men identified within the National Cemetery as a vehicle for exploring the wider social story of 1860s Irish America. Just such an opportunity surrounds the case of...