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...
George was born around 1845 in Dingle. He had been enrolled at Lynn, Massachusetts on 3rd December 1863, becoming a private in Company H of the 2nd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, a unit with a heavy Irish American contingent. At the...
The new post comes from regular contributor Brendan Hamilton, who needs no introduction on the site. It brings another insight into Brendan’s fantastic and pioneering research on the boys from the North’s Houses of Refuge who found themselves in Union...
As the new Andersonville Irish Project gathers steam, the site will be sharing stories and information about some of the Irish American men who died there, as well as news on the database and map as they are updated. In...
I’m pleased to let readers know of the official launch the Andersonville Irish Project here on Irish in the American Civil War. We’re seeking public help to ID Irish interred at Andersonville, the cemetery that likely contains more Irish casualties...
Very occasionally Irish American pension files contain beautiful documents that were created as a record of the family’s origins and growth (for a previous examination of one, see here). The adoption of Family Registers to note down births, marriages and...