Pension Files
The Andersonville Irish Project continues apace; we have now identified almost 1,050 Irish Americans who perished at the prison. One of the men identified in recent days is Leitrim native Edward Carter, who was around 25-years-old when he died at...
A previous StoryMap post on the site explored the devastating toll the 1866-67 Cholera epidemic took on immigrant and African American families connected with the Regular army (you can read that here). In this post, we take a look at...
As I am on a brief visit back to my former home of Midleton, Co. Cork at present, I thought for our next post we might take a look at some work I have undertaken on local men who served...
Earlier this year Damian presented an online lecture for Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council as part of their Rippling Effects of The Great Irish Famine Series. The talk primarily explored the stories of emigrants from around the local...
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...
Patrick Coffey was a labourer in his 30s when he went to war. In the summer of 1861, he marched off to Virginia as part of Company D, the “Fitzgerald Guard” of the famed 69th New York State Militia. Like...
Owen Moloney was 26-years-old when he was mustered into Company C of the 6th New Jersey Infantry on 7th November 1861. Over the years that followed, the young Co. Clare emigrant saw his fair share of war. He was there...
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...
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...