Posts filed under: Social History (Famine Era)
The latest in the Storied Tombstones series looks at some of the Irish American graves I encountered during my brief visit to Gettysburg National Cemetery. As regular readers will be aware, the premise behind the series revolves around photographs I...
As regular readers will be aware, Andersonville Prison and Andersonville National Cemetery are regularly featured on this site. It is almost certainly the National Cemetery that contains more Irish American dead from the Civil War than any other in the...
Many of you will be familiar with the Civil War Monitor, one of the leading magazines focusing on the American Civil War. In each issue they run a two-page infographic feature entitled “Figures”. For their Summer 2020 edition I teamed...
Regular contributor Brendan Hamilton returns with more utterly fascinating research from his project examining underprivileged boys from the North’s juvenile justice system who found themselves in Union service during the American Civil War. You can catch Brendan’s previous post on...
Like many I have had a number of events cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic. One talk that fell victim was for the Kilrush and District Historical Society, where I had hoped to discuss stories of local men and...
One battlefield. One regiment. Three bodies. Three families. A story of Step Migration, Chain Migration, and Americanisation- and of the Kerry diaspora in Ireland, Canada and America. As the last wisps of lingering gunsmoke departed the woods and ravines of...
In May 1913, Cork emigrant Timothy Sullivan approached a Commissioner of Oaths in Liverpool. He wanted the man to write and witness a letter for him. Though he could sign his own name, the 66-year-old was not confident enough to...
During my research I have repeatedly encountered the consequences of the 1866 Cholera epidemic that swept through the U.S. Army. By the time it was over, the military had suffered almost as many deaths as were experienced in the entire...
The event which led to the recording of the lives of the three Mary Driscolls occurred along the Gulf Coast of Texas in September 1863. On the 8th of that month, a small contingent of largely Irish American Confederates under...
A special podcast that features a talk I gave to the Lough Gur Historical Society in December 2019. It describes why I believe the American pension files are such a major resource for uncovering the ordinary lives of the 19th...