Widow’s Pension Files are among the most remarkable records that survive relating to the American Civil War. Filled with fascinating social information, they often also contain primary sources from 1861-1865- such as wartime letters- that have lain unread for over...
On 5th November 1862 ‘Arthur Shaw’, a 19-year-old Dubliner, stepped off the decks of the Great Western and into the hustle and bustle of New York City. From that day forward, his family never heard from him again. I have spent considerable...
For a number of months I have been researching the personal stories of US military pensioners who were living in Ireland in 1883. The vast majority of these men and women were Civil War pensioners, and it is my hope...
Widow’s Pension Files often contain extremely poignant information. As women sought to prove their connections to their deceased spouse, they sometimes had to submit what must have been extremely treasured possessions to the Pension Agency. For Sarah Jane Cochran of...
150 years ago, on the evening of Tuesday 22nd December, 1863, a stunned Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Reed prepared to send a message that promised to send shockwaves through New York City. The commander of the 69th New York National Guard Artillery...
I have been spending an increasing amount of time looking at the records of U.S. military pensioners who lived in Ireland. Of the c. 170,000 Irish who fought in the American Civil War, only a relative handful ever returned to...
Each month for much of the 1880s the octogenarian Timothy Durick travelled from his home in Lackamore, Castletownarra, Co. Tipperary to the nearby town of Nenagh. He made the journey to visit the Post Office and collect his pension, which...
In 1925 newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic carried the story of the ‘Old Man of the Sea’. about a Corkman travelling back from the United States to live with his sister in Newport, Wales. He was thought to...
At least 150,000 Irish-born men fought for the Union during the American Civil War. However this figure does not include those first-generation Irish, born in Canada and the United States, who considered themselves just as Irish as anyone born on...
John Mitchel was an Irish revolutionary who had been deported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1848. He escaped to America in 1853 and settled initially in New York. Mitchel found himself increasingly disillusioned with the form of capitalism he felt...
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