Although proportionately very few Irish veterans of the American Civil War returned to Ireland after their service, hundreds did choose to do so. Up and down the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries those who had served...
Over the course of the last few years I have been asked to provide historical advice and content for the Irish Veterans charity. One of their primary missions is to explore the experiences of Irish emigrants and the Irish Diaspora...
For anyone familiar with the excellent John Banks’ Civil War Blog you will be familiar with how he makes extensive use of the widow’s pension files to tell the stories of those impacted by the American Civil War. I recently did an...
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Cedar Creek. That battle witnessed many terrible scenes, but there were surely few to match that experienced by Irish emigrant Charles Reilly, who went into the fight shoulder to shoulder with...
The latest #ForgottenIrish story is now available on Storify. It forms part of the continuing effort to raise awareness in Ireland of the c. 200,000 Irishmen who fought in the American Civil War, and their families. As with the previous...
Bridget Burns married her husband William in Ireland on 18th August 1840. When her husband died eight years later, he left Bridget a widow and their only child, Henry, fatherless at the age of six. By the time 1861 came...
On the 27th January 1865 a Union prisoner of war was found dead in the yard of Salisbury Prison, North Carolina. The soldier, recently transferred from Libby Prison in Richmond, appeared to have died from a combination of exposure and...
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...
A previous post looked at a number of Irish veterans who returned to the land of their birth following the American Civil War and received a pension for their services, delivered to their local post office. Part 2 of the series...
Reminders of the American Civil War abound in the United States. Even regions far from the battlefield can point to local memorials and veterans graves as a reminder of those tumultuous times. In contrast, there is little on the island...