Irish America

Irish America

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Presidents & First Ladies of Irish Ancestry

By Carl Sferrazza Anthony

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The backgrounds of America's First Families are diverse: Nancy Reagan and Lady Bird Johnson have Spanish forebears; Herbert Hoover was Swiss and Canadian; Mamie Eisenhower was part Swedish while Ike was German; Martin Van Buren and the Roosevelts were Dutch; James Garfield had a royal strain of French; Eliza Johnson's parents were immigrant Scottish sandal-makers; both Calvin … [Read more...] about Presidents & First Ladies of Irish Ancestry

Irish President Mary McAleese speaks to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11, and honors those who took part in the recovery efforts

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Irish America honored the heroes and victims of  9/11 at its annual Top 100 event held on March 14, 2002 at The Plaza Hotel, New York City. The honorees came from every segment of the community – firefighters and police officers, ironworkers who cleared Ground Zero for rescue workers, and families who had lost loved ones. The guest speaker, President of Ireland Mary McAleese, … [Read more...] about Irish President Mary McAleese speaks to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11, and honors those who took part in the recovery efforts

Queen of the Klondike

By Gary Blackwood

July/August 1997

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After the discovery of gold in the Klondike, 100 years ago, some 100,000 people headed north in search of a quick fortune. Only a handful of them found it, and of that handful, only one was a woman. When Belinda Mulrooney died nearly penniless in a nursing home near Seattle in 1970, few of her neighbors suspected that, seventy years earlier, she was known as the Queen of Grand … [Read more...] about Queen of the Klondike

Yankee Doodle with a Brogue:
The Irish in the American Revolution

By Thomas Fleming

Originally published in July / August 1998

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In Virginia's Shenandoah Valley there is a gravestone that reads: Here lies the remains of John Lewis, who slew the Irish lord, settled in Augusta County, located the town of Staunton and furnished five sons to fight the battles of the American Revolution. Those words are an apt summary of the Irish role in the Revolution. They responded en masse to the call for resistance to … [Read more...] about Yankee Doodle with a Brogue:
The Irish in the American Revolution

The Future of Irish America

Peter Quinn looks at the position of
Irish Americans as we embrace the new millennium.

April / May 2000

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“Whatever the future may hold, wherever it may take us, we can bring along only what we possess, and if we don’t possess our past, if instead of a true history and a significant literature, we bring along only trivia, empty myths and a handful of stories, or-worst of all -- the latest intellectually fashionable versions of ourselves, we will offer those to come after nothing of … [Read more...] about The Future of Irish America

Peter Quinn looks at the position of
Irish Americans as we embrace the new millennium.