Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan

Mrs. O’Leary Exonerated

Abdon Moriarty Pallasch
March/April 1998

October 7, 2021 by 1 Comment

The truth would have made a great story: Catherine O'Leary, successful Irish immigrant businesswoman. She had five cows in her dairy and her husband Patrick was gainfully employed as a lathe-worker. As Catherine and Patrick slept on that dry October night in 1871, someone started a fire in their barn. The blaze grew into the Great Chicago Fire, killing 300 people, leaving … [Read more...] about Mrs. O’Leary Exonerated

March 23, 1847

On this day in 1847, the Choctaw Native American tribe collected money to help starving victims of the Irish potato famine. Several years before, in 1831, President Andrew Jackson seized Choctaw territory in what is now southeastern Mississippi and parts of Alabama, forcing the Choctaw to travel five hundred miles along the “Trail of Tears” to reserved Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The Choctaw people sympathized with Ireland’s forced submission to Britain, and with the starvation and disease that plagued them. A group of Choctaws gathered in Scullyville, Oklahoma and raised $170, which they then forwarded to a U.S. famine relief organization. Though U.S. contribution in aid to Ireland totaled in the millions, the Choctaw donation was by far the most generous.

Mrs. O’Leary Exonerated

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Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan

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