After many false starts, the Jeanie Johnston famine ship replica is on its way to the United States. If there is a symbol of the trials and tribulations of getting the Irish replica famine ship Jeanie Johnston to sea on its homage to history, Tom Kindre is the poster boy. When Tom McCarthy, the captain of the ship, quizzed him on crewing across the Atlantic, the member of the … [Read more...] about Jeanie Sets Sail for New World
Irish immigration
The Irish as Playful Souls
The old St. Patrick's Day quip about there being two kinds of people – those who are Irish and those who wish they were – turns out to be not so far from wrong. The research my colleague Michael Hout has carried out shows that there are a lot more Americans claiming to be Irish than one might expect from immigration records, because the children of ethnically mixed marriages … [Read more...] about The Irish as Playful Souls
The Irish in Atlantic Canada
Story and photgraphs by John Francis Bourke.
July/August 1995
The Irish in Atlantic Canada represent a community of considerable size. Many Irish spent years in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick before eventually migrating southwards to communities in Boston, Maine or elsewhere. The Irish in Atlantic Canada represent a community of considerable size. Many Irish spent years in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, … [Read more...] about The Irish in Atlantic Canada
Derry: The Town I Love So Well
By Mary Pat Kelly
May/June 1995
Mary Pat Kelly talks to Phil Coulter, one of Derry's most famous sons. Often during the years of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, when the"end of the day" brought political conversation, someone would sing PhilCoulter's "The Town I Loved So Well." And if the singer was from Derry they knew, too, "the gas yard wall" where soldiers had replaced school boys playing ball. … [Read more...] about Derry: The Town I Love So Well
The Irish of Dubuque, Iowa
By Lyn Jerde
March/April 1995
They didn't all settle in the big cities on the East Coast. Many Irish immigrants headed for the frontier, where cheap land and mining jobs awaited them. The January 14, 1841, edi- tion of the Philadelphia Catholic Herald includes this letter from Charles Corkery, one of Dubuque, Iowa's first Irish settlers: "My sole desire is to direct the attention of Catholics (Irish … [Read more...] about The Irish of Dubuque, Iowa