Irish America

Irish America

Megan Smolenyak

Roots | Letter to Ireland Answered – 28 Years Later

By Megan Smolenyak and James G. Ryan

Fall 2026

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Genealogy is all about researching your family’s history, but every once in a while, it can turn up a piece of your own past. I was fortunate enough to experience this when I received a response to a letter I had written to a stranger in Ireland 28 years earlier – in 1984. More peculiar still, the gentleman I contacted had passed away in 1990. Perhaps I should explain. I’ve … [Read more...] about Roots | Letter to Ireland Answered – 28 Years Later

Tim Walz of the Tomhaggard Doyles

By Megan Smolenyak

Fall 2024

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How A Solitary Tombstone in Wisconsin Solved the Mystery of His Irish Origins As a professional genealogist of half-Irish heritage, I’ve long embraced the opportunity to underscore the ties between Ireland and the United States, and one of the most obvious ways to do this is to trace the roots of high profile Americans to their place of origin in Ireland. This is trickier … [Read more...] about Tim Walz of the Tomhaggard Doyles

“No Man Left Behind”

By Megan Smolenyak
IA Newsletter, June 1, 2024

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"No Man Left Behind" is so much more than a slogan to me. In a sense, I contemplate Memorial Day year-round due to my work with the Army. For the past 25 years, I’ve been assisting the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) with the identification of our soldiers who gave their lives in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam but have not yet been accounted for. My role as a … [Read more...] about “No Man Left Behind”

How I Found My Elusive John Murphy

By Megan Smolenyak
IA Newsletter
April 6, 2024

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The Deadly Trail that Finally Revealed a Phantom Branch of My Family Tree My earliest American-born ancestor was my great-great-grandfather, Edward Murphy. It took a while to figure this out as the skimpy traces he left claimed both New York and Ireland as his birthplace, but then I stumbled across his baptism. To my delight, he was christened in the historic St. James … [Read more...] about How I Found My Elusive John Murphy

How Name Changing Hid a Heritage

By Megan Smolenyak

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Barry Manilow. Yes, I know, most think of him as a Jewish fellow from Brooklyn – and he is. But he’s also a quarter Irish, and due to certain circumstances in his family, that Irish share has had a disproportionate influence on his family tree. - Megan Smolenyak Name Changing Though he wouldn’t have known it, when Barry changed surnames, he was the third generation … [Read more...] about How Name Changing Hid a Heritage