Irish America
Irish America
"The Greatest Living Irishwoman" – George Bernard Shaw Writer, playwright, folklorist, and co-founder of The Abbey Theatre, Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, née Isabella Augusta Persse, (born March 15, 1852, Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland – died May 22, 1932, Coole, did much to preserve Ireland’s forgotten history. Toward the end of the 19th Century, Queen … [Read more...] about Lady Augusta Gregory
Rosemary Rogers shares her experience of traveling to Ireland with her daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren, and sister in 2017. When I was 12 my mother took me to Ireland, her first trip home since she left 35 years earlier. In keeping with that tradition, I took my daughter, Nell, several times but in 2017 our group included Nell, her husband Christian, and their sons … [Read more...] about A Multi-Generational Family Trip Home
Pilloried by the press and railroaded to prison, she still managed to sail into the sunset. During the summer of 1965 in the East Bronx, the collective grief in Saint Raymond’s convent was almost palpable. The nuns learned that one of their students, a former Good Irish Catholic Girl, had brought shame on them and the rest of the tribe. Alice Crimmins was now fodder for … [Read more...] about Wild Irish Women: More Sinned Against Than Sinning
1939 - Astor Bar, New York My father, Michael Rogers, was a bartender at New York’s legendary Astor Bar from 1936 to 1965. The photo above was taken for the N.Y. Daily News series, “The Correct Thing,” on tipping bartenders. It’s not a good shot of him, as it doesn’t do justice to his hair, wavy and deep black, a color he likened to “the inside of a raven’s wing.” He was … [Read more...] about “What’re You Having”
“How hard Ireland was on the women who could not fit in – the wild ones, the ones who had to get out, seeming emigrants but actual exiles.”– Nuala O’Faolain Chicago May wasn’t from Chicago and, in fact, spent little time there, but the name somehow suited her. May Duignan was born in 1871 in the remote county of Longford in the ancient world that was 19th-century Ireland. Her … [Read more...] about Wild Irish Women: Chicago May
