“She was a mother to the motherless; she was a friend to those who had no friends; she had wisdom greater than schools can teach; we will not let her memory go.”Sara Cone Bryant, from "Margaret of New Orleans," in Stories to Tell Children(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908)There’s a small park in New Orleans, on the corner of Camp and Prytania Streets, which exists solely … [Read more...] about The Mother of Orphans
History Archives
Roots:
The Unrelated Ryan Girls
Whether it’s stomping the boards on Broadway or on Hollywood’s silver screen, these girls all share a love of performance. Perhaps it’s in the DNA?Thinking about writing an article for Irish America, I recalled the childhood games my mother and I would play on long car rips. We named state capitals, movie titles and how many famous people we could list with the same last name. … [Read more...] about Roots:
The Unrelated Ryan Girls
The Bonds of a Nation,
100 Years On
With the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising upon us, a curious piece of memorabilia printed 150 years ago reminds us that the Rising was not the only bid for Irish independence. In the possession of Patrick Doherty, a director in the state comptroller’s office for New York, is a Fenian bond dating from 1866. Doherty is an avid collector of Irish artifacts and a well informed … [Read more...] about The Bonds of a Nation,
100 Years On
Dear Julia: Personal Reflections on 1916 and its Aftermath
A grandmother’s letters, passed down through two generations, offer a fascinating, and at times intimate, glimpse into the period following the 1916 Rising. Dermot McEvoy talks to Rosemary Mahoney“My maternal grandmother, Julia Frances Rohan (née Fraher), and her five sisters who emigrated to Boston from Ballylanders, County Limerick, were fervid Sinn Féiners. My grandmother … [Read more...] about Dear Julia: Personal Reflections on 1916 and its Aftermath
The Rebel Path
Ernie O’Malley was a renowned figure in Ireland’s fight for independence. Here are his memories of 1916 as compiled by his son Cormac O’Malley.Born in 1897 in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ernie O’Malley’s (Malley) family moved to Dublin in 1906 where he went on to study medicine. During the Easter Rising O’Malley came to share the vision of the rebels, and left his medical studies in … [Read more...] about The Rebel Path