I’ve written about several Irish American mothers for this magazine – Eugenia Biden, Lorna Colbert, and Anne Meara – and the word that always comes to mind is indomitable. Nothing breaks them, which makes it all the more shocking when we lose them. My mother was a member of this club.
The last-minute child in a Jersey City family that included two older sisters, Mom was named … [Read more...] about Photo Album:
The Shields Family
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The Road to the Bright City
My grandfather John Bernard “Barney” Hynes and his brother Thomas J. Hynes emigrated from Loughrea, Galway, Ireland to Boston, Massachusetts in 1875. They were in their early teens.
Barney got a job with the Elevated Railroad Company, where he worked for 40 years and moonlighted at night singing, mostly at Irish wakes.
Tom went to Harvard where he spent countless hours on the … [Read more...] about Photo Album:
The Road to the Bright City
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“We Loved You, Mary Garvey”
My grandmother Mary Garvey was born on October 18th, 1894 in Farmhill, Claremorris, County Mayo. She was the oldest of six children born to Anne Mullen Garvey and Peter Garvey. She left for America in 1914 at age 20 and came to New York via Ellis Island. She soon married a successful young engineer, John Edward O’Connor, whose name is on the brass plaque as one of the engineers … [Read more...] about Photo Album:
“We Loved You, Mary Garvey”
Photo Album: John Harrington
My great-great-grandfather John Harrington’s family had probably been in the Beara peninsula of southwest Ireland for many generations before he emigrated in 1848, during the Great Hunger. In Irish, the ancestral name was probably Ó hIongardail (anglicized to Harrington for ease of entry into tenant logs after the land seizures of the 17th century), a name associated with an … [Read more...] about Photo Album: John Harrington
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Ma Bell and Mom
My mother Christine Daly (née Flynn), born in CastleGregory, County Kerry, came to the U.S. in 1949 when her Aunt Molly sponsored her. She met our late dad – Patrick Daly – also from Kerry (Killarney) and married him in 1951.
I came along in 1952, my sister Ann in ’53 and our brother Michael in ’55. Our Irish parents raised us in the beautiful Bronx, and the three Daly ‘kids’ … [Read more...] about Photo Album:
Ma Bell and Mom