Imirce Collection Day for Donors - Irish emigrant letters

On Tuesday 3 December, the Imirce project team hosted a Collection Day for members of the public to donate new material towards the digital repository of Irish emigrant letters and memoirs. In a single morning the digital collection has been enriched with 400+ more letters that will be released online by February 2025.

The Day

The morning began with a welcome, introductions and some background about the Imirce project presented by Catriona Cannon (Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation), Daniel Carey (Professor of English), Breandán Mac Suibhne (Professor of Modern Irish History) and Marie-Louise Rouget (Digital Archivist for the Imirce project). The donors then moved through a morning of interview sessions to review their donated letters, sign deposit agreements and take part in recorded oral history interviews. All donors were also given a tour of the digitisation studio, hosted by Brendan Duffy and Eimhin Joyce, giving them a peek behind the scenes to better understand and appreciate the preservation activities for heritage collections.

In between the scheduled slots, the invited guests had time to mingle with other donors and members of staff to swap stories and bond over a shared appreciation for the history of Irish emigrants and their diverse networks across oceans. The donors and staff alike came away feeling inspired by the real human connections in the room, and the connections with the individuals who live on through the letters. The letters received on the day range across just more than a century, covering a broad spectrum of Irish emigrant experiences from 1893 through to 1994.

The Donors

The donors reached the project team by filling in an online form that is available on the Imirce website. Imirce’s first phase has been to release online the transcripts of Irish emigrant letters and memoirs compiled over some fifty-years by historian Kerby A. Miller.

In its second phase, to continue Miller’s work, members of the public are invited to contribute additional emigrant letters and memoirs to the University’s Archives and Special Collections, in physical or digital form, for inclusion in the Imirce online database. The methodology of accepting digital deposits acknowledges the sentimental value of these family heirlooms and that there are individuals who want to hold onto them for descendants. Supporting the digital preservation of the artifact gives families peace of mind and allows donors to contribute towards the collection in the way that best suits their needs.

Of those who attended the Collection Day, half of the donors opted to donate the physical records to the University’s permanent collection, and the other half opted to have their records digitised and returned to them on the same day.

The Imirce project team extends sincere thanks to the following donors who have made recent contributions to the Imirce database. We look forward to making the newly received letters available in the new year for the public to discover more about the highly nuanced Irish emigrant experience.

Odhrán Ó Spáinneach

Odhrán Ó Spáinneach (Co. Galway) reached out to contribute letters written between 1978-1984 by Cornelius F. “Neil” Maloney. He was the son of Cornelius Maloney, the founder and editor of the Waterbury Democrat newspaper, whose parents emigrated from Co. Clare and Co. Fermanagh and settled in Waterbury, Connecticut. Neil was born in 1900 and his father died in 1914. The newspaper remained under the family’s direction until it was sold in 1946 to the American-Republican, Inc.

The letters were written late in Neil’s life to his Irish second cousins Patrick and John Loughrey, and Patrick's wife Maude (née McCarthy), in Co. Clare. Patrick and Maude were Odhrán’s great-grandparents, and the letters came to him through his paternal grandmother. Through the letters, the Maloney and Loughrey cousins exchange family news, and fondly refer to past reunion trips to Ireland, as well as providing updates for forthcoming trips that are in the planning.

Speaking about what the letters mean to him and his family, and what it means to share digital copies of them with the University, Odhrán explained:

“They're [a] connection to people that you hear stories about... and something physical to connect to these people. It kind of feels relieving [to deposit digital surrogates of the letters]. In case anything happens to these letters there will be extensive information and background attached to them that will be kept safe in the University of Galway for generations to come to research these letters.”

Martina O’Byrne

Martina O’Byrne (Co. Dublin) inherited emigrant letters from her mother, Mary Carmel, who was the youngest of 10 children of Winifred Doolin. Most of the letters are addressed to Winifred in North Strand, Dublin. They were written and sent by a son who emigrated to Gloucestershire, England, an Italian son-in-law writing from Rome to practice his English with his mother-in-law, and an assortment of friends who emigrated to the USA and Canada.

Martina’s uncle Tom Doolin wrote several letters to his mother in the late 1940s. In these letters his personality and humour shine through, but he also tries to explain the difficulty in describing his emigrant experience to his mother:

“You can write to me and tell me about people I know at home, but you don't know any of the people I know over here, so there's no point in giving you news about them. And when you can't write about people you know, it's hard to know what to say.”

Although not explained in full in the letters, Winifred relied heavily on her children to sustain her after her husband died in 1940. In one of his letters, Tom sends his apologies for not being able to send her money at that particular time.

Martina feels a strong connection to the characters in the letters and wanted to ensure that they would be preserved for future readers by depositing them with the University.

"I don't think Irish Society acknowledges enough how reliant women at home were on the emigrant's money... I think it's a bit of social history here. [Donating them to the University means that] they're safe and somebody else will enjoy reading them. And when they're up I'll send the link out to the cousins, and they can read them. It's a good way of sharing them then and it keeps these people alive in a way, in memory."

Fergus O’Brien

Fergus O’Brien (Co. Wicklow) contributed postcards written by his great-aunt Mary Scanlan (1885-1987) who emigrated to the USA from Cloncraff, near Horseleap, Co. Offaly. Her outbound journey to the USA coincided with the week the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.

On the day of Titanic’s maiden voyage from Cobh (formerly Queenstown) in April 1912, Mary wrote a postcard to her sister Susan to let her know that she had arrived safely and would depart the next day. In the message, she describes how tired she is from her journey and that although she had the opportunity to leave on the famous ship, she opted to rest up and travel out the following day instead. Mary wrote often to her family in Ireland and her sister kept the postcards and photographs she sent to show her daily life and travels in America. Mary lived to 103 and Fergus recalls “the beautiful woman, very kindhearted person, who would always send you 10 shillings in the post at Christmas and for your birthday.”

In choosing to donate the entire collection to the University, Fergus expressed his desire for others to enjoy them as much as he and his relatives have over the decades.

“It's incredible to think that these ordinary people who took a photo or posted a card over a 100 years ago will be given a voice so many years on, especially someone like Mary who had no children herself. The more I read the Imirce materials the more I realise it is unique and a fitting place to tell the stories of these extraordinary people.”

Debbie Kelly

Born in Sri Lanka herself to Irish parents, Debbie Kelly (Co. Clare) comes from a family of emigrants who have left and returned to Ireland across multiple generations. In the 1980s, Debbie’s father gave her the book Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft by Thor Heyerdahl and showed her two surviving letters from her grandfather’s younger brother who had been shipwrecked on Easter Island from 1912 to 1915. The letters captured the imagination of the Kelly family and leave a tantalising glimpse of an unforgettable adventure in the South Pacific.

In 1918, after an extended silence, Patrick "Packy” Kelly finally made contact with his family in Ireland from an address in Australia. At 30 years old, the young man from Birr, Co. Offaly, reflects on his travels, describing in particular the iconic Easter Island statues and shares his worldly philosophies about mankind and the cyclical rise and fall of human civilisations. His sentiments reflect the specific anxieties following the Great War but could easily be mistaken for a contemporary critique of where the world is today.

The Kelly family kept the letters safe for more than a century and opted to donate them to the University to secure their future preservation and access. According to Debbie:

“As an ex-Librarian myself I just thought it was time for it to be kept in a Special Collection and when I came across the emigrant letters collection I thought, well, this is an ideal collection for it to belong with from now on because it will be kept safe. And the interest in a place like Easter Island and the fact that an Irish person arrived there unexpectedly... It just was a fascinating story and it's important for that letter physically to be kept safe so that the story will carry on.”

Stephen O’Connell

Stephen O’Connell (Co. Galway) was born in New York and grew up knowing his great-aunt Mary Lux (nee Folan, 1909-2005) who emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland from Spiddal, Co. Galway, in 1927. It was Mary who sponsored Stephen’s father’s emigration to the USA in 1958. Mary worked as a housekeeper for wealthy families, and in 1939 she took a two-to-three-month summer trip to Ireland that spun out to almost 7 years with the outbreak of World War Two.

In February 1946, her friend Delia Naughton (another emigrant from Spiddal living in Baltimore) wrote to Mary expressing how happy she was to know that she will finally be able to return to the USA. This is the only letter the family has from Mary and although Stephen laments the fact that it is not in her own words, it gives some insight into her life story and lends context to the post-war period for Irish emigrants. According to Stephen:

“I knew Mary Folan very well. Most of my immediate family was in Ireland. Both my father and mother immigrated from here. And [Mary] was always there, for Christmas and Easter. It was just a little bit of insight into her life. She wasn't very talkative about the past, not about that time in Ireland... I had heard this from my father, about the shortages during the war and there was no more tea, which was a big deal, but there was coffee available... And my great aunt was one of the only people who knew what to do with the coffee because she had been working for rich people [in America] so that came in handy. That came from my father, not from her. She just didn't share much about that time at all. So that's why it's interesting to me.”

Laurence Whelan

In 1927, Laurence Whelan’s (Co. Dublin) grandfather, Laurence Finnegan, received a letter from James O’Keefe in Richmond, Virginia. In the letter, James explained that he was a first cousin. He was the son of Laurence’s aunt Mary Jane Finnegan and his father, who was also an Irish emigrant, was named James O’Keefe. James was looking for information on his father’s side of the family and would be grateful to his cousin for any leads.

The connection between the families dates back to the 1850s when Laurence Whelan’s great-great-grandmother Mary Finnegan (Mary Jane’s mother) emigrated to the USA with her six children. The unexpected letter requesting information from fellow descendants they are no longer close to is a typical aspect of diaspora communities. These letters open doors for both families to explore the ties over consecutive generations, and have led Laurence to uncover some of the family connections and disconnections, including gravesites in America and in Ireland.

According to Laurence:

“I have [photos] of the gravestone in Mulhuddert [Dublin] of the O’Keefe’s who were left behind and they faded out as a family. I think the sons married, but had no families so I can never find any connections after 1906 of the O’Keefe’s in Cardiffsbridge.”

In reflecting on what it means to contribute the letter to the Imirce project, Laurence explained:

“I have plenty of nephews and nieces, but I’m afraid the letter might get lost somewhere along the way. It’ll be nice to keep that letter. I can give them copies if they’ve any interest. It’s just the preservation of that letter that I would like to see, being kept somewhere.”

Angela Sheil

Through her mother and a great-uncle, Joe Seymour, Angela Sheil (Co. Galway) received letters written to her grand-aunt Mary Seymour in 1925. Mary emigrated to America in 1904, settled in New Jersey, and found work as a cook. By 1925, Mary was back in Ireland to stay with her mother for six months, along with her one-year-old daughter, Helen. Whilst in Ireland, she received letters from America from her cousin Margaret Molloy and from her husband, Fred, who was employed as a chauffeur for a wealthy physician at the time. In his letter, Fred fills Mary in about the goings-on in the house they both work in, and shares reflections about his baby daughter whom he is clearly missing.

Angela describes finding the letters of her relatives as a “breakthrough” for understanding her own family history, as well as the broader trends for Irish emigrants.

“[The letters show] how it was for them and despite the hardship there was still love and fun. I think it's critical that we share this history. This has been in an attic for years... and I just think it would be a shame that this part of our history be forgotten about, or maybe burned, or thrown away. I think it's so important that as a country we retain this history to show how people lived and the story of immigration.”

Peter and John Cunningham

Peter and John Cunningham (Co. Westmeath), father and son, have donated digital surrogates of letters written by four Cunningham brothers who emigrated from Co. Westmeath to Canada and the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1915 and 1920, Thomas, Joseph, James and John wrote home to their mother Marcella and their sister Mary recounting tales of their daily lives abroad, sending seasonal greetings and condolences, and including their opinions and experiences of historic moments through World War One, conscription and the Irish War of Independence.

Even though the brothers were far away and never returned to the country, they kept their eyes fixed on Ireland and shared their views on the politics of the day from afar. In 1920, James Cunningham wrote home from Brooklyn, New York, and, among other things, wrote that he’d been to hear Laurence Ginnell (Irish nationalist and MP from Westmeath) speak in New York and expressed his desire for “President [Éamon de Valera to] go back to Ireland and see what England will do.”

Peter Cunningham, speaking about his connection to the letters and the authors, explained:

“[My father] minded them for 50 years and he passed them on to me, so I suppose I'm duty bound to do the same... I live beside where [the Cunningham brothers] lived growing up. Every day I walk out, I look at the old house, and if you have the letters, you can use your imagination, you can dream. You go back through the old roll books in the local school and their names are there. You look back through everything and it connects you to your own place. Even though they had gone, reading the letters, they still had awful affection for their home place.”

Ken and Tom Boyle

Cousins Ken and Tom Boyle (Co. Dublin and Massachusetts) have donated digital surrogates of a treasure trove of correspondence gathered from the multiple descendants of the Boyle family from Killaneen townland, Co. Leitrim. The letters span four generations of the family, beginning in 1893 and concluding in 1994. The collection chronicles the family’s patterns of migration across multiple continents, including North America.

In 2023, the letters were compiled and published in a book, titled The Boyles of Killaneen: A Leitrim Family and its Diaspora; The Letters (available here). Speaking to Linn’s Stamp News in May 2024, Tom underlined the importance of preserving personal correspondence for the benefit of future readers.

“History doesn’t get any more accurate than letters from the hands of those who lived average lives. I think the message for those who are not Boyles, or even of the Irish diaspora at all, is one of a documented history. I can tell you that the primary message I got from the letters is that the seemingly insignificant details of my own life will be so interesting to readers two and three generations from now.”

This blog post will be updated with hyperlinks as soon as the relevant new collections
have been published online in early 2025.

If you or somebody you know would like to contribute Irish emigrant letters or memoirs to the collection, reach out to the Imirce team by completing the online form or emailing us at imirce.universityofgalway.ie.

Author

Marie-Louise Rouget is the Project Digital Archivist for the Kerby Miller Collection. In 2023, she published her graduate research, titled 'Grave Concerns: the state of public cemetery records management in South Africa'.

Images

Credit for all images: Eileen Kennedy/ Arlo Avery

Image 1: Left to right: Speakers Catriona Cannon (Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation), Daniel Carey (Professor of English), Breandán Mac Suibhne (Professor of Modern Irish History) and Marie-Louise Rouget (Digital Archivist for the Imirce project).

Image 2: Left: Imirce donor Fergus O’Brien (centre), surrounded by other donors and members of the project team. Centre: Imirce donor Odhrán Ó Spáinneach (left) with his father Brian Spain looking at a selection of physical materials from the Kerby A. Miller Collection, put on display by Archivist Kieran Hoare. Right: A close up of a book of postcards donated by Annie Reilly Bannon.

Image 3: Left: Imirce donor Stephen O'Connell (donor) speaks to Brendan Duffy in the digitisation studio in the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room. Centre and Left: Imirce donor Laurence Whelan's donated letter being digitised.

Image 4: Imirce donor Odhrán Ó Spáinneach (centre) with his father Brian Spain and Catriona Cannon, Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library.

Image 5: Left: Imirce donors Fergus O’Brien (left) and Martina O'Byrne (right), with Catriona Cannon, Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library. Right: Imirce donors Fergus O’Brien (left) and Martina O'Byrne (right) at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library.

Image 6: Left: Judith Kelly (sister of Imirce donor Debbie Kelly) holds a donated letter from her family. Right: Professors Dan Carey and Breandán Mac Suibhne speak with Imirce donor Debbie Kelly and her sister Judith Kelly, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library.

Image 7: Imirce donor Stephen O'Connell (centre) with Marie-Louise Rouget, Digital Archivist for the Imirce project, and Catriona Cannon, Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library.

Image 8: Imirce donor Laurence Whelan with Catriona Cannon, Head of Heritage Collections and Digitisation, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library.

Image 9: Left: Imirce donor Angela Sheil (centre) with Marie-Louise Rouget, Digital Archivist for the Imirce project, and Monica Crump, University Librarian, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library. Right: A close up of a letter donated by Angela Sheil.

Image 10: Left: Imirce donors Peter and John Cunningham at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024, University of Galway Library. Centre: Imirce donor Peter Cunningham speaks with Professor of Modern Irish History Breandán Mac Suibhne. Right: A close up of a letter donated by Peter and John Cunningham.

Image 11: Left: The cover of Ken and Tom Boyle's publication, The Boyles of Killaneen: A Leitrim Family and its Diaspora; The Letters. Right: Imirce donor Ken Boyle with Marie-Louise Rouget, Digital Archivist for the Imirce project, at an Imirce digital collection donor event held on 3 December 2024.

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