Edward P. Doherty is one of the unheralded heroes of Irish American history, the man who captured Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth. He was fiercely and proudly Irish, enlisting in the Irish Brigade during the Civil War. He was born September 26, 1838 in Wickham, Canada East, to immigrant parents from County Sligo.

He came to New York in 1860 and was living there when the American Civil War broke out. He enlisted in a 90-day militia unit and was assigned as a Private to Company A of the 71st New York Volunteers on April 20, 1861. He was assigned to Colonel Ambrose Burnside's 2nd Brigade in Brigadier General David Hunter's 2nd Division, he was captured by the Confederates during the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the American Civil War which took place on July 21, 1861, near Manassas, VA. While a prisoner, he made a daring escape. Ultimately, the 71st Regiment, along with Doherty, mustered out on Aug 9, 1861.

Doherty went on to become a Captain in the Corcoran Legion, formed by fellow prisoner from the First Battle of Bull Run, Irish-American General Michael Corcoran, who was a close confidant of Abraham Lincoln. Doherty served for two years before being appointed First Lieutenant in the 16th New York Cavalry on Sep 12, 1863. The regiment was assigned to the defense of Washington, D.C. for the duration of the war, where Doherty distinguished himself as an officer.

Doherty’s path crossed with John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, after the war was over. According to Eyewitness to History.com on the night of April 14, 1865 Booth shot the president and then fled the screaming pandemonium he had just created by flinging himself over the wall of the Presidential Box at Ford's Theater. Behind him lay an unconscious and dying President Lincoln, a .50 caliber bullet lodged in his brain.

As he plummeted through the air, Booth caught his foot on the bunting decorating the front of the presidential box, lost his balance and crashed onto the stage floor below. Ignoring the pain from his broken left leg, Booth, ever the actor, hobbled to his feet and ran to the back of the stage, stopped and delivered his last line on stage, "Sic Semper Tyrannis." (Thus always with tyrants.) Booth then disappeared into the night.

Booth fled south on horseback and, after meeting with one of his co-conspirators, David Herold, collected a stash of supplies from the Maryland inn run by a woman named Mary Surratt. With his leg in need of medical attention, Booth and Herold went to the house of a Dr. Samuel Mudd to have his leg set. After Mudd ordered them off his property, they were briefly helped by a variety of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers as they made their way towards the Potomac to cross into Virginia. Once across, they sought refuge in a barn on the farm of Richard Garrett.

It was there almost two weeks after Lincoln was shot that Union soldiers of the 16th New York Cavalry found Booth and Herold.

The following is Lt. Edward P. Doherty’s account of what happened, which Eyewitness History adapted from an article Doherty wrote for Century Magazine in 1890, titled “Pursuit and Death of John Wilkes Booth”.

The Account of the Officer in Charge

On April 24, 1865, Lieutenant Edward Doherty sits on a bench across from the White House conversing with another officer. The arrival of a messenger interrupts the conversation. The messenger carries orders directing Doherty to lead a squad of cavalry to Virginia to search for Booth and Herold. Scouring the countryside around the Rappahannock River, Doherty is told the two fugitives were last seen at a farm owned by Richard Garrett. Doherty leads his squad to the farm arriving in the early morning hours of April 26.

"I dismounted, and knocked loudly at the front door. Old Mr. Garrett came out. I seized him, and asked him where the men were who had gone to the woods when the cavalry passed the previous afternoon. While I was speaking with him some of the men had entered the house to search it. Soon one of the soldiers sang out, 'O Lieutenant! I have a man here I found in the corn-crib.' It was young Garrett, and I demanded the whereabouts of the fugitives. He replied, 'In the barn.' Leaving a few men around the house, we proceeded in the direction of the barn, which we surrounded. I kicked on the door of the barn several times without receiving a reply. Meantime another son of the Garrett's had been captured. The barn was secured with a padlock, and young Garrett carried the key. I unlocked the door, and again summoned the inmates of the building to surrender.

"After some delay Booth said, 'For whom do you take me?'

"I replied, 'It doesn't make any difference. Come out.'

"He said, 'I am a cripple and alone.'

"I said, 'I know who is with you, and you had better surrender.'

"He replied, 'I may be taken by my friends, but not by my foes.'

"I said, 'If you don't come out, I'll burn the building.' I directed a corporal to pile up some hay in a crack in the wall of the barn and set the building on fire.

"As the corporal was picking up the hay and brush Booth said, 'If you come back here I will put a bullet through you.'

"I then motioned to the corporal to desist, and decided to wait for daylight and then to enter the barn by both doors and over power the assassins.

"Booth then said in a drawling voice. 'Oh Captain! There is a man here who wants to surrender awful bad.'

"I replied, 'You had better follow his example and come out.'

"His answer was, 'No, I have not made up my mind; but draw your men up fifty paces off and give me a chance for my life.'

"I told him I had not come to fight; that I had fifty men, and could take him.

"Then he said, 'Well, my brave boys, prepare me a stretcher, and place another stain on our glorious banner.'

"At this moment Herold reached the door. I asked him to hand out his arms; he replied that he had none. I told him I knew exactly what weapons he had. Booth replied, 'I own all the arms, and may have to use them on you, gentlemen.' I then said to Herold, 'Let me see your hands.' He put them through the partly opened door and I seized him by the wrists. I handed him over to a non-commissioned officer. Just at this moment I heard a shot, and thought Booth had shot himself. Throwing open the door, I saw that the straw and hay behind Booth were on fire. He was half-turning towards it.

"He had a crutch, and he held a carbine in his hand. I rushed into the burning barn, followed by my men, and as he was falling caught him under the arms and pulled him out of the barn. The burning building becoming too hot, I had him carried to the veranda of Garrett's house.

"Booth received his death-shot in this manner. While I was taking Herold out of the barn one of the detectives went to the rear, and pulling out some protruding straw set fire to it. I had placed Sergeant Boston Corbett at a large crack in the side of the barn, and he, seeing by the igniting hay that Booth was leveling his carbine at either Harold or myself, fired, to disable him in the arm; but Booth making a sudden move, the aim erred, and the bullet struck Booth in the back of the head, about an inch below the spot where his shot had entered the head of Mr. Lincoln. Booth asked me by signs to raise his hands. I lifted them up and he gasped, 'Useless, useless!' We gave him brandy and water, but he could not swallow it. I sent to Port Royal for a physician, who could do nothing when he came, and at seven o'clock Booth breathed his last. He had on his person a diary, a large bowie knife, two pistols, a compass and a draft on Canada for 60 pounds."

Booth's body was carried up the Potomac and buried beneath the floor of a penitentiary in Washington, DC. David Herold was tried with three other conspirators. All were found guilty, including Mary Surratt, owner of the tavern where Booth stopped, were hanged on July 7, 1865.

After the war, Doherty set up a business in New Orleans before returning to New York, where he worked as Inspector of Street Pavings until his death in 1897 at the age of 59. In his later years, he was twice Grand Marshal of the Memorial Day parade, and resided in Manhattan at 533 West 144th Street. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

* Originally pubished in 2016.

The Grand Central Terminal, an architectural marvel in the heart of New York City, is celebrated its 104th birthday on February 1 2017. However if it had not been for Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s efforts in 1975, the monument to human achievement in the heart of the Big Apple may not be with us today.

Building began in 1869 after Vanderbilt purchased the property. It became the largest indoor space in New York and the architecturally stunning building became a central hub of the city.

As Sam Roberts, columnist for The New York Times said, Grand Central did more than just transform New York, it became synonymous with America on the move.

However in 1968 the iconic New York building was almost demolished when plans for much needed refurbishments were blocked. The citizens began a stand against the decision.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis began her involvement with the campaign mildly at first by joining the citizens committee at the Municipal Art Society.

A colleague noted, "Jackie brought enormous visibility to the campaign...By standing up and speaking out for the terminal, she made it a success. And she made it not just a struggle involving New Yorkers, but people all over the country."

Read More: Jackie Kennedy disliked the Irish and cooking Irish stew

Jackie brought great attention to the campaign and led the fight by forming the Committee to Save Grand Central Station, and within this committee she participated in rallies at the terminal.

She and a group of campaigners also traveled to Washington, DC to bring attention to the Supreme Court Hearing.

The station was saved, refurbished and is now a celebrated tourist attraction of old New York City.

A History of Grand Central Station

1869 was the year that Grand Central first would rise when Vanderbilt purchased property between 42nd and 48th streets, Lexington and Madison Avenue to construct a new train depot and rail yard.

It was reborn in 1900 as "Grand Central Station," the depot’s most prominent feature was its enormous train shed. Constructed of glass and steel, the 100-foot wide by 650-foot long structure rivaled the Eiffel Tower and Crystal Palace for primacy as the most dramatic engineering achievement of the 19th century.

Grand Central Station officially opened its doors on Sunday, February 2nd 1913, with more than 150,000 people visiting the new terminal on its opening day, Grand Central had arrived and New York City would not be the same again.

In 1968 trouble began to brew for Grand Central as Penn Station filed an $8 million lawsuit against the City of New York, blocking the renovation. Jackie makes history as she rallies against changes to Grand Central. By December 1975, Central Station is named as a national historic landmark.

Grand Central, the City’s crown jewel, has become an international example of a successful urban project that gave new life to an historic building which otherwise would have been discarded and destroyed.

CBS News reports that after it was completed in 1913, the New York Times predicted the terminal would eventually handle 100 million people a year. A hundred years later, according to Roberts, that's about to happen. Eighty-two million people passed through last year and with expansion projects underway, the total is likely to reach 100 million in a couple of years.

* Originally published in Feb 2013.

This article and podcast link appear courtesy of the Irish History Podcast by Fin Dwyer.

Click here to listen to the podcast episode as you read along. 

Between 1920 and 1933 alcohol was banned in the U.S.A. Almost immediately the sale of illegal alcohol – bootlegging – soared, and the ban became increasingly ineffectual. While the likes of Al Capone made a fortune bootlegging, ordinary folks - including one Irish nun - also turned their hand to it.

In 1926, my grandaunt Sister Genevieve Dwyer, a nun in South Dakota, returned to the USA after a visit to Ireland. In Chicago she wrote back to my grandparents to inform them that a mysterious cargo had been delivered. As she passed through US customs she went on to say:

“I met the brothers. I put the xxx inside my bosom, it must have been boiling point when I took it out, we laughed more over that.”

Given this was right in the middle of prohibition, its hard to see what else she could be referring to other than booze.

For over 40 year Genevieve Dwyer wrote letters to my grandparents about her life as an emigrant in early 20th century America. These featured her longing for home, World War II and her battles with depression. You can hear her stories in my latest podcast ‘Letters from Dakota’.

Eight months after the June 5th 1882 murder of notorious Irish gunfighter James Leavy in front of the Palace Hotel in Tucson, Arizona Territory, professional gambler and fellow Irishman Johnny Murphy rose to make a statement upon his acquittal: 

Your honor, I thank you and the jury, but I desire to say that I have lived all my life on the frontier. I was honorably discharged from the navy, when a young man, on the coast of Florida, and came right through to the frontier. I have been amongst rough men all my life, have stopped many a bad fight, and never before been in any trouble. I regret this occurrence, but what I did was done by me conscientiously and with a belief that it was all I could do to save my own life, and it was done in self-defense.  

Murphy, along with accomplices William Moyer and David Gibson, shot down Leavy in a hail of small-caliber gunfire after a night of heated arguments over one of Murphy’s faro tables at Tucson’s Fashion Saloon. Immediately afterwards all three surrendered and were placed in the county jail and the protective custody of Pima County Robert Havlin “Bob” Paul. Testimony began in a preliminary hearing against the three defendants when suddenly the trio escaped the county jail in what the Arizona Weekly Citizen called, “a bold and successful break for liberty by desperate criminals.” 

During his life, and even after death, those who knew Irish gunman James Leavy described him as an honorable and intrepid fighter. Some remembered him as a man willing to give anyone a fair show. But he was also considered a hard case and a dangerous man. One Deadwood pioneer recalled Leavy’s ability as a gunman, claiming he was second only to James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok. For a brief time Leavy’s notoriety spread far and wide, surpassing even that of his former business partners Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Of the hundreds of gamblers and gunmen in the trans-Mississippi West, few fostered a more fearsome and geographically transcending reputation than Leavy. 

By some accounts Leavy survived 16 shootouts. Although most can’t be properly documented, that is not unusual for a legendary Old West gunfighter. That Leavy is not better known today (no photograph of him is known to exist) is somewhat of a mystery. But details are coming to light on his career as a gunman, thus landing him a spot among what author Richard Maxwell Brown terms the “glorified gunfighters.” 

The early life of James H. Leavy is riddled with mystery. His last name is often misspelled “Levy,” but letters he wrote and legal documents show the addition of an “a.” He was born in Ireland, probably in 1842, and though he was likely Catholic, much of Leavy’s modern legend as a shootist rests upon the fact he was thought to be Jewish (no evidence has turned up to support this claim). In early 1852 young Jim departed Liverpool, England, with his parents and sailed to the United States, docking at New York City on May 14. While still in his teen she traveled west and found work in the gold mining camps of California. When news broke of significant silver strikes in Nevada in the late 1860s, Leavy ventured to the rough-and-tumble mining camp of Pioche in southeast Nevada’s Lincoln County. It was there Leavy likely learned about gun handling and gun play from another Irishman, Richard Moriarty, alias Morgan Courtney, who had built a reputation as a feared gunman and participated in at least three gunfights. 

Leavy got into a gunfight of his own in Pioche in May 1871. A prospector named Mike Casey claimed to have shot another man that March in self-defense, but Leavy testified that he had witnessed the shooting, and that Casey had fired first. The angry Casey tracked down Leavy, and the two engaged in a wild shootout in an alley. Leavy killed Casey, but Casey’s friend Dave Neagle, a future Arizona Territory lawman, in turn shot Leavy through the jaw, leaving the Irishman with a disfigured and sinister face. 

Born in Ireland in 1847, Murphy first enters the record shortly after the Civil War as a Landsman aboard the USS Contoocook, a screw sloop-of-war. Murphy was admitted to the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, New Hampshire after becoming ill from exposure from “washing deck.” What brought Murphy to Arizona remains unclear, but evidence suggests early mining opportunities attracted Murphy to central Arizona thus establishing his tenure in the Territory. 

In 1880, Pima County Sheriff Charles Shibell entered Murphy into the Great Register of Pima County. Two years later, in 1882, Murphy is known to have been operating faro tables at several saloons in Tucson and under his employ was fellow gamblers William Moyer and David Gibson. Gibson, a noted Tucson card sharp, had a run-in with “Big Ed” Byrnes’s “Top-and -Bottom Gang” of con-men and gamblers recently expelled from Benson during the annual San Augustin Festival in Tucson: 

The usual amount of gaming was in progress, and the “sure thing” crowd were still exhibiting numerous tempting devices for trapping the unwary. A fight occurred on the feast grounds between Dave Gibson and one of the "top-and-bottom” gang. The latter used a revolver freely in clubbing Gibson over the head, cutting him quite badly. 

The attraction to Tucson as a gambling center drew James Leavy, a veteran of the gambling dens of San Francisco, Deadwood, Pioche, Cheyenne and Tombstone. Hot-tempered and dangerous when drunk, Leavy strongly accused Murphy of running a “crooked game” and demanded a duel with Murphy to settle the score. Knowing a fair fight with Murphy would likely end in his own death, Murphy enlisted the help of his fellow gamblers and set-out to even the playing field.  

After the murder of Leavy a short trial began before Murphy and his two co-defendants escaped from the Pima County Jail. Both Murphy and Gibson were later caputed living under assumed names in Fenner, California and were both acquitted of their crimes. Moyer was captured about the same time in Denver, Colorado and was sentenced to life (a sentence that was later pardoned)  in prison at Arizona's notorious Yuma Territorial Prison. 

Leavy's remains are in an unmarked grave somewhere in Tucson's urban sprawl. Following his acquittal, Murphy remained quiet, but his presence in the gambling underworld was still strong. For years Murphy was deeply involved in gambling rackets in Tucson and Bisbee, a mining town south of Tombstone in Cochise County. Both cities record several arrests against Murphy for various charges well into the early 1900s. In 1903, pioneer photographer William E. (W.E.) Irwin staged a series of photos inside Bisbee’s Orient Saloon. One of these images, “Orient Saloon at Bisbee, Arizona…Faro game in full blast” would become one of the most widely-distributed and easily recognized images of the frontier, but few know that the faro dealer in the photograph is none other than Johnny Murphy.  

On March 27, 1926, Johnny Murphy died in Tucson. Buried in an unmarked grave in Tucson’s Evergreen Cemetery, Murphy seems to have earned redemption and forgiveness with his obituary from The Arizona Republican 

Death Thursday claimed one of the few remaining picturesque characters of Tucson’s wide-open gambling days in the passing of John Murphy, resident of Arizona since the early eighties when he figured as one of the professional gamblers of Tucson and one of the most skillful rough-and-tumble fighters of the old regime. He was 74 years of age at the time of his death and retained much of his old-time robust vigor to the last.

*adapted from the author's Gamblers, Guns & Gavels, 2016

The shortest parade, the worst, the longest, the coldest, the largest shamrock, and the snake race – all the information you need to make your St. Patrick's Day season fun.

The World's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade:

The shortest parade is always held on March 17th on historic Bridge Street in downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas. Bridge Street became famous in the 1940s when “Ripley's Believe It or Not” designated it "The Shortest Street in the World." Having earned this distinction, the Hot Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau deemed Bridge Street the most logical location for this novel parade.

World's worst St. Patrick's parade

Chicago's South Side parade was canceled in 2009 but local bar owner Gerry O'Connell had his own parade – around his bar “Irish Eyes.” O'Connell wanted to pay homage to the defunct Chicago tradition.

"The South Side [parade] was canceled," he said. "So what we're doing, is we're starting at the south side of the bar, and we're going to come around from the south side and parade the whole bar. And we're going to salute the South Side, because we'd like them to have their parade. The parade was reinstated in 2012. 

 World's coldest St. Patrick's celebration:

Bering Sea Ice St. Patrick's Golf Classic: Third Saturday of March in Nome Alaska. Six-hole course played on the frozen Bering Sea with bright orange golf balls. Par is 41. Cash prizes for best scores. $50 entry fee includes a t-shirt, hat, golf balls, tees (old shotgun shells), snakebite remedies (small bottles of vodka) and a certificate of completion.

World's smallest St. Patrick's celebration:

Can you say one? That's right, this is a party for one, and it has occurred every St. Patrick's Day since 1993 in the town of Enterprise, Alabama.

A different person of Irish descent each year holds the Irish flag high above his/her head, carries a pot o' gold and recites limericks as he/she walks past the local courthouse and around the Bol Weevil Monument. (Yes, Enterprise is the only American city with a monument of a pest. Don't ask!)

Grand Marshals in absentia are nominated and selected on the basis of their written acceptance speech, plus their reasons for not being able to attend the parade. In other words, anyone can be a Grand Marshal.

World's largest St. Patrick’s Day parade:

The New York parade has become the largest Saint Patrick's Day parade in the world. In a typical year, 150,000 marchers participate in it, including bands, firefighters, military and police groups, county associations, emigrant societies, and social and cultural clubs, and two million spectators line the streets

 
World’s oldest St. Patrick’s Day parade:

The New York celebration is the oldest and largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in the world. The parade dates back to 1762,

 
World's longest celebration of St. Patrick’s Day

Montserrat in the Caribbean

In the 17th Century, Irish Catholic indentured servants were welcomed to the tiny volcanic island of Montserrat at a time when they were shunned in most other English-controlled islands of the Caribbean. The Irish mixed freely with the African slaves brought to work the English sugar plantations, and a unique Afro-Irish culture developed.

Some say St. Patrick's Day is a bigger deal in the U.S. than it is in Ireland, but Montserrat may top them both.  The St. Patrick's festivities here go on for a solid week. In fact, Montserrat is the only nation in the world other than Ireland that considers St. Patrick's Day a national holiday.

St. Patrick's Week in Montserrat includes parades featuring costumed revelers wearing green shamrocks, concerts with calypso, soca, and iron band music, church services and dinners, and a special March 17 commemoration of an attempted slave revolt in 1768. You'll find Guinness on tap in the bars, hints of Irish cookery in the national dish (a stew called 'goat water'), and lots of Irish surnames among the people.

 
World's newest St. Patrick’s Day celebration:

Hong Kong was the latest addition to the global St. Patrick's Day celebration. On Sunday, March 15, they organized an event in Tamar Park to celebrate the links between Hong Kong and Ireland and to bring together locals, Irish and other ex-patriates.

World's weirdest St. Patrick's Day event:

Until recently, San Francisco featured a snake race involving real snakes racing each other in their celebration. A recent winner was named "Window Viper", "I'm boa-ed" was second.

World's largest shamrock

In Nebraska, the world's largest shamrock is painted on the road in the town of O'Neill, which is the Irish capital of Nebraska. Every year, they install a huge blarney stone at the corner of the Shamrock and have many festivities, including a public reading of the book, "Green Eggs and Ham."

*Originally published March 2012

Famed 19th century Irish writer William Carleton was born on February 20, 1794, in Clogher, Co. Tyrone, acclaimed for his depictions of life in Ireland throughout the early 1800s and later through the years of the Great Famine. His most famous work is said to be “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” a collection of ethnic sketches of what he deemed to be the stereotypical Irishman.

Born the youngest of a massive 14-child family, Carleton’s father was a Catholic tenant father who greatly influenced his son's writing, as a Irish-language speaker, and a storyteller with a remarkable memory. It is even rumored that such was his father’s excellent memory he knew the full Bible off by heart.

His mother was also a noted singer who sang in Irish and many of the scenes of rural Ireland that Carleton later wrote about in his novels and sketches were formed from his childhood experiences in Co. Tyrone, from hedge schools to his relationship (and hatred) of the Catholic Church.

Despite only receiving a basic education from attending various hedge schools while he and his family moved from place to place with their father searching for work, Carleton would earn great success through his writing once he eventually moved to Dublin, although the fame would unfortunately never make him rich.

The majority of his learning was acquired from a curate named Father Keenan, who taught a classical school at Donagh, Co. Monaghan, and Carleton had hoped to eventually enter the church by first winning a scholarship to become a poor scholar. An ominous dream, however, convinced him otherwise.

His thoughts of ever entering the priesthood were brought to a very abrupt end following his excursion on a religious pilgrimage when he was 19, and he would eventually renounce Catholicism completely to become a Protestant.

After a time spent as a tutor in Co. Louth, the moment had eventually come for Carleton to take to the capital city and he arrived in Dublin with just two shillings and sixpence in his pocket.

His range of professions whilst in Dublin was certainly eclectic and he spent periods of time as a bird-stuffer, attempting to become a soldier, and working at a clerkship in a Sunday School office before his writing started to earn some attention.

He made his name in 1830 when he published his most famous work, and his first full-length book, “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” releasing a second series in 1833, and “Tales of Ireland in 1834.

He focused heavily on the image of the stereotypical Irish “Paddy”, alienating many Catholic Irishmen through his depictions of them as drunks and placing a heavy emphasis on gang violence among the tenant classes.

Despite being born into a Catholic family, and claims that he only converted to Protestantism to garner the favor of those who would sponsor his art, Carleton denounced the efforts of Daniel O’Connell in fighting for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland, accusing him of inciting violence against the Protestant class, a crime he believed most Catholic priests were also guilty of.

Writing constantly until his death, Carleton left behind the stories of his childhood in Tyrone for his biographer David James O'Donoghue to complete and publish in “The Life of William Carleton …” in 1896.

He was never to be a rich man, however, and the later years of his life were defined by the alcoholism that he was so eager to portray among his sketches, and poverty that was only slightly lessened by the awarding of a pension of £200 in 1848.

The successful petition by a list of Ireland’s most eminent people to award him this pension is an everlasting tribute to the regard in which many people within Irish society held him. The list is said to have included the President of the Catholic College at Maynooth, the Orange leader Colonel Blacker, Daniel O’Connell’s son, and Oscar Wilde’s father.

In 1820, the writer married Jane Anderson and they had several children. He died in his home in Ranelagh on January 30, 1869 and is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin.

Ever since John F. Kennedy's trip to Dunganstown, County Wexford, in 1963, almost every President of the United States has traveled across the Atlantic, often to seek out their ancestral home.

With our current President, Barack Obama, also visiting his ancestral family home, Moneygall, County Offaly, during his time in office, historians are taking a look at the 22 American presidents with roots in Ireland.

John Robert Greene, a historian and author of dozens of books, explained: "It's very simple, Catholic votes …There's not a huge love of Irish tradition, with the possible exception of JFK and Ronald Reagan, not a huge love of Irish culture, with the possible exception of JFK, Reagan and Bill Clinton, but there's a huge love for Catholic votes and particularly Irish Catholic votes.

In 1984 President Ronald Regan and his wife Nancy visited Ballyporeen in County Tipperary. Eight bed and breakfasts, two cafes and souvenir businesses opened up. The tourist boom lasted for six or seven years.

The local pub was renamed after the president before he even arrived and after his death in 2005 the Reagan presidential library acquired the interior of the pub. The walls were decked with images of the president around the world.

The pub's owner, Mary O'Farrell, told the BBC, "He was real Irish in temperament …You'd know he was Irish, he had that sense of humor and glint in his eye."

Most of the 22 Irish American presidents have their roots in Tyrone and Antrim and come from a Protestant background of 19th century Ulster. They generally settled in the south and west in the US. Later they labeled themselves Scots-Irish in a bid to distinguish themselves from the Catholics fleeing Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s. It better served those running for the presidency to not associate with those coming out of Ireland, who were being accused of stealing American jobs.

During the early 20th century, those attitudes began to change and then along came John F. Kennedy.

Although neither his parents nor grandparents were born in Ireland, he forged a solid Irish identity and he became the first Catholic to take the office. At Kennedy's rallies, filled with prominent Irish Catholics such as Tip O'Neill, "Danny Boy" was the tune of choice.

Talking about Kennedy Greene said, "He clearly wanted the link to the Irish and he made himself more Irish than any other American president."

Since Kennedy (who was assassinated on November 22, 1963) every president apartment from Gerald Ford has claimed some sort of Irish ancestry, says Greene. Although he commented that in Bill Clinton's case there was no evidence.

Carl Shanahan, founder of Wild Geese, an organization that promotes Irish culture in the US and worldwide, said that what these presidents are doing is exactly like what millions of Americans do every day.

Shanahan said, "Being Irish doesn't hurt you at any level of society. We were never at war with Americans like the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese. In Washington's army the numbers were a third Irish or Scottish-Irish …There is an affinity by association. It's the reputation of the Irish, the fighting Irish. A guy who gets off his feet and fights the battle and wins. We had boxing champs and baseball teams."

He continues, "We fought their wars, opened up their territories and built their cities. There's nowhere to tell that story and if we don't tell it, then people will forget."

One excellent demonstration of this is the St. Patrick's Day parade, which is older than the United States itself. The first parade took place 250 years ago in 1766, in New York, ten years before the Declaration of Independence.

* Originally published in 2013. 

Field Marshal Douglas Haig, head of the British forces along the 'western front' during WWI, described Father Franis Browne as “the bravest man I ever met."
 
Not many people know that "Father Browne of The Titanic" went on to serve with great distinction during the First World War.
 
In 1916 he joined the British Army as a Jesuit chaplain. He served for most of the war with the Irish Guards at the front in the trenches and on the battlefields of Flanders.

Read more:Did the Irish priest on board the Titanic take a “selfie”?
 
Ministering to soldiers in the thick of the action, Father Browne was wounded five times and badly gassed. “Father Browne's First World War” gives an account of his wartime experiences and contains 100 photos from his remarkable collection. There are also extracts from his letters home describing his experiences, and from his messages to the families of the fallen. The book includes a moving account of the time he spent working alongside fellow chaplain, Fr Willie Doyle, killed by a shell.
 
In recognition of his bravery Fr Browne was awarded the Military Cross and the French and Belgian Croix de Guerre.
 
Father Eddie O'Donnell has written a fascinating and moving account of Father Browne's war, brought vividly to life with extracts from his letters, and illustrated throughout with photographs taken by Father Browne.

*Originally published in 2014

On June 3, 1944, Irish Coast Guardsman and Blacksod lighthouse keeper Ted Sweeney delivered a weather forecast by telephone from Co Mayo’s most westerly point. The report convinced General Dwight D Eisenhower to delay the D-Day invasion for 24 hours, potentially averting a military disaster and changing the course of World War II.

June 6 will mark the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion that signaled the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. On Tuesday, 70 years to the day Sweeney delivered his weather report, the D Day Museum in Portsmouth will be presented with Sweeney’s original Blacksod observation sheets, collated by the Irish Met Service, and including the actual weather observations which proves so crucial to the invasion.

The Irish Independent reports that new evidence from Met Eireann forecasters reveals how the Blacksod Bay forecast changed the course of history.

Despite years of planning, in the days leading up to the attack, the Allied invasion would depend on one crucial and uncontrollable factor - the weather.

Although separate observations were taken at various locations by Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and United States Army Air Force meteorologists, an accurate forecast from the Irish Meteorological Service, based on observations from Blacksod on Mullet peninsula would be the most important.

Despite the country’s neutrality during the war,  Ireland continued to send meteorological reports to Britain under an arrangement which had been agreed since Independence.  According to the Irish Independent, Blacksod was the first land-based observation station in Europe where weather readings could be professionally taken on the prevailing European Atlantic westerly weather systems.

The Normandy invasion was originally planned for June 5. Nearly 5,000 ships and over 11,000 aircraft would carry approximately 156,000 troops into battle on the day across a 60-mile beachfront and into the interior of the Cotentin peninsula. Because of the importance of the landings by sea and by air,  the 6th and 7th, were also pinpointed as possible dates because moon and tide conditions were then deemed ideal.

However, British and American forecasters could not agree on the likely weather conditions for the planned date.

According to the memoirs of Scotsman James Stagg, the chief meteorologist for the Normandy Landings, by June 2, the Americans were optimistic for a 'go' on June 5, whilst the British were "unmitigatedly pessimistic.” An agreement could not be reached.

Then, in the early morning hours of June 3, Irish Coast Guardsman and lighthouse keeper Ted Sweeney sent his hourly weather observation report, containing a warning of "a Force 6 wind and a rapidly falling barometer" at Blacksod.

Group Captain Stagg, stationed at Southwick House outside Portsmouth,  studied the Blacksod report and advised General Dwight D Eisenhower to postpone for 24 hours. Eisenhower postponed the invasion to Tuesday June 6.

Sweeney, who died in 2001, said in an interview from 1994: "I was sending an hourly report 24 hours a day and night. It had to be phoned into London, (Dunstable). We got a query back.

"They asked for a check. 'Please check and repeat the whole report.' I was wondering what was wrong. I thought I had made some error or something like that. They sent a second message to me about an hour later to please check and repeat again. I thought this was a bit strange so I checked and repeated again. It never dawned on me that this was the weather for invading or anything like that. When I checked the report, I said: 'Thanks be to God, I was not at fault anyway.' I had done my job and sent over a correct reading to London."

New Met Eireann analysis has confirmed that Ted Sweeney's June 3 reports from Blacksod indicated a cold front lying halfway across Ireland and moving rapidly south eastwards and that a deep depression lay between Iceland and Scotland. Gale-force winds, low clouds and heavy showers would still be affecting the English Channel in the early morning hours of June 5.

On June 4, Sweeney sent a report saying that heavy rain and drizzle cleared, cloud at 900ft and visibility on land and sea very clear. An hour later, Blacksod would receive full clearance of the weather.

The following day, at Eisenhower's morning briefing, the latest report from Blacksod confirmed the passage of a cold front at Blacksod at noon on June 4 and confidence was restored, reports the Irish Independence.

Eisnehower’s long awaited weather clearance had arrived and he gave the order for Operation Overlord, as the invasion was named, to proceed. D-Day would be on June 6.

New information has emerged in recent years about the man believed to have shot Ireland’s revolutionary leader Michael Collins, including the revelation that he had previously met “the Big Fella” twice.

Denis “Sonny” O’Neill, a former Royal Irish Constabulary and IRA officer who fought on the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War, was at Beal na Blath  94 years ago today, on August 22, 1922, for the ambush that took Collins’ life.

According to pension records published by Ireland’s Military Archives and analyzed by the Irish Independent, he claimed that his presence that day was an accident.

“We accidentally ran into the Ballinablath [sic] thing. We took up a position, and held it there until late in the evening,” he said in a sworn statement delivered in 1934 when he was applying for a military pension.

The Collins party had been delayed and O’Neill and his comrades were about to abandon the ambush when they heard the Collins group approaching.

Collins leaped from the car and began firing when they came under fire. He was shot by a single bullet through the head and died instantly.

O’Neill also had two personal encounters with Collins while working with the IRA during the War of Independence. The first in 1920, when he was introduced to Collins and a number of his confidantes; the second in 1921, when he was entrusted to deliver a message to Collins from London. 

That these records survive is remarkable in itself, given that a 1932 government order directed all files pertaining to the Civil War be burned.

O’Neill, described in army intelligence files from 1924 as “a first class shot and a strict disciplinarian” and “undoubtedly a dangerous man,” was born in Timoleague, Co. Cork in 1888.

He served in the RIC and as a marksman for the British Army in WWI, but was discharged after being shot in the arm.

Back in Ireland, he rose through the ranks of the IRA thanks to the access granted him by his RIC past. In the Irish Civil War he fought on the Anti-Treaty side. The pension files paint a picture of a man on the run after the war ended, never staying in the same house two nights in a row.

Years later he settled in Tipperary, becoming a peace commissioner and a director of elections for Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail. He died in 1950.

All of this information about O’Neill was included in the second cache of Military Pensions Archives published by the Irish Defense Forces and just made available online.

Between 1924 and 1949, the Irish government made those who had fought or performed intelligence work in the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War eligible for pensions.

In order to receive benefits, however, they had to provide evidence, personal testimony and second hand testimony of their service.

Because of this, the records are exceptionally detailed. The portion released, for example, includes 1,158 individual pension records, 77 administrative files and 173,000 scanned documents, letters and photographs. The site also includes a map of activity during the 1916 Easter Rising and a photo identification project.

* Originally published in 2014.

A new book, about Judy Garland, has revealed that President John F. Kennedy would often call the star and ask her to sing her most iconic song, “Over the Rainbow,” over the phone.

A new memoir by "The Wizard of Oz" star’s third husband Sid Luft, which was crafted from notes Luft left unfinished before he died in 2005, tells how Garland was introduced to JFK by Peter Lawford and his wife Patricia, Kennedy’s younger sister, when Kennedy was a junior senator from Massachusetts.

“JFK was young, lanky and extremely outgoing,” writes Luft in "Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland." “He asked Peter and Pat to introduce him to ‘Dorothy’ in the flesh.”

Garland and Kennedy struck up a friendship, and as Luft wrote: “In the coming years, JFK would ring Judy from either the White House or Camp David and ask her to sing to him over the telephone.”

“He’d request ‘Over the Rainbow,’” continued Luft. “Judy was located somewhere in New York and obliged the President with several renditions of his favorite melodies.”

Garland and Sid Luft’s son, Joey Luft, remembers how excited his mother would get whenever the president called.

“I remember he called her one time. I think it was after the election and she was jumping up and down in the living room. She campaigned for him and they were pretty close,” he said.

In the book, Sid Luft also shares memories of the parties he and Garland attended at the Lawford home.

“It was at the Lawford’s beach house that I was introduced to grass,” Luft wrote. “The scenes at the Lawford’s were heady – at times Jack was there or Teddy or some other member of the Kennedy clan. Peter knew damn well if he brought girls around, Jack would take over. He’d steal any girl in sight.”

Read more:What did a young John F Kennedy look like during World War II?

1. William Butler Yeats

In the shadow of Ben Bulben mountain in Sligo, in a small country graveyard. His epitaph reads, “Cast a cold Eye on Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by.”

2. Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's tomb is located in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. It took nine to ten months to complete the grave which includes an Egyptian sphinx motif by sculptor Jacob Epstein, a plinth by Charles Holden and inscription carved by Joseph Cribb. It is traditional for his admirers to put on lipstick and kiss his grave.

3. James Joyce 

James Joyce is buried in Zurich. In 1941, the self-exiled Joyce, who had left Ireland in 1902, died after undergoing ulcer surgery in Switzerland.

He was buried there in the Fluntern Cemetery. Though Joyce's wife Nora tried to move her husband's body to Ireland after the burial, the Irish government denied the request. Joyce's body resides in a grave alongside his wife and son, watched over by a small statue of the writer. An inscription by the statue reads, “He lived, he laughed, he loved, he left.”

4. Michael Collins

Buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin under a large cross with a Gaelic inscription. His funeral procession was three miles in length. He still receives Valentine cards from female admirers every year.

5. Countess Markievicz

The 1916 hero remained a revolutionary all her life. When she died, 300,000 people attended her removal to Glasnevin Cemetery. "Her life will be cherished," said Reginald Roper in a eulogy, “by those who were starving, those whose rents she paid, those to whom she carried sacks of coal on her shoulders."

6. George Bernard Shaw

One of the world's great playwrights. He was cremated and his ashes scattered and mixed with those of his wife at their home in Shaws Corner in Ayot Saint Lawrence in Hertfordshire, England.

7. SeamusHeaney

The Nobel Laureate is buried in a quiet corner in the family plot at Bellaghy Cemetery, Bellaghy, County Derry, in Northern Ireland with his parents and brother.

8. Samuel Beckett

His wife Susanna died on July 17, 1989. He was heartbroken, and confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease. He died on December 22. The two were interred together in the Cimetière duMontparnasse in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it should be "any color, so long as it's grey."

9. Charles Stewart Parnell

Though an Anglican, he was buried at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on October 11, 1891. His funeral was attended by more than 200,000 people. His notability was such that his gravestone of unhewnWicklow granite, erected in 1940, reads only "Parnell."

10. Daniel O’Connell

“The Liberator” is also in Glasnevin with the tallest structure in the cemetery – a round tower over his grave. George Petrie, the leading archaeologist of the time was given the task of a major memorial.

His vision was to recreate the core structures of an early Christian Irish monastic site, the Round Tower, Church and High Cross. O’Connell was interred in the crypt, which took the form of a circular barrow or burial mound enclosed by a ditch which provided access to the crypt beneath. Atop the barrow a massive 167ft Round Tower was constructed, the largest ever built in Ireland.

However, Petrie’s original plan was not fully realized as the whole plan was not completed. The mortuary chapel was not built until 1870 and the High Cross was never completed.

* Originally published in October 2014.

What was Ireland like 60 years ago? What did the countryside look like? What were the people like? What did it sound like to walk through the streets of Dublin?

Watch the videos below to find out.

Both feature scenes of Ireland, captured by a tourist on 16mm film. They were recently shared on YouTube by Michael Rogge, whose channel is a treasure trove of old video from around the world.

The first takes you through the Irish countryside near Carna, Clifden and Galway. Feast your eyes on everyday scenes of a world that’s no more: a boy on his donkey; women walking a country road, some covering their faces with scarves to hide from the camera; a man harvesting seaweed; a rowboat excursion; a sheep feasting on grass; people peering out of thatched cottages; cows in a field; a curious dog running up to the camera; and a vintage car (you can join the debate on the make, model and year) navigating its way over a bridge.

The second video captures the sights and sounds of Dublin in the 1950s. No soundtrack here, just the revving of motors, the chatter of passersby, and the clip clop of horse-drawn carts as they travel down the cobble stone streets.

See the shop fronts and the cyclists, the group of men with bemused expressions in reaction to the camera, workers from the Irish Assurance Company picketing on strike, the front entrance to Trinity College Dublin, the River Liffey and Nelson’s Pillar still standing.

*Thanks to Eoin Hahessy and Flight of the Cubs

* Originally published October 2014.

Young orphans who were sent from Northern Ireland to institutions in Australia were “painted black” for the apparent entertainment of their fellow ship passengers, a victim has revealed in testimony.

“Our faces were painted black to make us look like [Indigenous Australians],” he said, as part of the on-board attractions for paying passengers on the same ship.

Northern Ireland is in the midst of a historical inquiry into widespread physical and sexual abuse of children in both state and church run homes, reported to be the largest public investigation into institutional abuse.

The most recent sessions of the inquiry have centered on 130 children who were shipped to Australia between 1946 and 1956.

The inquiry, chaired by former judge Sir Anthony Hart, heard testimony on Tuesday at Banbridge Court House in County Down from a man, now in his 70s, who in 1953 was sent to Australia from the Catholic-run Termonbacca home in Co. Derry.

The man requested to remain anonymous before giving his testimony. According to The Guardian, tears streamed down his face as he recalled the abuse he and other orphans endured during the journey to Australia, including being painted black. 

He said that as a result of the abuse he experienced in Northern Ireland and then Australia, "I had no idea how to parent my children, or even how to cuddle and love them. I really don't know what love is."

Another victim, a veteran of the Australian Air Force, said that the abuse and conditions at the Bindoon home in Australia were even worse than what he experienced in Termonbacca.

"After Bindoon, Termonbacca turned out to be a holiday camp,” he said.

To date, 66 people who were shipped off to Australia during this dark decade in Northern Ireland’s history have given evidence and testimony.

The end-point remains uncertain, as the Northern Irish inquiry has no legal authority in Australia, but Hart has said that all evidence will be brought to the attention of a similar inquiry currently taking place in Australia.

Click here to view footage of the Bindoon Boy's Town in 1944. 

* Originally published in September 2014. 

Tracing your Irish roots just got a whole lot easier as the National Library of Ireland is to give free online access to its Catholic Church records collection online, from summer 2015. This will enable millions of people around the world to trace their roots in Ireland.

Genealogy expert John Grenham wrote in The Irish Times that it is "almost impossible to overstate the importance" of what will happen.

The National Library of Ireland has announced that it will give free online access to its archive of Catholic Church records, the earliest of which dates back to the 1700s. The records are considered the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census. They cover 1,091 parishes throughout Ireland, and consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records.

Currently, the National Library provides free access to its microfiche records at its research rooms in Kildare Street, in Dublin. However access has been hampered in recent years by high demand and increased pressure on resources. The only online access to date has been through a third party paid genealogical service, RootsIreland.ie.

The National Diaspora Programme, Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO), has warmly welcomed the announcement that these resources will be available online.

Ireland XO Founder and Chairman Mike Feerick said, “Ireland XO has been campaigning for free online access to these valuable records since the organization was founded five years ago. Every Ireland XO volunteer knows how important it is that these records are freely available to everyone. The fact that these records have been available online only through an expensive paid service has meant that a huge number of people of Irish descent worldwide have been unable to trace their roots in Ireland.”

He added, “It is a truly exciting development for all involved in the diaspora and heritage sectors. It will have a profound impact on the number of people arriving in Ireland to trace their roots, and will allow the building of greater contacts between the Irish diaspora and their parish communities of origin in Ireland.”

Clare Doyle, Heritage Resource Manager at Ireland XO added that “the impact of charging for online access to these records has been greatly underestimated and, in many cases, prohibited the advancement of genealogical research by the Irish Diaspora.

“A huge number of Irish descendants living abroad are there as a result of famine and pre-famine emigration. To trace so far back, you simply have to look at a lot of records, and if you have to pay for each, the cost of your research simply becomes too expensive."

Since 2009, Ireland XO volunteers have been tireless in their quest to uncover ancestral origins for thousands of Irish descendants. The digitization of records from the National Library is a great boost to their research resources and will mean real progress in creating the online Irish diaspora community.

Read more: Millions more Irish birth, marriage and death records free online

My image of my grandmother, Margaret Boyle nee Martin, was of an old lady with her dark, fine hair scraped back in a bun. A widow for many years, she dressed in the regulation black and white of her generation, with the occasional navy blue thrown in as a nod to high days and holidays.

When we stayed at the family farm outside Milltown, Co. Galway, in the 1960s and 1970s, she wore workman-like black boots and I’d stare at them thinking that back in Yorkshire, my home city, I didn't know any women who wore such footwear.

Life halted at 6pm in her bungalow as Irish TV played the Angelus – the prayer of devotion traditionally recited in devout Catholic households three times a day. My grandmother stopped whatever she was doing, sat in her high-backed wooden kitchen chair and prayed. Then the TV would be switched off – and covered with a tea towel while we ate our meal.

At night time, I’d quietly watch her silhouette as she knelt at her bedside to pray before she got into bed with me.

Her careworn face was lined and tanned – undoubtedly from years of running the farm, raising her seven children, caring for a disabled husband and tending the orphaned seven children on the neighboring farm.

But though the top of her back was stooped as age took hold, her blue eyes always had a twinkle in them.

Today, her story would probably register as shocking. Back then, and in the harsh times of life in the first half of the 1900s, it was undoubtedly one replicated in all of Ireland’s counties.

Indeed, many readers whose family hailed from other native shores will tell similar tales.

Occasionally, it would be mentioned that my grandmother had been to America as a young woman. And more shockingly, she had been due to sail on the Titanic, joining the hundreds with a third class ticket hoping it would transport them to a better life across the Atlantic.

It was a story I never, regrettably, asked her about. But it is said that on the April 15 anniversary of the ship’s sinking, she would never talk about it and would feel ill.

I have spent years researching my family tree– long before the Internet was in mass use – and my doggedness helped me get quite far back on my mother’s Mayo-based Costello, Leitrim-rooted McPartland and Wicklow Keegans lineage.

It’s only in the last three years that I have tackled the Boyle and Martin (my paternal grandmother’s maiden name) side.

But as I gathered information, it made me reassess the old lady staring stoically into the camera in our family photos and see through fresh eyes the once beautiful young woman she was.

Since the 1840 Famine, Irish people were forced to leave their homeland to survive. They really only had two choices – America or England. And so my ancestors immigrated to both lands. By 1890, two of every five Irish-born people were living abroad. By the end of the century the population of Ireland had almost halved, and it never regained its pre-Famine level.

Second and third generations of my family settled in northern England, working in the mills, mines and construction industry. My maternal grandfather Patrick Costello recalls the sign `No Irish Need Apply’ displayed at several boarding houses in the West Yorkshire city of Wakefield, where he worked down the coal mines.

Over half of my ancestors went to the US. Margaret was the seventh of 12 children born in 1891 to Thomas and Ellen Martin, on a small farmstead in County Mayo.

When the brown-haired young 20-year-old decided to try for a new life in America, where at least three siblings had already emigrated, she paid £7 for her steerage class ticket no 367167 and was booked to sail along with the 120 other Irish folk on April 11, 1912 on the Titanic.

She was due to sail with a cousin, Celia Sheridan of Stripe near Mill town Galway.

Family myth has it that thanks to Celia being late leaving her family home, and so possibly unable to buy a ticket, the duo missed the boat – finally leaving 24 hours later on the SS Celtic. My grandmother canceled her passage and her ticket (which incorrectly has her listed as Mary) simply states 'Not boarded.'

Though she never discussed her brush with that fateful journey, she must have imagined herself in the place of those who perished on the ship that night. Her chances of survival were slim with 44% of steerage passengers dying.

However, when the 'unsinkable' Titanic crashed into an iceberg, Margaret was fast asleep in her cabin 700 miles away.

US newspapers indicate that news of the sinking – in which 1,517 passengers died and 700 were saved – was kept from the Celtic passengers. As the New York Times, on 21 April 1912, reported:

"The news that the Titanic had gone down was received by Capt. Hambelton of the Celtic last Monday, several hours after the liner went down, but it was not known among the passengers until last Wednesday, when it was posted on the bulletin board. Many of the passengers became nervous when they read the terrible story told in the bulletin and from that time on some of them kept a life preserver near at hand.

The second and third class passengers did not learn of the disaster until Friday, when the liner was in halting distance of New York. The Rev. Dr. W. F. Hovis took the lead in a successful effort to calm the more excitable of the passengers."

The Chicago Tribune for Sunday April 21 reveals the Titanic sent an 'SOS' to the Celtic, but other boats were nearer, adding:

"After Wednesday the nervousness spread. Few passengers, if any, took off their clothing when they retired. When Mrs. H. C. Bergh, wife of a Rochester businessman, refused to go to bed, her example was followed by most of the married women passengers. A minister, the Rev. W. S. Hovis, of South Bend, Ind., was pressed into service as a story teller to help relieve the gloom of the cabins.

The news of the disaster was kept from the second cabin and steerage until yesterday."

And so as Margaret was among the first passengers to sail into New York on April 20, docking in the very bay where the Titanic should have been, it must have been a gloomy New World she entered.

But she must have thought how lucky she was to have missed the boat, in the very saddest sense.

Margaret went on to a new life – joining her sister and spinster aunt (both named Celia Martin) working as a maid in Hartford, Connecticut, for the prosperous and politically-active Hooker family.

It was while in America, she posed for a handsome black and white photo with her three brothers – Owen, Jim and Pat and the latter’s wife Delia, and her sister Celia Martin, all living in the Hartford area. Margaret has a lovely white blouse on, her lustrous hair piled high and her high cheekbones defined her face.

Shades of her strong character emerged, as it became known that she had become close to a man who, shockingly for then, rumor had it was a non-Catholic and was said to have German origins. My Aunt Margaret Cleary – my father’s sister who lives in Manchester, CT – believes his first name was possibly Michael and surname Blackburn.

I employed a genealogist to help me overcome hurdles I faced. Michael Rochford found a copy of the Titanic ticket and then, amazingly, helped track down a Blackburn family in Connecticut.

He discovered the Blackburns left Dewsbury – a mill town only six miles from my home today – where the father was a foreman and moved to Sagan in Germany for him to work in a mill there.

A widower, he met and married a German woman and en masse they emigrated to Windsor Locks, Connecticut, which had a developing mill industry there. Michael Blackburn was a product of his father’s first marriage, but had a German step-mother – hence the link.

The family story passed down is that at some point my grandmother won a raffle and the unusual prize was a paid trip back to Ireland – so she went home – as yet I cannot find when.

Read more:The one reason why this Titanic passenger survived

I personally doubt there was ever a raffle and wonder it was a story put out by her family? Did her spinster aunt, then in her 50s, disapprove of the relationship? Did she write to her brother and wife telling them what their beloved daughter was doing who then ordered their young daughter home?

With the religious and cultural differences, Margaret and Michael were never going to be, though as she left America for good, he gave her a gold ring with the letter `M’ engraved inside it. In the romantic sense, they were ships that passed in the night. She later told a neighbor it was an engagement ring.

Margaret’s effort to carve out a new life in the bright New World ended not as maybe she hoped. And so in 1923, at the relatively late age of 32, Margaret wed my grandfather Michael Boyle, a man older than herself. It was thought to be a semi-arranged match.

They settled at his family homestead in a hamlet called Emracly outside Milltown, Co Galway. After fathering seven children, including a set of twins, Michael succumbed to arthritis – so severe that my own father Michael could never recall seeing him walk.

But the redoubtable Margaret coped with her lot, running the small farm, raising her brood and overseeing the seven neighboring orphaned Donnelly children. When social workers came to take them to a children’s homes, she put her cattle on their land and simply refused to allow them to be split up. To this day, the Donnellys – many now in Philadelphia – credit her with keeping them together.

The circle of life continued and – as countless other families had to – she waved off one son Pat and three daughters, Mary, Margaret and Philomena to the US, and my dad and his brother Jimmy for the UK, while the youngest Sean stayed behind to run the family farm.

In their late teens, my father Michael with his lifelong pal Jimmy Donnelly traveled to Lincolnshire and the North Yorkshire market towns, where they slept in a barn with pigs and hired themselves out for work.

Dad eventually settled in Wakefield and worked for decades as a miner and a laborer. His siblings settled to varying degrees in the US. Margaret was just 16 when in 1948 she left their thatched cottage home – with no electricity or indoor toilet – and flew into New York for a new life.

My generations of the family undoubtedly benefited from their hard work – we were the first to go to university, travel the world for pleasure not necessity, and have genuinely comfortable lives.

After my gran’s death – at the great age of 92 in 1982 – her wedding ring and her lost love’s ring – which she had kept all her life – were passed to her daughter Mary, in Philadelphia.

As for her lost love, my aunt Margaret Cleary was introduced to Mr Blackburn at a social event in Hartford in the 1950s, where she had settled.

Mother-of-five Margaret, now 85 and living in Manchester, Conn, recalls the meeting: `It was at a picnic and my Uncle Pat Martin, a bus driver, introduced us. Mr Blackburn was told I was Margaret’s daughter but he said he knew straight away who I was as I looked like my mother.

`I think he was called Michael but I am unsure. My mother did tell me about him when I was young. I wish now I had asked her more but you don’t think about it at the time.’

Mr. Blackburn told my aunt that he had never married but was very pleased to meet her. Did he always hold a candle for my grandmother?

My grandmother told a friend she regretted leaving America. I took my children to see the house where she worked as a maid and thought why wouldn’t she feel sad – leaving her first love and the home comforts and hopes of a modern US to return to the hard life of rural Ireland?

One day, I hope to tell her story in a book. Meanwhile, it is left to us, the ancestors she left behind, to ponder how different life would have been if Margaret Martin had boarded the Titanic – if she had not missed the boat in many senses of her life – but such was the journey she took that brought me to be born and raised in Yorkshire and my other family to America.

Read more: The last letter written on board the doomed Titanic

* If anyone has any information about the Martin or Blackburn family, contact Sheron on sheronboyle@aol.com, via Facebook, or on Twitter at sheronboyle1.

* Originally published November 2014.

Are you looking for Gaelic baby name inspiration? Here we have a list of Ireland’s most popular boy’s names of Irish origin and their meanings. The names are pulled from from the Central Statistics Office.

1. Conor

Conor is the Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Conchobhar, a compound name composed of “conn” (wisdom, counsel or strength), “con” (hound or dog), and “cobhair” (aid). It is usually translated as “lover of hounds.” It can also mean “high desire,” as derived from the Irish word “coachuhhar.” Conchobhar MacNessa was the king of Ulster - according to the legend, he was born on the same day as Christ.

2. Sean

Sean is the Irish cognate of the name John, and means “God is gracious.”

3. Oisin (pronounced o-sheen or uh-sheen)

This name means “little deer.” In Irish mythology, Oisin was a poet-hero, remembered for his love for Niamh of the Golden Hair, with whom he lived in Tir-na-nOg, the land of eternal youth. He was the son of legendary warrior Fionn MacCool and the goddess Sive. His mother was turned into a deer by the Dark Druid, and she raised him in the forest for seven years; when his father found him while hunting, he recognized the boy as his own son and gave him the name “little deer.”

4. Patrick

Patrick is the Anglicized form of the Irish name Padraig, from the latin Patricius which means “nobly born.” The patron saint of Ireland.

5. Cian (pronounced kee-an)

This name means “ancient,” or “enduring.” In the Irish legend, Cian Mac Mael Muad was the son-in-law of Brian Boru, both of whom were killed in the Battle of Clontarf.

Read more:Irish baby first names that are super popular in the US

6. Liam

Liam means strong-willed warrior and protector. It is the short form of the Irish name Uilliam, which comes from the Frankish Willahelm. It is also the Irish cognate of the name William.

7. Darragh (pronounced: dara)

Some translate Darragh into “fruitful” or “fertile,” and some translate the name into “dark oak” or “oak tree.” According to the Irish legend, Daire Mac Fiachna owned the Brown Bull of Cooley, and his refusal to sell it to Queen Maebh was part of the cause for the fight between Ulster and Connacht.

8. Cillian (pronounced: kill-ee-an)

The popular name Cillian has several known meanings, including “war,” “strife,” and “bright-headed.” The word cille also means “associated with the church,” so the name is often associated with the word “church” or “monastery.” There are several Saint Cillians in Irish history, including one in 650 AD who was sent to Bavaria to convert the natives, and was martyred for his trouble.

9. Fionn (pronounced: finn, fee-in or fyonn)

Fionn is a Gaelic name meaning “fair-headed,” “white” or “clear.” Other translations include “small blonde soldier” and “handsome.” Fionn MacCool was a central character in Irish folklore and mythology - he was the leader of the warrior band “The Fianna.” He wasn’t known to be incredibly strong, but he was known for being brave, handsome, wise and generous. He acquired his wisdom by touching the “salmon of knowledge” and then sucking his thumb.

10. Finn

Finn is the Anglicized version of Fionn (9). Meaning fair, blonde, or “small blonde soldier.”

* Originally published October 2014. 

Who invented St. Patrick's Day? Most people would assume the Irish, but here's a case for it being an American innovation. The U.S. Embassy in Dublin created this video three years ago. It sets out to prove that it was, in fact, America which created St Patrick’s Day and not Ireland! We liked it so much that we thought we'd share it again this year.

The video claims that Ireland took the tradition of celebrating St Patrick’s Day from their trans-Atlantic cousins in America and sets out five distinctly American inventions that prove St Patrick’s Day, as we know it, came from the US.

Top of their list is that they invented the parade tradition. The earliest recorded parade was one that took place in 1737 in Boston while New York City also claims a St. Patrick's Day parade took place there in 1762. 

The embassy's second item is that Americans were turning things green long before the Irish were, with a list of examples such as green beer, green rivers, and green clothes!

Number three on the embassy's list is their assertion that marching bands were invented by Americans with number four explaining the all-too-believable reason corned beef and cabbage is also a US invention.

Read more: Why Irish Americans eat corned beef and cabbage, not bacon and cabbage

The last thing they lay claim to are the keys to the White House!

Here’s the video. Do you agree with the US Embassy's list of five things that prove Americans created St Patrick’s Day?

*Originally published in March 2014. 

The Irish have a beautiful way with words that even when translated sound poetic.

Nowhere is that more  true than with proverbs and seanfhocals -- literally “old words” that the Irish use. Here are some examples:

1. Ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scoilb. A windy day is not a day for thatching.
Meaning: Don’t close the barn door after the horse gets out.



2. Ní féidir leis an ngobadán an dá thrá a fhreastal. The sandpiper cannot serve two beaches.

Uttered when one is trying to do to much at the same time.



3. I scath a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.In each other’s shadow the people live.

Uttered when a local calamity shows up how much people need each other.



4. Ní mar a shíltear a bhítear. What is assumed is often wrong.

Uttered when things don’t go quite according to plan.

5. Is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras.Before a big meal after a long fast.



6. Giorraíonn beirt bother.A companion shortens a road.

When a friend helps time pass on a journey.



7. An sean Madra  don bhóthar chruaidh. The old dog for the hard road.

When age and experience is the best  answer to a problem.



8. Ni beireann cailin dathuil an citeal.Beauty doesn’t boil the kettle.

When a girl may have looks but little home skills.



9. Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón. It is often a man’s mouth broke his nose.

Usually after a loudmouth in a pub gets his comeuppance.



10. Cad a dhéanfadh mac a cat a dhéanamh ach luch a mharú?What would the son of a cat do but kill a mouse?

Our nature is always within us. 

The term “The Emerald Isle” is synonymous with Ireland and its rolling hills and vales of green – at least forty shades, or so the famous Johnny Cash song goes.

But how did Ireland come to be known as the Emerald Isle?

Ireland’s resplendent greenery certainly had a lot to do with it, but there's more to the story and it starts with one rather interesting man.

The first time the words ever appeared in print in reference to Ireland was in a poem by Belfast-born William Drennan, titled “When Erin First Rose.”

Drennan, a poet, a physician and a political radical who helped found the Society of United Irishmen, was born in Belfast in 1754. His father was the Reverend Thomas Drennan, who served as minister of Belfast’s First Presbyterian Church.

After studying in Scotland, Drennan returned to Belfast in 1778 and set up an obstetrics practice. He was known for being a medical innovator, urging for simple but effective measures such as hand-washing to prevent the spread of disease and of inoculation against small pox. In the early 1780s, he began publishing creative and political works and became known for his support of Catholic emancipation and civil rights.

He moved to Dublin in 1789, and in 1791 he and his brother-in-law Sam McTier developed a plan for the Society of United Irishmen. As they exchanged in letters, they envisioned “"a benevolent conspiracy—a plot for the people—no Whig Club—no party title—the Brotherhood its name—the rights of man and the greatest happiness of the greatest number its end—its general end, real independence to Ireland and republicanism its particular purpose—its business, every means to accomplish these ends as speedily as the prejudices and bigotry of the land we live in would permit."

As the society grew, Drennan became its leading force in Dublin and stood trial for libel in 1794. But by 1798, the year of the rebellion, he had parted ways with the society as its emphasis shifted to rebellion and violent uprising.

It was in 1795, however, that Drennan penned the poem “When Erin First Rose.” The stanza where the words "the Emerald Isle" first appeared reads:

Alas! for poor Erin that some are still seen,

Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to green;

Yet, oh! when you're up, and they're down, let them live,

Then yield them that mercy which they would not give.

Arm of Erin, be strong! but be gentle as brave;

And uplifted to strike, be still ready to save;

Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile

The cause of, or men of, the Emerald Isle.

Read the full poem here.

Dr. Drennan married Sarah Swanwick in 1800, and in 1807 he retired from the medical profession and returned to his native Belfast. There he founded the Belfast Monthly Magazine and became involved with the Belfast Academical Institution, one of the first attempts at educating Protestants and Catholics together for secondary and higher level education.

When Drennan died in 1820, in a final symbolic gesture he had insisted that his coffin be carried by three Protestants and three Catholics.

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*Credit: uudb.org

* Originally published in December 2014.