Archive of Irish emigrant letters goes online

A new website of letters between Irish emigrants in North America and other destinations overseas and their families at home has gone online.

The website, Imirce, was created by the University of Galway and digitises a collection donated by American historian Kerby A. Miller.

Professor Miller’s collection includes approximately 7,000 letters from Irish emigrants dating from the late 17^th century to the mid-20^th century, as well as memoirs and other historical documents.

Professor Breandán Mac Suibhne, Director of the Acadamh and historian at University of Galway, said: “Letter-writing was long the primary means of communication between Irish emigrants to North America and family and friends at home. The Imirce database allows researchers - amateur and professional - to access an extraordinary collection of emigrant letters and memoirs assembled over half a century by historian Kerby A. Miller and it provides a repository in which people can share copies of letters in their possession. Imirce is at once an important resource for scholars and a potent connection, across time, between the descendants of emigrants to North America and the people and places around Ireland that their forebears left behind."

The documents provide poignant insights into ordinary people’s lives.

In one letter, written in about 1910, Ann McNally in Mullanarry townland, Magheross parish, near Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, writes to her sister in America: “Poor Thomas [her husband] dide the 8 of June last May God have mercy on him. he was only one month sick i am nerly gon my Self.”

They also show the writers’ views on wider issues at the time. On 17 August 1883, Patrick Callaghan in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, wrote to his sister Maggie in Fallow, Kilmacthomas, Waterford, about Irish independence: “In the paper I got from Bridget [his other sister] was mentioned a preliminary meeting towards getting up a great meeting in Waterford on the 26^th Inst. I hope ‘twill be a success. Anything is good to keep up the national spirit until the day of retribution comes. I hope they’ll get peasant proprietary and a native parliament in a few years.”

The Imirce website also has maps showing the locations of the letters’ writers and their recipients and a timeline showing the years in which they were sent.

The Imirce team are also seeking donations of more letters and memoirs by Irish emigrants, particularly those written in Irish. If you have documents to donate, you can do so on the website.