Mining Irish American Lives

Author : Alan J. M. Noonan
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1646422511
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Mining Irish-American Lives written by Alan J. M. Noonan and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2022-09-29 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mining Irish-American Lives focuses on the importance and influence of the Irish within the mining frontier of the American West. Scholarship of the West has largely ignored the complicated lives of the Irish people in mining towns, whose life details are often kept to a bare minimum. This book uses individual stories and the histories of different communities—Randsburg, California; Virginia City, Nevada; Leadville, Colorado; Butte, Montana; Idaho’s Silver Valley; and the Comstock Lode, for example—to explore Irish and Irish-American lives. Historian Alan J. M. Noonan uses a range of previously overlooked sources, including collections of emigrant letters, hospital logbooks, private detective reports, and internment records, to tell the stories of Irish men and women who emigrated to mining towns to search for opportunity. Noonan details the periods, the places, and the experiences over multiple generations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He carefully examines their encounters with nativists, other ethnic groups, and mining companies to highlight the contested emergence of a hyphenated Irish-American identity. Unearthing personal details along with the histories of different communities, the book investigates Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans through the prism of their own experiences, significantly enriching the history of the period.

Author : David M. Emmons
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252054652
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Butte Irish written by David M. Emmons and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering study, David Emmons tells the story of Butte's large and assertive population of Irish immigrants. He traces their backgrounds in Ireland, the building of an ethnic community in Butte, the nature and hazards of their work in the copper mines, and the complex interplay between Irish nationalism and worker consciousness. From a treasure trove of "Irish stuff," the reports, minutes, and correspondence of the major Irish-American organizations in Butte, Emmons shows how the stalwart supporters of the RELA and the Ancient Order of Hiberians marched and drilled for Irish freedom---and how, as they ran the town, the miners' union, and the largest mining companies, they used this tradition of ethnic cooperation to ensure safe and steady work, Irish mines taking care of Irish miners. Butte was new, overwhelmingly Irish, and extraordinarily dangerous---the ideal place to test the seam between class and ethnicity.

Author : David M. Emmons
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806184531
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Beyond the American Pale written by David M. Emmons and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convention has it that Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century confined themselves mainly to industrial cities of the East and Midwest. The truth is that Irish Catholics went everywhere in America and often had as much of a presence in the West as in the East. In Beyond the American Pale, David M. Emmons examines this multifaceted experience of westering Irish and, in doing so, offers a fresh and discerning account of America's westward expansion. "Irish in the West" is not a historical contradiction, but it is — and was — a historical problem. Irish Catholics were not supposed to be in the West—that was where Protestant Americans went to reinvent themselves. For many of the same reasons that the spread of southern slavery was thought to profane the West, a Catholic presence there was thought to contradict it — to contradict America's Protestant individualism and freedom. The Catholic Irish were condemned as the clannish, backward remnants of an old cultural world that Americans self-consciously sought to leave behind. The sons and daughters of Erin were not assimilated, and because they were not assimilable, they should be kept beyond the American pale. As Emmons amply demonstrates, however, western reality was far more complicated. Irish Catholicism may have outraged Protestant-inspired American republicanism, but Irish Catholics were a necessary component of America's equally Protestant-inspired foray into industrial capitalism. They were also necessary to the successive conquests of the "frontier," wherever it might be found. It was the Irish who helped build the railroads, dig the hard rocks, man the army posts, and do the other arduous, dangerous, and unattractive toiling required by an industrializing society. With vigor and panache, Emmons describes how the West was not so much won as continually contested and reshaped. He probes the self-fulfilling mythology of the American West, along with the far different mythology of the Irish pioneers. The product of three decades of research and thought, Beyond the American Pale is a masterful yet accessible recasting of American history, the culminating work of a singular thinker willing to take a wholly new perspective on the past.

Author : James R. Barrett
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0143122800
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Irish Way written by James R. Barrett and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the newest volume in the award-winning Penguin History of American Life series, James R. Barrett chronicles how a new urban American identity was forged in the streets, saloons, churches, and workplaces of the American city. This process of "Americanization from the bottom up" was deeply shaped, Barrett argues, by the Irish. From Lower Manhattan to the South Side of Chicago to Boston's North End, newer waves of immigrants and African Americans found it nearly impossible to avoid the Irish. While historians have emphasized the role of settlement houses and other mainstream institutions in Americanizing immigrants, Barrett makes the original case that the culture absorbed by newcomers upon reaching American shores had a distinctly Hibernian cast. By 1900, there were more people of Irish descent in New York City than in Dublin; more in the United States than in all of Ireland. But in the late nineteenth century, the sources of immigration began to shift, to southern and eastern Europe and beyond. Whether these newcomers wanted to save their souls, get a drink, find a job, or just take a stroll in the neighborhood, they had to deal with Irish Americans. Barrett reveals how the Irish vacillated between a progressive and idealistic impulse toward their fellow immigrants and a parochial defensiveness stemming from the hostility earlier generations had faced upon their own arrival in America. They imparted racist attitudes toward African Americans; they established ethnic "deadlines" across city neighborhoods; they drove other immigrants from docks, factories, and labor unions. Yet the social teachings of the Catholic Church, a sense of solidarity with the oppressed, and dark memories of poverty and violence in both Ireland and America ushered in a wave of progressive political activism that eventually embraced other immigrants. Drawing on contemporary sociological studies and diaries, newspaper accounts, and Irish American literature, The Irish Way illustrates how the interactions between the Irish and later immigrants on the streets, on the vaudeville stage, in Catholic churches, and in workplaces helped forge a multi-ethnic American identity that has a profound legacy in the USA today.

Author : Beth O’Leary Anish
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030831949
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK written by Beth O’Leary Anish and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK addresses the concerns of Irish America in the post-war era by studying its fiction and the authors who brought the communities of their youth to life on the page. With few exceptions, the novels studied here are lesser-known works, with little written about them to date. Mining these tremendous resources for the details of Irish American life, this book looks back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the authors' immigrant grandparents were central to their communities. It also points forward to the twenty-first century, as the concerns these authors had for the future of Irish America have become a legacy we must grapple with in the present.

Author : John Stewart
Publisher : Mining the American West
ISBN 13 : 9781607321873
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Thomas F. Walsh written by John Stewart and published by Mining the American West. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas F. Walsh tells the story of one of the West's wealthiest mining magnates - an Irish American prospector and lifelong philanthropist who struck it rich in Ouray County, Colorado. In the first complete biography of Thomas Walsh, John Stewart recounts the tycoon's life from his birth in 1850 and his beginnings as a millwright and carpenter in Ireland to his tenacious, often fruitless mining work in the Black Hills and Colorado, which finally led to his discovery of an extremely rich vein of gold ore in the Imogene Basin. Walsh's Camp Bird Mine yielded more than $20 million worth of gold and other minerals in twenty years, and the mine's 1902 sale to British investors made Walsh very wealthy. He achieved national prominence, living with his family in mansions in Colorado and Washington, D.C., and maintaining a rapport with Presidents McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft, as well as King Leopold II of Belgium. Despite his fame and lavish lifestyle, Walsh is remembered as an unassuming and philanthropic man who treated his employees well. In addition to making many anonymous donations, he established the Walsh Library in Ouray and a library near his Irish birthplace, and helped establish a research fund for the study of radium and other rare western minerals at the Colorado School of Mines. Walsh gave his employees at the Camp Bird Mine top pay and lodged them in an alpine boardinghouse featuring porcelain basins, electric lighting, and excellent food. Stewart's engaging account explores the exceptional path of this Colorado mogul in detail, bringing Walsh and his time to life.

Author : Michael McMonagle
Publisher : Orpen Press
ISBN 13 : 1909895288
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Footprints Across America written by Michael McMonagle and published by Orpen Press. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the adventures of a hardy nineteenth-century Irish emigrant to America, Micí Mac Gabhann, who detailed his exploits in the Irish language book Rotha Mór an tSaoil, Michael McMonagle undertakes an epic journey to retrace his steps. Following his journey from New York to the Klondike Gold Rush, he traverses the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains of Montana, and the vast Alaskan wilderness. As he compares the America that Micí encountered in the late nineteenth century with that of the twenty-first century, the author provides a unique perspective on a very different America. Footprints Across America weaves the two journeys together and highlights the strong links between both eras. We are brought to historic places like Butte and Dawson City, mining ghost towns, Native American reservations, ranch houses and isolated Alaskan villages. We are dragged up mountains and down rivers. In these out-of-the-way places, the voices of cowboys, shamans, exotic dancers, soldiers, chancers, miners and Native Americans emerge to paint an insightful picture of life in America today, while the author also paints a compelling picture of the life of an immigrant caught up in the excitement of the Gold Rush.

Author : Cian T. McMahon
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040047165
Total Pages : 886 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Routledge History of Irish America written by Cian T. McMahon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-23 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers over 40 world-class scholars to explore the dynamics that have shaped the Irish experience in America from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. From the early 1600s to the present, over 10 million Irish people emigrated to various points around the globe. Of them, more than six million settled in what we now call the United States of America. Some were emigrants, some were exiles, and some were refugees—but they all brought with them habits, ideas, and beliefs from Ireland, which played a role in shaping their new home. Organized chronologically, the chapters in this volume offer a cogent blend of historical perspectives from the pens of some of the world’s leading scholars. Each section explores multiple themes including gender, race, identity, class, work, religion, and politics. This book also offers essays that examine the literary and/or artistic production of each era. These studies investigate not only how Irish America saw itself or, in turn, was seen, but also how the historical moment influenced cultural representation. It demonstrates the ways in which Irish Americans have connected with other groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans, and sets “Irish America” in the context of the global Irish diaspora. This book will be of value to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as instructors and scholars interested in American History, Immigration History, Irish Studies, and Ethnic Studies more broadly.

Author : Pat Commins & Elizabeth Rice
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1467146315
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Irish Immigrants in Michigan: A History in Stories written by Pat Commins & Elizabeth Rice and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To leave or stay was the question for the Irish in the nineteenth century. In Ireland, people suffered persecution, poverty and famine. America offered freedom and opportunity. For those who left and came to Michigan, the land's abundant natural resources encouraged them to become loggers, miners, fishermen, traders and farmers. Others became rail workers, merchants, lawyers, soldiers, doctors and teachers. Governor Frank Murphy advocated for civil rights. Sister Agnes Gonzaga Ryan administered schools and hospitals. Charlie O'Malley provided generously to suffering Irish people. Lighthouse keeper James Donohue never let physical disability deter him. Prospector Richard Langford discovered iron ore and then left others to mine its wealth. Authors Pat Commins and Elizabeth Rice share one story from each Michigan county about Irish immigrants or their descendants.

Author : Paul Moses
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479871303
Total Pages : 395 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book An Unlikely Union written by Paul Moses and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They came from the poorest parts of Ireland and Italy, and met as rivals on the sidewalks of New York. In the nineteenth century and for long after, the Irish and Italians fought in the Catholic Church, on the waterfront, at construction sites, and in the streets. Then they made peace through romance, marrying each other on a large scale in the years after World War II.An Unlikely Union unfolds the dramatic story of how two of America's largest ethnic groups learned to love and laugh with each other in the wake of decades of animosity.The vibrant cast of characters features saints such as Mother Frances X. Cabrini, who stood up to the Irish American archbishop of New York when he tried to send her back to Italy, and sinners like Al Capone, who left his Irish wife home the night he shot it out with Brooklyn's Irish mob. Also highlighted are the love affair between radical labor organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Carlo Tresca; Italian American gangster Paul Kelly's alliance with Tammany's “Big Tim” Sullivan; hero detective Joseph Petrosino's struggle to be accepted in the Irish-run NYPD; and Frank Sinatra's competition with Bing Crosby to be the country's top male vocalist.In this engaging history of the Irish and Italians, veteran New York City journalist and professor Paul Moses offers an archetypal American story. At a time of renewed fear of immigrants, it demonstrates that Americans are able to absorb tremendous social change and conflict—and come out the better for it.