Monthly Archives: January 2015

Old stage coach route in Kerry transformed into hike trails

I came across this feature about the transformation of an early 19th century stage coach route through historic villages and sites in County Kerry into new 8-day and 11-day self-guided hikes.

This History Ireland piece gives extensive background about the Charles Bianconi coach system that revolutionized public transport throughout Ireland. And more about the system from The Irish Story.

Bianconi’s cars, Bians as they were popularly called, had by 1857 opened up Ireland –  opened it to trade, and a novelty, to tourists. …[T]he cars were all but totally safe. Bianconi and his cars were so popular that they could travel anywhere in Ireland, by day or night, in troubled times or peaceful ones, without molestation.

Finally, Irish Central recently posted this photo feature about “the Kingdom that is Kerry.”

Debate heats up over separation of church, state and schools

Debate in Ireland is heating up about the role of religion in managing school admissions. The Humanist Association of Ireland is calling for a ban on baptism certificates or other proof of a child’s religious affiliation.

Brian Whiteside, an official with the secularist group, told The Irish Times:

There is a new reality that has to be addressed. One third of couples are getting married in non-religious ceremonies. It’s reasonable to ask what sort of schools they want for their children.

The HAI says it “promotes the ideals and values of Humanism, working for people who choose to live an ethical life without religion.” The organization has made strong inroads in Ireland’s marriage ceremony business, as the Irish Independent reported last summer.

About 257,000 of 4.5 million living in the Republic in 2011, or just under 6 percent, said they had no religion. Catholics remained the majority at about 85 percent, according to the Central Statistics Office, and the church controls about 90 percent of Ireland’s primary schools.

The schools debate is more than just the usual separation of church and state struggle. It also brings full circle a vision for the Irish education system that began in the first half of the 19th century, long before independence.

Historian Diarmaid Ferriter writes this opinion column in the Times about Thomas Davis, a Young Irelander, poet and journalist, who argued for a state-endowed secular system of third-level education based on national colleges. Davis believed a “mixed education” was a vital component of an inclusive form of nationality in Ireland.

Deenihan addresses Washington’s Irish community

Irish Minister for Diaspora Affairs Jimmy Deenihan says he is within weeks of issuing “a new strategy to improve Ireland’s connection with the diaspora.”

The policy paper is part of the government’s review of its relationship with Ireland’s scattered sons and daughters. It has been in the works since Deenihan, a Fine Gael TD from north Kerry, was appointed to the new ministerial post in July and is based on interviews with individuals and submissions from Irish organizations from around the world.

Deenihan is a on a four-day visit to Washington, D.C. and Boston. He addressed the annual meeting and reception of Irish Network-DC at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington on 22 January. (Full disclosure: I am a member of Irish Network-DC.)

Kerry T.D. Jimmy Deenihan at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington on Jan. 22.

Kerry T.D. Jimmy Deenihan at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington on Jan. 22.

Deenihan noted how the Irish diaspora maintained a strong relationship with the homeland through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. But new measures are needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century, especially engaging the younger generation of Irish emigrants, he said.

The global Irish diaspora is estimated at 70 million people, including about half in the U.S. Some 156,000 people born in the Republic of Ireland were living in America at the start of the 21st century, with an estimated 50,000 Irish currently living in the country illegally.

Deenihan told The Irish Times he doesn’t think the new Republican majority in Congress can stop President Obama from sparing four million illegal immigrants of various nationalities from deportation. He said undocumented Irish should start preparing the paperwork required for temporary relief from deportation under Obama’s executive order.

Deenihan was less specific about immigrant issues in his talk at the Embassy. He mentioned meeting with Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, and other members of the new majority “because they are the ones in power.” But he suggested Republicans “will work together” with Congressional Democrats on Ireland’s behalf.

As for the forthcoming policy paper and improving relations with the diaspora, Deenihan said groups such as Irish Network-DC and 18 other chapters under the umbrella Irish Network USA organization are critical.

He also said his office would begin reaching out to alumni of Irish universities, regardless of where they were born, who can help Ireland with economic development and other opportunities. Tech companies working in Ireland such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google are also being asked to help build connections.

“That should suit the Irish diaspora quite well because we are spread so wide,” Deenihan said.

Irish art exhibit to open in Chicago

Deenihan announced that he will open a major exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690 – 1840” will feature more than 300 objects from public and private collections.

An exhibition of 18th century decorative and fine arts from Ireland has never been undertaken on either side of the Atlantic, according to AIC. The exhibit opens on St. Patrick’s Day and continues through June 7.

The Irish in Pittsburgh, circa 1930

In 1930, U.S. Census enumerators recorded for the first time whether Irish immigrants hailed from the Irish Free State or Northern Ireland. A decade had passed since the island’s partition during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. In America, the Great Depression was barely two years old, and the Irish here were still transitioning from a mostly downtrodden people to among the most successful immigrant groups to ever reach these shores.

Many tens of thousands of these Irish immigrants populated the American cities of Boston, Chicago and Pittsburgh. In 1930, my grandparents and their four children (two more came later), plus other relatives from Kerry, were among those being counted in the Pennsylvania city.

In his excellent Townland of Origin website/blog, Joe Buggy recently posted about a set of maps from the National Historic Geographical Information System showing the 1930 distribution of first and second generation Irish immigrants in these three cities. As Buggy notes:

There can sometimes be ambiguity as to whether a first generation immigrant is the foreign-born person who immigrated or their native-born children. Social science researchers and demographers mostly refer to the first generation as those who are foreign-born and immigrated to the U.S.

The three NHGIS maps are below, and under that is a map of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. My grandparents settled in Hazelwood, shown in dark blue inside the deep bend of the Monongahela River (at bottom) from the area extending to the 5 position of a clock face. There, up to 30 percent of the residents were Irish, and the percentage reached up to 60 percent in the adjoining Greenfield section.

Map 1930 NHGIS

 

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Aspects of the Famine in north Kerry, 1845 – 1852

Continuing the Famine theme of the previous post, I’ve been reading and studying a new book: “Teampall Bán: Aspects of the Famine in north Kerry,” by John D. Pierse. As regular readers of this blog know, this part of Ireland is where my maternal grandmother and grandfather emigrated from (1912 and 1913, respectively) and is of great interest to me.

“The graveyard which has come to symbolize the Famine for the north Kerry and Listowel areas is undoubtedly Teampall Bán, located on the outskirts of the town off the Ballybunion Road, just beyond the old Lartigue railway overbridge,” Pierse writes in his Preface.

Back, left and front, right, of the book.

Back, left and front, right, of the book.

The Kerryman reports:

Seven years in the making, “Aspects of the Famine” focuses on the Listowel Union area comprised of the baronies of Iraghticonnor and Clanmaurice – encompassing pretty much all of rural Kerry north of Tralee. John along with his son Maurice, historian Kay Moloney Caball (My Kerry Ancestors), researcher Martina Flynn and former Institute of Advanced Studies Professor Pádraig de Brún painstakingly analysed as many records as they could find pertaining to the Listowel Workhouse, where so many perished, Listowel Presentation Convent and much else.

The book is to have its formal launch on 22 January in Listowel and will benefit the local Tidy Towns organization. For book orders contact Mary Hanlon at maryehanlon@hotmail.com.

Sultan’s aid to Famine Ireland: new telling of an old tale

In 1847 a Sultan of the Ottoman Empire provided relief to Ireland during the Great Hunger, An Gorta Mor. That the ruler sent money appears beyond dispute. Whether he also directed shiploads of food to the Irish port of Drogheda, County Louth, is more of a mystery.

Freelance writer Tom Verde has produced a well-researched telling of this old tale in the Jan./Feb. 2015 issue of AramcoWorld magazine, which is dedicated to Arabic and Islamic cultures.

Whatever the truth, this chapter in the history of “The Great Hunger” has nonetheless been immortalized in paint and in stone, and may yet be made into a feature film—should the ambitions of Turkish producer Omer Sarikaya be fulfilled. Yet, at its heart lies the undisputed fact of a generous gesture on the part of an Ottoman ruler toward a people to whom he owed nothing but the mercy required of him by faith and personal character.

Here’s a link to the full story.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese was criticized for believing too much of the story during her 2010 visit to Turkey. Verde reports the proposed movie, in the works since 2012, will be released later this year.

The nearly 170-year-old story appears to have gained new popularity in the age of the Internet, as well as increased attention to the relations between Islam and the West.

There were nearly 50,000 Muslims living in Ireland in April 2011, “a sharp rise on five years previously,” the Central Statistics Office reported in October 2012.  From 1991 to 2011, the number of Muslims increased from just 0.1 to 1.1 per cent of the total population.

Nollaig na mBan aids Northern Ireland Human Rights Fund

A £10 million Human Rights Fund is being established to continue peace building efforts in Northern Ireland over the next decade. The public appeal is just getting started and got a $10,000 boost from The Irish American Partnership, which presented a Nollaig na mBan (Women’s Christmas) breakfast Jan. 6 at the University Club of Washington, D.C.

The fund is a co-effort of The Atlantic Philanthropies and The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, which have jointly committed £4 million toward the goal.

A $10,000 check is presented to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Fund. From l. to r.: Norman Houston, Northern Ireland Bureau; Melanne Verveer; Avila Kilmurray, Monique Choiniere Miller, Committee Chair; Mary Sugrue McAleer, Irish American Partnership.

A $10,000 check is presented to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Fund. From l. to r.: Norman Houston, Northern Ireland Bureau; Melanne Verveer; Avila Kilmurray, Monique Choiniere Miller, Committee Chair; Mary Sugrue McAleer, Irish American Partnership.

Avila Kilmurray, CFNI’s former director, said the fund will be used “to embed a culture of rights and peace building” in the North, where nearly 50 “peace walls” still divide Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. Some of the walls were erected since the Good Friday Agreement, Kilmurray said.

“There is still a danger of recourse to violence, especially among young men,” she said.

Kilmurray emphasized the role women have played in bridging the sectarian divide in the North since before the 1998 accord. She insisted that continuing to focus on human rights issues can move the region past the entrenched “politics of zero sum game.”

First U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer delivered the breakfast’s keynote address, focusing on her days as Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Chief of Staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton. She recalled their historic 1995 Christmastime visit to Belfast.

(Verveer now runs the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security here in Washington, where Hillary Clinton is Honorary Founding Chair. Though Verveer never shed her diplomat’s reserve, just a wee bit of “Ready for Hillary” enthusiasm seeped through her talk.)

Like Kilmurray, Verveer emphasized the positive role that women have played in peace building and politics. Yet fewer than 10 percent of peace negotiations include women, she said.

“So many places I have gone I have seen the influence of the women of Northern Ireland,” Verveer said. “Women are agents of peace, and agents of change and they should be equal partners.”

Is Dublin’s Georgian heritage at risk?

The Irish Times begins the new year with several stories about how Dublin’s Georgian heritage is threatened by degradation and development.

Dereliction has become “endemic” in the north Georgian core of the city, according to Independent Senator David Norris. O’Connell Street and the surrounding Georgian and Victoria district are slipping into ever greater degradation with derelict historic buildings, a build-up of household rubbish and inappropriate infill developments on the site of former Georgian houses, the Times reports.

The Georgian period stretched through the reigns of four King Georges from 1714 to 1830. The style of buildings in the period derived from Palladian Architecture.

Dublin image from Panoramio.

Dublin image from Panoramio.

A sidebar in the Times package details the 1757 creation of the Wide Streets Commission, which was “responsible for creating the grand Georgian boulevards of the capital and for turning it from an east-west to a north-south orientated city though the development of new bridges.”

Here’s a link to the Irish Georgian Society. And another blog about the period from Dublin by Lamplight.