Best of the Blog, 2025

My thirteenth year of producing this blog was productive and rewarding. Highlights included the publication of several freelance pieces in scholarly journals or the popular press. The University of Galway accepted my family’s letters between the U.S. and Ireland from the 1920s through the 1980s for their digital immigrant archives. I was interviewed for a St. Patrick’s Day television program and gave a presentation about Michael J. O’Brien, my 2024 entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. I made my thirteenth visit to Ireland in 25 years.

This website was on pace for record all-time traffic, then rocketed over the top by a mid-November surge of AI content-scraping bots. Or maybe thousands of readers in China have suddenly become interested in Irish news and history. I object to the unauthorized grab of my intellectual property, but I’m happy if it eventually contributes to global knowledge, especially my work about American journalists in Ireland.

More details and links to some of this year’s best content follow below each of the photos:

The gate between the Museum of Literature Ireland courtyard and the Iveagh Gardens. “MoLI replaced the former Dublin Writer’s Museum.

Freelance pieces

The former London and North Western Hotel seen in April 2025. A group of American journalists watched from the top floor as Irish rebels and British forces fired on each other during the 1916 Rising. The dark glass building at right is part of the Salesforce Tower, which renovated the former hotel as office and meeting space. The red brick structure at left is the former railway and steam packet terminal operated by the L&NW hotel company. It was vacant during my visit. The building faces the River Liffey.

Two blog series:

Revisiting William Brayden’s 1925 ‘survey’ of Ireland

The Irish-born journalist wrote a summer 1925 series for the Chicago Daily News about the state of Ireland on both sides of the partition. His series, later compiled as a book, and follow up reporting about the end of the Irish Boundary Commission served as the conclusion to American newspaper coverage of Ireland’s decade-long revolutionary period.

Leon and Jill Uris in Ireland

The American husband and wife team, author and photographer, respectively, made several visits during the 1970s. They produced photobooks and a bestselling novel that perpetuated notions of “romantic Ireland” before the Republic’s economic modernization and the Good Friday Agreement at the end of the 20th century.

Family letters

Nearly 60 of my family’s letters to and from Ireland were accessioned and digitized in the Imirce (Irish for migration, emigration) project at the University of Galway. The searchable Joan Diggin Collection is named after my aunt, who either authored or was the recipient of most of the letters. The collection also includes a digitized copy of my 2013 book, His Last Trip, about Joan’s father, my grandfather. The letter manuscripts and a print copy of the book may be consulted in the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room.

This February 25, 1953, note from Ireland before St. Patrick’s Day is part of the Imirce collection. I kept the shamrocks, which also were included in several other letters.

Television interview

Watch my St. Patrick’s Day interview with FOX 8’s “News Now” in Johnstown, Pa. The conversation covers my Irish ancestry and historical research. Each segment is 5 minutes:

My remote St. Patrick’s Day television appearance for FOX 8 in Johnstown, Pa., included the obligatory bookcase in the background. But they are real books that I’ve actually read and use.

Thanks archivists, librarians, and others

This year’s research included multiple visits to the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and Catholic University of America here in Washington, D.C. I also spent time at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, New York Public Library, and the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh Archives and Records Center. I received remote help from the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Catholic Diocese of Gaylord, Mich., and the Paulist Archives in New York City. As always, I am grateful to the professionals at these institutions who assisted my work. … I was delighted to contribute some research and materials to “The Irish Revolution in the African American Press” exhibition at University College Cork. It focused on how the US black press covered De Valera’s tour of America (1919–20), MacSwiney’s hunger strike death (1920), and the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921-22). Dr. Jemima Hodgkinson, a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow, curated the exhibit. … I enjoyed watching excellent presentations by Irish historians (and friends) Daniel Carey and John Dorney at the “Navigating War and Violence in Twentieth-Century Ireland” conference at Dublin City University in April. … On the same trip I was welcomed to Dungloe, County Donegal, by Patrick J. Dunleavy, chairman of the The Cope’s board of directors, who gave me a detailed driving tour of the Rosses region, and by Mark Sharkey and Emma McGarvey, Cope CEO and business support manager, respectively.

I hope to return to Ireland in 2026, and to visit two new domestic archives I’ve eyed for some time. Meanwhile, happy holidays to the site’s human readers, especially my loyal email subscribers. Sláinte!

Low tide twilight at Dungloe, County Donegal. The pier at left replaced the one constructed during the revolutionary period and detailed in 1922 by American journalist Redfern Mason.