The ‘worst year that was ever remembered’

This post is reprised from January 2021 with minor revisions. The referenced letter is from the Joan Diggin Collection, part of the University of Galway’s ‘Imirce’ project of Irish emigrant letters and life stories from North America. Joan was my aunt. MH

***

On Jan. 24, 1921, widowed farmer John Ware wrote a hand-written letter from Killelton townland, Ballylongford, a rural community in County Kerry where the River Shannon empties into the sea. The letter was addressed to his same-name, bachelor son, a streetcar motorman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a noisy, smokey industrial city of more than a half million people; a hub of Irish immigrants, including two of his sisters, with a brother on the way. The sender was the father of my maternal grandmother, the recipient her older brother.

The 87-year-old father began the letter by thanking his 35-year-old son for an earlier postal order for £3, equivalent to about $175 today.[1]Bank of England Inflation Calculator through November 2025, and XE Corp. GBP to USD conversion on Jan. 20, 2026. Such remittances from immigrants were vital to the Irish economy and perpetuated still more departures.

Your prosperity in America is a great consolation to me. Your generosity and kindness since you left home.

John Ware in US Army uniform, World War 1.

John Ware the younger left home in 1910. Sisters Nora (my grandmother) and Bridget followed him to Pittsburgh in 1912 and 1916, respectively. He was naturalized in 1917, entered the U.S. Army as as private in April 1918, and shipped to France two months later. John survived the Great War and returned to Pittsburgh in February 1919.[2]See: An Irish-American’s most perilous summer, 1918.

The father reported that another son in Ireland had just welcomed a baby girl to his family three weeks earlier. A third son had sailed from Queenstown four days before he wrote the letter, also destined for Pittsburgh.

We all felt so happy he [was] able to get away giving to the present state of the country. That state of the case in Ireland at present is very bad.

War in Ireland

Ireland was in turmoil in January 1921. Two years had passed since Irish separatists established Dáil Éireann in Dublin. The Irish Republican Army’s guerrilla war against the British adminstration in Ireland had escalated steadily since summer 1920. IRA attacks were typically followed by military and police reprisals.

There was a policeman shot in Listowel a week ago. There is a fear there will be great damage done the town of Listowel through envy.

District Inspector Tobias O’Sullivan

District Inspector Tobias O’Sullivan was shot multiple times at close range mid-afternoon Jan. 20, 1921. He was only a few yards from the Listowel barracks. The victim was accompanied by his 5-year-old son.[3]”Listowel D.I. Shot Dead In Sight of Barracks”, The Kerryman, Jan. 29, 1921.

In Pittsburgh, John Ware may have read the next-day, front-page newspaper coverage of the O’Sullivan killing,[4]”Irish Official, 5 Constables Slain in Trap … Second Inspector Slain”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 21, 1921. which occurred about eight miles from his father in Killelton, Ballylongford. Pittsburgh papers reported several of the shootings and fires deliberately set to houses, creameries, and other businesses that occurred in North Kerry since fall 1920,[5]Dwyer, T. Ryle, Tans, Terror and Troubles: Kerry’s Real Fighting Story 1913-23, Mercer Press, Cork, 2001. See Chronology, pps. 21-29. one episode only a few weeks earlier:

At Listowel, in the marshal law area, crown forces  were fired on by civilians while arresting men wanted. They returned the fire, killing one and wounding two who were captured and sent to a hospital. Five arrests were made.[6]”Three Die In Fighting”, Pittsburgh Daily Post, Jan. 3, 1921.

These and other episodes of violence against civilians, but not IRA attacks on military and police, were cataloged by the Dáil in “The Struggle of the Irish People,” presented in May 1921 to the U.S. Senate.[7]“The Struggle of the Irish People”, Address to Congress of the United States, Adopted January 1921 Session of Dáil Eireann. Attacks on people and property in Listowel and Ballybunion, pps. … Continue reading The burning of Ballylongford “has still not been forgotten locally” a Kerry author wrote nearly a century later.[8]O’Callaghan, Tony, The Kerry Coast, Tony O’Callaghan, Blennerville, Co. Kerry, 2016, p. 31.

Agricultural distress

War violence was not the only trouble John Ware mentioned in his letter from Kerry:

The past year in the country is the worst that was ever remembered. The most of the year was all raining, the farm produce was never before so bad.

Farming in Kerry in the early 1920s.

His assessment is confirmed in Kerry newspapers of autumn 1920, which reported the impacts of a “late spring” and “continuous wet weather” that created a “black outlook not only for the farmers but for the people in the towns as well.”[9]”Kerryisms”, The Liberator (Tralee), Oct. 7, 1920. Government reports also recognized the decline in agricultural activity that year, though quantifying it was complicated by the war and relied on estimates and summaries. “In 1920 it was not found practicable to obtain particulars of either crops or livestock on all farms.”[10]Farming Since the Famine: Irish Farm Statistics 1847-1996, Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 1997, p. 31

John Ware in Kerry did not mention his two daughters in Pittsburgh, who worked as household servants and perhaps also sent remittances. He concluded the letter to his son with wishes for a Happy New Year, a year that would soon bring a truce to the fighting and end with the treaty that created the Irish Free State.

References

References
↑1 Bank of England Inflation Calculator through November 2025, and XE Corp. GBP to USD conversion on Jan. 20, 2026.
↑2 See: An Irish-American’s most perilous summer, 1918.
↑3 ”Listowel D.I. Shot Dead In Sight of Barracks”, The Kerryman, Jan. 29, 1921.
↑4 ”Irish Official, 5 Constables Slain in Trap … Second Inspector Slain”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 21, 1921.
↑5 Dwyer, T. Ryle, Tans, Terror and Troubles: Kerry’s Real Fighting Story 1913-23, Mercer Press, Cork, 2001. See Chronology, pps. 21-29.
↑6 ”Three Die In Fighting”, Pittsburgh Daily Post, Jan. 3, 1921.
↑7 “The Struggle of the Irish People”, Address to Congress of the United States, Adopted January 1921 Session of Dáil Eireann. Attacks on people and property in Listowel and Ballybunion, pps. 15-17, 20, and 28-30. Presented in the U.S. Senate on May 2, 1921, and recorded in Senate Documents, Vol. 9, 67th Congress, First Session, April 11-Nov. 23, 1921, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1921.
↑8 O’Callaghan, Tony, The Kerry Coast, Tony O’Callaghan, Blennerville, Co. Kerry, 2016, p. 31.
↑9 ”Kerryisms”, The Liberator (Tralee), Oct. 7, 1920.
↑10 Farming Since the Famine: Irish Farm Statistics 1847-1996, Central Statistics Office, Ireland, 1997, p. 31

More Americans move to Ireland to flee Trump

Rosie O’Donnell isn’t the only American who has emigrated to Ireland to escape the realm of Mad King Don the Con.

Nearly 100 US citizens (94) sought formal political asylum in Ireland last year, up from 22 in 2024. The figure was 18 in 2023 and 13 in 2022, according to Irish Department of Justice data cited by the Irish Times.

Citizensinformation.ie, an Irish government website, provides this information about applying for asylum.

Another 9,600 US citizens moved to Ireland without seeking asylum protection in the 12 months to April 2025. That’s nearly double the 4,900 who immigrated to Ireland in the previous 12 months, the Times reported, citing data from the Central Statistics Office.

Numerous media outlets have reported surges in the number of US citizens who have applied for Irish passports since President Trump returned to the White House last January. RTÉ appears to have been one of the first to use the term “Trumpugees.”

Of course, it’s difficult to fully escape from Trump. His tariffs and other policy decisions have economic and political consequences in Ireland and the rest of the world. In September the Irish Open will be at held at Trump International Golf Links Ireland, in Doonbeg, County Clare.

The Trump golf and hotel operation has sought planning permission to build-wait for it–a new ballroom. That’s right, why just erect such a gathering place adjacent to the White House in Washington when you could also add one to the Clare coastline. A permit decision from Clare authorities is expected by late February.

The entrance of Trump’s Doonbeg golf course in County Clare during my July 2016 visit, while he was campaigning for his first term as US president.

Massive prehistoric settlement in Co. Wicklow detailed

Archeologists from Queens University Belfast have described an area in County Wicklow as “the largest nucleated settlement identified in prehistoric Ireland and Britain.” Their findings are reshaping the established understanding of Bronze Age and Iron Age social organization in ancient Ireland and challenging assumptions about settlement patterns in prehistoric Europe.

Antiquity magazine first reported the discovery in a Nov. 18, 2025, article. Since the first of the year other scientific journals and the popular press have featured additional stories.

The study area at the south-western edge of the Wicklow Mountains is about 45 miles south of Dublin city. It is known as the Baltinglass hillfort cluster. It includes up to 13 large hilltop enclosures which contain up to 600 suspected house platforms. The site shows signs of continuous settlement from the Early Neolithic through to the Bronze Age, between 3700 to 800 BC.

Fáilte Ireland (the National Tourism Development Authority) in 2015 launched the “Ireland’s Ancient East” tourism initiative to promote “over 5,000 years of history hidden amidst these lush landscapes, winding rivers and glorious gardens” of the region. This finding should add to the mystique.

Aerial photograph with indication of test-trench locations in County Wicklow.            Cambridge University Press.

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.

More on Jill and Leon Uris in Ireland

I’m keeping my promise to follow up an earlier post, When Jill and Leon Uris went to Ireland. The couple first visited both sides of the partitioned island from May 1972 to January 1973, then published Ireland: A Terrible Beauty in November 1975. The book featured nearly 400 photographs by Jill and text by Leon, an established author.

Leon released his Irish novel, Trinity, in 1976. It became a best-seller. The couple returned to Ireland at least five more times over the next few years. Jill photographed places that represented the fictional locations in Trinity. She did a piece for the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine headlined “Connor and Shelly,” which illustrated the novel’s main characters. Jill and Leon traveled the River Shannon on a houseboat, “a lovely second honeymoon,” she recalled in a second book of photos, Ireland Revisited, published in 1982.[1]Jill Uris, Ireland Revisited. [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1982], 1-2.

Of her half dozen trips to Ireland, Jill enthused:

I always arrive with anticipation, wanting to be haunted by her mysteries and teased by her fantasies. I travel through her tortured landscape wondering what it is about this place that entices me so. Is it ancient ruins, wild seascapes, the hundred shades of green? Or is it the verbal jousting and continual singsong of stories in a language that is something beyond English …yet not quite foreign? It is all of these and more; it is a people whose goal is only to be themselves, whose spirit retains a dignity which is rare in today’s world. It is the Irish refusal to be servants to anyone but their own minds.[2]Ibid.

The Irish Independent published this advert on Dec. 8, 1982. The image appeared on the book jacket and on an inside page. Titled “Man of Aran,” the figure was Dara Beag Ó Fátharta, the “Bard of Inishmaan,” who died in 2012 at the age of 92.

Revisited received mostly tepid reviews. John M. McGown of Gannett News Service noted the Uris’s first photo book had become “a staple on the shelves of Irish Americans” and the second was “likely to become a companion piece.”[3]”Two authors write varying views of Irish”, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, Dec. 2, 1982, and other papers. But Doug Wells of the Des Moines (Iowa) Register compared paging through Revisited to sitting through a neighbor’s vacation slides as he rhapsodized about how much he “just loved Ireland.”  Wells continued:

To be sure Jill Uris is a much better photographer than the man next door. Most of her photographs are well done. … She has concentrated on the rural, older Ireland, the romantic image most Americans have of the country. … But just as your neighbor babbles on and on about how beautiful it all was, so Uris carries on about Ireland. Her dullish prose, combined with snips and scraps from Irish writers and poets, upset what flow and balance the pictures provide.[4]”Too much, too little”, Des Moines (Iowa) Register, Oct. 17, 1982.

In Ireland, Frank Miller of the Sunday Press described Revisited as “a headless horse of a book, a book of photographs based on an unreality, lost and wandering somewhere between the myths and mists of romantic Ireland.” He also complained that Dara Beag Ó Fátharta (image above) appeared “no less than four times through the book.”[5]”Lost between myths and mists of romantic Ireland”, Sunday Press, (Dublin), Dec. 5, 1982.

Historical context

Ireland Revisited appeared a decade after Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland. As copies reached American bookshops in autumn 1982, the Troubles’ death toll climbed to 1,794 by year’s end. This turned out to be roughly half the total of number of people killed in the conflict.[6]”Year of the death” in Malcolm Sutton’s Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, found at cain.ulster.ac.uk. Sutton’s index ranges from 1969 to 2001, three years after … Continue reading

Jill Uris wrote that after each of her trips to Ireland “the headlines from the North became more piercing. The people in the Republic wish the ‘troubles’ would just drift away. After all, they are finally building their own country and who needs the continuing hostility and fanaticism of Ulster?”

In fact, the Republic in the mid-1980s was “crippled by political violence, mass emigration, mass unemployment, political paralysis and a sense of hopelessness,” Michael McDowell, an independent member of Seanad Éireann, wrote at the start of 2025. It would take another decade or so before the Republic began the economic modernization known as the “Celtic Tiger” and citizens confronted abuses by the Catholic Church that resulted in today’s militant secularism. More then 40 years after Ireland Revisited, Ireland faces “very real” new challenges, McDowell concluded, “but very different from the dark past we left behind.”

So, too, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”[7]”September 1913” by William Butler Yeats.

References

References
↑1 Jill Uris, Ireland Revisited. [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1982], 1-2.
↑2 Ibid.
↑3 ”Two authors write varying views of Irish”, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, Dec. 2, 1982, and other papers.
↑4 ”Too much, too little”, Des Moines (Iowa) Register, Oct. 17, 1982.
↑5 ”Lost between myths and mists of romantic Ireland”, Sunday Press, (Dublin), Dec. 5, 1982.
↑6 ”Year of the death” in Malcolm Sutton’s Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, found at cain.ulster.ac.uk. Sutton’s index ranges from 1969 to 2001, three years after the Good Friday Agreement.
↑7 ”September 1913” by William Butler Yeats.

St. Mary’s, Dublin, no longer ‘Pro-Cathedral’

Pope Leo XIV in November formally designating St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral as the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, ending 200 years of “pro-tempore” or “provisional” status. St. Mary’s, located two blocks off Dublin’s main boulevard, is now the capital’s first official Catholic cathedral since the Reformation.

The history of St. Mary’s is deeply interwoven with Irish religious and political history. As noted on the cathedral’s website:

The rebellion of 1798 and consequent reprisals postponed plans to build a large, central church … .  Catholic Emancipation did not, as hoped, come with the Act of Union passed in 1800.  Even the siting of the new church tells its own tale.  When in 1796, Drogheda Street (later O’Connell Street) was widened on its west side to align it with Sackville Street and become Dublin’s premier thoroughfare, one of the sites on offer was considered for the new St. Mary’s.  However, it was feared that such a bold step might only delay or jeopardize Emancipation, so attention was directed to a less conspicuous spot nearby, leaving the Sackville Street property to become the site of the new general post office.

St. Mary’s opened on November 14, 1825, as the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Chapel. It was the Feast of St. Laurence O’Toole, patron of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Ninety-one years later the 1916 Eastern Rising unfolded a few blocks away at the General Post Office, which had opened a few years before St. Mary’s. There was briefly talk of building a new Catholic cathedral in place of the burned out GPO, but the building instead was restored to its civic purpose.

Much has been written, including on this blog, about the decline of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland over the past several decades. The fall has appeared even more precipitous because of the robust and definitive presence the Church held in Ireland for more than a century.

“There can be a temptation to look to the past with rose-tinted glasses when the churches were full, but as we know not all was well and serious issues needed to be faced,” Auxiliary Bishop Paul Dempsey of Dublin said after the pope’s announcement. “This process has been disconcerting for some who have a nostalgia for the past and want to go back to the way it was. However, nostalgia could be described as a looking into the past with the pain taken away.”

He continued:

So today, as we reflect upon 200 years of St. Mary’s we are left with a choice: Do we lament the past and wish for its return or seek ways of looking forward with hope-filled hearts, responding to the new questions we face in a complex and changing culture? When I reflect upon the life of Jesus in the Gospels, I see someone who was always looking forward! As his disciples we need to do the same, while always learning from the past

Plans are being developed to renovate and restore the 200-year-old St. Mary’s Cathedral. The church appeared a little dingy during my last visit in April, though the Palestrina choir at the 11 a.m. Sunday Mass was lovely.

Dublin now has three cathedrals. Christ Church, the original Catholic cathedral when Protestants broke away from the papacy, is the Church of Ireland cathedral for the Dublin and Glendalough dioceses. St Patrick’s Cathedral is the Church of Ireland’s national cathedral.

A statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus inside St. Mary’s Cathedral, Dublin. April 2025.

Who leaked the 1925 Irish Boundary Commission report?

In early November 1925 the Irish Boundary Commission concluded a months-long review of the partition between the six unionist counties of Northern Ireland and the 26 nationalist counties of the Irish Free State. Before the commission could present its recommendations, however, the Morning Post in London published a detailed report about its work, including a map that purported to show proposed changes to the border.

Joseph R. Fisher

Journalist and lawyer Joseph Robert Fisher (1855–1939), the Northern Ireland representative of the three-member commission, was “head of the suspects” in the leak to the newspaper, historian Geoffrey J. Hand wrote more than four decades later. The County Down-born Fisher had worked for several British papers, including correspondent for The Times in Ireland during the war of independence (1919–1921). It is unknown whether he passed the Boundary Commission’s work product to the Morning Post, or if this was done indirectly through his correspondence with pro-unionist politicians and loose chatter with Tory journalists.[1]See Geoffrey J. Hand, “Introduction” in Report of the Irish Boundary Commission, 1925. [Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1969], xviii. Also, “Fisher, Joseph Robert” … Continue reading

Hand speculated “someone of lesser rank” among the commission staff might have been the source of the leak. Contemporary newspapers suggested the Morning Post obtained the report through the printing firm hired to put the material in final presentation form.[2]”Irish Boundary Crisis Stirred By Newspaper”, Baltimore Sun, Dec. 4, 1925. Regardless of the source, the damage was done. The British and Irish press quickly confirmed the Morning Post’s reporting was substantially correct: the Boundary Commission’s recommendations largely favored unionist.

Notably, the proposed changes did not reassign the border counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh to the Free State, as Irish officials had expected since the Boundary Commission was created as part of the December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Free State representative Eoin MacNeill resigned from the commission after the leak, though it is believed he originally agreed with its proposals.

The American press was slower to cover the leak and the border controversary. US big city dailies and wire services had moved on from the drama of the Irish war against Britain and subsequent civil war. London-based John W. Owens (1884-1968) of the Baltimore Sun produced some of the best coverage.[3]Owens later became editor of the Baltimore Sun. He won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. He wrote:

The Irish boundary dispute between the Free State and Ulster now bids fair to become sufficiently complicated and dangerous to satisfy the subtlest Irish combatants or the most inveterate prophets of Irish futility. …

The cause of the latest upheaval is this: On November 7 the Morning Post published a forecast of the Ulster-Free State boundary, which the boundary commission is expected to declare some time before the first of the year (1926). This forecast was favorable to Ulster, which hitherto had been fearing the worst and talking correspondingly at regular intervals.

If one examines the map, as pointed out by the Post, there is nothing in the changes to cause a great row. The space between the old line and the forecast of the new line is seldom really appreciable, often barely perceptible. The net balance of the predicted changes is hardly larger than one good-sized election district in Maryland. But the Free State got the worst of it. More than that, the Post account referred to most of the territory gained by the Free State as wild and sparsely settled.[4]”League Of Nations May Have To Settle Irish Boundary Spat”, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 25, 1925.

This map of the 1921 border between Northern Ireland (Ulster) and the Irish Free State also showed “probable” and “doubtful” changes proposed by the Irish Boundary Commission. It was leaked to the Morning Post, London, which published the map and narrative descriptions on Nov. 7, 1925.

The Irish-born journalist William H. Brayden (1865–1933), correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, also provided American newspaper readers with extensive coverage of the Boundary Commission, before and after the Morning Post’s scoop. See my earlier exploration of his work:

Emergency meetings between the Free State, Northern Ireland, and the British government were held in London through early December. The three parties agreed to keep the existing border in place, making no changes. The Free State’s obligation for World War One debt and pensions was erased in exchange for dropping its counterclaim of over taxation during the period.

The three parties agreed to suppress the public release of the report, with 20 copies stashed in a British government vault. Other copies were destroyed.[5]Cormac Moore, “The Boundary Commission–The Fallout” in History Ireland, Vol 33, No. 6 (November/December 20250), pp. 39-42. The report was finally released to the public in 1969, with the introduction by Hand, the historian. He wrote:

Who was responsible for the Morning Post ‘leak’?’ Was it deliberately calculated and, if so, what was the object ? Perhaps, as the years go by and tongues are loosened and desks unlocked, these questions will be confidently answered. As things stand, only suspicions can be offered.[6]Hand, “Introduction.”

More than 50 years later, the identity of the leaker remains a mystery.

References

References
↑1 See Geoffrey J. Hand, “Introduction” in Report of the Irish Boundary Commission, 1925. [Shannon, Ireland: Irish University Press, 1969], xviii. Also, “Fisher, Joseph Robert” in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
↑2 ”Irish Boundary Crisis Stirred By Newspaper”, Baltimore Sun, Dec. 4, 1925.
↑3 Owens later became editor of the Baltimore Sun. He won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
↑4 ”League Of Nations May Have To Settle Irish Boundary Spat”, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 25, 1925.
↑5 Cormac Moore, “The Boundary Commission–The Fallout” in History Ireland, Vol 33, No. 6 (November/December 20250), pp. 39-42.
↑6 Hand, “Introduction.”

Catherine Connolly inaugurated Ireland’s 10th president

Catherine Connolly has described her 64 percent election victory as “a powerful mandate” by Irish voters “to articulate their vision for a new Republic”; one that is not, as some critics charged during the campaign, “too far out, too left.”

Catherine Connolly at inaugural.

Connolly’s Nov. 11 inauguration as the tenth president of Ireland took place in St. Patrick’s Hall at Dublin Castle, the seat of the British government in Ireland until 1922. The position of president was created by the national constitution of 1937. Connolly is the third woman to hold to position. She acknowledged Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, who were both in attendance.

Connolly said she and her supporters overcame “insurmountable challenges” to win the Oct. 24 election. She continued:

We were led to believe that it was too great a leap, that our ideas were too far out, too left, at odds with the prevailing narrative. In shared conversations all over the country, however, it became evident that the dominant narrative did not reflect or represent people’s values and concerns. Time and time again, people spoke of how it served to silence, to other, to label, to exclude and to stifle critical thinking.

Along with that however, along with meaningful engagement, we saw the emergence of hope, we saw the emergence of joy, along with the courage and determination of people to use their voices to shape a country that we can be proud of.

Connolly’s vision for the Republic is a place where “diversity is cherished, where sustainable solutions are urgently implemented and where a home is a fundamental human right.” Ireland faces significant challenges regarding immigration (and right-wing opposition to it), climate change, and a shortfall of affordable housing.

Connolly has said she would like her first official visit as president to be to Northern Ireland.

“I would like to see a united Ireland in my term as president. I will use my voice in every way possible for that vision to be a reality,” Connolly said during her campaign, according to the Irish Independent.

In brief comments during her inauguration address, she called for “inclusive and open dialogue across the island in a manner that highlights and recognizes our similarities and respects our differences.”

Northern Ireland Assembly First Minister Michelle O’Neill of the pro-reunification Sinn Féin party, and party president Mary Lou McDonald, attended the ceremony. Their support was critical to Connolly, who campaigned as an independent.

Emma Little-Pengelly, deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, declined to attend the inaugural. She cited earlier commitments for Remembrance Day, which commemorates the armistice ending the First World War. The DUP declined to send a representative to the inauguration. Ulster Unionist Party assembly member (MLA) Steve Aiken was the only unionist politician who said he would attend.

Connolly acknowledged Ireland’s “large and growing diaspora.” She did not directly reference the United States.

Read Connolly’s full inaugural speech.

Nine and ten: Outgoing Irish President Michael D. Higgins on Nov. 5 welcomed President-elect Catherine Connolly to her new office at Áras an Uachtaráin.  Both photos from president.ie.

When Jill and Leon Uris went to Ireland

Fifty years ago this month the American book publisher Doubleday released Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Jill and Leon Uris. The couple had traveled on both sides of the partitioned island from May 1972 (four months after Bloody Sunday) to January 1973.

Original dusk jacket.

Leon, an established author, conducted research for a new novel, Trinity, which became a best seller when it was released in 1976. Jill, his third wife, 23 years younger, photographed nearly 400 images of thatched cottages, mist-shrouded countryside, and gritty scenes of urban violence; in color, and in black and white.

Their Preface says:

“We were lured there by an intriguing people, their sometimes magnificent, sometimes harsh land, and, mostly, their poignant history. Our aim was to find the keys to that story which would clarify so much of the mystery and puzzlement of recent events and simultaneously photograph everyone and everything wherever the search took us. …

“Ireland is too vast and complex in its story for two people to cover it comprehensively in less than a decade. We made no pretense at attempting to.

“What we do have here is a social, historical, and political commentary on what we consider to be the guts of the matter of a unique people and their lovely but sorrowed island. This is our point of view on the “troubles” that have plagued Ireland for the fatter part of a millennium.”[1]Leon Uris and Jill Uris, Ireland: A Terrible Beauty. The Story  of Ireland Today (With 388 Photographs, Including 108 in Full Color). [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975]. … Continue reading

The couple covered 10,000 miles, mostly by auto, “on some decent and some indecent roads.” Their journey and their book recalled American photographer and antiquarian Wallace Nutting, who estimated he and his wife covered 700 miles in all 32 counties 50 years earlier, during the summer of 1925. Nutting’s book, Ireland Beautiful, was published in time for that year’s Christmas gift-giving. It featured 304 half-tone engravings of Irish landscapes—only six images show people—and his text in support of the title.

From his studio near Boston, Nutting wrote:

“This volume pretends to no place as a guide book, nor is its text intended to cover with precision or fullness any part of Ireland. It is merely a record of impression of beauty or quaintness, observed in a land which for romance and pathos, strange history and legend, for witching grace and mystery, is probably unsurpassed.”[2]Wallace Nutting, Ireland Beautiful. [Norwood, Mass.: The Plimpton Press, 1925]. 302 pp. Quoted from Foreword.

Though he began his career as a Congregationalist minister, Nutting insisted his book had “nothing whatever to do with political and religious matters.” He noted the work of the Boundary Commission, which later in 1925 fixed the partition line in place, and made sweeping, uncontroversial generalizations: “The people of Ulster were as insistent on remaining in the empire as South Ireland was on withdrawing from the empire.”[3]Ibid., 286.

For more on Nutting, see my August 2025 piece for History Ireland, “Ireland Beautiful–How A 1925 American Photobook Boosted Irish Tourism.”

More opinionated

Leon Uris was more opinionated in his analysis of an Ireland then descending deeper into sectarian strife, rather than the island emerging from the war of independence and civil war at Nutting’s visit. During the Uris’s nine-month stay, more than 400 people were killed and thousands of others were injured in shootings and bombings. More than 500 people were charged with terrorist offences. “Their visit coincided with one of the most violent years of the Troubles,” wrote biographer Ira B. Nadel.[4]Ira B. Nadel, Leon Uris: Life of a Best Seller. [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010], See Chapter 9, “Ireland,” 209-232.

Uris leveraged his identity as an American Jew, not an Irish-American of Catholic or Protestant faith, as well as his status as a celebrity author. He took particular aim at “the most diabolic by-product of three hundred and fifty years of the plantation of Ulster, a cancerous growth known as Paisleyism.” Grimly, he concluded: “The nightmare of Ulster has come about with Christian fighting Christian in one of the most advanced of Western societies. Continuation of this travesty with God can lead to the eclipse of civilization in that part of the world.”[5]Uris, Terrible Beauty, 128, 195.

The Troubles got much worse, of course, but not quite that bad.

By coincidence, Terrible Beauty’s November 1975 release was three months after the death of Éamon de Valera, the most consequential leader of twentieth century Ireland. The book says he “had the full measure of that detached, ruthless arrogance, political guile, persuasiveness, and total self-assurance that stamp greatness on a national leader. He was the rarest breed, the head of a small country that has achieved stature among the political giants of this century.”[6]Ibid., 162.

Photographing Ireland

Dev’s death ends the book’s 8-page chronology, which begins at 10,000 BC when the island emerged from the receding Ice Age. Naturally, the book included a map and, like the island itself, was divided into two sections: The Republic and Ulster.

“Photographing in the Republic was almost always a joy. Ulster was another story,” Jill Uris wrote. She described the difficulties of working as a woman and an outsider in the sectarian maelstrom of the North. Her “Photographing Ireland” in the Appendix also contains notes about the pre-digital camera equipment she used during the assignment.[7]Ibid., 209-212

Aside from the images of sectarian violence in the North, most of Jill’s photographs show a mid-twentieth century Ireland without much hint of the rapid modernization that emerged in the coming decades, and certainly since 2000. In this regard her images of the country are similar to those of American photographer Dorothea Lange, who arrived in County Clare in September 1954 on an assignment for Life magazine. See my September 2024 post, “Remembering Dorothea Lange’s ‘Irish Country People’“.

I’ll return to my exploration of the Uris’s visit and their work in future posts.

References

References
↑1 Leon Uris and Jill Uris, Ireland: A Terrible Beauty. The Story  of Ireland Today (With 388 Photographs, Including 108 in Full Color). [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975]. 288 pp.
↑2 Wallace Nutting, Ireland Beautiful. [Norwood, Mass.: The Plimpton Press, 1925]. 302 pp. Quoted from Foreword.
↑3 Ibid., 286.
↑4 Ira B. Nadel, Leon Uris: Life of a Best Seller. [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010], See Chapter 9, “Ireland,” 209-232.
↑5 Uris, Terrible Beauty, 128, 195.
↑6 Ibid., 162.
↑7 Ibid., 209-212

On Pope Leo, King Charles, and Soldier F

As voters in the Republic of Ireland selected a new president, two news stories with deep connections to Northern Ireland also made headlines this month:

  • Britain’s King Charles III prayed with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, the first joint worship of the English monarch and the Catholic pontiff since King Henry VIII broke away from Rome in 1534.
  • “Soldier F,” a former member of the British Parachute Regiment, was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder for Bloody Sunday, 1972, in Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.

As king, Charles is also supreme governor of the Church of England. He has met previous popes, but never prayed with them in public. “This would have been impossible just a generation ago,” Anglican Rev. James Hawkey, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, told Reuters. “It represents how far our churches have come over the last 60 years of dialogue.”

Pope Leo and King Charles in the Sistine Chapel. Photo www.royal.uk.

In Northern Ireland, however, some Orangemen turned red with rage. “A sad day for Protestantism,” the fraternal group said. Rev. Kyle Paisley, son of the late unionist leader Ian Paisley, and other Protestant clergy condemned the visit. Paisley even suggested that Charles should abdicate the throne.

In 1988 Paisley’s father infamously interrupted Pope John Paul II during the pontiff’s address to the European Parliament. “I denounce you, antichrist. I refuse you as Christ’s enemy and antichrist with all your false doctrine,” shouted Paisley, firebrand founder of the Free Presbyterian Church. It was hardly his only anti-Catholic stunt.

Of course, religious prejudice can cut both ways. Defeated Irish presidential candidate Heather Humphreys, an Ulster Presbyterian whose husbanded once belonged to the Orange Order, told the Irish Times that she and her family “were subjected to some absolutely awful sectarian abuse” during the campaign.

Most people in Northern Ireland seem to have accepted the rapprochement between Leo and Charles with a shrug. Not that we are likely to see Belfast “Kick the Pope” bands suddenly replaced by ecumenical choirs. Sectarianism waxes and wanes, but it seldom disappears.

Bloody Sunday verdict

Thirteen people were shot dead and at least 15 others injured Jan. 30, 1972, at a civil rights demonstration in the Bogside area of Derry. Fifty-three years later Judge Patrick Lynch of the Belfast Crown Court said members of the Parachute Regiment “totally lost all sense of military discipline” and shot “unarmed civilians fleeing from them on the streets of a British city,” according to reporting by the BBC.

The 1972 civil rights demonstration in Derry, Northern Ireland, that became Bloody Sunday.

But the evidence against Soldier F, whose anonymity is protected by a court order, fell short of what is required for conviction, Judge Lynch ruled in the non-jury trial.

Reaction to the decision was predictably split along the usual republican and unionist lines. “Deeply disappointing” and “continued denial of justice”, said First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin. Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson welcomed the “common sense judgement”, but said the trial had been “a painful and protracted process,” according to BBC.

The US-based Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Catholic fraternal group, issued a statement saying it was “saddened but not surprised” by the acquittal. “As we have for decades, the AOH will support the Bloody Sunday families as they take the next steps in their fight for justice, and we will stand with all victims’ relatives as they continue their fight for legacy truth.”

In 2010, then British Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologized for Bloody Sunday. The judges verdict is unlikely to be the last word on the matter, which has become the life’s work of the victims’ surviving family members and others on one side, with British veterans groups and hardline unionists on the other.

See my 2022 History News Network piece on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.