The following
letters were sent from County Kildare, Ireland, by widow Anne Farrell
Walsh, who was born in the town of Clane, to her daughter Catherine
(Mrs. Michael Dunn) in Troy, New York, and son Oliver in Greenwich,
Connecticut. A second daughter, Rose Walsh, who had married a Clinton
(also from Kildare), had lived in Troy but had died before Anne
wrote these letters. Anne had several other children who, so far
as is known, remained in Kildare.
Anne Walsh was the great great grandmother of TIGS member Mary Lee
Dunn from Maine, who collected these letters from a cousin, Kathleen
Dunn O’Connor, in Troy in the 1970s. She edited them lightly
and offered them to the Clane Local History Group in Kildare for
their journal “Coiseanna.” The journal, by the way,
is named for a local hillock where in 1798 one of the first battles
of the Irish rebellion took place.
The
letters discuss the doings of relatives and neighbors, how tough
life was then in Kildare, how she misses her emigrant family, and
some aspects of the national scene. They include, for instance,
mentions of the Land League, Parnell the politician, evictions,
the weather, and so forth. Anne eventually emigrated to Troy with
her son William and lived in South Troy with Michael and Catherine
for about a decade before her death in 1897; she is buried in St.
Mary’s Cemetery in Troy. Her husband’s name was Walter
Walsh but little is known about him.
The following article on the letters was published in the 2014 issue
of Coiseanna, the journal of the Clane Local History Group in County
Kildare and is reprinted with the Group’s permission.
Click
here to read the letters.
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