Forgetting Ireland

By Bridget Connelly

Book Overview

Forgetting Ireland is both a history and mystery, a story of western Ireland's Connemara coast and of Graceville, a small town in western Minnesota. In 1880, at the height of Ireland's second famine, a ship of paupers was sent from Galway to take up land granted them by a Catholic bishop in Minnesota. There they encountered the worst winter in the state's history and nearly froze to death in shanties on the prairie. National and international newspapers featured their plight as the welfare scandal of the year, and priests and politicians traded accusations as to who was responsible. The immigrants were at last removed from the colony; their name became the town's shorthand for lying, drunken failures.

By chance more than a century later, Bridget Connelly, who grew up in Graceville, discovers her Connemara past. As Connelly uncovers the deliberately suppressed history of her family's emigration, she exposes an old scandal that surrounded the settling of the land around Graceville, one that pitted Masons, Protestants, Germans, and Yankees against Irish Catholics -- and one that set lace-curtain Irish against the Connemara paupers. She also learns of an archbishop who was, according to farmer lore, 'worse than Jesse James'. In this compelling combination of history and memoir, Connelly tells stories of an epochal blizzard, a famous Irish bard, an infamous Irish woman pirate, feuding frontier communities, and an archbishop's questionable legacy. She also learns why her family tried so hard to forget Ireland.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873514491
• ISBN13: 9780873514491
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Borealis Books
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Verbose

I just couldn't finish this. It is repetitive and slogs along endlessly. Could have been reduced to an article.

A Great Family Story

My great grandfather was one of the Famine Irish who immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century. He came from County Cork with his parents and little brother to the Port of New York. After living in Pennsylvania for several years they found their way to the rich farmlands of southern Minnesota. To learn more about his life and times, I recently began doing some family research. During the course of that work I came across Bridget Connelly's wonderful book. Not only did I find Forgetting Ireland well written and fascinating, it also helped me to unravel my own family's story. While reading her book I found myself spending time in county courthouses, small town libraries, church graveyards, and at the Minnesota Historical Society. I poured over old township maps, land patents, census records, death certificates, and tombstones in order to piece together my great grandfather's life in Minnesota. Reading Bridget Connelly's book while doing my research was like taking two parallel journeys through Minnesota's Irish immigrant past. It was great fun; like being one of the History Detectives on PBS. The next step for me is to contact the genealogy societies in Cork to see if they can locate the town and parish where my ancestors came from. If they're successful, then I would like to travel to Ireland like Bridget Connelly did and look for our relatives. Anyone interested in oral histories, 19th century Irish immigration, or the development of Minnesota's prairies should read this great family story.

Fascinating Historical Perspective

The book arrived Friday and I couldn't put it down. It is an absolutely fascinating account of the early settlement of Minnesota by the Irish. I grew up in Graceville but had no idea of the rich and controversial history of the area. It's a great book but difficult to categorize. It's one person's search for understanding of her family, a historical account of an controversial incident in the history of Minnesota and the Catholic Church and an example of the difficulty we face in understanding our history. Was John Ireland "worse than Jesse James"?