Forgetting IrelandMinnesota Historical Society Press, 2003 - 263 pages 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. |
Contents
The Conamaras Are Coming | 3 |
OBLIVION | 15 |
Bridget Was Her Name | 30 |
On the Trail of the Thousand Dollar Bride | 42 |
Rumblings from a Glacial Moraine 5288 17 42 | 60 |
Irelands Indemnity Lands | 68 |
SCANDAL | 87 |
Grief at Graceville | 89 |
From the Ferocious OFlaherties Good Lord Deliver Us | 151 |
Nora Poor Nora Whatever Happened to Poor Nora? 89 100 122 141 151 | 173 |
HISTORY | 187 |
The Northwestern Blizzard | 189 |
Moonshine and the Bishop | 207 |
A Banshee a Blacksmith and a Movie | 217 |
The Other Side | 229 |
The Genealogy of a Family | 237 |
Disgraceville | 104 |
Those Goddamn NoGood Conamaras | 122 |
RECOVERY | 139 |
Return to Connemara | 141 |
The Genealogy of a Historical Fact | 241 |
Notes | 247 |
Acknowledgments | 261 |
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Common terms and phrases
acres Archbishop Ireland arrived Aunt Big Stone County Bishop Ireland Blake blizzard Bridget Flaherty brother Búrc called Cappy Catholic Colonization Bureau Cois Fharraige colony Conamaras Conneely Connelly Connemara colonists Connemara emigrants Connemara families Conroy County Galway cousin daughter Dillon O'Brien Éamon Éamon a Búrc famine farm farmers Father Ryan felt Flaherty's flour Gaelic Gallagher Galway Grace Graceville Graceville committee Graceville's Gramma's grandmother great-grandfather historians Hodges homestead Jim Griffith Joe Cook John Ireland knew landlord Lannon Larry Saile Lawrence Flaherty Learai lived lore Máirtín Ó Cadhain mara Melia Minneapolis Moonshine Moonshine Township Morris Tribune mother Mrya neighbors newspaper Nora Northwestern Chronicle O'Flaherty O'Neill oral parish Paul Pioneer Press Peige potatoes prairie priest Renvyle scandal seanachie settlers shanty soddy Spiddal story tell Thousand Dollar Bride Tokua told Tom O'Flaherty town Traverse Counties western Minnesota winter of 1880