Mary Eileen "Mims" Murphy Walsh was born in County Longford in 1881. She was college educated and worked in Dublin. She married Patrick "Paddy" Walsh on July 29, 1913. They immigrated to the United States in 1915. To Mims, it was an exile that she…

From "The Wicklow Mountains High" by Jim McGonigle.

One of the things I'm always on the alert for while driving along the roads of Ireland is any sort of roadside historical marker. The Irish have populated their cities…

It takes less than two hours to drive from Nenagh to the Burren in Co. Clare. At a recent launch for the Cliffs of Moher Geopark  (www.burrengeopark.ie) in Lisdoonvarna, I was reminded just how much this region has to…

After fellow Wild Geese member Oisen O'Connell had generously taken me on my last Wexford tour via Ballyhack Castle,…

Dunmore Cave

Ballyfoyle, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland



History and geology blend at Dunmore Cave to give an interesting and unique situation. Consisting of a series of chambers formed over millions of years, the cave contains some of the finest calcite formations found in any Irish cave. The case has been known to man for many centuries…

When a "family detective" starts researching  “Royalty” connected to one’s family, there arises  women known as “Mistresses” and “Concubines”.  Most Kings had them. Do you know the difference in these terms or “titles”?

A concubine can be part of a harem, or a…

The Wild Geese gained a spotlight on 'Communications Corner,' on Queens Public Television (QPTV), the Queens, NYC, public television network. During the broadcast, co-founder Gerry Regan shares his personal background while discussing the ever-growing and very passionate membership of the world's leading social network…

We arrived at Dublin Airport to some fairly typical Irish summer weather, i.e. cloudy with off-and-on showers and temperatures of about 18 (about 65 back in the…

... a trip to Ireland helped.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837- 30 November 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Mary…

In "Machine Made: Tammany Hall and The Creation of Modern American Politics," author Terry Golway doesn’t sugar-coat the negative aspects of a New York institution that flourished for about 100 years. What he does is swing the pendulum back from a crazy imbalance caused by…

It is a source of great pain and frustration to genealogists that most 19th Irish census returns have been destroyed. The destruction is generally blamed on the fire at the Public Records Office in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. While the 1922 fire did consume a great deal of…

Back before there were affordable and reliable alarm clocks, the occupation of a knocker-up made a few pence a week in England and Ireland by using a long, lightweight stick, often bamboo, to tap on their clients’ upper floor windows and wake them up so they could get to…

Two years ago if you asked me what magic realism was I would have confidently told you that it was “a creative device where magic elements appear within an otherwise realistic environment.” I was sure I understood the concept. After all I had read Allende, García Marquez…

In 2006, British director, Ken Loach won the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or award with his portrayal of the 1919-23 Irish War of Independence and Civil War in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. There is a scene in that film where a wealthy landowner who is about to…

On July first, we Canadians celebrate what we refer to as ‘Canada Day’, that day in 1867 when The British North America Act brought the Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia together with the formal dividing lines for Ontario and Quebec, and these provinces together…

I began to assemble this list of renowned Irish-Americans (including Scots-Irish) to keep me on track when I research and assemble their exploits. When their exploits are posted to my blog, I'll try to strike through their name. For example: Luke Ryan’s name is first on the list…

Widely respected as the jewel in Ireland’s gardening crown, Altamont Gardens are an enchanting blend of formal and informal gardens with riverside walks covering over 40 acres (16 hectares). The estate gains much of its character from the…

Have you ever had the occasion to visit a cemetery and noticed headstones that had coins left on them?  Here are some interesting reasons for the ‘tokens’ being left behind.

The Ferryman

By far the most popular…