After the defeat of O’Donnell and O’Neil, many of the McGlinchey clan escaped to Donegal in the North, in the early 1600s. Professor Desrosiers’ Irish ancestors, Eliza McGowan and Patrick McGlinchey, lived in Meentaghcallagh near Buncrana in the remote Inishowen Peninsula. When Patrick lost his life in a quarry accident, Eliza found a way to sail to America with her brothers and her five children. She traveled in the Famine Exodus from Moville to Liverpool and on to Boston Harbor. There she was welcomed by a cousin, Reverend Manasses Dougherty (Doherty) of St. Peter’s in Cambridge. Professor Desrosiers will share the importance of Faith and education for the next generations of McGlinchey’s: engaging in the Civil War and Gold Rush; settling the Kansas Prairie and creating their own Boston businesses; and graduating from Radcliffe (Harvard) followed by serving both secular and religious roles in their communities. The McGlinchey were ancestors of longtime Newporter, Genevieve McGlinchey Mathison. From oral history to Hearth Roll taxes, from the Boston Pilot to state archives, we will explore the emergence of an American family who never forgot their roots in Ireland.

MARIAN MATHISON DESROSIERS is an independent scholar and Adjunct Professor of History and Humanities at Salve Regina University, where she earned her Ph.D. She is an executive board member of the National Council for Social Studies and a two-time Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Desrosiers has researched and written on 19th century Irish immigration, women in positions of leadership during wartime and in the judiciary, among other topics. The subject of Dr. Desrosiers’ doctoral dissertation was Justice Florence Kerins Murray, the topic of her last lecture for the Museum, in November 2010. We welcome her back for this second speaking engagement.