The Rhode Island Irish Famine Memorial, located on the Riverwalk in downtown Providence, powerfully commemorates the sufferings and triumphs of the two and one half million victims and survivors of Ireland's "Great Famine" of 1845-1851. It also pays a moving tribute in granite, bronze and brick to the successive waves of Irish immigrants who have

A wealthy Protestant landowner from County Wicklow, Charles Stewart Parnell was elected to the House of Commons in 1874 at the age of 29 and quickly rose to the leadership of the Irish Home Rule Party. Highly regarded in Ireland and America as well, Parnell became more influential than any Irish politician before him. In

Documenting an historical past is a complicated process. The chronicle of the Irish in America has been the subject of novels, biographies and films. Family histories preserve a treasured story of a journey to America and then the subsequent struggle for acceptance and upward mobility. Social historians, on the other hand, rely on official records

Historical and literary accounts of a military engagement often unanimously extol one outstanding individual as the hero of the battle or campaign. This, however, is not the case with four works authored in the first two decades after the 1689 siege of Londonderry where a variety of individuals – both male and female, human and

In 1946 a provocative novel about growing up Irish in Rhode Island between 1900 and World War I was authored by Edward McSorley. McSorley had been a journalist with the Providence Journal, as well holding many other diverse jobs. The publication of Our Own Kind, which sold several hundred thousand copies and was a Book