A Christmas Gift for Irish Relatives and Friends...And Anyone Interested in Immigration History

The contributions of Connecticut’s Irish to Ireland’s centuries-long struggle for independence is the theme of a book published just in time for Christmas shoppers this year.

The 230-page book, titled From a Land Beyond the Wave, tells how the multitudes of Irish men and women who immigrated across the Atlantic from the late 1700s to the early 1900s became staunch allies to those they left behind. Stories in the book describe a fascinating variety of manpower and moral and financial support that flowed from Connecticut and other states to bolster revolutionaries in Ireland.

One Connecticut rebel sent a whaling ship on a successful 10,000 mile voyage to rescue Irishmen banished to life imprisonment in Australia. A New Haven Irishman set off a dynamite bomb in the British House of Commons, and spent 15 years in English prisons before returning to Connecticut as rebellious as ever. A Hartford immigrant resigned as a detective in that city’s police force to go back to his homeland and fight in the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s. His family went with him, and his son and namesake joined the Irish Free State Army.

Many Connecticut veterans of the American Civil War participated in military invasions of Canada in the 1860s and 1870s in the hope of wounding England by attacking its colonies. Other Connecticut Civil War veterans sailed back to the Emerald Isle to train Irish rebels and fight shoulder to shoulder with them.

Those Connecticut Irish men and women who could not take up arms fought in other ways. An immigrant from County Tyrone, earned a law degree at Yale, was elected to Congress and proposed that the United States buy Ireland and make it a state. A native of County Cork settled in Middletown and spent years writing poems in support of Irish rebels. A New London Irishwoman became known nationwide as an organizer and orator for Irish independence. A Catholic priest in Waterbury was a driving force in the Land League campaign that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Irish peasants threatened with eviction from their cottages in the 1880s.

The Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society sponsored the research, writing and publishing of From a Land Beyond the Wave as its contribution to the worldwide commemoration this year of the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. The book was written by Patrick J. Mahoney, a PhD student in the history and culture program at Drew University and author of a column, “The History Corner,” in the West Cork People newspaper, and by Neil Hogan, editor of The Shanachie newsletter of the CTIAHS.

From a Land Beyond the Wave is the sixth book published by the Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society. Each of the books describes some phase of the role Irish immigrants and succeeding generations of Irish-Americans have played in the history of Connecticut.

Copies of the book may be obtained for $18 each by sending a check made out to CTIAHS to: The McMahons, 640 Arrowhead Drive, Orange, CT 06477.

Photo ID: L-R: Co Authors, Patrick J. Mahoney and Neil Hogan; CTIAHS President George Waldron

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