The artist Hossein Valamanesh always insisted the monument was not just about the Great Irish Famine but about all famine. For me, this is what makes it a great monument. Continue reading
Filed under Famine Orphan Girls …
Julia Brien, A Fiery Orphan from Kilkenny
The tumultuous life and times of Julia Brien. Continue reading
Jane Feeney and DNA
DNA testing brings together many generations later cousins descended from a Famine orphan Jane Feeney. Continue reading
Eliza McCready: A ‘Belfast Girl’ sent to Moreton Bay
She wasn’t simply an obscure name on a family tree. Her name appeared in the archives, documents from which I could determine meaning. Continue reading
About my Belfast Girls
Jaki McCarrick talks about the writing, at ‘white heat’, of her play, ‘Belfast Girls’. Continue reading
Elizabeth Sharkey, Domestic Abuse Refuser
The seventh in Tinteán‘s Famine Orphan Girls Series by a descendant, Chrissy Fletcher. Elizabeth Sharkey is my grandmother’s grandmother, through an all-female line. I like to imagine this line as a fine gold thread coming from my heart and connecting me from mother to mother, spanning the oceans and the centuries back to a … Continue reading
Mary McConnell, a Belfast Girl
Mary Mc Connell entered the workhouse in Belfast in July 1847 as an orphan and a pauper. Continue reading
Margaret Cooke (1833-?): from Carbury in Kildare to Gladstone in Queensland, and Monte Cristo Station on Curtis Island
Stories about women who made an indelible impression on their children are often preserved in family folklore handed down the generations, but memory of Margaret Cooke doesn’t appear to have survived in this way… Continue reading
Book Review: Bathurst welcomes the Irish workhouse orphans
Anyone who has dabbled in researching Famine Orphan girls will recognise the vast amount of work and skill involved in this collection of histories. Continue reading
Jane and Bridget: Shipboard Friends who ran foul of the Law
Life was not easy for Jane and Bridget, two of at least fifty famine orphan girls who were gaoled in NSW from the 1850s to 1900. Continue reading
