Irish American Heritage Museum

In 1814, the Richmond Lunatic Asylum at Grangegorman in Dublin started an extraordinary program of asylum building across Ireland, aimed at alleviating the suffering of people with mental illness who were homeless, in prison, or confined in appalling circumstances. [Read more…] about The History of the ‘Lunatic Asylum’ in Ireland

From intermarriage and cooperation in New York City, to competition and violence in the West, the Irish and Chinese had a tumultuous historical relationship. [Read more…] about Irish and Chinese in America: A Tumultuous Historical Relationship

In 1919, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland noted that “there is a path of fatality which pursues the relations between the two countries and makes them eternally at cross purposes.” For better or worse, Ireland has frequently been defined by its relationship with its neighbor to the east. And for centuries, English monarchs and governments have struggled with what they came to term “the Irish Question.” [Read more…] about Anglo-Irish Relations Program April 20th

The Good Friday Agreement is a pair of agreements signed April 10, 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland which grew from the late 1960s.

A major development in the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s, it’s made of the Multi-Party Agreement between most of Northern Ireland’s political parties, and the British–Irish Agreement between the British and Irish governments. [Read more…] about Good Friday Agreement 25th Anniversary Virtual Program

Irish servant girls appeared in popular literature often stereotypically called “Bridget” or “Biddy.”  These names became so closely linked to domestic service in America that some Irish immigrants changed their name in an effort to escape the negative connotations.

The interactions between the Irish Bridgets and the middle-class Americans who hired them as domestic servants had a significant impact on Irish American life. The Irish Bridget was often the only Irish people with whom middle-class Americans had direct and ongoing contact. [Read more…] about Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service

Throughout much of the 20th Century, Ireland struggled with how to memorialize the tragedies of the Great Hunger in Ireland.

It wasn’t until June of 1998, that statues representing the duality of Irish immigration – the deprivation of famine left behind and the potential for prosperity of an American life, were unveiled in Boston, Massachusetts. The first American memorial for Ireland’s Great Hunger was only preceded by Dublin’s “Famine” sculptures, unveiled in 1997. [Read more…] about Global Memorials of The Great Hunger of Ireland