Join members and friends of the Museum of Newport Irish History for the 5th and final talk of its 23rd Annual Lecture Series with guest speaker Raymond J. McKenna.

The talk with Q&A to follow will be presented at 6:00 PM, in-person at the Wyndham Newport Hotel, and live-streamed on Zoom.

-Doors open at 5:30 PM
-Light hors d’oeuvres & cash bar available.

Reservations are required for both in-person and virtual participation:
– $5 per person fee to attend in person (cash or check at door).
– Those who become members to attend this talk will have the $5 lecture fee waived.
– There is no fee to participate via Zoom.

The lecture is made possible by a generous gift from the The Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, Newport.

Overview:
This talk will focus on the Irish community in northern Rhode Island from 1844 to 1879. Over 22,000 names with Irish birthplaces have been cataloged, along with nearly 300 people whose surnames led back to farms or small patches of land. The rich Old Stone Bank records detail not only those who came to Rhode Island and stayed, but those who chose to return to life in Ireland. One can trace families on the circuitous routes from the Irish countryside to an English (or Scottish) urban address and on to the Ocean State. Relationships with those in other states are revealed.

Personal details, physical descriptions, workplaces and workmates can be discovered. The records offer insight into the lives of domestic servants, including the families for whom they worked and the types of positions they held. If your ancestor commenced work on the factory floor at age eleven, they were not alone, the records show. Then there are the Civil War accounts. And don’t forget, most of our early ancestors could neither read nor write. The entries make this clear.

It is surprising how many Irish immigrants to R.I. found work as farmers. Numerous men, as well as some women, went West in search of gold. Some returned and opened accounts with gold nuggets. Finally, for historians, the records reveal the shift in immigration from Ulster in the early years to the Midlands, the West, and the South as the century progressed.