Friday, March 17, 2017

St. Patrick's Day in the Clarke Manuscripts

By Marian Matyn, Archivist, Clarke Historical Library


There is only 1 manuscript collection that documents a St. Patrick's Day celebration-Aladdin Co. Addition has a home movie film of a Bay City, MI, St Pat's Day parade, 1959. We do have a number of manuscript collections documenting Irish Americans, including:
Helen Collar Papers, 1907, 2006 6 cubic feet (in 11 boxes) documenting the Irish, in the history of Beaver Island

Catherine McGorlick Correspondence, 1856, in Ballygowans, Omagh County, Ireland, who had emigrated to the US, about her husband and how hard life had been there

John B. Bruneel, Sr.'s Michael F. Martin Collection, 2011, about Martin's life on Beaver Island and in Manistee, MI

John S. Archer collection, 2011, about the Irish American Archer family of Isabella Co., MI 

Beaver Island, MI birth, marriage, and death records, 1871, 1891 documenting the Irish

(highly likely Irish) Grace M. Kelly Photographs and negatives, c. 1930, 2015, 2.25 cubic ft. (in 5 boxes) about a Catholic nurse in WWII and her Catholic family of Adrian, MI 

Besides the manuscripts, there are some fun postcards in the Display Items collection. Here's a sample. Only one postcard in this group is dated- 1912.

 



Nostalgic images of Irish home inside a 4-leaf clover


Irish songs, music, poetry, lyre featuring the Maid of Erin, the Maid across the sea, and the Last rose of summer

Other nostalgic images of Ireland