No Shy Colleen: Stories of Irish American Women in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

The history of the Irish diaspora in North America has been recorded many times. Detailed lives of prominent men who became industrialists, politicians, legislators or religious leaders have been mentioned in history books, newspapers, biographies, journals and letters. Less well recorded are the contributions of generations of Irish women and women of Irish ancestry to the richness of the United States. A large number of Irish women settled in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There are very few recorded stories about them. Young Irish women who landed in cities such as New York City, Boston or Philadelphia worked as domestic servants, mill workers, washerwomen or held other low paying jobs. Other Irish immigrant women and their children came to regard as their right a vision of a future not bound by the prevailing societal conventions. Many of these women left the East coast cities for new lives in the less populated regions of the Midwest, the South, the West and the Northwest. Here, they were pioneers who took up farming, homesteading, mining, teaching and nursing. Some were doctors, lawyers, soldiers, administrators and women of business. This book contains fifty-one stories about Irish women, one from each state as well as the District of Columbia. These are true stories of bravery, determination and achievement. As you will learn, these women were ’no shy colleens’!