‘Debilitated By Having Borne 13 Children': An Irish Emigrant Recounts Her Family Story, 1871

Originally posted on Irish in the American Civil War:

In May 1871 an elderly Monaghan woman, ���infirm and broken in body���, came into Chicago from her ���Irish Shanty��� on the open prairie outside the city. Possessing little other than ���her scanty wardrobe���, she had come to meet her attorney. It was not her first visit. Earlier that year, she had dictated the story of her family and their hardships in extraordinary detail, part of a process she hoped would help her secure a pension bas...