Mary Lee Dunn, author of "Ballykilcline Rising / From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America"
Saturday, October 30, 2010, at noon in the library's meeting room


Mary Lee Dunn, a former resident of Chelmsford is now living in Maine. She is a former member of the Chelmsford Genealogy Club will talk about new research for her book, "Ballykilcline Rising / From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America." You can read about Mary Lee's new book at the Ballykilcline web site at www.ballykilcline.com

Mary Lee says that anyone interested in her story may also want to read either or both of the books listed below. Both concern events around Strokestown-Kilglass in famine time, which also are part of my story.

"The End of Hidden Ireland" by Robert Scally (about the rent strike in Ballykilcline, the evictions and forced emigration to New York)

"The Killing of Major Denis Mahon / A Tale of Old Ireland" by Peter Duffy (about the murder of Strokestown landlord Denis Mahon; the Mahon family for a time had been sub-lessees of the Ballykilcline estate as well, ending in 1834, when they failed to renew their lease and the townland reverted to the Crown, which touched off the rent strike in Ballykilcline).

Genealogy Club members may also be interested in a short story by Andrea Barrett titled "Ship Fever," which is about the summer of cholera in 1847 at the Canadian quarantine station at Grosse Ile, where so many of Denis Mahon evicted tenants landed.Half of them died.