The Shores of Amerikay | Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum
June 14, 2017
Opening celebrations at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Fifth Avenue, 1879. Leslie’s Illustrated New York.
Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University to host The Shores of Amerikay: How Archbishop John J. Hughes and the Sisters of Charity of New York met the needs of Ireland’s Famine Refugees, a presentation by Turlough McConnell on Wednesday, June 21 at 3:00pm.
Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum
3011 Whitney Avenue
Hamden, CT 06518
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required by calling 203-582-6500.
America’s Irish Famine immigrants were more likely than previous arrivals to be malnourished, unhealthy and members of broken family groups, children often ended the voyage alone. Irish children needed to be housed, fed and educated.
In response, New York’s Archbishop Hughes and the Sisters of Charity of New York created institutions for these unfortunates. An attempt in the early 1840s to secure public funding for New York City’s Catholic schools resulted in furor and the creation of New York’s non-sectarian Board of Education. Working in tandem with Hughes, the Sisters of Charity opened, staffed and grew schools, orphanages and St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Informed by primary sources from the archives of the SCNY, the Archdiocese of New York and the collections of Columbia University, McConnell’s presentation focuses on the critical days when refugees from Ireland’s Great Hunger flowed into the United States.
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