Series 20 - Bernard Flynn letters

17pp

This letter was held by Dermot Sweeney, Loughrea, who provided it to the University of Michigan/Bentley Historical Library's Immigration Sources Project on 24 July 1977. A copy of the manuscript was then provided to Kerby A. Miller by JoEllen McNergney Vinyard and Francis X. Blouin of the Bentley Historical Library.

Materials pertaining to a 31 October 1868 letter written by Bernard Flynn in New York City to his brother Martin in Birmingham, England, and a 14 June 1858 letter of recommendation for Martin in Birmingham showing him to be a lithographer.
Per Dermot Sweeney: ‘Martin and Bernard Flynn were brothers. Bernard, the author of the letter from New York, went to Birmingham with his parents, brothers, and sisters after the Great Famine caused the family to be evicted. Tradition had it that their house was burned down by their landlord, to prevent their re-occupancy. When they arrived in Birmingham, the boys went to night school and learned trades. Mr. Sweeney (whose mother was Martin Flynn's daughter) thinks they could not speak or write English before going to England except in very rudimentary form, as they spoke Irish at home in Bohola, Co. Mayo. The father of Bernard and Martin finally went home again to Ireland to die. Martin Flynn's daughter (D. Sweeney's mother) met Mr. Sweeney, her future husband, at a Hibernia Hall in Birmingham. They returned to Ireland to live after their marriage. Mr. Sweeney stated that all the family retained a strong dislike for the British and all things British despite the years they spent there.’
The series includes: transcripts and reproductions of the Bernard Flynn letters; donor Dermot Sweeney’s 1977 notes on the Flynns; and the 1977 letter of provision from Sweeney to the University of Michigan/Bentley Historical Library's Immigration Sources Project.