Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1847-2016 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
4 sub-series
Context area
Archival history
Copies of the Carroll-Markey Letters were donated to Kerby A. Miller by Kathleen McMahon of Togher, County Louth, via her letter of 10 April 1978. Ann Sweeney, Drogheda, also provided permission to publish the letters via her letter of 15 August 1988.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Materials pertaining to a set of 55 letters written by members of the Carroll-Markey family, Irish emigrants living in Illinois and Wisconsin, to their family back in County Louth between 1847 and 1932. The primary authors are cousins Mary 'Minnie' Markey and Ann Carroll. In 1894 Minnie Markey ran away with Ann Carroll's fiancée and married him in Milwaukee. Upon returning to Chicago as Mary McMahon, she was estranged from her Markey relations and in financial duress; her new husband, who suffered from alcholism, died in 1896 and no further mention of Minnie Markey is made in Ann Carroll's letters. Annie Carroll was admitted to the Peoria State Hospital asylum at some point during the 1910s. The series includes transcripts and reproductions of the letters, plus extensive research files on the family compiled by Kerby A. Miller, Patricia Kelleher, Beth Ruffin McIntyre, and their correspondents.