Series 23 - Costello family letters

234pp

The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia, provided Kerby A. Miller with reproductions of the Costello letters from the Costello family papers via letter of 12 September 1974. In 2002, the Costello family papers became part of the holdings of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania [collection number MSS001].

The Costello family letters are 47 letters from James and John Costello in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, written primarily to family in Dublin, Ireland, and Bristol, Pennsylvania, as well as to William Woodlock, presumably the Costello family's agent or lawyer, in Dublin, between 1833 and1874. The letters detail the Costello family's challenges with property and business, both in Ireland and America in the lead up to, during and after the Famine. Kerby A. Miller wrote abstracts for 12 of the letters and of the remainder writes: 'There are about twenty-five more letters between James P. Costello in Dublin, and his brothers and sisters in America. James was truly miserable in Dublin, and longed for the happy life as a merchant that he had left behind long ago [...] He never seems to have been very successful in obtaining much of his father's estate back in Ireland, and his brothers and sisters in America seem to have equally poor luck in obtaining legal redress for the wrongs done to them. The letters of James show throughout the great, deserved [contempt] in which the members of the Irish legal profession were held.'
The series includes Miller's typed transcripts for two of the letters and abstracts for 12 of them, along with photocopies of the original letters.