Series 6 - Daniel Polin letter

21pp

In the early 1970s, Kerby A. Miller received a photocopy of the Polin letter from the Balch Institute in Philadelphia, the collections of which were absorbed into the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 2002.

Materials pertaining to a letter written in 1818 from recent immigrant to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Daniel Polin from Saintfield, Co. Down, to an earlier immigrant and family friend, William Bennet in Mercer, Pennsylvania. Noted by Kerby A. Miller to be 'a fascinating letter by an idealistic Irish republican,' the letter recounts for Bennet information from home, plans to move on from Pittsburgh to meet another Ulster immigrant further west in Kentucky, discussions of Britain's growing success in dividing Ulster Protestants and Catholics and the idea of America as a land of freedom and refuge, and a detailed lament for Ireland's terrible economic and political condition along with Polin's belief that there is no hope for Ireland without revolution. Miller notes: 'Polin was typical of late 18th- and early 19th-century Irish immigrants, especially from Ulster or Dublin and usually Presbyterians or Catholics, often of lower-middle-class or skilled worker status, who were imbued with the spirit of American, French, and Irish republicanism,' and that this letter 'is a classic statement of the idealized marriage of Irish and American republicanism.' The Daniel Polin letter collection includes a photocopy and typed transcripts of the letter, Miller's synopsis of the letter and research notes on Saintfield, County Down.