Series 1 - Dunny-Colgan-Grant letters

2 sub-series

Dr. Arnold Schrier collected the letters during the 1950s. Schrier donated copies of the Dunny-Colgan-Grant Letters to his collaborator, Kerby A. Miller, per Schrier's letter of 3 January 2000.

The Dunny-Colgan-Grant letters are a group of nine letters written between 1851 and 1870 and collected by Dr. Arnold Schrier circa 1954-1955. Eight of the letters were written to Thomas Denny of Sleaty, Queen's County (now Laois). Authors include: Dunny's siblings Patrick Dunny and Ellen Wogan in Philadelphia; his friend Bartholomew Colgan in Chicago and later in Nevada; his brother-in-law Tom Grant in County Kildare; and his former domestic Anastasia Dowling in Buffalo. Per Schrier: 'Patrick Dunny wrote his surviving letters to his father (name unknown) and his older brother, Thomas Dunny. Thomas Dunny was born in 1823. According to the donor, "he came young to Carlow College farm where he spent the rest of his life as Steward & Farm manager and died in 1914. From letters of which which remain he seems to have been a very competent man, clever above the average & of a bookish turn of mind." By contrast, his emigrant brother, Patrick, never rose above the status of a laborer in America and married a woman who was recorded as illiterate in the 1860 census. Also, their sister, Ellen Wogan, likewise an immigrant, was married to a weaver and was herself a seamstress.'