Series 1 - George Pepper memoir

603pp

Citation for a published source: Pepper, Rev. George W. (1899). Under Three Flags: or the Story of My Life as Preacher, Captain in the Army, Chaplain, Consul, with Speeches and Interviews, Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings.

[This series contains outdated attitudes or language that does not reflect the current views or positions of the University of Galway Library. Reader discretion is advised.]
Materials pertaining to the memoir of George Pepper. Per Kerby A. Miller: 'Pepper was born in Ballinagarrick, near Gilford, County Down, in 1833. His father was a staunch Anglican and Master of the local Orange Lodge. Pepper was well-educated. The major influence upon his life and attitudes toward Ireland seem to have been his mother, for his father died when he was very young. His mother's family was Presbyterian, Liberal, and imparted to her son a strong family tradition of Irish nationalism. Her family had been United Irishman in '98, and favored the Young Irelanders. His mother was also a worshipper of the United States as the ideal refuge [...] Pepper emigrated to the U.S. in 1854, and became a circuit-rider and minister in the Ohio Conference of the Methodist church. Even though he was a Protestant, he encountered and overcame a considerable amount of nativism because he was an Irishman.' Miller also observes that, 'when the Civil War began, [Pepper] volunteered for service and organized a company, serving as its captain in Sherman's campaigns. Protestantism, republicanism, temperance, enthusiasm for the Civil War as a crusade both for freedom and to preserve the Union - all these were united concerns for evangelical dissenting Ulstermen like Pepper. Pepper was unusual in that he retained a strong Irish-nationalism, and a hatred of landlordism and of British rule, speaking on the same platform with Parnell during the latter's trip to America (in Toledo).' Pepper wrote his memoir, Under Three Flags: or the Story of My Life as Preacher, Captain in the Army, Chaplain, Consul, with Speeches and Interviews, in the late 1890s, publishing it in 1899. The series contains a photocopy of Pepper's memoir, along with Miller's research notes.