Series 2 - John Logan Power memoir

45pp

Transcript made from a manuscript held by the Callan Heritage Society, County Kilkenny and shared with Kerby A. Miller per letter in 2019.

Materials pertaining to the memoir of John Logan Power. John Logan Power was born in 1834 in Mullinahone, County Tipperary. His mother was widowed when he was born, eventually remarrying and emigrating to Lockport, New York with her new husband and his children, with a plan to send for Power within 6 months. Power was left in the care of an aunt who, after a year, could no longer care for him and sent him to the Callan Union Workhouse in 1842. There was a teacher in the Callan workhouse and Power did well with lessons, advancing rapidly, thus enabling him to write a memoir at age 21 that left Professor Kerby A. Miller, 'astonished by its literary qualities', despite having grown up in a family that was largely illiterate. After nine years in the workhouse, a relative took Power on as a tailor's apprentice and his mother eventually sent money for his passage to America in 1850. Miller writes: 'In his memoir, the adolescent Power comes across as a sensitive, caring human being, alert to expressions of human kindness and also to social and political, as well as personal, oppression and injustice. Although he has rejected Catholicism, he remains imbued with strong Irish nationalist sentiments (which makes me wonder if he was involved with Young Ireland in 1848-49 or, later, with the Fenians in the US). However, it's striking-and deeply saddening-that someone who felt like that so strongly in his 'teens, and who had personally endured dire poverty and loss during his young life, would later fight to perpetuate slavery and white supremacy in the US Civil War and, afterwards, become a prominent figure in Mississippi's Democratic Party'. Power died in Mississippi 1901. This series contains Miller's correspondence with the donor and a colleague, typed notes regarding Power and his memoir, and part of a typescript version of the memoir sent to Miller.