Collection P155 - Kerby A. Miller Collection

128 boxes

Kerby A. Miller

Letters, life stories, and other documents composed by Irish emigrants to North America from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries collected by historian Kerby A. Miller, Curators’ Professor of History at the University of Missouri (emeritus) and honorary Professor of History at the University of Galway, plus his associated research materials. From the early 1970s, when researching what became his landmark Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford, 1985), Miller transcribed writings by emigrants from Ireland to North America held in libraries and archives. Looking beyond those repositories, he placed notices in Irish national and local newspapers asking people to send him correspondence which he and research assistants then copied, transcribed and returned. Following publication of Emigrants and Exiles, Miller continued to collect such material. The result is a vast collection of transcripts of the writings of craftsmen, especially weavers and spinners, miners, domestic servants, farmers, and canal, railroad, mill and construction workers; the material dates from the late 1600s through the mid-1900s.
Included in the collection are transcripts of correspondence collected in the 1950s-60s by historian Arnold Schrier when working on his Ireland and the American Migration, 1850–1900 (Minneapolis, 1958), and by historian E. R. R. (Rodney) Green, director of the Institute of Irish Studies at the Queen’s University-Belfast; both Schrier and Green subsequently shared their materials with Miller. The University of Galway also holds research data compiled by Miller when working on items in the collection. All the materials described above can be consulted in the University Library. These materials form the backbone of Imirce, the University of Galway's online repository of letters, life stories and other documents composed by and/or sent to Irish emigrants to North America. The letters and life stories collected by Professor Miller have been digitised as part of Imirce and can be viewed at https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie/.

The materials in the Kerby A. Miller Collection have been arranged into 128 boxes (126 physical boxes and 2 digital boxes). The second part of the reference number of each item in the collection is derived from its containing box. Each box contains a number of series of records. Each series in the collection reflects an individual set of letters/life stories collected by Miller pertaining to a specific family or topic. The majority of these series are subdivided into one or more file folders (sub-series).

Open

Letters and life stories from the Kerby A. Miller Collection can be viewed online at https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie/.

17/12/2021
19/06/2025