Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1914-1991 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
242pp
Context area
Archival history
The Kinsale Courthouse and Regional Museum Committee donated reproductions of the Marie Sheehan Letters to Kerby A. Miller on 8 December 1978. The original manuscripts are in the M. Hayes Papers, Kinsale Museum, County Cork.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The Maria Sheehan letters are a set of nine letters written between 1914 and 1921 by Maria Sheehan of Boston and later Brookline, Massachusetts; all but one were written to her niece by marriage Catherine 'Katie' Hayes in Kinsale, County Cork. Sheehan was a native of Curraghnadeely, County Limerick who emigrated in 1886. According to Bruce D. Boling, Sheehan was a housewife with 9 or 10 adult children and likely a widow at the time of the letters. A return visit by Sheehan to her home in 1913 was 'received indifferently'.
The series includes; Bruce D. Boling’s biographical notes on Sheehan; Boling’s compiled Irish census and land valuation data on the Sheehan and Hayes families; Kerby A. Miller’s transcripts of the Sheehan letters; legal and probate records copies from Norfolk County probate and Family Court; 1991 correspondence between Miller and his research colleagues regarding research on the Sheehan letters; correspondence between Miller and Cork historical repositories; excerpts from a published history of Norfolk County, Massachusetts; and reproductions of the Sheehan letters.