Series 19 - Mary and John Doherty letters

17pp

Ruth-Ann Harris created the transcripts of the Mary and John Doherty Letters from the original manuscripts held in PRONI [reference number T2606]. She provided the transcripts to her collaborator, Kerby A. Miller, via email on 7 March 1997.

Ruth-Ann Harris' transcripts (with extensive contextual notes) of the Mary and John Doherty letters, a set of nine letters written between 1849 and 1860. Per Harris:
‘Mary Doherty fell into poverty when her husband failed to return home to. While it was not his intention to desert his family, he never achieved the riches he sought and refused to return until he had achieved his goals. Meanwhile Mary hoped until the very last that he would return. From Mary's letters it is possible to discover that she and her husband, John, came to America sometime shortly before 1848 with their two small children, Isabelle and William John. They apparently had joined other family members living in the Philadelphia area where John found employment on the railroad in western Pennsylvania. He was made a foreman but left the job in frustration after being threatened by his fellow workers when he was promoted over them. (There is also the suggestion that sectarian jealousy played a part in this.) From that time on and for the next eleven years he always intended to return home after making a fortune, but kept following the chimera that success lay in the next opportunity.
Most of Mary Doherty's letters veil the real person. In almost every one she says very little of what she was feeling. She hoped for the best in every situation -- and then -- in a letter describing her joy that her sister would soon arrive to join her in America, she dropped the mask, revealing to her family that she had deliberately concealed her suffering because she didn't want them to worry… … The dilemma facing her throughout the years covered by her letters was that until the very end when the news was bad, there was always reason to believe that John would return, a hope which must have both sustained and tortured her. Her family in Ireland wanted her to return so that she always had that as an option. However, while she herself wanted to return home, she knew that as a single woman in Ireland, without a husband to provide for the family, her children would be denied opportunity -- so she remained in America for their sake.’