Series 2 - Nora O'Connor Stine memoir

222pp

Maryellen McGarry and William C. Geoghan, the author's grandnephew, donated the transcript and reproductions of the original manuscript to Kerby A. Miller on 7 December 2015.

Nora O'Connor Stine was born in 1886 into a family of Roman Catholic labourers and servants in Bantry, West Cork. O'Connor Stine emigrated New York City in 1906 with one of her brothers at th behest of her mother. She wrote her memoir, The Life of a Young Irish Girl from Bantry, County Cork, Ireland to America 1885-1918 in 1947, and it was typed by descendants in 1997. Kerby A. Miller writes that 'since it's estimated that about half of post-Famine rural emigrants came from the farm laboring and servant classes (the other half being small and middling farmers' non-inheriting sons and daughters), the NCOS [Nora O'Connor Stine] memoir is both representative and valuable.' He also observes the following: 'Clearly, NCOS [Nora O'Connor Stine] is very favorably impressed her servant's life in the incredibly large and luxurious Bantry House and by her employer, Lady Leigh-White (English but apparently remarkably kind and generous), and this at a time when the Irish landlord class as a whole was under attack from Nationalist Ireland and suffering serious financial decline, which doesn't appear to have affected the residents of Bantry House [...] NCOS seems to have no class- or nationalist-based resentments against the Anglo-Protestant establishment or her family's inferior position in society. One has the impression that Bantry House so totally dominated Bantry town's economy and society that it was similar to a "garrison town," dominated by a British military installation, in which nearly all the local Catholic residents were quite indifferent to the sorts of social and political issues that animated Cashman's angry worldview. NCOS's apparent content with social inequality seems to carry over into her American life, since I don't recall her ever complaining about her employers, her wages, or her working conditions in the US. Looking back, NCOS appears to have been very happy at Bantry House, and her memories have a kind of "paradise lost" feeling.' The series contains: Miller's typed transcript of the memoir; a photocopy of the original handwritten memoir; a copy of the 1997 memoir transcript; a copy of New York Irish History, vol. 13 (1999), in which an excerpt of the memoir appears; and Miller's research notes.