Series 10 - Thomas Gunning letters

138pp

The original Thomas Gunning letters are held in the Major Charles O'Hara Papers, National Library of Ireland, Dublin [call number MS 20328].

[This collection contains outdated attitudes or language that does not reflect the current views or positions of the University of Galway Library. Reader discretion is advised.] The Thomas Gunning letters is based on five letters written in the 1830s by Thomas Gunning, a Catholic merchant's clerk in New York City, to Major Charles O'Hara, who is thought to be his former landlord or employer, in Tobercurry, Co. Sligo. Gunning emigrated to New York in the 1820's and, in some of the letters, recounts having been conviced by two fellow Irish immigrants to move with his wife to Mexican Texas. This move would prove to be disastrous for the Gunnings, as it was for many early coloniseres of the area, which Gunning explains in detail. The Gunnings eventually abandoned the colony and headed back to New York, but Mrs. Gunning did not survive the journey. Also discussed are the politics of the time with emphasis on Jackson and the Democratic party, economic opportunities in the North East, seed sharing, interactions with Spanish settlers and Indigenous populations, Sauk leader and warrior Black Hawk in the North East, conditions in Mexican Texas, failed migration schemes, and Gunning's plans to have the young son he left in Ireland sent across to him. The collection contains typed transcripts and photocopies of the original letters, Kerby A. Miller's research notes and correspondence, information on the Lambert family, and Miller's research on 19th century Irish and New York sources, including photocopied pages from two published works on the Irish in Texas: William Oberste, Texas Irish Empresarios and Their Colonies (Austin, 1953) and John B. Flannery, The Irish Texans (San Antonio, 1995).