Series 1 - Tim and Dan Cashman memoirs

8 sub-series

Timothy D. Cashman, grandson of Tim Cashman, provided the Cashman materials to Kerby A. Miller per his letter of 24 March 1978.

Materials pertaining to the writings of brothers Tim and Dan Cashman. Tim Cashman (b. 1866) and Dan Cashman (b. 1872) were from Killeagh, near Youghal, County Cork and emigrated in the early 1890s. Per Kerby A. Miller: 'In many ways, their lives and writings (in both Irish and English) provide a microcosm of Irish-American society-at least of the dwindling numbers of Irish-born-during the Irish Nationalist fervor of the early 20th century. Tim and Dan Cashman's parents were poor Irish-speaking farm laborers, and both brothers worked as unskilled laborers in American factories, docks, and mines in Boston and the Far West. Their memoirs and poems, which reflected on their lives in Ireland and America, show a strong class-consciousness-a deep resentment against social exclusion and exploitation on both sides of the Atlantic. Both brothers remained emotionally centered on Ireland rather than their adopted country, and both dreamed that a successful revolution would create an egalitarian, as well as a politically independent, Ireland. However, Tim Cashman's dreams were expressed through petty-bourgeois forms of "advanced" Irish-American nationalism, such as Clan-na-Gael and the Gaelic League, whereas brother Dan embraced the social radicalism of James Connolly and, especially, 'Big Jim' Larkin, and was likely a member of the revolutionary syndicalist IWW. Although they divided politically over the 1921 Treaty and the subsequent Civil War, both "lost" the Irish republics of their dreams: Dan Cashman never returned to an Irish Free State he despised, and Tim Cashman's sole visit "home" in 1925 was deeply disappointing. In the end, both brothers had to settle for-and die in-an American society that had never matched their expectations or engaged their imaginations.'