Documentary On One on the letters of forgotten Irish emigrants

Over the centuries, millions of people emigrated from the island of Ireland to the United States. Every one of those people left someone behind as they went to find a better life in a new land. The only way to stay in touch with family and friends was through a letter home... Programmer maker Tim Desmond writes about this weekend's moving Documentary On One production - listen to A Letter Home above.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of Irish people emigrated, and many of them went to the United States. Every one of those people left someone behind; they left to find something better and sometimes they did.

So many emigrants were desperate to stay in touch and the only way to do that was by letter- even if you couldn't write and your family couldn’t read, someone could write you a letter and somebody on the other side could read it out and the bond with home could be maintained.

Tens of millions of letters were sent over and back across the Atlantic and some of those incredibly, have survived, as keepsakes and heirlooms handed down in shoeboxes and biscuit tins from one generation to the next. A collection of these letters are now in an online archive that inspired this week's Documentary On One, A Letter Home.

As a college graduate in the 1970's, American Kerby Miller saw the value in the letters of Irish emigrants to America so he made a series of public appeals to borrow these letters, asking their custodians if he could make records of the stories they told. As Kerby pursued his academic career (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a book about Irish emigration) his collection grew to over seven thousand letters and became a valuable resource for anyone studying the story of Irish Emigration to the United States.

When he retired from academic life, Kerby donated his collection to the University of Galway and they are using it as the basis for bigger online archive of emigrants letters and stories . It's called IMIRCE and some of those letters are featured in this week's Doc On One.

The Irish emigration story is one we think we know well. Millions leaving a sorry land because of hunger, lack of opportunity and religious persecution, arriving in a new land and prospering while always looking back to home and remembering those left behind.

But the story is of course more complex and nuanced, millions of people moving from one continent to another can never be something simple. The letters tell stories of getting to America, which took money and time, weeks at sea in often dangerous conditions followed by arrival into a completely alien environment.

The letters of emigrants were retained as keepsakes and family heirlooms, in shoeboxes and biscuit tins and under beds.

As professor Breandán Mc Suibhne from the University of Galway puts it: 'In any movement of people there are going to be push and pull factors.People were pushed out of Ireland by poverty. They were pushed out of Ireland by political circumstance. But they were drawn to America by the opportunity that they understood America to offer.'

Those opportunities involved hard work and material comfort, but America could be a tough, unrelenting place. The story of the McGee brothers, featured in the documentary, is a case in point. In the course of ten years, these three brothers from Donegal worked their way across the US doing hard manual labour, digging tunnels and working in the mines. Their letters talk of sending money home and helping to bring others out whenever they could. The brothers ended up in Leadville Colorado, a mining town high in the Rocky mountains during a rush for silver. The eldest brother Michael writes, in 1880:

I got a good mining claim in Leadville and plenty of good miner land. We have hoisting machinery at the ready to take out silver. We can sell it for $100,000. I know it is worth five times that much. I'm going to stick to it for as long as I can or get more. I must get a fortune out of it or nothing at all.

And then, in an instant , a mining accident leads to Michael losing everything. His brothers weren't part of the claim, and they can't get anything for his share. It's a heartbreaking story brought to life by the voices in the letters.

There are more stories in the documentary that reflect the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary events in people's lives. A series of letters between members of the Callaghan family from county Waterford end with a particularly sad letter home from the eldest brother who is stationed on Alcatraz Island in San Franciso Bay in 1885.

'I hope all at home are well. Give my best love to all the boys. I have good hopes yet although I'm in a poor place at present but patience and time will change all for the better please God.

I remain your affectionate son, Patrick Callaghan.'

The tone of this letter is illuminated by the fact within weeks, Patrick had taken his own life, clearly in a distressed state. This particular information came to light because over the years, Kirby Miller added to the information in the letters by fact-checking and closing the gaps in the stories, in this case talking to family members and looking at other sources, like census records and newspapers.

Throughout history the well-known and wealthy wrote lots letters, and many of these are in separate family collections around the world along with the likes of papers detailing the sale of a big house, or the promotion of a son to rank of admiral in the navy.

But the writings of people without status and wealth have rarely been preserved. The letters of emigrants were retained as keepsakes and family heirlooms, in shoeboxes and biscuit tins and under beds. The great gift Kerby Miller has given us is the preservation of these writings. For documentary makers like the Doc On One team, a collection like this makes it easy to bring these important stories to life.

The real value of the Imicre collection is that for the most part it has stories from ordinary people who were striving to make a new life and there is something in the content of many of these letters home that shouldn't be overlooked. They are a first writing of history , simple , day to day history, the struggles and joys of daily life reflecting the bigger tragedy of mass emigration from a country that had very little to offer for so many years.