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| Professor Michael Connolly |
My grandmother was a first-generation Irish American - a Gaelic speaker whose parents were Connemaran through and through. This past Christmas I took my family to spend the holiday with my cousins who still live on Ireland's wild and western shore. Normally, when I travel abroad, I have to explain how many hours north of New York City or Boston I live for people to have any clue where I'm from. Not so in county Galway. "Oh, it's Portland you're from! Of course, I have a cousin that lives there. 'tis lovely, lovely." They even know about
Munjoy Hill and
Ri Ra's. It's enough to make you feel quite at home. Well, for good reason -
Portland's Irish connection runs deep and you can count on
Professor Michael Connolly to tell just how deep this connection runs.
For some families, it means their ancestors worked on the waterfront. For others, it meant building railroad lines. For mine, being an Irish laborer meant polishing chandeliers on Portland's West End and waiting on tables (badly) at the
Mount Washington Hotel.
Whatever your interest in Irish history and Maine, though, Connolly - a Galway descendant himself and professor of history at St. Joseph's College - can fill you in. Come to the
Maine Irish Heritage Center on Friday, June 24th at 7 p.m. where Connolly will talk about his research for his book "Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine and its Irish Longshoremen."
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