Robert Doyle, Michael Gorman and Michael Hanna added their family letters to the Letters 1916 online collection. They showed The Irish Times the originals and other items of family history from the period and shared their family stories with Peter Murtagh.
It is great to see that the Letters 1916 Project encouraged the three donors, as well as many others, to contribute and share their family treasures with the public. Hanna’s note to Murtagh shows how the project can enhance a family history in the story of Ireland:
“It took three generations for a true Irish identity to emerge in us and for the umbilical cord with Britain to be broken,” he wrote in a follow-up note to my visit to his home. “But more than anything, the fact that Trinity now has taken this letter and made it part of the national story of 1916 through this wonderful initiative makes me part of that story too in a way that I can now speak about with full knowledge about the place of me and my family in the story of our country.”
Click here to read the full article by Peter Murtagh.