Hurley Family Emigrant Letters (Ref. U170)

U170/

14 April 1923 Letter from Denis Hurley, Carson City, Nevada to his brother John Hurley, Tawnies, Clonakilty, County Cork. He received John’s box of shamrocks after St.Patrick’s day. Refers to the Irish Civil War, that Ireland’s condition ‘seems more deplorable that under the Saxon yoke…I thought the Irish people with their Catholic faith and their love of justice would arrange matters between themselves…It makes an Irish man in this country hang his head in shame…if one is friendly with one side he is supposed to be an enemy of the other’. 2pp 10 August 1923 Letter from Denis Hurley, Carson City, Nevada to niece Mary Hurley, Tawnies, Clonakilty, County Cork. Sends regards and encloses £5. He is fortunate in having a job which does not tax his strength and which pays a salary that more than meets his expenses. Mentions the funeral of President Warren Harding, ‘a good upright man who worked faithfully in the country’s interests’. Denis is glad that fighting has ceased in Ireland, ‘More work and less wrangling is what the country wants…intelligence, enlightenment and general good will’. Notes discontent and dissatisfaction amongst farmers in the U.S.A. He celebrated the 50 th anniversary of his coming to Carson City, ‘a nice affair tho’ under another’s roof’. 2pp 15 November 1923 Letter from Denis Hurley, Carson City, Nevada to his brother John Hurley, Tawnies, Clonakilty, County Cork. Says he is well, ‘but slower in my walk and less firm in my step’. Wishes John could have seen him become a 4 th degree Knight of Columbus in Reno, ‘High Hat, dress suit, a sword dangling at my side, marching military fashion…Few of my friends of 40 years before that I knew in Reno were around’. Mentions general election in England. His brother Michael is ‘a strong Free Stater. De Valera he terms a “bum” making trouble by his agitation’. Denis ‘cannot agree’, due to De Valera’s ‘15,000 votes in the Clare constituency. These voters are not bums nor a rowdy element’. He does not think Ireland should be partitioned, ‘nor was it manly…to abandon the nationalists of the north to the tender mercies of the orange lambs’. Farmers are complaining at the low prices of stock and wheat and ‘Labor is very high, especially in the building trades’. 2pp