Hurley Family Emigrant Letters (Ref. U170)

U170/

4pp

11 December 1877 Letter from Michael Hurley, Carson, Nevada to ‘Dear Parents’. He thanks his parents for sending out the money, ‘We will never forget your kindness in sending it and…we will sell stocks at a big profit and send back that amount or double’. Times are ‘purty hard in this country at present…owing to Republican misrule’. He voted in the last Presidential election and has lived at Lake Tahoe during the summer. Wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 4pp 22 August 1879 Letter from Denis Hurley, Carson, Nevada to ‘Dear Parents’. Apologises for the delay in writing. Encloses money towards the new Church, the Vincent De Paul Society, and to family members. He made a trip to Lake Tahoe and California and stayed with his brother Michael. 4pp 5 December 1886 Letter from Michael Hurley, Kennet Post Office, Shasta County, Middlecreek, California to ‘Dear Sister Kate’. He would have written before but he has not had a permanent residence. He is sorry times are so bad in Ireland. Describes the climate in California. ‘You were advising me to come home a few years ago. If I did I might be like Patrick and Tim Hurley now, living in misery trying to raise the rent to pay the tyrant Lords. I hope the time will soon come they cant collect no more rents’. (Reference to landlords). 2pp 13 January 1891 Letter from Michael Hurley, Spokane Falls, Washington State, to ‘Dear Mother’, Clonakilty, County Cork. Written on notepaper of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. He is astonished that his family paid £750 for a tenant farm, but he does not wish to return to run it ‘…after all I have lost…I don’t want to give it all for that place’. Refers to the Parnell and Mrs O’Shea affair in Ireland and he is ‘afraid it will delay home rule for a while…Ireland never was in the point of gaining anything but something happened to prevent it’. Notes that the ‘wilds of America are becoming builded rapidly’. 1pp