Showing posts with label Irish Ancestry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish Ancestry. Show all posts

Could My Great Grandfather Tom Loftus Be Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame? He Should Be!

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Here is a fantastic, and for me fascinating interview with baseball historian John Pregler, concerning the role my Irish Great Grandfather Tom Loftus played in the early history of Major League Baseball. Listen here. Pregler has done a wonderful job in writing about him in the Spring 2020 Baseball Research JournalEven if this topic may sound boring to you, there's so much that is utterly fascinating you should listen to it! It aired on "Sport's Forgotten Heroes." Enjoy. I did! He's even being suggested as a future inductee into the Baseball Hall of fame!

My Great Grandfather's Major League Baseball Legacy Has Been Settled!

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Finally! 110 years after he died, my great grandfather's efforts in the early years of baseball has been acknowledged and noted! Here is a picture of him I hadn't seen before.
The recent Spring 2020 issue of the Baseball Research Journal has a story written by John T. Pregler titled, "Tom Loftus: The American League's Forgotten Founding Father." He was famous in his day, very much so!
Tom's son was named John. His son's name was Tom, my dad. From Tom to John to Tom to you know who! My older brother's name was Tom. Cool, eh?
To read the article Click Here. To see a photo of the Journal cover and first page of the article see below. Yes. it's exciting!

Maybe Irish People Should Have a Moment of Silence On St. Patrick's Day?

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What most people don't know about American slavery is that Irish people were used and abused as slaves before Africans were enslaved in the New World (which is my ancestry so it is personal with me). Here is the rest of the story, which can be read in Don Jordan and Michael Walsh's book, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America.In an online commentary of the book, John Martin of the Montreal-based Center for Research and Globalization, points this fact out:

Did I Tell Ya That the Irish Know How to Party? Hell Yeah!

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Across America, and around the world, the Irish know how to celebrate with the wearing of the green, our parades, our green beer and our whiskey on St. Patrick's Day. In Chicago they color the river green as they do in Ft. Wayne (yesterday), and other cities. I looked for an Irish Historical Society in Ft. Wayne and you know what I found? Irish pubs, lots of them. That's apparently the only historical society most of us need or want around here. ;-)

In what follows are just a few of our favorite traditional drinking songs. I think most people will like them (don't miss the last two). See if you don't like them, I dare ya. Let's drink to that!

The Fairies and Elves of the Irish People

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Now I must speak of my Irish ancestry's superstitious belief in fairies. Yes, fairies. They really believed in them and many still do today. Belief in the fairy world was extremely strong in the Irish folk tradition. Fairies (and otherworldly beings) were both feared and respected. But then most cultures have believed in them. Ever hear of Santa's elves? And guess what? They believed in them just as much as others in today's world believe in their saints, angels, demons and gods.
Every civilization, it seems, has its own collection of elf and fairy myths. The notion of tiny human-like creatures with magical powers roaming the earth unseen appears to have universal appeal. This is no less true of Ireland. Treasured by adults and children alike, tales of mischief-making fairies and elves color the rich Irish oral and literary traditions. These tales have made their way down to the rest of the world and are still enjoyed and appreciated today. LINK.

Famous Irish Americans

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As another post in my series on the Irish experience leading up to St. Patrick's Day, I'll focus on some famous Irish Americans, which is my ancestry (see tag below). You can see a list of eighty of them with brief biographies right here. I really think my great grandfather deserves to be on one of these lists, as I've mentioned before. Nonetheless, let me just highlight two of them below: Bing Crosby, and believe it or not, President Barack Obama.

Here's a video of some of them:

The Titanic and the So-Called "Luck of the Irish"

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Pictured is the Titanic Museum in Belfast, Ireland, which was opened in 2012. The Titanic was designed by Irishman Thomas Andrews and built in Belfast. It was also crewed and traveled on by Irish people, for the most part. It was the pride and joy of the Irish, whose pride was dashed just 4 1/2 days after departing.

Irish Immigrants From the Famine Settled in America

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I've written about the Coffin (or death) Ships that transported Irish Immigrants who were fleeing from the famine to North America, resulting in a 30% loss of life (see tag below). As soon as they arrived in New York they were met by the tavern and boarding house runners, who worked for a commission to induce them to their establishments. It was quite the scene. The immigrants were weak and sick from the voyage when the runners descended upon them, before they were even able to get off the ship. They vied with each other over the passengers, even grabbing their luggage to take them to their over-priced and overcrowded run-down unsanitary boarding houses. Then these Irish immigrants were met by an overwhelming hostile Protestant Christian America who didn't want them there. In the public schools of New York their Catholic faith was taught as the "whore of Babylon" (a reference to the book of Revelation).

Irish Immigrants Sailed on "Coffin Ships" to Escape the Potato Famine

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I'm highlighting my Irish heritage this week in preparation for St. Patrick's Day. (See tag below). The famine of 1845-1852 was so bad that one million Irish people had to immigrate to other lands in an attempt to stay alive, mostly to America and Canada. Most of them couldn't afford an American ship so they were forced to travel on British cargo ships. Those ships became known as Coffin Ships, since so many immigrants died on the eight week voyage. They were forced to stay down below in extremely crowded conditions. When the sea became rough they were shut in for days without any ventilation, and the latrine facilities were piss poor, if you catch my drift. Lice and disease were prevalent. Many of them died. The total death toll is estimated at 30%. So they traded death in their Irish homeland for death at sea. The captains of many of these ships waited until just before arriving before allowing them to clean out their quarters. If captains had allowed this periodically it could have saved many lives. Those that survived the journey often had just one thought on their minds: to be free of British oppression. Here's more, and some songs:

The Irish Potato Famine: A Divine/Human Near Genocide

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As I said, I'm Irish. I can trace my roots from my father through to my great great grandfather, who immigrated to America during the potato famine of 1845-1852. According to the Wikipedia:
During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, ethnic, religious, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate. LINK.
First to be blamed is God himself, after all, he allowed the famine. Based on this fact alone I don't see why any Irish person would ever love such a divine being. If any other lover was that abusive the love affair would be over forever. If God had wanted to remain a hidden God, all he had to do was grow the potatoes that the Irish had planted. And no one would be the wiser since nothing would have happened. If nothing else, all God had to do was perform a perpetual miracle here, something that shouldn't be hard for an omnipotent being.

The British government was complicit in this near genocide. The British colonization of Ireland brought a lot of misery and death upon the Irish people, especially during this famine. The British were Protestant. The Irish were Catholic. The British didn't care much about the Irish. Most hated them. A few pundits have claimed, rightly or wrongly, that it was an attempted genocide by inaction on the part of the British government. They only did enough to claim they tried. They eventually set up a soup kitchen where the goal was to produce a soup ration that would help sustain the starving at the bare minimum cost possible per person. Several cooks examined the soup and said it couldn't sustain a cat. All they had to do was to stop the exporting of the crops grown on Irish soil for British consumption. You can read an in-depth online website devoted to it, where we read:
Some studies have also stressed the influence on key policy makers of a particular strain of Protestant evangelicalism, in which the undeniable horrors of the Famine could be interpreted as an example of the terrible but unquestionable workings of God’s providence, operating to root out social and moral evils.
For a book that describes the horrible conditions of the Irish people at the time, read Paddy's Lament, Ireland 1846-1847: Prelude to Hatred.The whole episode is appalling.

Rosie O'Donnell learned her ancestry stretched back into this very era in an NBC episode of "Who Do you Think You Are?:

My Irish Ancestry, Folklore and Songs, In Preparation for St. Patrick's Day

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This week leading up to St. Patrick's Day I'm going to share a bit of my ancestry with you along with some Irish folklore, songs and history.

I'll start with my great grandfather Tom J. Loftus (1856-1910), since I don't want his accomplishments to be forgotten. He was Irish and was proud of it. Can you tell? His parents immigrated from Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine. Tom was about as famous in America as one could hope for, given that by the last decade of his life baseball was America's favorite pastime. You see, he was a Major League Baseball (MLB) player who later coached/managed several MLB teams across the country, like the Milwaukee Brewers, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Senators, and the Chicago Orphans, later to be known as the Cubs, which he co-owned with Albert Spalding (yes, that Spalding). Being a manger also meant he was the recruiter. He helped the American League to start up (in 1901) to rival the National League, that gave rise to the World Series. When the Three Eyes League (or "Three I's League" representing Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa) had major rifts between them, Tom was the only one they could all agree to manage it. He was a life-long friend of Charles Comiskey, having first played ball with him in Dubuque, Iowa. In fact, Tom earned the two highest accolades that could be given: "Baseball Man" (or "Man of Baseball") and "Magnate." Here's part of his obituary on the front page of the sports section in the Chicago Tribune, April 17th, 1910: