|
Dreamer,
Patriot, Adventurer, Romantic, and Honorable Irishman
|
"There's a town, little town in the old County Down
It's the spot I was born in and reared.
And wherever I roam its my own its my own native home
Little Town in the old County Down"
Anon |
This story is not
designed as a definitive account of the part played in the industrial
history of the United States of America by the people of the ancient
kingdom of Mourne in County Down, Ireland. Rather, I have tried to bring
to life something of their world and struggles during a few tumultuous
years in one industry and in one city of this fair land of the United
States of America. While many of their bones may lie with other immigrants
in a graveyard filled not with the common span of humanity but the young
victims of uncontrolled exploitation and hardship, I felt it important to
leave some testimony of them.
This I felt
qualified to do by relating something of the history of my paternal
grandfather. In his lifetime from 1878 to 1965,
Henry Joseph Doyle played out his allotted role as dreamer, patriot, adventurer,
romantic and above all honourable Irishman.
His life spanned the age
of oil lamps to television, from a day out to the next village on a
horse drawn bus, as a middle class honeymoon, to the age of
interplanetary space exploration. At the time of his birth his own
Christian names demonstrate the submergence of Ireland into the
Anglo dominated world where the sun could not physically set on the
Empire. He lived through world revolutions and two World Wars to see
his native land re-emerge as a proud Republic and member of the
European Community and the United Nations. |
|
An Honorable Irishman
Henry Joseph Doyle
1878 - 1965 |
Politicians and
establishments may subvert at times the path of behaviour and idealistic
concepts of any country and the ambitions of its people. I maintain the
intertwined history and establishment of our two republics cannot be
separated from the sojourns of the Irish here and the presence of their
descendants. Their particular history, character and ambitions while of no
more intrinsic value than that of any other race is never-the-less one, in
which I can take fierce personal pride. |
Lawrenceville, New Jersey, USA.
March 2003. |
|
|
|
|