Karen Frances McCarthy's Blog

Irish American Writers & Artists

By Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy

Photos by Cat Dwyer

Edna O’Brien believes that Irish writers are driven by conflict…and loss…and an innate sense of tragedy. At the Irish American Writers & Artists Salon, summer came to an end with tales of death, love and loss.

Brent Shearer got the Salon started with “The Cancer Hospital” a story about a biddy who ventures into Manhattan from Long Island to visit her dying friend.  Afraid of muggers, she leaves her handbag home bu...

What do Mark Twain, Neil Armstrong and John McCain all have in common?

They’re descendants of Scots-Irish braggarts who crossed the Atlantic from the north of Ireland in the early 1700s and settled in America’s south, giving rise to NASCAR, at least 14 presidents, decisive victories in the Revolutionary War, a third of today’s US military, the NRA, country music, the horror story, American-style democracy, the religious right and victory in the space race.

“The Other Irish” shines a light on...

I came across this terrific blog that mentioned by book. The author, a single mother, who had been fighting addiction, was trying to get through detox.

“While I was detoxing, as soon as I was able to hold a book and read for a bit, I read The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America by Karen McCarthy. It helped me remember that those who came before me were also survivors, being strong because they had to be, finding a way through their difficulties with ingenuity, an indomitable...

I just got a lovely email from a preacher in rural Louisiana. Many people are so quick to bitch that it was really nice to hear something so positive.

“I’m reading for the second time ‘The Other Irish.’ What an awesome and wonderful book. This is my second reading. Expect to read it more times. It is so marked up with notes that it may well be fully underlined before all is said. Just want to thank you from the deep of my heart for such a writing.

A great part of my infatuation comes form my...

Karen F. McCarthy’s The Other Irish is a delightful and deeply informative new take on the Scots-Irish who, despite being relatively unknown, made a tremendous contribution to America’s culture. What I particularly appreciate about the book is the way in which she tells their story by concentrating on the incredible characters in that tradition. She thereby circumvents the dry as dust abstractions of the more conventional approaches taken by academic historians and sociologists. Because she i...

By Bill McGimpsey

Comprehensive works on the Scotch-Irish are few and far between. Since James Leyburn’s milestone “Social History,” published way back in 1962, there have been few notable exhibits. It is now eight years since Senator James Webb introduced his colorful version of the Scotch-Irish story, Born Fighting, a completely different narrative style from the Leyburn landmark, but covering the same cross Atlantic timeline. Now we have another recently released version of the ScotchIrish...

The tale of a ‘proud and feisty’ people

The Scots-Irish in the United States have an illustrious legacy, which should be the envy of other diasporas in North America. After all they were, as President William McKinley said, “the first to proclaim for liberty in the great United States”.

Their fearless contribution on the 18th century American frontier in creating a civilisation out of a bleak wilderness is the stuff of classic movies and countless novels, yet still in some quarters the Scots-...

by Karen F. McCarthy forMcClatchy Newswire

It was with some surprise that I happened upon the little known story of the mass migration of Protestants from Ireland to America in the 1700s, 150 years before the Catholic Irish arrived on Ellis Island. It was even more surprising to find that they have had more influence over the creation and character of the nation than the Irish of New York, Boston, and Chicago, the Irish of Kennedy repute.

My search for this lost chapter of the Irish Diaspora...