Heritage
Find Your Own Irish Heritage!
With the help of our in-house genealogy experts, you can find out about your own Irish story. It’s free, fun and fascinating.
Family History Bios Needed
Our genealogy expert is looking for family history bios for our collection. She typically finds these in libraries, state history books and on-line, and focuses on Irish families from Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. They contain lots of interesting facts about each family, sometimes giving where they were from in Ireland, where they settled in America, the names of their parents, children, etc. They talk about the size of their farm and how they have helped serve their community. If you would like your Irish ancestor story included with our collection you can send an .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or bring it to the festival.
KC Irish Fest Heritage Area
Irish Women – Beauty, brains and strong backs
There was a joke told among Kansas City society ladies back in the 1870s. It went something like this: Did you hear about Mrs. Dinwiddie’s maid, Bridget? Seems Mrs. Dinwiddie sent Bridget to the dry goods store to get a comforter. And wouldn’t you know, thick-headed Bridget came home with the clerk!
The fact is, the hundreds of thousands of young Irish women (average age 21) who fled Ireland in the decades following the Famine were mostly unsophisticated farm girls who could barely read or write. They were relegated in America – as they had been at home – to washing, cleaning and cooking, and looking for a husband with a job. Yet centuries of raising children, keeping a farm and holding a household together made them strong-willed and capable of independent thought and action.
Irish Fest’s Heritage area traces the path of the female Irish immigrant, and features the stories of 10 amazing Irish and Irish-American women who became leaders in social and labor reform, business, politics, education and religion.
