Mariah Press

Efforts to chronicle the exceptional history of Irish people in the Upper Midwest have been extensive in the past decade. The Irish of our region have been an integral part of the American experience in the past 150 years. Doug McAllister's "Irish Eyes: The Story of Nebraska's Irish" is a great addition to the effort to document the experiences of the Irish in the Upper Midwest.

McAllister highlights three important contributors to the settlement of the Irish in Nebraska: General John O’Neill, the Union Pacific Railroad, and the Roman Catholic Church.

The John O'Neill segment features interviews with General O'Neill's great-grandsons, Richard and John Martin. Most people do not realize that John O'Niell died very young, as a result of his wounds incurred in the Civil War. O'Neill was a career, military officer prior to the Civil War. His involvement in important battles with the Fifth Indiana Cavalry made O'Neill a highly decorated war hero.

The activities in the 1870s of Bishop James O'Connor of Omaha and the organization, the Irish Catholic Colonization Society were as formal and extensive as Bishop John Ireland's activities in Minnesota and the Dakotas during the late 1870s and 1880s. Father Michael Gutgsell of the Archdiocese of Omaha presents an excellent overview of Bishop O'Connor's efforts and the contributions of the Irish to the early Catholic Church in Nebraska.

Irish railroad workers were important contributors to the Union Pacific's effort to create the Transcontinental Railroad after the Civil War. It is ironic that that the railroad historians have found a complete lack of papers describing the experiences of the Irish railroad workers; no journals, letters home, or later reminisces have been located. Omaha and many cities to the West were the end result of the railroad's work.

Doug McAllister serves as a broadcasting professor at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska.