My Life as an Irish American
Randa McCauley
Axia College of University of Phoenix
ETH 125 Cultural Diversity
Instructor
January 7, 2007
My Life as an Irish American
Being Irish American in today’s society is not entirely too stressful; however there once was a time that it was hard to find work, or a place to live. We do not have major segregation problems. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Irish Americans are the second largest ethnic group in the United States. Roughly 34 million Americans reported Irish ancestry (Wikipedia, 2007). My ancestors began to enter American soil before 1776 as a result of the British Empire moving from one region to another (Wikipedia, 2007). We originated in Ireland and also in Scotland. When we moved to the United States, we moved into the frontier areas of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. This is where we put out skills to use against Indian raids. By the 1840’s half of the immigrants in the United States originated from Ireland (Wikipedia, 2007), and we went to major cities like Boston, New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Even today New York City has more Americans who claim their Irish heritage than Dublin’s (the capital of Ireland) whole population.
Nearly six generations ago, on my father’s side, there was a man named Duggan. Duggan would be considered my great, great, great, great grandfather. Duggan’s parents where part of the Irish community that migrated to the United States. Duggan was born in the United States, but his parents where from Dublin. Growing up Duggan lived on a farm, as most Irish families did. Duggan was also Catholic; there are two major religions in the Irish community, Catholic and Protestant. Duggan came to a point in his life where he needed to start living on his own. He went out to start looking for a new job. This was around the 1850’s where there was a rival between the Irish Catholics and the Native Americans. They began fighting over the construction business. It was...