by Kathleen Mackenzie
Walking the streets of Dublin today, reminders of the 1916 Easter Rising are scattered throughout the city. The armed rebellion against British rule launched a turbulent period that ultimately led to the establishment of the Republic of Ireland, and the Irish people have taken care to ensure that the rebellion’s leaders are never forgotten. Indeed, their names grace countless street signs, monuments, and buildings throughout the city. Their words are memorialized on the walls of train stations, restaurants, and theaters. But what about the voices of ordinary people who lived through the turmoil of 1916 in Ireland, but whose names were lost to history? For the most part, these voices have remained absent from the popular narrative of the revolution—until now.
“The Letters of 1916: A Year in the Life” is Ireland’s first crowd-sourced public history project. It began in 2013 with a nationwide call for letters written between November 1, 1915 and October 31, 1916 that pertained to life in Ireland.[1] Topics ranging from politics, to romance, to the mundane would all be accepted.[2] Donors were allowed to keep the physical letters and send in a scans, and project staff scanned letters if the donors were unable to.[3] The results were astonishing: 2,400 letters were donated by members of the public and historical institutions, and 1,500 volunteers transcribed them.[4] By the Easter Rising’s centenary in 2016, a fully-fledged digital archive website was launched, making these letters available to the public for the first time. Among the collection is Eamonn O’Modhráin’s letter sent from a Welsh prison camp to his mother, assuring her that he is attending mass while being held prisoner for his participation in the Rising.[5] Also included is a love letter from James Finn to his fiancé May Fay, in which he asks her to pray that there wouldn’t be a second rebellion so that their wedding plans wouldn’t be ruined.[6] Other letters discuss school, family affairs, the Great War, religion, and much more.
The project was led by Susan Schreibman, Professor of Digital Humanities at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, and was funded by the institution along with support from the Digital Repository of Ireland, the National University of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.[7] The goal of the project was to preserve and bring to life the stories of average people living in Ireland in 1916. As Schreibman has noted, “All too often our emphasis is on the grand narrative focusing on key political figures…we want to try to get a sense of how ordinary people coped with one of the most disruptive periods in contemporary Irish history.”[8] By devoting an entire digital archive to the letters of ordinary people, the project not only paints a fuller picture of history, but it also underscores the value of stories outside of the traditional historical narrative. This certainly presents a marked contrast to the statues and plaques dedicated to the Rising’s leaders that line the streets of Dublin.
It is also important to note that the process of collecting and transcribing the letters was in many ways just as significant as the final product of the digital archive. By allowing the public to contribute to the collection, the project gave them the opportunity to take ownership of their own history in a way that was uniquely suited to the needs of the country. Ireland’s history has long been shaped by colonial rule and political and religious conflict, which has given way to drastically different perspectives on national identity and history throughout the country. While other public history projects have encouraged the public to shape their own historical narrative, “Letters of 1916” purposefully resists a singular narrative. As Shreibman notes, “[the letters] create a mosaic of life lived, messy and complex, eschewing our notions of a collective past that tends to be flattened by a method of narrative that historians employ in writing for the page.”[9] By placing a nationwide call for any and all letters written in 1916, the project quietly and effectively legitimized the myriad of perspectives and experiences surrounding a painful and divisive moment in Ireland’s history.
Thanks to the success of the project, “The Letters of 1916” recently received a grant from the Irish Research Council to extend its collection period to include letters through 1923.[10] If you would like to submit a letter to the project, to volunteer to transcribe previously submitted letters, or to simply search and browse this rich and extensive collection, please visit letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie.
References
Finn, James. “Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 27th May 1916”. Letters of 1916. Schreibman, Susan, Ed. Maynooth University: 2016. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/explore/letters/348.
Letters of 1916. Letters 1916-1923: Ordinary Lives – Extraordinary Times. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/
O’Modhráin, Eamonn. “Letter from Eamonn O’Modhrain to Mary Moran, 3 July 1916”. Letters of 1916. Schreibman, Susan, Ed. Maynooth University: 2016. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/explore/letters/333.
Schreibman, Susan. “Public Invited to co-create 1916 Letters Project.” The Irish Times. August 4, 2014. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/public-invited-to-co-create-1916-letters-project-1.1887075
Trinity News and Events. “Letters of 1916 Research Project Calling on Public to Contribute Family Letters.” September 24, 2013. https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/letters-of-1916-research-project-calling-on-public-to-contribute-family-letters/4405
[1] Trinity News and Events. “Letters of 1916 Research Project Calling on Public to Contribute Family Letters.” September 24, 2013. https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/letters-of-1916-research-project-calling-on-public-to-contribute-family-letters/4405
[2] Ibid.
[3] Schreibman, Susan. “Public Invited to co-create 1916 Letters Project.” The Irish Times. August 4, 2014. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/public-invited-to-co-create-1916-letters-project-1.1887075.
[4] Schreibman.
[5] O’Modhráin, Eamonn. “Letter from Eamonn O’Modhrain to Mary Moran, 3 July 1916”. Letters of 1916. Schreibman, Susan, Ed. Maynooth University: 2016. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/explore/letters/333.
[6] Finn, James. “Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 27th May 1916”. Letters of 1916. Schreibman, Susan, Ed. Maynooth University. 2016. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/explore/letters/348.
[7] Schreibman.
[8] Trinity News and Events.
[9] Schreibman.
[10] Letters of 1916. Letters 1916-1923: Ordinary Lives – Extraordinary Times. http://letters1916.maynoothuniversity.ie/