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The Irish Are Coming
The stories, struggles, and influence of the Irish in America
BUILDING AMERICA · THE RECORDS THAT DECIDED WHO BELONGED · 1800 - 1870·
Aid to the Irish in Their Darkest Hour
Why did Bellevue clerks write 'recent immigrant' in the disease column — and what happened when a city had nowhere to house the Irish pouring off the ships?
Historian Dr. Anelise Shrout traces how the Great Irish Famine became one of the nineteenth century's first transnational humanitarian campaigns — drawing aid from the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and enslaved people in the American South, while Irish arrivals reshaped New York's hospitals, poorhouses, and jails.
ABOUT THE GUEST
She read one sentence about the Choctaw Nation donating to Ireland — and spent fifteen years chasing it down.
Anelise Hanson Shrout, Ph.D., studied at the University of Chicago and New York University, and now teaches at Bates College, where she's an associate professor jointly appointed in history and digital and computational studies. Her research sits at the intersection of migration, philanthropy, and data — who helped Irish famine survivors survive, and what that reveals about the origins of international aid.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Bellevue project / Phillips Fellowship (2025–26)
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Christine Kinealy — famine historian cited in the episode; founding director, Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute, Quinnipiac University
"He had said, 'Will you give up one meal a day to aid the starving Irish?' … The enslaved people go away and they talk, and they come back and they say, 'We're not going to do that. We will, however, give you fifty dollars.'" — Dr. Anelise Shrout
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ABOUT THE GUEST
She spent three college summers hand-transcribing hospital ledgers from microfilm — and has spent the years since writing the immigrants in them back into history.
Anelise Hanson Shrout, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in Atlantic history from New York University and is now Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies and History at Bates College. She studies what old records reveal about who counted and who didn't — hospital ledgers, donation rolls, admission books kept by institutions that decided who belonged inside them. She is now writing a history of immigrants incarcerated in New York's Bellevue complex from 1790 to 1890.
EPISODE RESOURCES
PUBLISHED WORKS
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Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the Rise of Transnational Philanthropy (New York University Press, 2024)
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Christine Kinealy — famine historian cited in the episode; founding director, Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute, Quinnipiac University
"The New York City Department of Corrections actually began as part of a hospital — a hospital that was shaped largely in the 1840s by Irish immigrants." — Dr. Anelise Shrout
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