The O'Brien Family originally came from county Galway, Ireland, and members of this family immigrated from Ireland to the United States from 1848 to 1897. Philip O'Brien completed the family genealogy and traced his roots back to 1835. O'Brien's great grandparents, Dennis and Alice Calahan, were born in Ireland and immigrated during the Great Famine (1845-1850) first to England, and then to the United States in 1848. They settled in the Irish neighborhood known as The Angle, on West 25th Street and Washington Avenue, in Cleveland, Ohio. Three generations of his family fought in four different wars. Michael Eagan fought in the Spanish American War, William J. O'Brien fought in World War I, Eugene O'Brien fought in the Korean War, and Philip himself fought in World War II. Members of these families made Ohio and Pennsylvania their home.
The Philip O'Brien Family Papers, 1835-2003, consist of death records, genealogies, baptisms, cemetery records, necrology records, essays, pedigree chart and United States Federal Census records.
This collection is of value to those seeking information about the Irish community in northeast Ohio. This collection will be of special interest to those seeking information about early immigrants from Ireland who settled in the Western Reserve Region. Those interested in Irish participation in the United States Army will find this collection useful. Genealogists tracing the roots of the Eagan, Egan, O'Brien, Flannery, Sommerly, Finnigan, Furey, Callaghan, Joyce, Boyle families and ties to County Galway, Ireland will find this collection to be of value. Individuals seeking information regarding Irish history from pre famine times until the turn of the twentieth century, as it relates to Irish immigration to the United States will find this collection to be of use.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by document type, and then chronologically.
All photographs have been removed to PG 529 Philip O'Brien Family Photographs.
Processed by Regina Costello in 2004.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 4918 Philip O'Brien Family Papers, The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of Philip O'Brien in 2003.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.