>Ft. Leavenworth K.T. [Kansas Territory]
May 30th 1858

My Dear Parents

Tomorrow we will take up our line of march and although I have a great deal to do I take the advantage of a few moments leisure to write you a few lines…

So begins a letter from George Ryan (signed Your aff son) to his parents, John and Johanna Ryan. This letter represents one of over 1200 individual pieces of correspondence contained in the Ryan Family papers at CatholicU.

This is a collection of an Irish American family’s correspondence, primarily spanning two generations from the 1820s through the American Civil War. Starting with their arrival in Massachusetts, going into business and raising families in Connecticut, later moving on to Illinois and Missouri, the Ryans were involved in business, politics, immigration, the Catholic Church, and the military.

The first generation – John, Mathew, Charles, and Kyran Ryan – was born in Ireland and arrived in New York City on July 10, 1827. The brothers started their lives in the United States, working in the textile mills of Massachusetts. In 1835, John Ryan married Johanna Boomer Reed and their first son, George, was born one year later. Also in 1836, the Ryans purchased a woolen mill of their own in Norfolk, Connecticut. (They would operate this mill for the next 20 years.) John and Johanna’s family would grow to include 12 further children in addition to George.

John, who is the focus of the collection in this generation, became deeply involved in local Democratic politics and the temperance movement. He was heavily involved in helping Irish Potato Famine refugees in the 1840s. In 1858, following the dissolution of the family mill, John took his family to Decatur, Illinois, where he worked as a lawyer and the local postmaster.

In the 1850s, the focus of the collection shifts to the next generation, with correspondence primarily from John and Johanna’s first two children, sons George and Mat. George graduated from West Point in 1857 as a commissioned officer in the 7th Infantry. This position took him to Utah in 1858 as part of the Utah War and to New Mexico in 1860 as part of the Navajo Wars. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, George spent time as a prisoner of war, only to be paroled in 1862. From 1863-1864, he served as the commander of the 140th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. In May 1864, George was killed leading a charge the next day at Laurel Hill, beginning the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Upon George’s death, his personal effects were sent to his surviving family in a footlocker inscribed with a comrade’s last name, “Crilly”. This footlocker would serve as the Ryan Family paper’s home until its donation to CatholicU in 2002, passed down from descendants of his brother Mat.

While George pursued a military career, Mat focused on business and obtained an appointment as a wartime sutler for a hometown volunteer regiment, the 35th Illinois. Mat followed this regiment through Missouri and into the Tennessee theater of war. Mat, marrying Nancy Lawrence, settled in St. Louis and became a successful businessman and local politician, serving in the Missouri legislature.

The many stories contained within the thousands of letters of the Ryan Family papers are difficult to summarize, but detail the story of an Irish-American family navigating the challenges of nineteenth-century America. The collection is transcribed and available digitally online here: Ryan Family Papers