Ida Milne (Carlow College) & Paul Donnelly: 'The Elmes letters: a Wexford Protestant family in the 1798 rebellion and aftermath'

The Elmes Letters is a collection of family papers from a Protestant family network in south Wexford. They include letters written at the heart of the 1798 rebellion, from Wexford, London and Wales, bringing eagerly sought news about family members at this dangerous time. Several of their neighbours were slaughtered in the Scullabogue massacre, just three miles from their home. The letters reveal complex allegiances and differing attitudes to the rebellion within the local Protestant community. The talk considers the 1798 letters and the Elmes family in the longue durée, in a south Wexford where memory of the rebellion has to be carefully nuanced.

Dr Ida Milne is a Lecturer in European history at Carlow College. She completed her PhD at TCD on the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Ireland, which led to Stacking the Coffins, Influenza War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-19 (Manchester UP, 2018), and she continues to research the social history of disease and medicine. She is also interested in southern Irish Protestant history, and co-edited (with Ian d’Alton) Protestant and Irish, the minority’s search for place in independent Ireland (Cork UP, 2019), and in working lives in the newspaper industry and in medicine. Paul Donnelly is a public historian from Newtownards, Co. Down.

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