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Grief and Hardships on the Family Tour
Between 1827 and 1854, Dorothea and John Ladeveze Adlercron of Moyglare, Co. Meath, and their children made a series of tours of France, Switzerland and Italy. Dorothea (1800–79) was daughter of Abraham George Rothe (1768–1846) of Kilkenny and Anne Salisbury (d. 1842). Detailed records of these tours survive in Dorothea’s diaries and the passports issued to the family in various…
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Dublin Obstetrician Meets ‘Ideal Man’ in the Arctic, 1812
In 1812, Thomas McKeevor, a young Dublin obstetrician, crossed the Atlantic as physician to around 70 Irish and Hebridean migrants to the Red River Colony or “Selkirk Settlement” in Canada. In 1819, he published a short, 76-page account of the journey, describing Canadian natural history and the Inuit and First Nations. The book bore a long, descriptive title typical…
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Peter Fidler: the fur-trader who trekked 48,000 miles
Peter Fidler was one of Canada’s greatest exploratory surveyors and his work formed the basis for the mapping of Western Canada. He produced two large-scale shoreline sketch maps, eight smaller-scale maps, and 373 segmental sketch maps, representing 7,300 miles of track and river. While travelling an estimated 48,000 miles by foot and canoe, he assisted in the establishment…
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Attempted Murder and Swindling Children: Irish Accounts of 19th-Century Belarus
“I have just written the word Kattova, and what think you, Ladys and gentlemen the place is like?” (Martha Wilmot to her mother, 29 June 1804, Royal Irish Academy, Wilmot papers, MS 12L24, p. 216) Today, Belarus is a country relatively few Irish people visit. In the early nineteenth century, however, the region was the westernmost portion of the…
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John Lee: Traveller, Egyptologist, Astronomer
John Lee is not well remembered today, but in his lifetime he was known across Britain and Ireland, South Africa, North America, and north Africa. Lee’s home, Hartwell, was celebrated for its observatory and for his private collection of ancient artefacts. How did a merchant’s son rise to such celebrity in scientific and antiquarian circles?…
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