Michael Corcoran

Alfred Webb

A Compendium of Irish Biography

1878

Corcoran, Michael, Brigadier-General, U.S.A., was born at Carrowkeel, County of Sligo, 2ist September 1827. He emigrated to the United States in 1849, obtained a clerkship in the Post Office, and first came into notice as Colonel of the 69th New York Militia. On the call for troops, April 1861, he took the field with his men, and distinguished himself at the battle of Bull Run, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. He was confined successively at Richmond, Charleston, Columbia, and other places, and was one of the officers selected for execution, had the Federal Government carried out its threat of hanging as pirates the captured crews of several Confederate privateers. Exchanged next year, and was made Brigadier-General, dating from 21st July 1861. He recruited an Irish legion, and served in North Carolina at the battles of the Nausemond River and Suffolk, and checked the advance of the Confederates upon Norfolk. He died of severe injuries received by a fall from his horse, near Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia, 22nd December 1863, aged 36.

Sources

37a. Biographical Dictionary—American Biography: Francis S. Drake. Boston, 1876.

Featured Books

An American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine:

Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger

Sailing from New York, she set out to determine the condition of the Irish poor and discover why so many were emigrating to her home country.

Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today.

The author returned to Ireland in 1847–49 to help with famine relief and recorded those experiences in the rather harrowing: Annals of the Famine in Ireland.

See more of our books »

The Ocean Plague: or, A Voyage to Quebec in an Irish Emigrant Vessel is based upon the diary of Robert Whyte who, in 1847, crossed the Atlantic from Dublin to Quebec in an Irish emigrant ship. His account of the journey provides invaluable eyewitness testimony to the trauma and tragedy that many emigrants had to face en route to their new lives in Canada and America. The book is also available in Kindle.

The Irish in America by John F. Maguire provides a substantial and invaluable account of the extreme difficulties faced by pioneer Irish immigrants in North America during the 19th Century. The book is also available in Kindle.

The Scotch-Irish in America tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century. It relates the circumstances under which the great exodus to the New World began, the trials and tribulations faced by these tough American pioneers and the enduring influence they came to exert on the politics, education and religion of the country.

Show fewer titles