Wherever Green is Worn explores the Irish diaspora all over the globe:
AMERICA: The entire expansion west owed a considerable debt to one Joseph Murphy, a wagon-maker who came from Co Louth at the age of 12. By 1839, he had established himself as a wagon-maker in St Louis, but then the Mexican government put a tax of $500 on each wagon entering its territory via the Santa Fe trail. Murphy reacted by inventing a wagon which held four or five times the normal load of 1,000 lbs. This minimised the tax bite considerably, and the trade which the Mexicans had hoped to kill flourished instead. Murphy also developed a new type of wagon for the Oregon trail. This had to be commodious enough to take both the families and the provisions for the lengthy journey. Accordingly, Murphy developed "the Prairie schooners", which sailed through hostile Indians and the empty vastness of the West, bearing the legend "J. Murphy, St. Louis" painted on their sides . . .
The most famous woman in American trade union history was Irish-born Mary Harris, better known as "Mother" Jones, the sobriquet she adopted to avoid police harassment. Harris came to live in Chicago after her husband and four children died in a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. Just as she was getting on her feet, she lost everything she owned in the great Chicago fire of 1871. She then joined the fledging Knights of Labour, and became a mine-workers' organiser. On one occasion, she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, at a kangaroo trial organised by the copper bosses in Colorado, but she was cleared after a Senate investigation. She took a leading role in most of the tumultuous turning-point trade union battles of her time . . .
No one really knows how many Irish died in the digging of New Orleans' New Basin Canal in the 1830s, but a figure of 20,000 to 30,000 is generally accepted. The canal lay through a swamp and men died like flies from cholera, malaria and yellow fever . . .
The Canal was six miles long, six feet deep and 60 feet wide. The Irish were paid a dollar a day for battling with black slime, mosquitoes, snakes and alligators. They lived in huts along the canal banks, shopped in the company store and used community lavatories. Slave owners would not allow slaves to work on the canal project because of the conditions and the disease. Initially the Irish were at the bottom of the New Orleans social pile. The city created particular difficulties for them. It was divided not only along colour lines, but by rivalry between the Americans and Creoles. Like the Amercians who despised them for their poverty and their religion, the Irish spoke English, but like the Creoles, who spoke French, they were Catholic. There was competition with the black population over work, and the Irish earned the reputation of being prepared to work for the lowest wages, thereby adding to the hostilities . . .
A galaxy of Irish film stars now twinkles in the Hollywood firmament. The list includes Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Patrick Bergin, Gabriel Byrne, Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Rea. The number of world stars who can claim either Irish parents or grandparents is remarkable: Tom Cruise, Sharon Stone, Harrison Ford, Roma Downey, John Travolta, Meg Ryan, Daniel Day Lewis, Mel Gibson, Dana Delaney, Jack Nicholson, Mia Farrow, Sean Penn, Helen Hayes, Brian Dennehy, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Marlon Brando (who applied for Irish citizenship after coming to Ireland in 1995 to make Divine Rapture) . . .
All the stars listed above have one thing in common: they follow in a long line of famous Irishmen and women who have dominated the American stage and screen, including James Cagney; George M. Cohan; Bing Crosby; John Ford; Jackie Gleason; Buster Keaton; Grace Kelly; Victor MacLaglen; Audie Murphy, who before becoming an actor was America's most decorated soldier; Pat O'Brien; Maureen O'Hara; and Ronald Reagan . . .
John Ford claimed he was born Sean Aloysius O'Feeney, but there was no "O" in the name of his parents, Sean and Barbara Feeney, to whom the young John was born shortly after they had left Galway for the US in 1894; and they would appear to have given him Martin rather than Aloysius as a middle name. However, either they or the gods also gave him a unique talent. Ford won five Academy Awards for his work as a director. Amongst the stars he developed was a young man who had been christened Marian Morrisson by his Irish-descended parents. Hollywood decided this was no name for a would-be he-man star, and he was rechristened John Wayne . . .