Our Family History

Family Reunion 2025

Family Tree Histories

Graceville — The “Connemaras” in Minnesota
A film by Bob Quinn. Copyright © 1997.

In June 1880, a shipload of impoverished families of fishermen and smallholders from the West of Ireland was transported to Minnesota by the Bishop of St. Paul. Each family was given twenty acres of rich prairie land from which the Dakota Sioux had recently been driven.

Things went badly. Watch the video.

The Graceville Home

Mary Lou Erickson

She embodied all that is good, pure, and noble in the word “Mother.”