CHICAGO – One hundred years ago, a few thousand miles away across the Atlantic, a quiet moment in history rippled across northwestern Europe.
The day was April 18, 1926. Ireland was coming off centuries of British rule and a bloody civil war and hadn’t paused to understand where it stood, or how it had changed, in years. But the young nation was dawning a new age. And that spring night, Ireland conducted its first census in more than a decade – its first as a free state.
Today, there are few living testaments to that headcount. But newly revealed records show that one of them is just a few miles outside of Chicago. And she’s a spitfire…