01
Sep
FOCUS ON HISTORY - An Irish immigrant woman who lived and worked in Amsterdam became a national union leader in the 19th century.Leonora Kearney Barry wrote. “Day after day, I sat sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen.”Leonora was born in 1849 in Cork. Her parents, John and Honor Kearney, fled the Irish potato famine and settled in Pierrepont in northern New York where her father worked a farm.When Leonora was in her early teens, her mother died. Her father married a woman five years older than his daughter and the two women did not get along. Leonora took…
