I can tell you the exact moment I fell down the reporting rabbit hole, when I latched on the story like a dog to a bone. It was late summer 2021, in the fog of the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was spending the empty hours unravelling a classic Irish-American genealogical mystery: my great-grandfather had arrived in the States in 1922 on the run after being in the IRA.
For most of my life, I had used the tale to bolster my own ancestral bona fides, proof our Irishness transcended the paddywhackery so often associated with the diaspora. I loved the mystery of my great-grandfather’s story, this canvas over which I could drape my own heritage. But by 2021, I wanted more than broad strokes. I had become fascinated by one particular detail of his story. Although he had arrived in Boston, he quickly moved to Philadelphia. There, he nursed Irish republican sentiment until his death.
I wanted to know why he had fled to America, and why he had gone south. Why had Philly become home? Was there something that pulled him, an IRA veteran, to the city over any other? I started looking online for reports on the city’s diaspora, census numbers, extraneous colour.
Instead, a 1975 New York Times headline flickered across my screen: 5 Indicted in Philadelphia in Ulster Gunrunning.