An Post has recently marked the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence with a stamp featuring a portrait of the printer of the first copies of the Declaration, John Dunlap, who was born in Strabane, Co Tyrone, in 1746.
This is the latest in a sequence of Irish stamps that celebrate our connection with the US. These stamps have included a set of four issued in 1976 for the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence and a stamp in 2024 celebrating the centenary of Irish-US diplomatic relations.
The sequence of stamps began with two issued in 1939 for the 150th anniversary of the US constitution. They were of identical design but in different colours, and depicted George Washington with the dual symbols of the eagle and the Irish harp.
The stamp for Irish-US diplomatic relations also carried a potent symbol: an illustration of the bowl of shamrock that is presented by the taoiseach to the US president on St Patrick’s Day.
Post script: Felix Larkin on Ireland’s stamps celebrating US connections
Going Gone – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of Irish go-go dancing
Scuff and tumble: Frank McNally on the art of ageing pubs (also applicable to literature)
Baltic banter: Frank McNally on taking part in a ‘conversation festival’ in Latvia
The Dunlap stamp has given rise to a little controversy in Northern Ireland, with objections from certain quarters to An Post laying claim to an American of the Ulster-Scots tradition.
This is not, however, the first time an Ulster-Scots American has been honoured with an Irish stamp. In 1983, there was a stamp for Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the US, whose parents were both born in Co Antrim and left Ireland two years before Jackson’s birth in 1767.
No fewer than five Americans actually born in Ireland have featured on Irish stamps: Commodore John Barry, founder of the American navy; James Hoban, architect of the White House; John Philip Holland, inventor of the submarine; the composer Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, famous for writing, among other tunes, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”; and Carmel Snow, editor of Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958.
Gilmore and Snow appeared in sets of stamps issued in 2020 for The Irish Abroad and Pioneering Irish Women respectively. Holland was one of four inventors included in a set of science and technology stamps issued in 1981.
Barry was the subject of two stamps in 1956 on the occasion of the unveiling of his monument on the Wexford quayside, and he was included in a set of stamps for Irish Mariners in 2003.
Hoban was commemorated in a stamp in 1981 on the 150th anniversary of his death, and this stamp was a joint project with the US Post Office, which issued a stamp of similar design at the same time. There was further collaboration with the US Post Office on a stamp for John McCormack in 1984 and on a stamp in 1999 showing an Irish emigrant sailing ship as emblematic of Irish emigration to the US.
Barry and Hoban were referenced in US president John F Kennedy’s speech in Leinster House in 1963. He mentioned that he had Barry’s ceremonial sword hanging in the Oval Office in the White House, and he noted that Hoban was supposed to have been inspired by the architecture of Leinster House in designing the White House.
In that speech he also mentioned Thomas Francis Meagher, the Young Irelander who went on to become a distinguished general in the American Civil War and later governor of Montana. A stamp was issued in 2017 on the 150th anniversary of Meagher’s death by drowning in the Missouri river in suspicious circumstances.
JFK was himself featured three times on Irish stamps: in 1988, on the 25th anniversary of his death; in 1999, as one of a number of famous figures of the Millennium then drawing to a close; and in a set of two stamps in 2013 marking the 50th anniversary of his visit to Ireland.
The 1988 stamp used the magnificent posthumous portrait of Kennedy by the US artist Jamie Wyeth. Kennedy will be forever associated with the space programme, and in 2019 a set of four stamps featured astronauts of Irish-American descent – including Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Another Irish-American included in the Millennium stamps in 1999 was Princess Grace of Monaco, the former actress Grace Kelly. The Irish connection with Hollywood has been a recurring theme in Irish stamps.
Apart from Kelly, actors Barry Fitzgerald, Maureen O’Hara and Richard Harris have appeared on Irish stamps. In 2022, a set of stamps honouring Irish Oscar winners was issued.
The art historian Emily Mark-FitzGerald has written that “a stamp is an inherently humble physical artefact – paper, ink, adhesive – yet it is also fundamentally part of the bricks-and-mortar of state-building”.
The process of state-building includes the cultivation of international relationships, and Ireland’s American stamps have certainly played an important role in that.
