SNIPPET: Perhaps you can find this book in your library, if the subject interests you - "Irish American Landmarks: A Traveler's Guide," by John A. BARNES, Visible Ink Press (1995). The author takes you on a 46-state, two provinces (Quebec and Ontario) journey through decades of Irish-American tragedy and triumph. Bagpipes enthusiast editorial writer for the "Detroit News," Barnes recalls listening fondly to stories told by his grandfather, John McAULLIFEE, a native of Co. Cork. To research material for his book, Barnes hopped into his car and visited places he had heard about near and far and managed to rediscover some long-forgotten and neglected landmarks. Among other things, he found that James CONNOLLY, the Irish labor leader and a rebel in 1916, lived in the U.S. for a decade, and that there was a monument to him in Troy, NY. Barnes found that the most Irish place in America was not where you might think it might be. It was in the hills and dales of TN (yes, Tennessee), in Houston Co., to be exact., where some 40% of the county's 7,000 residents claimed Irish ancestry in the 1990 census. Little wonder, then, that the county is home to a town called Erin. Barnes' tour takes readers to Duffy Square, Tammany Hall and Ellis Island in NY, to the home of the legendary Boston politician James Michael CURLEY (whose house had shamrock shutters), and to the courthouse in Jim Thorpe, PA, where the Molly Maguires were tried and convicted in the 1870s. The author takes you to the bust of Union Brigadier Gen. Michael LAWLER, Vicksburg, MS, to the Irish Brigade Monument, Gettysburg, PA, adorned with a Celtic cross and Irish wolfhound, to the Dick DOWLINS Memorial, Sabihepass, TX, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, John F. KENNEDY's home in Boston. You see a photo of the "Margaret" status in New Orleans, LA. The first statue of a woman erected in the U.S., it commemorates Cavan-born Margaret GAFFNEY HAUGHEY, who worked with the city's orphans in the early 19th century. You learn about the Tuskahoma, OK, Choctaw Nation Museum featuring exhibits showing the help this indigent Native American tribe sent to the starving Irish during the Great Potato Famine. You read about the young, talented granddaughter of Irish immigrants, Georgia O'KEEFFE, born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, WI, who began visiting an area near Taos, New Mexico in the 1930s. Soon, she was bringing along her paint and easel, and became a very important artist who sought beauty by isolating and intensifying such things in nature as the skulls of animals and flowers. The artist died in NM in 1986. One of the author's favorite discoveries took place in a Civil War-era fort in Hampton, VA. The fiery Irish patriot, journalist and Confederate sympathizer John MITCHEL was imprisoned in the facility, Fort Monroe, after the Civil War ended, thanks to his outspoken sympathy for the South. He thus became perhaps the only Irish exile to be held as a political prisoner in both Britain and the United States, (although John DEVOY, the legendary Fenian, might quibble with such a conclusion as Devoy served time in British prisons after the Fenian rising of 1867, and later did 60 days in NY for libeling the politically-connected banker August BELMONT). Banres visited a statue of the Irish patriot Robert EMMET in Emmetsburg, IA. There is an amusing story connected with the statue having apparently been "stolen" in the late 1950s, after a town in MN refused to return it to Emmetsburg. -- Excerpts, "Irish America" magazine (1995)