William J Duffney, a retired musician, educator and postal historian, will present the lecture, “The Quakers and Irish Famine Relief,” on Thursday, September 8, at 4 p.m. in the Carl Hansen Student Center, Room 225, at Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave in Hamden, Connecticut.

This event, sponsored by Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac, is free and open to the public. Registration is required at www.ighm.org.

Using original correspondence, Duffney will outline the efforts the Society of Friends (Quakers) made on behalf of the starving Irish during the Great Hunger, a period of mass starvation disease, and emigration in Ireland from 1845 and 1852.

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“The personal vignettes found within their letters bring us closer to the perspective of the people in their place and time,” Duffney said. “Political and social history, and maritime and postal history collided in unexpected ways.”

Duffney, who has traveled extensively in Ireland, oversees www.ctpostalhistory.com. For several years prior, he served as the editor of the Connecticut Postal History Society Journal.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac is home to the world’s largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the Irish Famine. The museum preserves, builds and presents its art collection in order to stimulate reflection, inspire imagination and advance awareness of Ireland's Great Hunger and its long aftermath on both sides of the Atlantic.

The museum, which is currently closed while necessary improvements are being made to the building, is scheduled to reopen on October 5.

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