Digitized records show it was not just the poor who perished in the Famine, Irish doctors, lawyers, and once solidly middle-class families flocked and perished in Dublin workhouses during the Great Hunger too.
Who started the Irish tradition of presenting shamrock to the United States President? And why does the St. Patrick's Day tradition continue?
In 1952, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, John Hearne, sent a small box of shamrocks to US President Harry Truman.