Minnesota State Arts Board Grant 2024

Author Jannet L. Walsh, March 16, 2024, at the Minnesota State Capitol. Photo by Jannet L. Walsh.
This trip was part of her Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant 2024, viewing The Fifth Minnesota at Corinth painting in the Governor’s Reception Room.

Jannet Walsh is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

ABOUT THE GRANT
View link to Fiscal Year 2024 Creative Individuals at the Minnesota State Arts Board website, see grantees, and their projects. All research and travel took place in Minnesota, but includes family history from Ireland and Canada, with emphasis of forgotten family stories in Minnesota, American Civil War to present day life in rural Swift County, Minnesota.

1863 Civil War letter from Chaplain John Ireland

**Civil War Letter** — This is a portion of a letter written by Chaplain John Ireland, later Archbishop of the Diocese of Saint Paul. He wrote U.S. Major General Ulysses S. Grant, March 19, 1863, asking to resign as chaplain of the Fifth Regiment of Minnesota, from Helena, Arkansas. Ireland writes to Grant his bishop, then Bishop Thomas Grace, needed him back in Minnesota due to a sick clergyman. Author Jannet Walsh’s Great-Great Uncle James D. Foley served as a solider in the same regiment as Ireland, and sent letters home to Minnesota. Source: United States National Archives.

Creative Individuals grant is designed to help individual artists and culture bearers develop or sustain their creative practices and meaningfully engage with Minnesotans. Grantees may use funds to support their creative practice and meaningfully connect to and engage with audiences, participants, students, and/or communities during the grant period.

**1950s Love Letters to Murdock** — This is a box of family letters from the parents of author Jannet L. Walsh, Murdock, Minnesota. The letters were written by the late Margaret “Peggy” Glieden Walsh, Brooten, Minnesota, and the late father Martin J. Walsh Jr., originally from Murdock, Minnesota.

Artist goal for writing project
“My goal for the grant is to write a new collection of nonfiction family history stories in Minnesota, arriving before the Civil War and eventually homesteading in Swift County. Stories will be used to create a manuscript ready to seek a book publisher.”
Jannet L. Walsh
2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Author Jannet L. Walsh, of Murdock, Minnesota, Feb. 15, 2024, at the Cathedral of Saint Paul, Saint Paul, Minnesota. This was part of a research trip to the Saint Paul, including the Minnesota History Center. Self portrait by Jannet L. Walsh.

View biography of Jannet L. Walsh

View online profile of Jannet L. Walsh

Manuscript title:
Dispatches from Edge of the World
Collection of stories from rural Minnesota
by
Jannet L. Walsh

Manuscript Summary: This is a creative nonfiction collection of mainly Irish family history stories in Minnesota by Jannet L. Walsh of Murdock, Minnesota. Her family arrived in Minnesota before the Civil War, homesteading on the prairie lands of rural Swift County, Minnesota. Walsh’s family was among the first in a series of Catholic colonies established in 1876 by Archbishop John Ireland in De Graff, Minnesota. There were 4,000 families selected for colonies, including her family in De Graff, the first colony, 1877, to make new lives as farmers. Her Irish Walsh family left County Kilkenny, Ireland, 1842, to escape famine, the Great Famine, along with religious, racial, and political discrimination under British rule. After arrival in North American, her family followed a long path of migration, about 35 years, from Ireland, Canada, and finally rural Minnesota. Her writing is as ‘you are there’ writing style, along with use of letters, epistolary form, weaving family history to world history, finding the extraordinary hiding in plain sight, and showing readers history lives in our own homes. What is presented here explores the author’s quest to preserve and gather stories, antiquated and modern, understand her family as ancestor’s journey after finding a permanent home living on the edge of the world in rural Minnesota.

Manuscript Blurb
Dispatches from the Edge of the World by Jannet L. Walsh (2025)
By Tracy Ross

“I am the editor and writing mentor of the forthcoming work, Dispatches from the Edge of the World by Jannet L. Walsh. Ms. Walsh has a dedication and passion that is unmatched. Her attention to research, genealogical detail and accuracy, makes this manuscript a fascinating account of not only the origins of Irish heritage in America, but a dive into the search for meaning and identity. She has traveled and data mined extensively in the preparation of this family history, merging profound self inquiry with exact deconstruction of ancestral perseverance and reliance in light of present day circumstance. This is a monumental work of genealogical record and thoughtful self awareness.

What is even more remarkable, is Ms. Walsh takes the reader, step by step, through her own awakenings in the present on her quest to find answers to these origins and cultural benchmarks. Whether it be traveling to the country of Ireland for unearthing ties to the roots of heritage, or chronicling the migration of ancestors over sea and land to Canada and America, she invites the reader to discover with her, sharing the illuminations of real time epiphanies.

Ultimately, Dispatches from the Edge of the World is a paramount undertaking of promise, embodying in depth searching for both cultural history and the person-hood of American identity. It encompasses universals of human experience along with the importance of knowing the past in order to progress forward. A fascinating and noteworthy manuscript of depth and insight.”

Tracy Ross, July 8, 2025

About Tracy Ross
Tracy Ross is a poet and writer. She is a 2025 recipient of a McKnight Fellowship in Writing (Creative Prose). She has published four books of poetry, most recently When Lightning Strikes—Nikola’s Dove (2023) about the life, genius, and neurodivergence of Nikola Tesla. She is also the author of Binary Logic (short stories) and Certainty of One—A Tale of Education Automation (dystopia memoir). Currently her work, “What We Can Become on the Verge of Global Unity” will be featured in The Journal of Fantastic Art (August/Sept. 2025). She has been published in Memoir Magazine, Wayne Literary Review, Still Points Arts Quarterly, 34th Parallel, Sublunary Review, The Journal of Poetry Therapy, and Author Magazine. Ross holds a B.A. from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a Master’s in Education from Bemidji State University. She is an alum of the MFA Creative Writing program at Augsburg University where she also teaches writing and research to undergraduates. You may learn more about Ms. Ross at her website, rosspoet.org.

Author Jannet L. Walsh, of Murdock, Minnesota, July 27, 2024, with Tiger Lilies in bloom at home in Murdock. Self portrait by Jannet L. Walsh.

Edge of the world sketch, Murdock, Minnesota, 2015

View of inspiration at the Edge of the World, Murdock, Minnesota — Watercolor and ink sketch by Jannet L. Walsh, Murdock, Minnesota, 2015. This view of Murdock inspired Walsh to continue writing about rural Minnesota.

**Writing notebooks** — Here’s a view of some of the notebooks used to create latest manuscript now underway of Jannet L. Walsh, of Murdock, Minnesota. Walsh carries a notebook with her daily, recording life in rural Murdock, Minnesota. Nearly all her writing starts in a notebook first. Photo taken July 8, 2025, by Jannet L. Walsh

Listing of blogs, stories at JannetWalsh.com
and other sources related to this writing project

June 30, 2025, Send letters, cards by mail, start preserving family history, by Jannet L. Walsh, blog published at JannetWalsh.com. This blog is in response to concerns by Walsh regarding the loss of letter writing, created with pen and paper. During her grant for the Minnesota State Arts Board FY 2024, she was writing about family letters, love letters, containing interesting details to life in 1958-1959, rural Minnesota. She thinks family history, artifacts found as primary sources, is slipping away quickly each day due to the lack of letter writing, hard copies, sent through the United States Postal System, USPS. Family letters often provide lost details to gather family history, an insight into the past about relationships, living conditions, and daily life. Digital communication is deleted often after it’s written. A movement of slow communications, snail mail, is needed to combat loss of letter writing, and family history found in letters, postcards and greeting cards. The county of Denmark will end letter delivery starting 2026, due to digital communication.
June 27, 2025, updated June 29, 2025, Writing grant ends for Creative Individuals grant, Minnesota State Arts Board, National Endowment for the Arts, 2024, by Jannet L. Walsh, blog published at JannetWalsh.com. Details about the grant, and nonfiction writing practice by Jannet L. Wash, and her writing series. Blog was updated on June 29, 2025, due to emails and requests about searching for family history in Swift County, Minnesota. A listing of Swift County’s first recorded pioneers, European in origin was added to the story, and is downloadable as a PDF at the blog post. This blog has been shared on Facebook pages and groups by family historians.

Interviews, publicity, talks about Jannet L. Walsh

January 31, 2025, interview about Archbishop John Ireland and his first colony, De Graff, Minnesota. Video by Abigail Peters, University of St. Thomas student. Interview, November 23, 2024, Murdock, Minnesota. See video at YouTube, “Becoming American: Archbishop John Ireland and the Catholic Colonization Bureau of St. Paul.” Interview with Jannet L. Walsh starts approximately at 6:30 in the video.

April 22, 2024, Archbishop John Ireland Talk, Zetetic Study Club spring luncheon at McKinny’s, Benson, Minnesota. This was not a planned activity for the grant, but did present new information I found during my research trips to Saint Paul, part of Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, Creative Individuals, Fiscal Year 2024. There was a very engaged, and active question and answer session following the presentation. Walsh talked about the family of. the late Archbishop John Ireland, and the first of his Irish Catholic colonies in De Graff, Minnesota.
Announcement by the Minnesota State Arts Board Grant
Creative Individuals, Fiscal Year 2024
Jannet L. Walsh, Murdock, $10,000
Walsh will write a new collection of nonfiction family history stories in Minnesota, arriving before the Civil War and eventually homesteading in Swift County. Stories will be used to create a manuscript ready to seek a book publisher.

Creative Individuals is designed to help individual artists and culture bearers develop or sustain their creative practices and meaningfully engage with Minnesotans. Grantees may use funds to support their creative practice and meaningfully connect to and engage with audiences, participants, students, and/or communities during the grant period. See details at Minnesota State Arts Board Grant website.

Learn more about the Minnesota State Arts Board, and apply for grants, see Creative Individuals grants.

**Civil War Letters and Minnesota Connections** — Author Jannet L. Walsh, of Murdock, Minnesota, March 16, 2024, at Historic Fort Snelling Round Tower, Saint Paul, as part of a research trip for a chapter about her relative James D. Foley, served in the American Civil War, and the late Archbishop John Ireland, both veterans of the Fifth Minnesota, Battle of Corinth, 1862. Foley and Ireland both wrote letters back home to Minnesota from the battle fields. Foley was a solider, and Ireland was military chaplain. Self-portrait by Jannet L. Walsh.

Jannet L. Walsh of Murdock, Minnesota is a photographer, writer, and educator. She is the author of a creative nonfiction quest narrative “Higgledy-Piggledy Stones: Family Stories from Ireland and Minnesota,” 2023, by Shanti Arts Publishing. Walsh is recipient of a Southwest Minnesota Arts Council Growth Grant funded by the McKnight Foundation, 2022-2024, and Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, 2024-2026. She is also recipient of a 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant, funding from National Endowment for the Arts. You can follow Walsh on Facebook and Twitter, and on her other social media channels, with the hashtag #IrishFamilyHistoryDetective.