Sourced from the record. Honest to the last stamp.

The family is invented. The world they live in is not. Every date, every event, every place the O'Donnells write about is drawn from the record, so the story holds up to the one reader who knows Ireland well enough to check it.

Here is how the history is researched, who researches and writes it, and the honesty we hold ourselves to. This is the evidence behind a heritage gift that lives or dies on being real.

How the history is researched

Every Book begins with the record, not the story. Before a single letter is written, the era is built from named, checkable sources: the National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, the local histories of the county the letters are set in, Co. Mayo in the sample, and the parish, workhouse and emigration records that document how ordinary people were actually born, married, moved and counted.

Those sources anchor the fiction to real, dated events. The American wake and the coffin ships of Black '47. The Land War that began in Mayo and gave the word "boycott" to the world. The Gaelic League, the Rising, the Somme, the War of Independence, the Emergency. When the family reacts to something, it is something that genuinely happened, in the month and the place the letter is written.

All of it sits inside a single story bible: ninety-six letters, eight Books of twelve, mapped out before the correspondence begins so the family, the dates and the history stay consistent across a whole century. It is one continuous life, not a set of loose scenes, and it is planned that way on purpose. You can read the story behind the letters, or see how it plays out across the eight Books.

Our honesty pledge

Everything here is built for one particular reader: the person who knows Ireland, and would spot a fake at a glance. That reader is the reason we hold to a few plain promises.

If a claim is not on this site, it is because it is not true yet.

We never invent proof. No made-up review scores, no star ratings, no subscriber counts, no testimonials from people who do not exist. We would rather show you less and have all of it be true.

The fiction is always labelled as fiction. The O'Donnell family is a work of the imagination, and we say so on every page where it matters. What is real is the world around them, and we are careful never to blur that line, or to sell you a story as if it were your own genealogy.

We tell the truth about the stamps. Ireland used British stamps, the Penny Black and the Penny Red, until it issued its own in 1922. So we never dress an 1847 letter in an Irish stamp that did not exist. Any period stamp shown is British Victorian, honestly labelled, and kept inside the envelope, never passed off on the outside as something it was not. It would be prettier to fudge it. We do not.

The Famine is handled with gravity. An Gorta Mor is not decoration here. It is the reason a family was broken across an ocean, and it is written with the weight a bereavement is owed. We do not invent suffering for effect, and we do not romanticise it.

The same rule runs through the whole site, from Brigid's 1847 letter to the common questions: plain answers, and nothing claimed that we cannot stand over at the kitchen table.

Who is behind the letters

Yours, From Ireland is made by Maebh Collins, an Irishwoman with a love of genealogy and Irish history, not a faceless brand or a print shop reselling someone else's template. The research, the story bible and the letters are the work of her one hand: she reads the sources, plots the century, and writes the correspondence the family sends home.

That is the honest truth of it, and we would rather state it plainly than dress it up.