It is a story that started like so many Others…

A family leaves Waterford, Ireland for a better life. The new country is challenging and the home land and relatives left behind still pull at the heart.

The Flanagan Family first settled in the Philadelphia area before returning to Waterford to help with family left behind. They family returned to the Albany ,New York area and eventually relocated to New York City where the brothers found fame performing in the popular dance halls. The place where Irish immigrants gathered for a bit of the old life left behind in Ireland.

The Flanagan brothers—Joe, Louis, and Mike—were born at the end of the nineteenth century and raised in the city of Waterford, on the south coast of Ireland. Their father, Arthur Flanagan, was a coachman and quay laborer in Waterford, where he met and, in 1890, married Ellen Keane. Working on the quays, Arthur was familiar with the ships that plied the trade to the United States, and as a young man he had made several working trips there. Ellen and Arthur began married life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The eldest daughter was born there but family subsequently returned to Waterford and settled in a three-room house on Summerhill Terrace where five more children were born - two girls and three boys. The children were educated at the local school - conducted by religious order, the De La Salle Brothers - not far from the family home near Waterford's city center.

Arthur and Ellen, along with all of their children, returned to America in 1911, this time settling in Albany, New York, where Arthur's uncle, Ed Lynch, lived. The family's passage was paid by Ed, and it was in his home on Morton Avenue in Albany that the Flanagans settled initially to begin a new life. Louis and Mike completed their education at St. Anne's School in Albany.

Music was an every day part of life in the Flanagan household. Father Arthur played the single row accordion or melodeon, while mother Ellen was a singer with a large repertoire of Irish songs, which she taught to her children. Mike recalled that his first introduction to playing music was in Waterford when, at the age of ten, he plucked out a tune on a charred mandolin he had recovered from a fire. Later, in Albany, he joined family music sessions with his father and brother Joe, who was learning to play the accordion.

The family was attracted to the bright lights of New York City. Joseph found a job as a clerk in Manhattan in 1918. Mike joined him there and found work shoeing horses for a blacksmith (ferrier) in the colorful midtown Irish neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. The family set up house on E. 88th St.