My paper focuses on the life of Rose McGrory to address broader shifts in identities across the Atlantic and throughout the United States. From a British colonial subject to an American colonial settler, Rose McGrory’s life illustrates how individuals refashioned their identities to confront and exploit the contradictions of race, gender, religion, and nation, revealing how they simultaneously challenged and conformed to societal norms in the process. Rose was born in 1884 in desolate Dunree, Ireland. Though Ireland and Britain were theoretically equals after their unionization in 1800, Rose lived in Ireland as a British colonial subject. For centuries, the British had represented the Irish as racially backwards to justify their colonization. In the decades after the Great Famine, females like Rose gained greater access to educational opportunities, but their socioeconomic prospects did not improve likewise. In this historical context, Rose immigrated to Boston in February 1905. Here, racial and gendered hierarchies confined Irish women like Rose to abject jobs like domestic servants. Although many Irish on the East Coast succeeded in their crusade to become perceived and treated as white, in part by distancing themselves from black people, Rose found Boston restrictive. Rose moved to Hood River, Oregon in 1910. In the west, the Irish had already associated their racial identity with whiteness by leading the racialization of the Chinese and Japanese as non-white. In this new racial landscape, Irish immigrants could transform themselves into “settlers”, an identity associated with whiteness and increased socioeconomic opportunity for Rose and her family. Rose’s life reveals the intricacies of her various identities and the complexities of the Irish-American immigrant experience. Integrating primary sources like censuses and newspapers with various scholarly literatures, my paper unveils Rose’s arduous journey and provocative story.