Irish Boston History & Heritage

Portrait of Louis St. Gaudens,  photo courtesy of Saint Gaudens National Historical Park  Louis St. Gaudens (1854-1913), whose iconic sculptures grace the American landscape today, was born in New York City on January 8, 1854. He was the son of Bernard Saint-Gaudens from France and Mary McGuinness from Ireland, and the brother and protégé of his older brother Augustus, considered the preeminent American sculptor of his generation.   The family had emigrated from Dublin to Boston in September 1848, fleeing the Irish Famine.  They stayed in Boston for about six months before moving to New York City, where they settled. Among the most revered works of Louis are the twin lion statues in the foyer of the Boston Public Library; a statue of Greek poet Homer in the Main Reading Room Rotunda of the Library of Congress; six allegorical figures encircling Union Station in Washington, DC, and 46 Roman legionnaire statues inside the station. Louis was schooled in the art of scul...

Trinity Church, Boston, 1890, courtesy of Boston Public Library English-born Irish rebel Robert Erskine Childers married Mary (Molly) Alden Osgood at Trinity Church in Boston on Tuesday, January 5, 1904. They met at a state dinner hosted by the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company at Faneuil Hall and were married after a three-week courtship. Both were idealists from upper class families whose passions turned toward Ireland. The Boston Globe called the wedding "One of the most interesting events of the social season in Boston....In the distinguished gathering which filled the auditorium of the church was quite a delegation of Londoners, all friends of Mr. Childers, who is clerk of the house of commons and a personal friend of Lord Denbigh." Childers was a gifted writer whose book,  Riddle of the Sands , published in 1903, is considered the first spy-novel thriller. In 1911 Childers published his book,  TheFramework of Home Rule , in which he decried British abuse of f...

Irishman  Patrick S. Gilmore , the famous 19th century musician and bandleader, started the annual tradition of the New Year's Eve countdown in New York City on December 31, 1888.   On this particular New Year's eve, the Gilmore Band performed for the large audience that gathered up and down Broadway, and then Gilmore led the crowd in a countdown, firing two pistols at the stroke of midnight.  In 1891, Gilmore applied for and received permits from New York City to hold a special concert in  Times Square , which at the time was simply known as the Long Acre, according to Gilmore historian Jarlath McNamara .   The area was renamed Times Square in 1904 when the New York Times opened its offices there. After living in Boston for more than two decades, Gilmore started a new chapter in his life and career when he moved to New York City in 1873, where he led the 22nd Regiment Band. The Gilmore Band performed frequently in the city, and for the final two decades of his ...

  On Friday, December 28, 1877, an order was passed in Boston City Council to pay sculptor Martin Milmore "an additional $8,1000 for extra work and materials for Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument" on Boston Common, which had been unveiled on September 17, 1877. Milmore had been awarded the commission on December 30, 1870 to build the Soldiers and Sailors War Memorial on Flagstaff Hill, winning over fifteen other proposals. The cost was not to exceed $75,000.  But when Milmore moved to Rome, Italy, where he spent nearly five years working on his masterpiece, he had a change of heart about what material to use.  According to City Councilor Sampson, "Under the contract, Mr. Milmore was to furnish a granite statue. After going abroad to complete his models it was suggested to him by observations made there that granite would be rather bad material to make the statues of on account of the softness of the lines to be made, and on account of its liability to be defaced by...

Rev. John Moorhead, portrait by John Greenwood, 1750 Presbyterian Reverend John Moorhead, head of New England's first Scots-Irish congregation, died in Boston in December 1773, just as the America Revolution was about to start.  Formerly of Newtonards, County Down,   Moorhead had emigrated with his congregation of 30 parishioners, and  established the Church of the Presbyterian Strangers in 1729. They built an Irish Meeting House in a converted barn at the corner of Berry Street and Long Lane (now Channing and Federal Street).  As church historian Harriett E. Johnson writes in  Handbook of the Arlington Street Church , (1929) these Scots-Irish were “Good, quiet, law-abiding citizens . . .. [W]ith their sober, steadfast, hardworking, moral philosophy of life they constituted an excellent balance to the idealistic, variable [Puritan], who so often preached freedom, but practiced intolerance and bigotry.” The Church of the Presbyterian Strangers had prospered enoug...

Mrs. Muriel MacSwiney, widowed wife of Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney, visited Boston two months after her husband died on October 20, 1920, after a 74-day hunger strike protesting British rule in Ireland.   She came here to express her gratitude to the Boston Irish for their steadfast support of her husband during his imprisonment and subsequent hunger strike.  She was accompanied by Harry Boland, secretary to Ireland's President Eamonn deValera, and her sister in law, Miss Mary MacSwiney. During her visit, MacSwiney met with William Cardinal O'Connell, and later attended a dinner in her honor at the Copley Square Hotel, attended by numerous Boston Irish leaders. The following day, the visitors went to the State House, where she was received in the Hall of Flags, and invited to address the Massachusetts Senate.  Addressing the senate, Mrs. MacSwiney said, "It gives me great pleasure to thank you for the greeting that has been extended to me today. I never made a pu...