Irish Boston History & Heritage

Roxbury Soldier at Forest Hills Cemetery A notice in the Boston Evening Transcript, dated February 18, 1869, reported that Martin Milmore 's Roxbury Soldier bronze statue was on temporary display at Boston City Hall on School Street, across from the statue of Ben Franklin. The piece had just been cast at Ames Works in Chicopee, MA and had been commissioned by the Town of Roxbury for placement in Forest Hills Cemetery. "It deservedly attracts much attention from the throngs of people who are constantly passing through that thoroughfare," BET reported.  Clay Model of Roxbury Soldier in Milmore's Studio on Tremont Street Image Courtesy of Library of Congres s The Town of Roxbury commissioned the statue which it "purchased a lot in the Forest Hills Cemetery upon recovering the bodies of 8 local soldiers from the Antietam Battlefield in 1862," according to a National Portrait Galley exhibit in 2006.  "We have spoken heretofore of this fine work when in the c...

General John Sullivan, a hero in the War for Independence and a key figure in ending the Siege of Boston, was born in Somersworth, NH on February 17, 1740.    Sullivan was the third of five sons born to Owen Sullivan of Limerick and Margery Browne of Cork, both indentured servants from Ireland. He and his brothers were home-schooled by their father, who had been a teacher in Ireland.  His brother  James Sullivan  was governor of Massachusetts and his brothers Daniel and Ebenezer also fought in the American Revolution.  John became a lawyer, served in the New Hampshire legislature, and was chosen as a member of the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress in 1775.  As the Revolutionary War escalated, Sullivan was selected as one of General George Washington’s eight Brigadier Generals in the Colonial Army.  When  Henry Knox  delivered the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Massachusetts in the w...

  Image Courtesy of Mass Moments Thursday, February 4, 1993 was Larry Bird Night at the old Boston Garden, when the Boston Celtics officially retired Larry Bird '33 jersey and hoisted it to the rafters. It was an event for the ages, with Larry's former teammates and coaches returning en masse to honor one of the most consequential basketball players in NBA history, and certainly one of the Celtics' most legendary players.  During his 13 year career with the Boston Celtics Bird led the team to NBA championships in 1981, 1984, and 1986. He is also the only person in NBA history to win MVP, Coach of the Year, and Executive of the Year.  At the Larry Bird Night, Magic Johnson was there, and so were teammates Cedric Maxwell, Rick Robey and M.L.Carr, along with Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. Bird's wife Dinah and son Connor were on the parquet, along with Bird's mother Georgia, his sister Linda and brothers, Mike, Mark, Jeff and Eddie.  The Garden itself was packed to...

  Louise Bogan photo, courtesy of Library of Congress Acclaimed American poet Louise Bogan (1897-1970) was born in Livermore Falls, Maine on August 11, 1897, the daughter of Irish Catholic parents whose own parents had emigrated from Donegal and Derry in the 19th century.  A story in the Livermore Advertiser in September 2023 reveals more about her ancestry. “Bogan was the granddaughter of a sea captain who emigrated from Ireland to Portland, Maine, before the potato famine of the 1840s. The couple had 12 children and built a home on Captain’s Hill in Portland. The eldest, Daniel Bogan, was Louise Bogan’s father, who married Mary Murphy Shields in 1882. ” Because her father worked in paper mills and bottling plants, the family moved around often, in Maine, New Hampshire and finally to Andover, Massachusetts.  Image courtesy of Beltway Poetry Louise began writing poetry at age 14, attending both the Girls Latin School in Boston and then Boston University for one year. ...

Jeremiah Cohan, circa 1915 Jeremiah Cohan, a traveling minstrel who toured the country with his wife and two children in the late 19th century until they became vaudeville stars on Broadway, was born on Blackstone Street in Boston's North End on January 31, 1848.   He was one of 10 children born to Michael Keohane and Jane Scott, both emigrants from Bantry Bay, County Cork who had moved to Boston in the 1840s. Michael worked as a tailor and died when Jeremiah was 11.  At the time, the North End was a heavily Irish neighborhood due to the number of immigrants who came here to escape the Irish Famine between 1945-49. As a boy, Jeremiah worked as a saddle and harness maker and became a Surgeon orderly during the Civl War, before turning to music, dancing and acting.  "From a boy he was an expert dancer," wrote the New Britain Herald.  "It is said that he had inherited some talent for the stage from an Irish minstrel among his forebears."  He married Nellie Cos...

On January 24, 1776, Bostonian Henry Knox (1750-1806) arrived at General George Washington's Colonial Army headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with news that some 60 tons of weapons, including 58 cannons and assorted artillery, had been successfully transported from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to the outskirts of Boston.  The weapons were being used to fortify American defenses against the British occupying forces during the Siege of Boston. Historian J.L. Bell suggests that the bulk of the weaponry may have been held at Framingham, MA, and that Knox was simply reporting to General Washington about the successful mission on January 24. Knox was the mastermind and commander of what became known as the Noble Train of Artillery, a 300 mile trek across a frozen landscape in the dead of winter. Knox and his men dragged the arsenal across hills and mountains, frozen lakes and fields, on boats and sleds, with horse and oxen, through dozens of small villages in eastern New York and...