Irish Boston History & Heritage

Portrait of W.B. Yeats by John S. Sargent, 1908 Courtesy of John J. Burns Library at Boston College  On this day in history: Irish poet and playwright   William Butler Yeats   addressed an audience at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston on September 28, 1911 on the subject, "History of the Irish National Theatre and its Purposes." As managing director of Dublin 's   Abbey Theatre , Yeats was in the United States to introduce a new literary movement taking place in Ireland that he hoped would be "the awakening of the mind of Ireland ." The   Plymouth Theatre , located at Eliot Street (now Stuart) and Tremont Street , was a brand new playhouse, described as "a cozy, compact and home like-arrangement, with the seats in all parts of the house as near the stage as possible."  The Abbey players christened the new theatre with their productions.   The Irish plays on opening night included The Shadow of the Glenn by John M. Synge, Birthright by T...

The classic war anthem, " When Johnny Comes Marching Home ," was first performed at Tremont Temple in Boston on Saturday, September 26, 1863 by  Patrick S. Gilmore  and his Orchestra.  Gilmore originally published the song - also known as the "Soldiers Return March" - under the pseudonym Louis Lambert for reasons unknown, but later acknowledged that he authored the piece.  The song appeared during the height of the American Civil War, and was meant as an optimistic tribute "dedicated to the Army and Navy of the Union."   Henry Tolman & Company of Boston was the publisher.  Gilmore expert  Michael Cummings  surmises that Gilmore took the song for an earlier Irish marching song called "Johnie I Hardly Knew Ye," which was apparently sung by Irish regiments fighting for the British in Ceylon in the early 19th century.  Cummings, who founded the  Patrick S. Gilmore Society   to preserve Gilmore's memory, notes...

Mayor John B. Hynes Boston Globe reporter Andrew Ryan , who is covering Mayor Marty Walsh's trip to Ireland , has written in Monday's paper that another Boston mayor, also from Dorchester and with Galway roots, visited the old country back in 1953, according to Pat Hynes , a member of the Galway City Council. That was Mayor John B. Hynes , who served three terms as mayor, from 1950-1959.  Hynes left Logan International Airport for Shannon Airport in Ireland on October 15, 1953, the first leg of a trip that would also take him to France, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel, where he joined other U.S. Mayors on a fact finding visit. Once in Ireland, Mayor Hynes sent his own dispatch to the Boston Globe on October 16, describing his drive from Shannon to Dublin, traveling the 140 miles through Limerick, Tipperary and Kildare. He was joined by his wife Marion, three of his five children, and a coterie of city hall officials and friends. On October 17 h...

On this day in history, Patrick A. Collins (1844-1905), the city's second Irish-born Mayor, died suddenly while on vacation at Hot Springs, VA, at 10:15 on September 14, 1905. The cause of death was acute gastritis, an ailment he had endured for some time.  His son Paul was at the bedside with him when he died. His sudden death shocked Boston's political establishment and its residents, as well as the Irish-American community, because Collins was considered one of the city's great statesmen. Collins was born in 1844 in Ballinafauna, a townland outside of Fermoy, Cork , and came to Boston in March 1848, with his widowed mother, part of the mass exodus from Ireland due to the  Irish Famine .  They settled in Chelsea , where the anti-Irish Know Nothing movement was fully blown in the 1850s.  Patrick got a job as an office boy with  Robert Morris , an African-American lawyer, and later become a lawyer himself.  He entered into an upholstery a...