Irish Boston History & Heritage

On March 19, 1918, the Massachusetts Senate adopted resolutions offered by Representative John L. Donovan of Boston : Resolved . That the General Court of Massachusetts hereby requests that the Congress of the United States, if it shall be deemed expedient, shall recommend that the right of Ireland to be a free and Independent country be considered at any peace conference which may   be held at the termination of the present war; and be it further Resolved . That copies of these resolutions be sent by the secretary of the Commonwealth to the presiding officers of both branches of Congress and to each Senator and Representative in Congress from This Commonwealth. The resolution was submitted to the Congressional Record by Congressmen James A. Galvin, Peter F. Tague and George H. Tinkham and by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge on April 3, 1918.

Mary Boyle O’Reilly (1873-1939) was a social activist and reformer whose passion was protecting children and young women.  The daughter of Irish leader John Boyle O’Reilly , she was born and raised in Charlestown , and also lived in Jamaica Plain. In 1901 O’Reilly and others established the Guild of St. Elizabeth, a Catholic settlement home for Children in Boston ’s South End.  From 1907-1911 she was Massachusetts Prison Commissioner, and also a trustee of Boston ’s  Children’s Institutions. O’Reilly also used her writing to create change.  In 1910, disguised as a mill worker, she exposed the notorious ‘baby farms’ in New Hampshire . In 1913 she became a foreign correspondent for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, reporting from Mexico and Russia , and heading up the London Office.  When World War I erupted, she entered Belgium disguised as a peasant to cover the action.  The Germans briefly imprisoned her and three other journalists,...

The Boston Massacre Monument Tremont Street on the Boston Common Near the Visitors Information Center and Parkman Bandstand MBTA: Red Line to Park Street Station Irishman Patrick Carr was one of five people shot to death in front of the Old State House on State Street on March 5, 1870 after a scuffle between colonists and British solders erupted into gunfire.   The Boston Massacre, as it became known, was the flash point for the American Revolution.   Daniel Webster said it marked "the severance of the British Empire " in the minds of the American colonists. Little is known of Carr, except that he was an Irish immigrant in Boston and likely a Roman Catholic.   Because he was Irish, he was alleged to have been a "mob expert" by prosecutor Samuel Adams during the trial of the British soldiers who opened fire.   Ironically the soldiers were part of an Irish regiment from Dublin , led by Captain Thomas Preston, an office of the 29 t...