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Boxing Champ John L. Sullivan Born in Boston on October 12, 1858



Boxing champion John L. Sullivan was born on October 12, 1858, on East Concord Street in Boston's Roxbury/South End. 

His father, Mike Sullivan, emigrated from County Kerry around 1850 and married Katherine Kelly, whose family had immigrated from Athlone in 1853. They married on November 6, 1856. 

Most Irish boys during this time seemed to follow in their fathers' footsteps. John dropped out of school at age 15 and seemed destined to be a laborer like his father and thousands of other young Irish men living in Boston. But thankfully sports proved to be an outlet for John, and a way out from the drudgery of pick and shovel to which most Irish immigrants had to resign themselves. 

He was a gifted baseball player, and was apparently offered a contract by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional team in baseball. 

By the time he was 17 John weighed nearly two hundred pounds and was already impressed his friends with feats of strength that earned him the nickname Strong Boy. He was lured into the forbidden, outlawed world of boxing in 1878 at the Dudley Street Opera House, when he knocked out Jack Scannell in one punch at an old time sporting event. 

He began sparring with local and visiting boxers, and eventually worked his way up to the big leagues in 1879 by knocking out John Woods at a match on Hanover Street. Eventually he defeated Tipperary's Patsy Ryan, the reigning heavyweight champ, and soon became the most celebrated boxer of the 19th century.

Sullivan remained close to his parents, and bought them houses and furnishings along the way. 

The citizens of Boston honored him at special ceremony at Boston Theater in 1887. Mayor Hugh O'Brien and other city officials greeted him, and gave him a $10,000 champion's belt of gold and diamonds. Sullivan lived a flashy and destructive life, spending his earnings on 'whiskey and women,' and seemed to have hit bottom when he lost his heavyweight crown to James Corbett in 1892. 

John Donoghue sculpture of John L. Sullivan

Sculptor John Donoghue did a sculptor of Sullivan that was exhibited at Horticultural Hall in January 1888 in Boston to great acclaim, Poet John Boyle O'Reilly predicted Donoghue's statue of Sullivan would "win international renown as the towering Young David in Florence." In his review for The Boston Pilot, O'Reilly commented on the merger of classical forms with American themes that had emerged from local sculptors including Thomas Ball and the Milmore brothers, when he wrote, "It is the statue of a magnificent athlete, worthy of ancient Athens and distinctly and proudly true of modern Boston."

But he bounced back and formed his own temperance association, hitting the road to lecture on the evils of alcohol. Later in his career he wrote sports articles for the New York Times. 


He died in 1918 in Abington, Massachusetts and is buried at Old Calvary Cemetery in Boston.

Read more about John L. Sullivan in Christopher Klein's book, Strong Boy.

Learn more about Boston's Irish history at IrishHeritageTrail.com.

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