The mission of Boston's YMCA, Sullivan explained to an audience at Old South Church shortly after it opened, was to “meet the young stranger as he enters our city, take him by the hand, direct him to a boarding house where he may find a quiet home. . . and in every way throw around him good influences, so that he may feel that he is not a stranger.”
The Boston branch, which would become the prototype for thousands of YMCAs across the United States, was designed to offer the following amenities to young men new to the city:
. a reading room and library
. popular lectures series and evening classes
. social gatherings and excursions
. a gym
. employment department
. a boarding house
. bible classes
Read more about the Boston YMCA on MassMoments.
. social gatherings and excursions
. a gym
. employment department
. a boarding house
. bible classes
Read more about the Boston YMCA on MassMoments.
New YMCA Building Unveiled in November 1883
In November, 1883, a new YMCA building was unveiled at the corner of Boylston and Berkley Streets. which Harper's Weekly Newspaper described as a sign of the organization's growing success. "In 1866 there was but one Association building, now there are 73....Since the close of the Civil War, the Associations have entered upon a career of progress such as we never known before."
Sullivan was born in 1800 on what is now Salem Street in Boston's North End. He and his family were members of the Baptist Church.
Described as having an "active, restless disposition, full of spirit, he early yielded to an impulse to go to sea, and his career on the ocean abounds in adventure," wrote L.L. Doggett in his 1901 book, A History of the Boston YMCA. "He gathered what was a fortune for his time, and in 1831 owned three ships. In that year, however, these were lost at sea, and he was involved in debt." It was after his bankruptcy that Sullivan turned to religion and devoted the rest of his life to religious proselytizing while continuing his seafaring adventures.
Leonard M. Synder's account of Sullivan notes that he "was shipwrecked in the Antarctic, fell from a yard and was nearly killed; was attacked by pirates off the coast of Brazil; and by the time he was thirty three he had made a fortune and lost it."
In 1834, Sullivan made a missionary trip into Brazil. On board his vessel he flew the Bethel flag, a 19th century symbol of a 'floating chapel' used by missionaries, and a supply of Bibles and tracts printed in several languages. He held a revival at sea and his crew converted to Christianity, wrote Doggett.
Sullivan devoted much of his life helping sailors seek seek both religion and financial assistance. He spent several years in the Great Lakes region, and formed the American Bethel Society at Buffalo, NY. In 1840 Sullivan was appointed chaplain of the Society for Port Oswego, and later was a missionary-at-large for Lake Ontario, with instructions to hold services wherever possible for sailors. In 1842 he established at Oswego the first sailors' home on the Great Lakes.
By the time he moved back to Boston in 1847, the Irish Famine was well underway and thousands of Irish refugees were arriving by ship, seeking help and resources. During this same period, young men who were coming in from the farms across the region. "Each year hundreds of New England country lads, most of them orthodox by upbringing, were drawn as by a magnet to the metropolis," wrote William B. Whiteside, author of The Boston YMCA and Community Need, published in 1951.
While other benevolent groups were forming to assist the Irish famine victims who were mainly Catholic, Sullivan's efforts was geared more to the New England boys and men coming to town who were largely Protestant.
Sullivan's Irish roots have interesting historical context. His grandfather, Valentine O'Sullivan, was born in Clonmel, Tipperary, in 1730, and was "educated in Ireland for the priesthood, but in 1752, having grown out of harmony with the tenets of the Roman Church," according to Doggett.
O'Sullivan emigrated to Boston and later moved to New Hampshire, where he and his wife raised their five children. During the Revolutionary War, O'Sullivan was attached to the Third Regiment, New Hampshire Line, according to Michael J. O'Brien in A Hidden Phase of American History. O'Sullivan fought at the Battle of Ticonderoga and he died in July, 1879 at age 49.
Sullivan himself died in 1859 and is buried at Woodbrook Cemetery in Woburn, MA. His tombstone epitaph reads: He Rode Out the Storm.
For more about Irish history in Boston, Massachusetts and throughout New England, visit IrishHeritageTrail.com.
Research and Text on YMCA and Thomas V. Sullivan, Michael Quinlin
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