Irish Boston History & Heritage

Photo courtesy of Mass Moments Ancestors of the early Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony discouraged Jews and Irish Catholics from burying their congregations in local cemeteries the first half of the 19th century.  Boston had long been known as a place where outsiders were considered with suspicion and hatred, due to their religion or ethnic backgrounds. According to Mass Moments , a daily history log published by Mass Humanities , on April 29, 1844, a Jewish congregation in Boston "petitioned city officials to set aside a corner of an East Boston cemetery for their use.  When the city refused, the 40 congregants of Ohabei Shalom contributed five dollars each to purchase their own burial ground. "Eight years later, they dedicated Boston's first synagogue. Located on Warren Avenue in the South End, it originally served the city's 125 Jewish families, almost all of whom hailed from German-speaking central Europe.  "In the late nineteenth century, large numbe...

    Statue of Edmund Burke in Washington, DC On April 19, 1774, a full year before the Battle of Concord and Lexington erupted, Irish MP Edmund Burke of Dublin (1729–97) made a compelling speech in the British House of Commons in London, supporting a motion to repeal the Townsend Revenue Act, which taxed tea in the American colonies. Burke warned his colleagues that taxing the American colonies ‘three pence per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his Majesty’s dominions in America,’ was a recipe for rebellion from the colonists. This type of taxation called into question the very concept of liberty the Americans cherished, and made the British appear as tyrants. “Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience,” he said, asking his colleagues to “reflect how you are to govern a people, who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. “When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters," Burke said. "If that so...

Bernadette Devlin of Cookstown, Country Tyrone, was elected as the Mid Ulster MP to Westminster Parliament in 1969, and gave her maiden speech there on April 22, 1969. She was 21 years old.  Her opening words set the tone of the speech and also of her political career: "I understand that in making my maiden speech on the day of my arrival in Parliament and in making it on a controversial issue I flaunt the unwritten traditions of the House, but I think that the situation of my people merits the flaunting of such traditions," she said.   Read her entire speech here . Devlin criticized the political corruption and hypocrisy of the political establishment in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.  She criticized "the society of landlords who, by ancient charter of Charles II, still hold the rights of the ordinary people of Northern Ireland over such things as fishing and as paying the most ridiculous and exorbitant rents, although families have lived for generations on their l...

  State Capitol Building, Concord, New Hampshire, Photo, Michael Quinlin One of New England’s true military heroes of the American Revolution was General John Stark (1728-1822), the son of Scots-Irish parents who emigrated to the American colonies in 1720 and settled in the Scots-Irish colony of Nutfield, NH , where John and his brothers were raised. Today, the former settlement is comprised of the towns Londonderry, Derry and Windham. It was Stark who coined the famous phrase, Live Free or Die, which is the motto of the state of New Hampshire. Accordingly, New Hampshire formally celebrates John Stark Day each year on the second Monday in April. See recent Governor's proclamation . John’s father Archibald Stark was born at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1697. His family moved to the Ulster province of Ireland, where Archibald met and married Eleanor Nichols of Londonderry,  according to  Memoir and official correspondence of Gen. John Stark , published in 1860 by his son Caleb St...

Photo courtesy of Harvard Libraries Days before President Abraham Lincoln's April 15, 1861 proclamation seeking 75,000 volunteers to join the Union Army, men from Boston's Irish community met on April 10 to "express unflinching devotion to the Federal Government." Irishman Thomas Cass of Boston's North End immediately began recruiting Irish immigrants to form the Massachusetts 9th regiment. The volunteers came largely from Boston and the nearby towns of Salem, Milford, Marlboro and Stoughton. A total of 1,727 men enlisted. The Irish volunteers encamped on Long Island in Boston Harbor through May to train and organize. On June 11, 1861, the Ninth Massachusetts Regiment was mustered into service. The 9th Regiment enjoyed an emotional send-off on June 25, 1861 , when the troops made their way from Long Island to Long Wharf in Boston, then marched to Boston Common, where Governor John Andrew welcomed them and thanked the two commanders, Colonel Cass and Lieutenant ...

Courtesy of Boston College Photo Archives Legendary politician Thomas P. Tip O’Neill was born in North Cambridge on December 9, 1912, the son of Thomas Philip O'Neill, Sr. and Rose Ann Tolan. His grandfather had emigrated in the 1840s during the Irish Famine.   Tip rose to become one of the most powerful political figures in 20th century America, delving into domestic issues as well as international ones, especially regarding Northern Ireland.  O’Neill based his entire career on the mantra, ‘All Politics is Local,’ a phrase that bespoke the need for politicians to communicate directly with constituents and to serve the people rather than oneself.  He entered the Massachusetts state Legislature in 1936 and in 1952 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, winning the seat held by John F. Kennedy. He became the 47th Speaker of the House in 1977 and held the post until 1987 when he retired.  In the 1970s through the 1990s, O'Neill was also heavily engage...

On April 15, 1883, the Nestorian steamship, operated by the Allan Line, landed at Boston Harbor, carrying more then 650 Irish paupers from the west of Ireland  who had been evicted from their small farms during that time.  Their arrival was part of an 'assisted emigration' scheme initiated by a Quaker as a way of helping the Irish.  It was then funded by the British Government as a way of dealing  with issues of poverty and starvation in the Connacht province of Ireland.  English Quaker James Huck Tuke  had witnessed first hand the effects of the 1879 Irish famine, which had largely affected the west.  Tuck's notion was to send entire families together, so as to avoid separation and further trauma, and to focus on small farmers whose livelihood had been altered by the famine and insufficient government response.  They had been evicted from their farms by landlords when they couldn't pay their fees as a result of the famine.  The efforts of th...

  The  Titanic Memorial  in Washington, DC, an iconic depiction of one of the major maritime tragedies of the 20th century, was carved in Quincy, Massachusetts by local sculptor John Horrigan, who used a 20-ton slab of granite to complete the masterpiece. The pedestal, designed by Henry Bacon, used granite from the quarries in Waverly, RI.   Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney submitted the winning design.  She also designed the Daughters of the American Revolution Memorial and the Pan-American Union Fountain and later founded the Whitney Museum in New York.  Described as weighing six tons and measuring 14 feet high and 13 feet wide, the statue was placed atop a pedestal with inscriptions that read on the front: Pedestal, front TO THE BRAVE MEN  WHO PERISHED  IN THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC APRIL 15, 1912 THEY GAVE THEIR  LIVES THAT WOMEN  AND CHILDREN  MIGHT BE SAVED ERECTED BY THE WOMEN OF AMERICA Pedestal, back TO THE YOUNG AND THE...

The very first Boston Marathon was held on April 19, 1897, inspired by the first modern Olympic Games held the previous year in Athens, Greece. The race was organized by Boston Athletic Association 's John Graham, who has also coached the Boston Olympians and had been inspired by the Olympic marathon race in Athens, which had been won by a Greek sheepherder. The initial field in 1897 Boston consisted of fifteen runners, of whom ten would finish the race, according The Boston Globe, while the Louisville Courier Journal later reported that there were "30 starters, and 23 finished the race." Thomas E. Burke , who won first place in the 100 and 440 yard races at the Athens Olympics in 1896, was the official starter of the race. "At 12:15, Tom Burke scrapped his foot across the narrow street in front of Metcalf's Mill and called the contestants numbers," reported The Boston Globe. John J. McDermott of the Pastime Athletic Club of New York won the first Boston ...

The famous  Boston Athletic Association  (BAA) was founded in the late19th century by an unlikely coalition of leading Boston Brahmins and a famous Irish rebel,  John Boyle O’Reilly  (1844-90).   The BAA was created at a time when amateur sports were increasingly popular across the United States.  There were many collegiate teams in greater Boston and numerous small associations, but the need for a major athletic association was acutely felt by local sportsmen and competitors.    It was O'Reilly in January 1887, who suggested that interested parties meet to discuss the idea of "forming an athletic club in Boston," wrote  The Boston Globe  in a March 9, 1912 story on BAA's 25th anniversary.  That initial meeting generated excitement and resolve to create an athletic organization, modeled on the popular New York Athletic Club, according to reports.   On March 16, a general meeting was held at the Cadet Armory. A go...

Charles E. Logue, courtesy of Logue Family  Meet Charles E. Logue (1858-1919), the man who build Fenway Park in 1913 as well as other iconic buildings in greater Boston.   An immigrant County Derry in Ireland, Logue emigrated to Boston in 1881 at age 23, part of a massive wave of Irish who came to Boston in the 19th century, escaping faming, landlord abuses and political oppression, while seeking economic opportunity.  He formed the Charles Logue Building Company in 1890 and was quickly recognized for his carpentry and construction skills.  Boston historian Dennis Ryan writes in his classic study, Beyond the Ballot Box,  that Logue became a major contractor in the city, building Boston College’s campus as well as churches for the Boston Archdiocese. He was part of a storied tradition of Irish builders and skilled craftsmen in the Boston area. In 1905, Mayor Patrick A. Collins appointed Logue to the Schoolhouse Committee, citing the need for a practical buil...

Rev. John Moorhead, portrait by Peter Pelham, 1751 In 1729, Scots–Irish Presbyterian Reverene John Moorhead, formerly of Newtonards, County Down, established the Church of the Presbyterian Strangers, initially with a congregation of thirty parishioners,. They built an Irish Meeting House in a converted barn at the corner of Berry Street and Long Lane (now Channing and Federal Street). As church historian Harriett E. Johnson writes in Handbook of the Arlington Street Church , (1929) these Scots-Irish were “Good, quiet, law-abiding citizens . . .. [W]ith their sober, steadfast, hardworking, moral philosophy of life they constituted an excellent balance to the idealistic, variable [Puritan], who so often preached freedom, but practiced intolerance and bigotry.” The Church of the Presbyterian Strangers had prospered enough so that the modest barn was replaced by a proper church in 1744; that Church later was the site in 1788 chosen to consider the adoption of the Federal Constitution. B...

James Brendan Connolly Statue in South Boston On Monday, April 6, 1896,  James Brendan Connolly  of South Boston became the first medalist in the modern Olympic Games when he won the triple jump on the opening day of the Games in Athens, Greece. Connolly won the event - back then it was called the Hop, Skip and Jump - by jumping 44 ' 9 3/4", beating the second place finisher by nearly six feet. After his final jump, the audience began chanting his name and yelling Nike, the Greek word for victory, according to Connolly's teammate, Ellery H. Clark. 1896 Olympians from Boston. Photo Courtesy of Colby College Connolly and his American teammates nearly missed their events - they arrived in Athens thinking they had twelve days to prepare, only to realize that the Greeks used the Julian Calendar, not the Gregorian Calendar, and his event was that afternoon. Connolly also competed in the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, and took second place in the Triple Jump. Beverly Cronin of the ...

Image Credit:  Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection , Johns Hopkins Library   On April 4, 1872, a group of Bostonians traveled to Washington, DC to personally invited US President Ulysses S. Grant to attend the World Peace Jubilee in Boston, scheduled to take place from June 17, Bunker Hill Day to July 4, Independence Day.  The DC delegation was led by Boston Mayor William Gaston and Patrick S.Gilmore , founder and leader of the World Peace Jubilee as well as a popular musician, composer and impressario. The  New York Daily Herald  wrote, "P. S. Gilmore, the Jubilee man, is here with a delegation of prominent Bostonians, headed by Mayor Gaston, making arrangements for the coming musical festival. They called upon the president this morning, and solicited his attendance at the Jubilee, and he has promised to be present. Members of the Cabinet, and other prominent officials have also been invited and accepted the Invitation." The Boston Evening Transcrip t ...