Irish Boston History & Heritage

Goodwife Ann Glover plaque in Boston's North End  The next time you are exploring landmarks along the Boston Irish Heritage Trail , visit the Goodwife Ann Glover plaque at St. Stephen's Church, located at 401 Hanover Street, in Boston's North End.   The plaque honors an Irish Catholic immigrant who was falsely accused of being a witch in Boston, part of a mass hysteria taking place in the Puritan community during that era.  Glover was found guilty and hung by the town elders, led by Minister Cotton Mather, on November 16, 1688.  According to 18th century accounts, Glover was an Irish indentured servant who had been sent to Barbados in the 1650s after the Cromwell invasion of Ireland. Her husband went with her, and when he died on the island, Ann and her daughter came to Boston where she worked in the Goodwin household as a servant.   The Goodwins 13-year-old daughter Martha swore she got sick shortly after discovering Goody's daughter stealing laundry. Based o...

  James Brendan Connolly Olympian and writer James Brendan Connolly was born on October 28, 1868 at 23 Bolton Street in South Boston, one of 12 children born to John and Ann (nee O'Donnell) Connolly, immigrants from the Aran Islands in County Galway, Ireland. Connolly's early claim to fame came in 1896, when he became the first athlete to win a first-place medal at the Modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. He won the triple jump, and also placed second in the high jump and third in the long jump. Then in 1900, Connolly went to Paris, France for the second Olympic Games, taking second place in the triple jump. James B. Connolly at the 1896 Olympics After his illustrious sports career, Connolly retired from competition at age 32, but stayed involved in the Olympic movement, writing astute articles especially on the 1908 Olympic Games in London. During this time, Connolly was also developing as a writer. He covered the Spanish-American War in 1898, sending dispatches from Hav...

French Minister of Culture André Malraux’s visit to the White House was attended by the nation’s leading artists, writers and musicians.  Photo Credit JFK Library   "John F. Kennedy’s optimism and resolve was emblematic of the American mind of the twentieth century, but he also brought a new level of sophistication to public life. Louis M. Lyons wrote, “The elevation of the tone of the national life may be John Kennedy’s most enduring contribution to his country.”  Poet Robert Frost Speaking with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy "Along with his beautiful, stylish wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, JFK brought a  savoir faire  to the White House and created a magical mood that later moved Jacqueline to use the word “Camelot” to refer to her husband’s presidency. Both the president and his wife were lovers of the arts, and they surrounded themselves with singers, poets, dramatists, artists, and dancers. In a well-deserved nod to the power of poetry, Kennedy invit...

Photo courtesy of the Knox Museu m Henry Knox, one of the prominent heroes of the American Revolution, died on October 25, 1806 at his home in Thomaston, ME.   A notice in the Boston Gazette read:  “It is with the deepest regret, I have now to inform you, that the great and good Gen. Knox, departed this life yesterday morning. He was confined about six days. It is supposed that the cause of his death was his swallowing a sharp chicken bone which perforated his bowels, and produced a mortification. The event was very sudden, and unexpected by his physicians till a very short time before his death. It has covered us all with the deepest gloom. The funeral will be tomorrow, when every testimony of respect will be paid by all classes of people." His funeral three days later was attended by 2,000 people who traveled there to pay their final respects. The Wiscasset Repertory Newspaper in Maine reported, "The sorrow discovered by his neighbors and townsmen, (as well as by own...

On October 15, 1995, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” He accepted the award on December 7, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden. Read his Nobel lecture here . Heaney became the fourth Irish writer to receive the coveted Nobel Prize, following William Butler Yeats , George Bernard Shaw , and Samuel Beckett . Born in the village of Bellaghy, County Derry in 1939, Heaney’s family was engaged in farming and selling cattle. He was a pupil at the acclaimed St. Columb's Secondary School in Derry, attended by other literary figures including Brian Friel and Seamus Deane and by musicians Phil Coulter and Paul Brady. He studied at Queen’s University in Belfast and lectured there after graduating. In describing his work, the Nobel Committee wrote, “Seamus Heaney’s poetry is often down-to-earth. For Heaney, poetry was like the earth—something that must be plowed and turned. Often, he pa...

Kindred Spirits in County Cork,  Photo courtesy of  Gavin Sheridan Irish rebel John Boyle O'Reilly arrived in Boston in January 1870, and almost immediately he became a powerful voice for the oppressed, including his own people of Ireland who were trying to break free of Britain, but also in the United States, Blacks, Chinese immigrants and Native Americans. O'Reilly saw the British conquest of the Irish and Native Americans as similar episodes of colonialism and exploitation. Native land had been stolen in both Ireland and America by the British, and O'Reilly's  sympathies were always with the oppressed and dispossessed.  Like everyone in Boston's Irish community, O'Reilly was aware of the extraordinary act of kindness that happened in 1847, when the Choctaw people raised more than $170 ($5000 today) to send to the people of Midleton, County Cork, during the height of the Irish Famine, a five-year potato crop failure that devastated the island. The Choctaws th...