Irish Boston History & Heritage

Twenty-five years ago this summer, the newly formed Boston Irish Tourism Association (BITA) launched an advertising campaign to promote Irish culture and heritage in Massachusetts to the visitor industry.  The goal was to form a coalition of local travel and tourism groups, hospitality entities such as hotels and restaurants, and cultural venues including museums, concert halls, festivals, cultural venues and universities, to brand Massachusetts as The Capital of Irish America.  The Association printed 50,000 copies of a full color, oversized brochure that featured cultural events, festivals, tall ships and other summer festivities, plus information on local Irish organizations, gift shops, museums and heritage sites.   It was distributed at hundreds of visitor and cultural outlets in New England and sent to national media, travel agencies and cultural venues across North America.  The campaign was supported with a grant from the Massachusetts Office of Travel & ...

The National Peace Jubilee, a gigantic music celebration of peace after the American Civil War, took place in Boston on June 15-19, 1869. The event was organized by Patrick S. Gilmore, celebrated cornetist and bandleader who emigrated from Ballygar, Galway to Boston in 1849.   Over 1,000 musicians and 10,000 vocalists participated in the National Peace Jubilee inside of a giant coliseum built especially for the festival.  The building itself measured 500 x 300 feet, with a height of 86 feet.  There were 12 entrances, each 24 feet wide, to accommodate the 50,000 people who attended each day.  According to newspaper accounts, two million feet of timber was used to build the stadium, and 20 tons of iron nails, bolts and bars. The coliseum was originally sought for Boston Common, but strong opposition from local residents and city leaders prevented it.  Instead it moved to the Back Bay near where Trinity Church and the Prudential Building stand today. Among...

The infamous Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, part of a widespread dissatisfaction in the American colonies about Britain's abuse of power, and also, the condescending attitude toward Bostonians and Americans in general by certain British subjects.   Flash forward to June, 1988, when a similar protest against British arrogance occurred in Boston, this time directed at one Peter Dobereiner, an English golf writer who was covering the U.S. Open Golf Tournament at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts on June 16-19,1988.  In an apparent attempt at humor, Dobereiner penned a tone-deaf and scurrilous anti-Irish essay, all in good fun as he believed, which appeared in the 96 page Golf Digest.    The publication was being distributed through The Boston Globe newspaper. The offensive story itself Entitled 'The Role of the Irish at The Country Club,' Dobereiner delved into a vile and base satire of the Irish, the kind of depiction reminiscent of...

Thomas Moore by Martin Archer Shee ca. 1817, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin Born on May 28, 1779 in Dublin, Ireland, poet and lyricist Thomas Moore was so beloved in Boston  that a group of his followers formed a Thomas Moore Club in his honor on May 3, 1852, to celebrate the life and musical genius of Ireland's most famous man.  Moore had died the previous February. The first annual celebration of the Thomas Moore Club occurred at the Merchant's Exchange Hotel on State Street in Boston on May 27, 1852. The original officers included Thomas Darcy McGee, President; P.H. Powers, Vice-President; John W. Atkinson, Secretary; and Henry Dooley, Treasurer. Boston had known about Moore's work from the beginning of the writer's illustrious career. His ten-volume collection of  Moore's Melodies , published between 1808 and 1834, helped revitalize interest in Irish music that was in danger of being marginalized and forgotten.   The Melodies quickly found their way into th...

A three-year effort by a local Girl Scout troop to restore a neglected Civil War statue was celebrated on April 28, 2001 at a rededication ceremony  in front of the  Edgell Memorial Library  in Framingham Center. More than 100 people attended the event.  The restoration effort was spearheaded by the Framingham Girl Scout Troop 2112, which began the project in 1998 as part of a national Save our Statues initiative. Courtesy of  Framingham.com “The 13 girls and three troop leaders learned about the need to repair the statue from local conservator Rika Smith McNally,” reported  The Boston Globe . “Troop 2112 then spent the next two years raising money for the restoration.”  They collected “nearly $1,000 in pennies collected from Framingham elementary school students, and almost $5,000 in private donations from businesses and individuals,” wrote the Globe, in addition to a $1,000 grant from the Framingham Cultural Council and $9,000 from Save Our Statues....

James M.Curley with wife Gertrude  On April 13, 1950, former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley took his family on a seven week vacation to Europe for "relaxation, recreation and study." The previous fall, he had lost his mayoral bid for re-election to fellow Democrat John B. Hynes in November 1949, effectively ending Curley's political career of 50 years.  Then in February, 1950, the Curley family suffered a terrible loss when two of their children, Mary Curley Donnelly, 41, and Leo, 34, died  a few hours apart of cerebral hemorrhages.  The European vacation included stops in France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, England and Ireland, visiting Paris, Lisbon, Rome, Naples, London and Dublin.  Before he left Boston, Curley told reporters he was taking with him a replica of the Boston Common plaque in honor of Commodore John Barry, Revolutionary War naval hero, which he planned to present to the French Ministry of Defense. He was also carrying a letter to the F...

Educator Anne Sullivan, known in her lifetime as the Miracle Worker for her work with the blind,  was born on April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Agawam, Massachusetts.  The daughter of impoverished Irish immigrants, Anne contracted trachoma, an eye disease caused by bacteria when she was five years old,  which caused her to become partially blind.  After her mother died in 1874, eight year old Anne and her brother Jimmie were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse, known as the Poor House for indigent people. Conditions were horrible, and her brother Jimmie died shortly after arriving.   When state officials arrived to conduct an investigation of the almshouse, Annie convinced the commissioners to send her to the Perkins Institute for the Blind  in South Boston, which taught blind children to read, write and spell. Annie entered the school in October 1880. After graduation, Anne was sent to Tuscumbia Alabama to teach a six year old blind child named Helen Keller....

The post-Famine generation of Irish women in Boston and New England were typically relegated to jobs as domestic servants, nursemaids and mill workers, before eventually being accepted as shop clerks, nurses and teachers.  This work was often in addition to their primary role running households as wives and mothers.  The young Irish girls of the Famine generation who benefited the most were the ones who took advantage of education and learning in both public and parochial schools, giving them an unparalleled opportunity to distinguish themselves as individuals, artists and professionals.   By the 1870s, a new generation of Irish and Irish-American women were establishing themselves as poets, children's book authors, novelists, essayists and travel writers.  These women took up writing as a way of earning a living but also as a creative response to their own lives and the lives of their families. Here is a sketch of nine Irish women writers who bec...

This week, Shawn Moran explored Boston's Irish history, taking a walk on Boston's Irish Heritage Trail and dropping in at the Green Dragon Tavern. Learn more about the Irish Heritage Trail . To enjoy Irish cultural activities in greater Boston throughout the year visit IrishBoston.org .