Irish Boston History & Heritage

Matthew Arbuckle One of Scotland's most famous musicians of the 19th century was Matthew Arbuckle, who made his name in America as an exceptional cornetist.  He was also a composer and bandleader as well as an accomplished violinist, bagpiper and drum major. Coliseum of the World Peace Jubilee in Boston He performed at the National Peace Jubilee in Boston in June 1869 for U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and again at the World Peace Jubilee in June 1872, which was the largest music festival ever assembled and included 2,000 musicians and 20,000 singers.   At the 1872 festival, Arbuckle conducted Handel's famous "Let the Bright Seraphim," leading the opening fanfare of fifty trumpeters and playing the trumpet obbligato part with vocalist Madame Ermina Ruggersdorf.  After the Jubilee ended, Arbuckle participated in a special concert for Austria's visiting composer Johann Strauss, perfuming a cornet solo that demanded an encore. Born in Lochside, Scotland, on March 2...

  On June 17, 1776, two British Navy transports, the George and Annabella, sailed into Boston Harbor, unaware that the British had been driven out of Boston two months earlier, on March 17, 1776, Evacuation Day. The two ships were carrying 185 Scottish Highlanders of the 71st British Regiment of Foot, newly formed by General Simon Fraser. Sir Archibald Campbell In command of the Regiment was Sir Archibald Campbell KB (21 August 1739 – 31 March 1791) a British officer.  Historian J. L. Bell reports that Campbell later wrote a letter to General Howe, saying that he had been at sea for seven weeks, "during the course of which we had not an opportunity of speaking to a single vessel that could give us the smallest information of the British troops having evacuated Boston." A story in The Boston Globe , dated June 17, 1926, wrote, "They approached the coast, expecting to find General Howe still comfortably fixed at Boston. They found instead a fleet of hornets awaiting them ...

Labor organizer and women's rights advocate  Margaret Lillian Foley  (1873-1957) was born to a working class Irish-American family  at Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, Boston's largest neighborhood.    With only a high school education from Girls' High School in Roxbury, Foley had a daring personality and a "voice like a trumpet."    She worked in a hat factory organizing women workers and was a board member of the Women's Trade Union League, founded in Boston in 1903 by  Mary Kenney O'Sullivan  as part of the American Federal of Labor.  As equal rights issues moved from the workplace to the political front, Foley became involved with the campaign to let women vote in all government elections, becoming  a member of the Massachusetts Women's Suffrage Association.  During this time, she earned and enjoyed the nickname The Grand Heckler for her willingness to confront male politicians in public settings such as the Boston St...

On June 11, 1837 a brawl erupted in downtown  Boston  when an Irish funeral procession and a volunteer fire brigade returning to the station reached an intersection at the same time.    In what became known as the  Broad Street Riot , the firemen and their supporters chased the Irish along Purchase and Broad streets into their houses, which were then attacked by the enraged mob.    “The air was full of flying feathers and straw from the beds which had been ripped up and emptied into the streets,” wrote Boston historian  J.B. Cullen .    Mayor Samuel A. Eliot  ordered 800 National Lancers, a military group, to quell the riot and maintain peace.   Read this letter of complaint about the mistreatment of the Irish by the firemen.   Artist Thomas Nast's depiction of Irish immigrants as apes, 1867 The riot was part of an escalating anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment among nativist Bostonians whose jobs were being threatened by...

 The National Park Service is planning to remove several quotation boards at Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, MA that pertain to slavery, women's suffrage, veterans and immigrants.  The action comes as a result of a nationwide directive issued by the Secretary of the Interior in May 2025 as a lead-up to America 250 celebrations.   The quotes hang in the Bunker Hill Lodge, at the entrance to the Bunker Hill Monument, and offer modern interpretation of what the Monument means to multiple groups of people.  The passage about 'foreign-born men' being excluded from the American Revolution pertains specifically to Irish immigrants living in Boston and Charlestown in 1875.  It was extracted from an editorial in  The Boston Pilot , an influential Catholic weekly newspaper with a national readership in the 19th century.   This is the passage in full, published in The Boston Pilot on May 8, 1875: The struggle to tell the story of America has always been a ...

Colonel Thomas Cass Statue, Boston Public Garden Boston Civil War hero Thomas Cass, commander of the  Massachusetts Ninth Regiment , was born on June 4, 1821 in Farmleigh, Queen's County (now County Laois).  His family immigrated to Boston when he was an infant, and settled in the North End, at that time a heavily Irish neighborhood. Cass was a member of the Boston School Committee and a successful businessman.  During the 1850s, he organized a local militia unit of Irish immigrants known as the Columbian Artillery but the group was dismantled by the nativist Know-Nothing movement in 1855.  When the Civil War broke out, and with the encouragement of  Governor John Andrew , Cass gathered his men to form Boston's first Irish troop, the Ninth Regiment. Colonel Cass reported with the regiment of 1,022 men at the State House on Tuesday, June 25, 1861, to receive the state flag and to be reviewed by Governor Andrew.    Fellow Irish immigrant  Patrick S....

John Fitzgerald Kennedy , 35th president of the United States, was born at about three o'clock in the afternoon on May 29, 1917 at 83 Beale Street in Brookline, Massachusetts.  John was the second son of  Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy , named in honor of his maternal grandfather,  John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald .  In the book, Rose Kennedy's Family Album, published in 2013, Rose Kennedy writes: "When a mother holds her first baby in her arms, what awe-inspiring thoughts go fleeting through her mind and fill her heart. A child has been bestowed upon her to mold and to influence - what a challenge, what a joy! ...On her judgement he relies, and her words will influence him, not for a day or a month or a year, but for time and for eternity - and perhaps for future generations. A grandmother, an aunt, a teacher may guide the child temporarily, but when the mother enters the room, it is to her he turns for the final judgement. "A mother knows that...

Citizen Soldier at Forest Hills Cemetery Martin Milmore 's Citizen Soldier bronze statue was unveiled at Forest Hills Cemetery on May 30, 1868, which was the first national commemoration of Memorial Day in the United States.  It was also known as the Standing Soldier,  and Roxbury Soldier, and was a homage to the local foot soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The Town of Roxbury commissioned the statue to the young, 24-year old sculptor after it "purchased a lot in the Forest Hills Cemetery upon recovering the bodies of 8 local soldiers from the Antietam Battlefield in 1862," according to a National Portrait Galley exhibit in 2006.  Clay Model of Roxbury Soldier in Milmore's Studio on Tremont Street Image Courtesy of Library of Congres s In February, 1868, just prior to the unveiling, the statue went on temporary display at Boston City Hall on School Street, across from the statue of Ben Franklin.   A notice in the Boston Evening Transcript, dated Febru...

On Sunday, May 24, 2009, Ireland's President Mary McAleese was the commencement speaker to the 172nd graduating class at Mt. Holyoke College in Holyoke, a small women's college in western Massachusetts. She spoke to 570 women graduates and an audience of 4,000 people. Tus maith is Leath na hoibre , she told the graduates in Irish, meaning: a good start is half the work.  "Here at Mount Holyoke College you’ve got a good start. You’ve given your very best here. You’ve been tested. You've been challenged. You know yourself a lot better now.”  The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported, "she said there is plenty of work ahead — especially in the advancement of women who in most parts of the world are still regarded as second class and second best." The announcement of President McAleese to address the graduating class was made by US Congressman Richard Neal , a trustee of the college and by Mount Holyoke College President Joanne Creighton, who said, “We are honored...

A number of Irish immigrants and Irish-American sculptors created some of the most distinctive Civil War Monuments of the 19th Century.   Here are three of their monuments in Boston and Cambridge worth visiting on Memorial Day Weekend: The Shaw Memorial , atop Boston Common and facing the Massachusetts State House, was officially unveiled on May 31, 1897, a homage to the 54th Black Infantry Regiment of Boston. It is considered one of America’s most significant Civil War memorials, and was the first public monument to accurately depict black soldiers in military uniform. The memorial was created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), who was born in Dublin Ireland on March 1, 1848, to a French father and Irish mother. They landed in Boston in September 1848, fleeing the Irish famine, and later moved to New York. It took Augustus 14 years to complete the monument.  The Twin Lions  in the foyer of the Boston Public Library in Boston's Back Bay were unveiled in 1891, a tribut...

Image courtesy of Canadian-American Club On May 19, 1937, a group of Canadian expatriates living in Massachusetts came together to form the Canadian-American League. The Boston Globe reported that the group was "seeking 1,000 charter members....(and) more than 200 attended" the first meeting. Three weeks later, on June 16, 1937, the group met again at Intercolonial Hall on Dudley Street in Roxbury, which was a regular gathering spot of Canadian immigrants. Attorney Joseph S. O'Neill, the organizer and first president of the Canadian-American League, was originally from Charlotteville, Prince Edward Island, according to his obituary in The Boston Globe published on August 20, 1938. He worked at the Dolan, O'Neill and Balch law firm in Boston. Other officers included Alexander C. Chisholm, treasurer; Mrs Colin W. MacDonald, secretary and Jeannette C. Chisholm, assistant secretary. "The purpose of the organization is to unite the great number of Canadi...

Image Courtesy of Boston Public Library Special Collections On March 6, 1927 Eamon De Valera visited the United States after an absence of six and a half years. The purpose of his visit, according to the New York Times , was to testify in the Irish Republican bonds litigation being tried on March 9, 1927 before the Supreme Court of the State of New York. "The funds in question amount to more than $2,500,000 and represent the unexpended balance of the first and second external loans of the Irish Republican Government and were raised by me, in the capacity of the first President of the Irish Republic, and by my colleagues, during our visit to the United States in 1919 and 1921,” he said. During his trip, deValera visited New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles among other places.   At the end of the 7-week tour, he returned to New York City for a final farewell, in which he declared, "The republic...

Photos Courtesy of The Music of Skuabh Luachra Ellen O'Byrne DeWitt (1875-1926), an Irish immigrant from Cloontumper, Co. Leitrim,  emigrated to New York City as a teenager and in her 20s, she opened an Irish music record shop that flourished for more than half a century in New York City and Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Ellen and her husband, Dutch immigrant Justus DeWitt, had two sons, Justus Jr. (1899-1983) and James (b.1902).  They ran a small travel company for several years before Ellen decided to open the small Irish music shop at 1398 Third Avenue near 79th Street.   With the swift rise of the recording industry in the early 20th century, Ellen was among the first to recognize that the burgeoning Irish immigrant population would always be looking out for music from back home, and she convinced several record companies such as Columbia, Victor and Decca Records to add Irish artists to their catalogs. Eventually the company began seeking out New York-based immigr...

Portrait of James Sullivan, painted in 1807 by Gilbert Stuart James Sullivan (1744-1808), a heralded lawyer, orator and statesman during the American Revolution,  including two terms as Governor of Massachusetts, was born in Berwick, Maine on April 22, 1744.  He was the fourth of five sons born to Owen Sullivan of Limerick and Margery Browne of Cork, who were both indentured servants from Ireland. James and his brothers were home-schooled by their father, who had been a teacher in Ireland and spoke numerous languages. Sullivan worked for and studied law in his brother’s legal firm, and later served as a justice for the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1776 to 1782, as well as serving as a probate judge for Suffolk County from 1788 to 1790.  Sullivan's brother John Sullivan was a general in the American Revolution and a close aide to George Washington.  His other brother,  Ebenezer Sullivan raised his own militia of soldiers and fought as a captain in the Battle ...

The Catalpa, Photo courtesy of City of New Bedford The 150th anniversary of the Catalpa rescue mission is being celebrated this month in cities around the world, including New Bedford, Massachusetts, Dublin, Ireland and Rockingham, Western Australia.  On April 17, 2026, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, and the New Bedford Port Society commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Catalpa rescue mission by raising a replica of the American flag Captain Anthony hoisted during the rescue mission. The ceremony takes place at New Bedford City Hall at 5 p.m. Afterwards, author Peter Stevens gives a lecture on the Catalpa at Seamen’s Bethel. Click  here  to register. Catalpa Memorial, Rockingham, Photo Credit Chris Doyle Earlier this month, on April 6, the Australian Irish Heritage Association held " a commemoration of oration, song, theatre and verse" at the Catalpa Wild Geese Memorial at Palm Beach, Rockingham.  Image courtesy of the National ...