People of Irish descent form the largest single ethnic group in Massachusetts, and one of the largest in Boston. Once a Puritan stronghold, Boston changed dramatically in the 19th century with the arrival of immigrants from other parts of the world. The Irish dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Irish Famine. Their arrival transformed Boston from an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant city into one that has become progressively more diverse. These people hired Irish as workers and servants, but there was little social interaction. In the 1840s and 50s, the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement targeted Irish Catholics in Boston. In the 1860s, many Irish immigrants fought for the Union in the American Civil War, a display of patriotism that helped to dispel much of the prejudice against them.
With an expanding population, group loyalty, and block-by-block political organization, the Irish took political control of the city, leaving the Yankees in charge of finance, business, and higher education. The Irish left their mark on the region in a number of ways: in still heavily Irish neighborhoods such as Charlestown and South Boston; in the name of the local basketball team, the Boston Celtics; in the iconic Irish-American political family, the Kennedys; in a large number of prominent local politicians, such as James Michael Curley; and in the establishment of Catholic Boston College.
History
Early America
The Catholic Irish have been in Boston since colonial times, when they arrived as indentured servants, mostly women and children, as opposed to those of Scots-Irish Protestant ancestry who were merchants, sailors, or tradesmen. According to historian James Cullen, a large number of Irish immigrants arrived as early as 1654, on the ship Goodfellow, and were "sold" into indentured servitude "to such of the inhabitants as needed them."Cullen (1889), p. 23. One of those Irish may have been Ann Glover"Catholics in a Puritan Atlantic:The liminality of empire’s edge".
Most of the early arrivals were Presbyterians from Ulster who came seeking relief from high rents, repressive taxes, and other pressures. Wary of Boston's Anglo-Saxon Puritans, who were hostile to the Irish, many moved to the outer fringes of the Bay Colony and founded towns such as Bangor and Belfast in Maine, and Londonderry and Derry in New Hampshire. The few Irish Catholics who settled in the Boston area had to convert or hide their identity, since Catholicism was outlawed.O'Connor (1995), p. 3-5 Other Irish immigrants may have come to Boston involuntarily, after being kidnapped by pirates.Cullen (1889), p. 24. The Boston News-Letter announced an auction of Irish boys in 1730, and women convicts deported from Belfast were sold in Boston in 1749.Byrne (2008) p. 551. Conflation of such immigrants, indentures, and convicts has given rise to the Irish slaves myth.
On March 17, 1737, after a particularly harsh winter, a group of Irish Protestants met in Boston to organize the Charitable Irish Society. Its mission was to provide loans and other assistance to Irish immigrants who were elderly, sick, or in need. The gathering was the first known observance of St. Patrick's Day in the Thirteen Colonies. Still in existence, the society is the oldest Irish organization in North America.Quinlin (2013), pp. 7-8.
Once the Irish had proved their loyalty by fighting in the American Revolutionary War, they were more welcome in Boston and better able to assimilate, provided, of course, that they were Protestants. According to historian Michael J. O'Brien, hundreds of Irish Americans fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill despite being Protestant, since analysis of their names in the records shows them to have borne Irish surnames, derived from the Irish language.O'Brien (1919), pp. 210, 224. One son of Irish immigrants, John Sullivan, served under George Washington and became a brigadier general. According to local legend, Sullivan used "Saint Patrick" as the official password when he led colonial troops into town following the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. Boston still celebrates the event each year on Evacuation Day, which coincides with Saint Patrick's Day. Sullivan's brother, James Sullivan, was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1807.O'Connor (1995), pp. 12-13.
19th century
A wave of Irish immigration to Boston started in the 1820s. Initially, most of the newcomers were Protestants, but increasingly, they were joined by Catholics. From the start, there were problems. The "papists" were seen as both a spiritual and a political threat, and the locals reacted accordingly. Gangs of militant Protestants roamed the streets of Irish neighborhoods, damaged property, and even destroyed several houses. Preachers railed from the pulpit against the "blasphemy" and "idolatry" of Roman Catholicism, and local newspapers fanned the flames by printing anti-Catholic propaganda, filled with wild conspiracy theories about the Jesuits.O'Connor (1995), pp. 43-45.
On July 11, 1837, a company of Yankee firemen returning from a call met with an Irish funeral procession on Broad Street. What started as a street brawl escalated into an all-out riot when a fireman sounded the emergency alarm, summoning all of the fire engines in Boston. Local Yankees and Irish Americans came running to join the fight, bearing sticks, stones, bricks, and cudgels. Some 800 men were involved in the actual fighting, and at least 10,000 gathered in the street to cheer them on. The riot ended when the mayor called in the National Lancers and the state militia. Remarkably, no one was killed. Three Irishmen and none of the firemen received jail sentences. The incident became known as the Broad Street Riot.O'Connor (1995), pp. 48-49.
Famine years
The Port of Boston was a major center of immigration during the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852). By 1850, the Irish were the largest ethnic group in Boston . Most of the immigrants during this period were poor, unskilled laborers from rural backgrounds who settled in the slums of the North End, the South Cove, and Fort Hill. Many were not only destitute but weakened by typhus contracted on the coffin ships that had brought them. To contain the health risk, a quarantine hospital and an almshouse were built on Deer Island, where hundreds of immigrants died and were buried in unmarked graves. To make matters worse, a cholera epidemic swept through Boston in 1849. The North End's poor, who lived in crowded, unsanitary conditions on the waterfront, were the hardest hit, and over 500 Irish died.Ryan (1979), pp. 2-3. Boston health inspectors described a typical Irish slum as "a perfect hive of human beings, without comforts and mostly without common necessaries; in many cases huddled together like brutes, without regard to age or sex or sense of decency."
Many Irish women became domestic servants; by 1860, two-thirds of the servants in Boston were Irish.Byrne (2008) p. 552. Most Irish men worked in construction, in quarries, or on the docks. Irish laborers helped build up the business district behind Faneuil Hall, built townhouses on Beacon Hill, cleared land for North Station, and filled in the South End; others worked on the waterfront as fish cutters and stevedores.O'Connor (1995), p. 37.
A notable exception was Andrew Carney. Born into poverty in County Cavan, Ireland, he trained as a tailor's apprentice, moved to Boston in 1816, and opened a successful tailoring business. Carney & Sleeper, Clothier, was one of the first shops to offer "ready-made" suits. After selling the business, Carney retired from tailoring and went on to a career in finance and a legacy of philanthropy. He co-founded the First National Bank of Boston and the John Hancock Insurance Company; funded the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the South End, and several Catholic orphanages; helped found Boston College; and in 1863 founded Carney Hospital, where, he insisted, "the sick without distinction of creed, color or nation shall be received and cared for." This policy was relatively enlightened at a time when Boston City Hospital was refusing to admit Jewish patients.Ryan (1979), p. 165.
Another influential figure was Thomas F. Ring, president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Catholic Union of Boston. A Boston native of Irish descent, Ring worked for his family's paper export business and was a leading member of several charitable organizations. Ring was also involved in the founding, in 1870, of the Union Institution for Savings, which provided loans to Catholics who were turned away by other banks.Cullen (1889), pp. 403-404. Other successful Irish businessmen included Christopher Blake, who started a large furniture factory in Dorchester; Patrick Maguire, founder of The Republic, a weekly political journal; and Dennis Hern, founder of a telegram service that employed 400 messengers.Cullen (1889), pp. 408–409, 413, 419.
The Boston Irish Famine Memorial was erected at the corner of Washington and School Streets, on the Freedom Trail, in 1998. One bronze sculpture depicts a starving woman, looking up to the heavens as if to ask, "Why?", while her children cling to her. A second sculpture shows the figures hopeful as they land in Boston.
Know Nothings In the 1840s and 50s, increasing nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment gave rise to the Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party and later the American Party. The Know Nothings gained a large following in Boston with their program of "Temperance, Liberty, and Protestantism." In 1847, they held a mass rally in the crowded Irish neighborhood of Fort Hill; residents, forewarned by the clergy and urged to keep the peace, stayed indoors that day.Cullen (1889), pp. 74-75.
In 1854, the Know Nothings took control of the Massachusetts legislature.O'Connor (1995), p. 76. Among other things, they passed laws barring Catholics from being buried in public cemeteries, denying church officials any control over church property, and requiring children to read from the Protestant Bible (the King James Version) in public schools. They formed a Nunnery Committee that raided Catholic schools and convents on trumped-up pretexts.O'Connor (1995), pp. 77, 80. The Boston Police Department's first Irish officer, Bernard "Barney" McGinniskin, was fired that year without cause, and on Independence Day, the newly constructed St. Gregory's Church in Dorchester was burned to the ground by Know Nothing rioters.
In Boston's public schools, Catholic children were required to say Protestant prayers and sing Protestant hymns, and their history books were written from an anti-Catholic point of view.O'Connor (1995), p. 80. In 1859, a Catholic boy who refused to recite the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments was severely beaten, leading to the Eliot School Rebellion. Over 300 boys withdrew from the school, which prompted St. Mary's Parish to create a primary school to educate them.Ryan (1979), p. 59.
Civil War