From the beginning of the city's history as the western bank of Springfield, Irish families have resided in and contributed to the development of the civics and culture of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Among the first appellations given to the city were the handles "Ireland", "Ireland Parish", or "Ireland Depot", after the village was designated the 3rd Parish of West Springfield in 1786. Initially occupied by a mixture of Yankee English and Irish Protestant families, many of whom belonged to the Baptist community of Elmwood, from 1840 through 1870 the area saw a large influx of Irish Catholic workers, immigrants to the United States, initially from the exodus of the Great Famine. During that period Irish immigrants and their descendants comprised the largest demographic in Holyoke and built much of the early city's infrastructure, including the dams, canals, and factories. Facing early hardships from Anti-Irish sentiment, Holyoke's Irish would largely build the early labor movement of the city's textile and paper mills, and remained active in the national Irish nationalist and Gaelic revival movements of the United States, with the Holyoke Philo-Celtic Society being one of 13 signatory organizations creating the Gaelic League of America, an early 20th century American counterpart of Conradh na Gaeilge.
Changes in industry and culture, and successive waves of different immigrant demographics would displace the Irish community to an extent, however the demographic remained an active identity in civic life throughout the 20th century. The Irish community today organizes the largest public event held in Holyoke annually, the Holyoke Saint Patrick's Day Parade. With representatives from surrounding towns and cities, the parade is a regional celebration for people of Irish ancestry. Today people of Irish ethnicity are the second largest demographic in Holyoke and the largest non-Hispanic group, representing about 15% of all residents, and 17% of residents of Hampden County, the second-largest single group by ancestry.
History
Early settlement and Ireland Parish
While the earliest settlers of Springfield would largely be of Yankee English stock, the first of the residents of the 3rd Parish of West Springfield were Irish immigrants who began settling in the region before the construction of the dam and industrialization that followed, granting the area the name "Ireland" or "Ireland Parish." Colonists had claimed lands by 1655, and early accounts refer to John Riley as the first permanent settler of Holyoke, but though Riley owned 28 acres along "Riley's Brook" (Tannery Brook in modern-day Ingleside), his daughters Mary and Margaret, and their Irish Protestant husbands, Joseph Ely and William MacCranny, would first establish their homesteads in 1667. By the time West Springfield was partitioned in 1707, numerous Irish families had moved to the Parish, and eventually it was chartered as such, the 3rd Parish of West Springfield, on July 7, 1786. Quickly it gained the nickname Ireland, for in those days a number of other families had joined the descendants of the Elys and MacCrannys; these names have also been in the past combined into the better known Ireland Parish handle.
Ireland Depot era
The growth of the Irish community up until this time can be found in birth records of West Springfield, of which Holyoke was its 3rd parish. In 1847 there were 14 births, none of which were of Irish surnames, but by 1848, 19 of 87 were, and by 1849 105 out of 221 West Springfield births were of Irish parentage. Many of the new arrivals came to find work in the construction of the dam and the factories that would be built with it. In the fall of 1848 the Hadley Falls Company put their building lots on the market, and of these lots, many were purchased by recently-arrived Irish. From these arrivals there formed three small villages, the abodes of the Hadley Falls Company Housing, otherwise known as the "North Flats" at the time, designed by mill engineer John Chase, and built by one Charles MacClellan.HLY.36, MACRIS, Massachusetts Historical Commission. Long lost to history there existed two smaller shanty villages, "The Patch", lying where Pulaski Park stands today, and "The Bush", a series of dwellings in the fields of South Holyoke. Another early settlement, simply referred to as "The Field", would be rechristened "Ireland Depot" with the arrival of the railroad in 1845, today being part of the broader-defined "The Flats" or more specifically "Depot Hill", which was used for tillage predating the development of the grid and canal system.
In contrast with the skilled-labor class and the rowhouses of the Hadley Falls Company in The Flats, the early dwellings of The Patch were primitive, ephemeral, and described as shanties. Construction of these structures was described in Clifton Johnson's Hampden County as "a shanty built by putting four upright posts, to which rough boards were nailed... a roof of overlapping boards was put on top, places cut for a door and windows... Inside the shanty the earth was smoothed... and a rude floor of boards put down". These buildings typically housed a single family, however some were boarding houses for large groups of workers, the largest described as being 40 feet long at its longest wall and housing 30 people. Livestock would often be seen milling freely about between such buildings in areas like The Patch.
Tragedy struck in 1849, when the immigrant colonies suffered a severe epidemic of cholera. Men, women and children would get sick in the evening, and perish by the morning; with no cemetery other than one across the river in Chicopee, the epidemic spread quickly and acutely. It was reported to have resulted in hundreds of deaths, and the outbreak resulted in the deaths of 10% of the city's early Irish population. Part of a national phenomena, the cause of the outbreak was likely from the unsanitary conditions on ships bringing large groups seeking refuge from the Great Famine. Prior to the construction of Prospect Park on the site and the construction of a modern sewage system, conditions at The Patch led to outbreaks that would persist for its residents there in the ensuing decades.
In 1850 following a meeting of the Hadley Falls Company, the New City was dubbed Holyoke. Emigration from Ireland to Holyoke would continue well into the 20th century and yet, with some irony it was after the changing of the name "Ireland Parish" from the New City to an English surname, that the area changed from more predominantly English Yankee, into a city substantially more Irish in character. With the emergence of industry and a new wave of immigration, by 1855 more than a third of residents in Holyoke were of Irish origin.
Tradesmen and builders
Irish immigration to Holyoke would continue well into the 20th century. The majority of immigrants to the city would be predominantly Irish in the first decades of the city's existence, from the famine refugees of the 1840s through the later factory worker arrivals of the 1890s. By 1900, larger groups of French-Canadians had begun to arrive, however with their early arrival and the separation of French language institutions, the Irish would however come to define Holyoke's identity as founders. They, along a much smaller and separate German demographic, would establish much of the city's early social, political, and labor institutions.
Although many of Holyoke's earliest arrivals would be farmers, these would-be laborers included a number of tradesmen such as carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths, some of the industrial city's workers who would construct its dam, canals, and factories in subsequent decades. This was reflected in a shifting demography: in 1860, three in four skilled construction workers were Yankee Americans; by 1880 fewer than one in five reflected the same demographic, the vast majority being Irish tradesmen who would define the labor community of unions and local politics for virtually the entirety of the city's history. One of Ireland's notable sculptor's Jerome Connor, was brought to the United States as a boy as his stonemason father, Patrick Connor, was among Holyoke's early tradesmen.
Despite anti-Irish sentiment in the United States during the 19th century, the Irish were split into two classes, with about 50% working in industry between 1860 and 1900, and 25–36% represented in professional services, such as lawyers, architects, bankers, and other occupations, during the same period, exceeding the proportions of the other immigrant demographics and native-born populations in such occupations during that time.
Among the earliest arrivals in Holyoke's workmen and contractors was John Delaney, a stonemason. By the time he would arrive in Holyoke in April 1849, Delaney had previously worked on the Croton Water-works supplying the City of New York, Fort Warren in Boston, and the Lowell Canal System. In his time in Holyoke he would become known for supervising the construction of the Holyoke Canal System, as well as a number of its mills, and oversaw the construction of Holyoke City Hall's foundations. In the latter years of his career, Delaney wished to build "a worthy monument to leave behind him", and purchased the old Second Congregational Church that once sat across from City Hall in 1884. By January 1885, work had begun in razing the old structure and plans had been drawn up by architect James A. Clough to build a grand building made of Sutherland Falls marble from Vermont, from a quarry owned by Vermont Governor Redfield Proctor's family, with foundational ashlar facing Dwight Street taken from Delaney's quarry at Mount Tom. When Proctor would visit Holyoke, Springfield, or one of its surrounding towns thereafter, he would make a point to pass that corner of Dwight and High "to see how his marble weathered." Unfortunately Delaney's monument to Holyoke's tradesmen would succumb to the wrecking ball after 65 years, for by 1950 its tenant the W. T. Grant Department Store sought a more modern building. Demolished in January and February 1950, a total of 195 trucks hauled the dismantled marble South Hadley, where it was used as ground fill in a new housing development. Today the legacy of Delaney and his men remains most visible in the stone facades of the city's canal system.
A prominent figure in Holyoke's printing industry was one Michael J. Doyle. Born in Ireland on September 27, 1872 to Thomas and Mary Doyle (née Murphy), Doyle would arrive in America with his parents in 1880. Educated in Holyoke Public Schools, he would eventually take up an engraving apprenticeship in Springfield, and began a firm under the handle "M. J. Doyle Printing Company" in 1893, was elected to the board of aldermen in 1897 and water commission in 1904, running many jobs for the city's annual reports and publications through the early 20th century.