Revolutionary Irish Trail Sites
Downtown Boston
Old State House: 206 Washington Street
A granite and bronze medallion marks the spot of the Boston Massacre along the Freedom Trail. Irishman Patrick Carr was among the five Bostonians fatally shot on March 5, 1770 by Irish soldiers in the 29th Regiment.
Massachusetts State House: 24 Beacon Street
Jeremiah O’Brien’s plaque near Hall of Flags honors the hero of America’s first naval battle at Machias, Maine. A portrait of Governor James Sullivan hangs in the 3rd floor corridor. A plaque inside the State House Library depicts the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by eight Irishmen.
Granary Burying Ground: 95 Tremont Street
Buried here are Irishmen Patrick Carr, killed in the Boston Massacre, Governor James Sullivan and his family and William Hall, founder and president of Charitable Irish Society, the nation’s oldest Irish organization.
Boston Common: Tremont and Boylston Streets
Sites of interest along Tremont Street include Commodore John Barry plaque and Boston Massacre Monument. The Central Burying Ground has gravesites of early Irish settlers and Irish soldiers killed at Bunker Hill. Irish regiments pitched tents on the Common in 1768.
American Ancestors: 97 Newbury Street, Back Bay
This national center for family history, heritage and culture has important collections of the New England Irish, especially the Scots-Irish migration in the 18th century to Worcester, New Hampshire and Maine, and records from Boston’s Catholic Archdiocese.
Commonwealth Avenue Mall: Between Berkeley & Clarendon Streets, Back Bay
The bronze statue of General John Glover, who led the famous Marblehead Regiment, was created in 1875 by Irish sculptor Martin Milmore of Co. Sligo. Milmore was selected to create the monument by Glover’s grandson, Jonas Glover.
Copley Square Park: Boylston and Dartmouth Streets, Back Bay
The son of Irish immigrants, John Singleton Copley was America’s first great portrait artist. A loyalist by persuasion, Copley painted both American and British leaders. Copley Square was named in his honor in 1888, and a statue placed there in 2002.
Boston Public Library: Boylston & Dartmouth Streets, Back Bay
Henry Pelham, John S. Copley’s half-brother, was a talented illustrator and mapmaker. A rare copy of his map, “A Plan of Boston in New England and Its Environs,” is in special collections, along with a coroner’s report on Patrick Carr’s death.
Museum of Fine Arts: 465 Huntington Avenue
The museum has the world’s largest collection of paintings by John Singleton Copley, including portraits of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren, plus Copley’s famous portrait of his half-brother Henry Pelham, titled A Boy with a Flying Squirrel.
Massachusetts Historical Society: 1154 Boylston Street, Back Bay Get Directions
Holdings include the Charitable Irish Society’s papers from 1738-2008, Henry Pelham’s 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre and correspondence by Henry Knox, John and James Sullivan, John S. Copley, Patrick Tracy and others.
Cambridge
Cambridge Common: Massachusetts Avenue near Harvard Square
On the Common: a plaque where General George Washington seemingly took command of the Continental Army in July, 1775, three Castle William cannons abandoned by the British, and a Knox Trail marker where the Fort Ticonderoga cannons were delivered.
Neighborhoods
Bunker Hill Monument & Museum: 43 Monument Road, Charlestown
General John Stark and Major Andrew McClary led hundreds of New Hampshire Scots-Irish into battle at Bunker Hill. Boston’s Henry Knox volunteered as a military observer with keen engineering insights.
Fort Independence (Castle William): Castle Island, South Boston
The Irish regiment involved in the Boston Massacre was sent to Castle William in 1770, where they remained temporarily before being shipped down to New Jersey. The fort was rebuilt and named Fort Adams, and in 1799, U.S. President John Adams changed the name to Fort Independence.
Dorchester Heights Monument: Thomas Park, South Boston
Henry Knox delivered the cannons, and Irishman James Boies helped set up the fortification on Dorchester Heights in March 1776. George Washington appointed General John Sullivan as Officer of the Day. The Continental Army’s countersign password on March 17, 1776 was St. Patrick.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library: Columbia Point, Dorchester
President John F. Kennedy’s favorite naval hero was Commodore John Barry, the Father of the US Navy and a native of Co. Wexford, Kennedy’s ancestral home. The JFK Library has Barry’s cutlass and a fragment of the ship flag he flew.
Plaques on the Revolutionary Irish Trail
Home of John S. Copley, 1774
42 Beacon Hill
In the 1770s, Copley owned this parcel of land, also known as Copley’s Farm, located right next to John Hancock’s mansion. He sold it in 1795 to Harrison Grey Otis. The City of Boston erected a plaque in 1925.
First Catholic Mass Held, 1788
24 School Street
Catholics had to worship in secrecy because of Puritan bigotry until November 2, 1788, when the first public mass was celebrated here. The site was previously a French Huguenot chapel and Congregational Church. The City of Boston placed the plaque in 1925.
Church of Presbyterian Strangers, 1729
Federal and Franklin Streets
The Long Lane church founded in 1729 by Reverend John Moorhead of Newtonards, County Down later became the Federal Street Church, in which the Massachusetts State Convention voted to ratify the United States Constitution on February 6, 1788.
Henry Knox Birthplace, 1750
Atlantic Avenue & Essex Street
Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox was born here on July 25, 1750, the seventh of ten children of Scots-Irish immigrants William and Mary Campbell Knox. The Massachusetts chapter of Sons of the American Revolution placed a plaque in 1911.
Boston Tea Party, 1773
470 Atlantic Avenue
The old Griffin Wharf was the site of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when Bostonians disguised as native Americans dumped British tea into the harbor to protest new taxes. Irishmen Charles Conner and Thomas White participated.
Knox Trail Markers
Twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox, a Boston book seller whose parents had emigrated from Ireland, organized one of the most audacious and daring feats of the Revolutionary War. Known as the Noble Train of Artillery, Knox and his men transported 59 large pieces of artillery – cannons, mortars and howitzer – from Fort Ticonderoga, NY to Cambridge, MA, and eventually to Dorchester Heights, in the dead of winter of 1775 and 1776. The 300-mile train of artillery weighed nearly 60 tons and took 56 days to complete. The artillery fortified the efforts of George Washington and his colonial troops to drive the British ships from Boston Harbor on March 17, 1776, ending Britain’s 11-month Siege of Boston.
In 1924, a commission was formed to place granite markers in each of the towns Knox passed through. In greater Boston, these markers are located at Dorchester Heights in South Boston, Roxbury Heritage State Park, Cambridge Common, Watertown and Waltham.
In 2026, Revolutionary 250 Boston and other partners recreated the Noble Train of Artillery, stopping in towns from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, culminating in a ceremony at Dorchester Heights on March 17, 2026.
More Rev Irish Sites
If you are willing to venture a bit further, these sites are worth the visit.
Concord Old Burying Ground : Monument Square, Concord
Here is the gravesite of Hugh Cargill, a former English soldier who joined the Patriot side and helped save town records at the Battle of Lexington & Concord. He also fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Cargill was born in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal.
Cary Memorial Hall : 1605 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington
The Town of Lexington commissioned Irish sculptor Martin Milmore to create a marble statue of patriot Sam Adams for its centenary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1875. The statue was shipped from Rome where Milmore was living.
Custom House Maritime Museum : 25 Water Street, Newburyport
Wexford-born Irish immigrant Patrick Tracy and his son Nathaniel put their entire merchant fleet behind the American Revolution, harassing British ships along the coast. The Museum has numerous Tracy artifacts and correspondence. Nearby Patrick Tracy Square is named in his honor.
Stay tuned for Rev Irish Trail sites in New Hampshire and Maine.