In 2025, Boston Irish Tourism Association (BITA) celebrates its 25th anniversary as a distinctive cultural tourism organization that promotes culture…
Continue Reading
A cool way to experience Ireland is to ‘settle yourself,’ a common Irish phrase that means to get your bearings…
Continue Reading
One of America’s most acclaimed sculptors of the 19th century was actually an Irish immigrant. Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was born on March 1, 1848 on Charlemount Street in Dublin at the height of the Irish Famine, when millions of Irish were fleeing Ireland to places like Boston, New York, Montreal, St. John and other eastern port cities….
Read More
The town of Milford Massachusetts has its own iconic Irish Round Tower, built in the 19th century by Irish immigrants who came to the Blackstone Valley Region to work in the rock quarries and on railroad construction. The Milford tower is about 65 feet high and 16 feet in circumference. Early media reports suggest that the…
Read More
On January 24, 1776, 25 year old Boston bookseller and American revolutionary war hero Henry Knox reported to General George Washington in Cambridge that he and his volunteers had just transported 59 cannons and artillery 300 miles, from Fort Ticonderoga in New York to eastern Massachusetts, in the dead of winter. Image Courtesy of Marching the Knox Trail The plan was to position…
Read More
Timothy Deasy (1839-1880), Civil War soldier, Irish rebel and elected official, died on December 10, 1880 in Lawrence, MA. Deasy emigrated with his family from Clonakilty, County Cork to Massachusetts in 1847 to escape the Irish Famine. The family settled in Lawrence 35 miles north of Boston, the nation’s first planned industrial city where immigrants and…
Read More
On November 17, 1918, more than 30,000 people gathered in Lowell to honor a favorite native son, William Henry Cardinal O’Connell, who was at that time the Cardinal of the Boston Archdiocese. Officials unveiled and dedicated a fountain of granite and bust of O’Connell along a parkway in front of City Hall. The fountain and…
Read More
On November 16, 1988 Boston City Council officially proclaimed Goody Glover Day in tribute to Goodwife Ann Glover, an Irish immigrant woman who was falsely accused of being a witch and hung from the gallows in 1688. Puritan leader Rev Cotton Mather and other town leaders were involved in the trial and execution of Glover. Glover was an Irish…
Read More
After the Revolutionary War, the Puritan’s strident objections to Catholics living in the Bay Colony had lessened, thanks in part to the bravery of French, Polish and Irish soldiers fighting alongside the colonists during the colonial war against Britain. But it wasn’t until November 1818 that the Town of Boston’s Board of Health gave “that…
Read More
Here are the Mayors of Boston Claiming Irish Heritage: Hugh O’Brien 1885–88 Patrick Collins 1902–05 John F. Fitzgerald 1906–07, 1910–13 James M. Curley 1914–17, 1922–25, 1930–33, 1946–49 Frederick W. Mansfield 1934–37 Maurice Tobin 1938–41, 1941-44 John Kerrigan 1945 John B. Hynes 1950–59 John Collins 1960–68 Kevin H. White 1968–83 Raymond L. Flynn 1984–93 Martin J. Walsh 2014- 2021 The lineage of Boston mayors with Irish ancestry…
Read More
In 1977, a Celtic Cross was placed in O’Connell Park on Merrimack Street across from Lowell City Hall, as part of America’s Bicentennial Celebration. The granite monument was carved by local artisan Adian Luz. The text on the back of the monument reads: The Irish community of Lowell was the first ethnic group to inhabit…
Read More
Photo Courtesy of Boston National Park Service Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the famous 19th century writer of short stories and novels, was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, to parents who were actors at the Federal Street Theatre in Boston. On his father’s side, “The poet’s ancestors were of the same Scotch-Irish stock that…
Read More
David I. Walsh, the first Irish Catholic elected as Governor of Massachusetts, received the largest plurality ever for a Democratic candidate for the office, winning by over 53,000 votes, getting 180,000+ votes. He defeated three other candidates: Charles S. Bird, Augustus Gardner and Eugene Foss. Walsh had to plan a larger inaugural reception than originally…
Read More
Twin Curley statues at Union Park on Congress Street, Boston James Michael Curley, the larger-than-life political figure who dominated Boston and Massachusetts politics for half a century, died on November 12, 1958. Over 100,000 people passed by his coffin at the Hall of Flags in the Massachusetts State House, according to a story in The Boston Globe….
Read More
Boxing champion John L. Sullivan was born on October 12, 1858, on East Concord Street in Boston’s Roxbury/South End. His father, Mike Sullivan, emigrated from County Kerry around 1850 and married Katherine Kelly, whose family had immigrated from Athlone in 1853. They married on November 6, 1856. Most Irish boys during this time seemed to…
Read More
Illustration by Leonard Everett Fisher A passenger ship called Brig St. John sank off the coast of Cohasset on the morning of Sunday, October 7, 1849, pushed to the brink by a severe nor’easter that rocked the boat for hours before it sank. On board the ship were 127 passengers from Ireland, along with sixteen…
Read More
On Wednesday, July 23, 1997, Ireland’s President Mary Robinson officially helped dedicate the Cambridge Irish Famine Memorial in Cambridge Common, a tribute to the 150th anniversary of Ireland’s Great Hunger, known as An Gorta Mor. Nearly 4,000+ people attended the ceremony in the iconic Cambridge Common near Harvard Square, which also includes the Cambridge Civil War Monument…
Read More
America’s first great portrait artist, John Singleton Copley (1737-1815) was born in Boston on July 3, 1738. He was the son of Irish immigrants who emigrated to Boston in the 1730s. John’s parents, Richard Copley and Mary Singleton from County Clare, were married in County Limerick before emigrating to Boston. Right after their son John…
Read More
Photo by Peter H. Dreyer, Boston City Archives Bunker Hill Day is celebrated in Boston each June 17 to mark the famous Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place on June 17, 1775 between American colonists and British troops. The Bunker Hill Monument was built to recognize the sacrifice of the colonists fighting against British rule. The British…
Read More
Boston’s most iconic public monument, the Shaw Memorial, was officially unveiled on May 31, 1897. The homage to the 54th Black Infantry Regiment of Boston is considered one of America’s most significant Civil War memorials. It was the first public monument to accurately depict black soldiers in military uniform. The memorial was created by immigrant Augustus…
Read More
March 5, 2020 Ceremony at the Boston Massacre Grave Site March 5, 2020, Boston marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, a transformative event in history that launched the road to revolution in the American colonies. The Massacre took place on a wintry Monday night on March 5, 1770, when British troops fired into a…
Read More
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890-1995), who held the Kennedy family together through tragedy and triumph for much of the 20th century, is permanently enshrined along Boston’s waterfront, with the Rose Kennedy Garden and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The Rose Kennedy Garden is the first stop on Boston’s Irish Heritage Trail, a walking tour of twenty landmarks that tell three centuries of Boston Irish…
Read More
One of Boston’s most interesting sculptures, Bacchante and Infant Faun, is displayed in the courtyard of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, Back Bay. The masterpiece was created in 1893 by American-born sculptor Frederick MacMonnies, a disciple of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. MacMonnies gave the original casting to his friend, architect Charles Follen McKim, whose own masterpiece, the Boston Public Library, was being…
Read More
Grand Union Flag used by George Washington at his Cambridge Headquarters in 1776 Here is an interesting summary of the variety of flags in the colonies at the start of the American Revolution, as reprinted in Irish American Almanac in 1876. The original source, according to the Almanac, was Appleton’s American Cyclopaedia. “In the beginning…
Read More
One hundred and thirty years ago, on November 14, 1888, state and city officials unveiled the Boston Massacre Memorial on Tremont Street on Boston Common. Among the guest speakers were Governor Oliver Ames, Mayor Hugh O’Brien and State Representative Julius Caesar Chappelle, an African-American leader who advocated for civil rights, voter registration and political participation.The sculptor was Robert Kraus, a German…
Read More
Maurice Tobin and his wife Helen Photo Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Presidential Library This Labor Day, the Boston Irish Tourism Association pays tribute to Boston native Maurice Tobin (1901-53), who served as mayor of Boston and governor of Massachusetts before being named US Secretary of Labor by President Harry S. Truman. Born in Roxbury’s…
Read More
