Irish Heritage Trail
Central Burying Ground on Boston Common, Fall 2022 Tucked away in a shady plot at the corner of Tremont and Boylston Street on Boston Common is the Central Burying Ground, cemetery established in 1756 as Boston’s fourth cemetery. It was originally called the South Burying Ground, and was used to bury foreigners, strangers, indigents and soldiers….
Battle between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, 19 August 1812, by Michel Felice Corne Courtesy U.S. Navy – Naval History and Heritage Command, 80-G-K-26254 America’s oldest commissioned ship, the USS Constitution, was first launched on October 21, 1797, and is berthed in the Charlestown Navy Yard. The USS Constitution is operated by the US Navy, a partner of the National Historic…
Photo of Eugene O’Neill, courtesy of PBS, An American Experience Eugene O’Neill, one of the great American playwrights and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in a hotel on October 16, 1888 in New York City to parents Ella Quinlan and Irish actor James O’Neill. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in…
One of Massachusetts’ most notable Olympic champions, Harold Vincent Connolly, died on August 18, 2010 at age 79. His rise to stardom, from a frail and partially paralyzed child to an Olympian, has inspired generations of Bostonians and athletes around the world. Born in Somerville on August 1, 1931, Connolly was raised in Boston’s Brighton…
Photo courtesy of Wally Gobetz Twenty-five years ago, on Wednesday, July 23, 1997, Ireland’s President Mary Robinson officially helped dedicate the Cambridge Irish Famine Memorial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 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…
Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command On June 12, 1775, the first naval battle of the American Revolution took place off the coast of Machias, Maine. That is the day when Jeremiah O’Brien (1744-1818) his four brothers and fellow townsmen from Machias created the “first act of Colonial piracy” in the war by…
On June 1, 1847, Mary Nelson became the first Irish immigrant to die at the new quarantine hospital at Deer Island. She died of typhus fever and was six years old. During the first ten days of June, 1847, other deaths included: Mary Connelly, age one on June 3; Mary Flaherty, age 21, on June…
Three years ago today, a memorial commemorating 800+ Irish immigrants buried on Deer Island in Boston Harbor was unveiled on Saturday, May 25, 2019, several miles off the coast of Boston. Speakers included Boston Archdiocese Sean Cardinal O’Malley and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Gene O’Flaherty was the master of ceremonies, City of Boston’s Chief Archivist…
She may be gone but she is certainly not forgotten. Rose Kennedy Fitzgerald (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. Born in Boston’s North End, Rose was the daughter of Boston’s gregarious Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Mary Josephine Hannon. The mother of President John F. Kennedy,…
The City of Cambridge has a long and illustrious history of Irish settlers, dating back to the 19th century when Irish immigrants settled in East Cambridge, Cambridgeport and in North Cambridge. Here are some significant landmarks and institutions that reflect the strong Irish presence over generations. Irish Famine Memorial On Wednesday, July 23, 1997, Ireland’s…
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….
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…
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…
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…
In one of his final acts as Mayor of Boston, James Michael Curley dedicated a bronze memorial on Boston Common to Revolutionary War hero Commodore John Barry, on October 16, 1949. A few weeks later, Curley lost his final bid for re-election to a fifth term as mayor, losing to John B. Hynes. Barry, a naval…
One of Boston’s most prominent Irish-Americans was Maurice Tobin (1901-53). Born in Roxbury’s Mission Hill, he was the son of immigrants from Clogheen, Tipperary. He had an illustrious political career, which culminated in his serving as US Secretary of Labor under President Harry Truman. Tobin became Massachusetts’ youngest state representative at age 25, and in 1937 made…
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…
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…
On Sunday, September 20, 2020, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) joined with Scituate Selectman John Sullivan and other local leaders in Scituate, Massachusetts to unveil a monument to Ireland’s Easter Rising of 1916. The monument, which is located at the band gazebo on Cole Parkway in Scituate, features the Proclamation of the Irish Republic,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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