Long before the Irish were welcomed or celebrated in American life, they were already fighting for the country’s liberty. In the spring of 1775, in the small frontier settlement of Machias on the Maine coast, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants from County Cork led a band of lumbermen and fishermen against a British warship. His name was Jeremiah O’Brien, and the bold action he commanded would produce the first naval victory of the American Revolution. Jeremiah O’Brien was born in 1744 in Kittery, in the district of Massachusetts that would later form the state of Maine, the eldest of six … [Read more...] about Before the U.S. Navy, There was O’Brien
Past Irish American Heritage Month Profiles
Patrick Carr: The Forgotten Irish Victim of the Boston Massacre
On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd on Boston’s King Street. The shooting left five men dead and helped ignite the chain of events that would lead to the American Revolution. Patriot leaders seized upon the event, pamphlets spread the story across the colonies, and Paul Revere’s famous engraving turned the episode into a symbol of British tyranny. Most Americans know the name Crispus Attucks. Far fewer remember Patrick Carr. Carr was a thirty-one-year-old Irish Catholic immigrant and a skilled leather-breeches maker who had come to Boston seeking what … [Read more...] about Patrick Carr: The Forgotten Irish Victim of the Boston Massacre
John Boyle O’Reilly: The Fenian Who Became Boston’s Voice
When John Boyle O’Reilly arrived in Boston in 1869, he was not a celebrated poet or civic leader. He was a Fenian exile who had escaped from a British penal colony in Western Australia after being transported there for revolutionary activity. Within twenty years he would become one of the most respected voices in the city: editor of The Boston Pilot, a widely read poet, and a civic leader whose influence extended far beyond the Irish immigrant community. O’Reilly rebuilt his life in America without abandoning the convictions that had sent him into exile. He remained committed to Irish … [Read more...] about John Boyle O’Reilly: The Fenian Who Became Boston’s Voice
“I Shot at Every Damn Plane I Could See”: John Finn’s One Man Fight at Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7th, 1941, John William Finn was asleep at his home at Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station on Oahu when a neighbor's pounding on his door and the sound of gunfire jolted him awake. The Imperial Japanese Navy had launched a devastating sneak attack without warning or declaration of war, and Finn and 32-year-old Chief Petty Officer and chief aviation ordnance man was about to be among the first to fight back. Born in Compton, California in 1909, Finn had dropped out of school and enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17. Now at 32, he had risen to the rank of Chief Petty … [Read more...] about “I Shot at Every Damn Plane I Could See”: John Finn’s One Man Fight at Pearl Harbor
Kate Mullany: An Irish Immigrant Who Helped Working Women Organize
Kate Mullany was a nineteen-year-old Irish immigrant when she became the head of her household. Her father had died in 1864, leaving behind a sickly mother and three sisters, and a brother who depended on her to survive. Like many daughters of Irish immigrants in Troy, New York, she went to work in the one place that offered steady pay to women: the collar laundries. Troy, New York, at the time, was known as Collar City. The detachable linen collar had become an essential fixture of respectable dress. Troy produced most of the nation's collars, but before they reached the market, they had … [Read more...] about Kate Mullany: An Irish Immigrant Who Helped Working Women Organize