A History of Saint Patrick's Day in America

Many working class Irish immigrants began arriving in the United States after 1845, fleeing famine in Ireland. The Tenement Museum’s "Irish Outsiders" tour tells the story of one Irish immigrant family, the Moores, and their struggle to survive and thrive in an unfamiliar nation and neighborhood. As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, we're exploring the history of this holiday and its role in our shared national history.

Roman Catholic Irish folks have been observing the feast day of St. Patrick on March 17 since the 9th or 10th century. Interestingly, however, the first parade held to honor St. Patrick's Day took place not in Ireland but in North America, in what would later become the United States. On March 17, 1762, Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as with fellow Irishmen serving in the English army.

An etching of St. Patrick c.1491

In 1848, several New York Irish Aid societies united to form one official New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Joseph Moore of 97 Orchard Street may have belonged to such a society, which would have provided his family with assistance in finding work, paying the rent in an emergency, and covering medical bills and funeral expenses.

Despite institutionalized discrimination, by the turn of the nineteenth century Irish Americans had organized a powerful political party known as the “green machine.” St. Patrick's Day parades became not only a show of strength for Irish Americans, but also as a must-attend event for political candidates courting the Irish voting bloc.

However, the role of Irish Americans in nineteenth century political and cultural arena was still hotly contested, as one can see in this image from a Harper’s Weekly magazine editorial column from 1887, now in the Library of Congress.

 

From Harper's Weekly, 1887

The drawing depicts an Irish-American Uncle Sam wearing a hat with pipe and four-leaf clover pulling at coat of arms under words "The Old Boston State House.” The pipe and four leaf clover were emblems of Irish pride which still appear in contemporary festivities.

 St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, c.1879

By 1911, the St. Patrick’s Day parade had grown substantially, attracting an estimated 30,000 marchers. Today, it's the world's oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States, with over 150,000 participants and 3 million observers. In 1911, a New York Times reporter stated that, “all true Americans now delight to honor the patron saint of a people who have played so large a part in the development of the Republic.” For many Americans, that holds true today.

--Posted by Development Associate Hilary Whitham

Questions for Curatorial: A look at forced emigration from Ireland

Curatorial Director Dave answers your a Museum educator's question.

A visitor told me that many of the Irish arrived on the coffin ships because the economy was switching from planting to grazing, and landowners wanted to get rid of the farmers. They would buy them ships passages to attempt to get rid of the farmers’ kids. The landlords didn't want to spend much money, so they bought the tickets on the worst ships. Is this true?

What this visitor has suggested is partly true. Many famine-era Irish immigrants arrived on what were called “coffin ships,” overcrowded and infested with disease. During the worst year of the Great Famine, 1847, 9% of all Irish emigrants bound for the United States died during the voyage.

The British government and many Irish landowners did view the Famine as an opportunity to remake Ireland in an image that conformed to their vision for the island society. This regeneration would be carried out through the transformation of Irish agrarian society using eviction and emigration to consolidate land holdings in the hands of a small number of strong land owners.

As the historian of Irish America, Kevin Kenny, has written: “Given the scale of the catastrophe, remarkably little assistance was offered to potential emigrants. Evictions were frequent, but only rarely were they accompanied by financial assistance to leave the country… The chief form of assistance available to them came not from landlords or the state, but from their own relatives in America.”

Indeed, very few Irish who were forcibly evicted received aid from landowners – approximately 50,000 out of a total 1.5 million that set sail for the United States.

It is possible that this particular visitor is thinking of two specific examples that appear to not have been indicative of the norm. During the Famine, Lord Palmerston forcibly evicted and assisted two thousand tenants from his Sligo estate to emigrate, and the Marquis of Lansdowne did the same for the 3,500 tenants of his estate in County Kerry.

Tenement as Art?

A while back, we were approached by Irish artist Jennifer Walshe about working together on an art project. Jennifer's work is fairly complex and conceptual and so a bit hard to explain - read more in this Village Voice profile.

For an upcoming exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum, she wanted to photograph small sculptures - what she calls "sound reliquaries" - in the rooms of the Moore family apartment. The reliquaries are created with different found objects, and in the middle of each is a  bubble "containing" a sound from Ireland - ice cracking on the river, a voice telling stories by the fire.

At the exhibit are the reliquaries as well as photos of them in situ in the Moore apartment. With her work Jennifer is exploring traditional aspects of Irish culture in new ways.

The exhibit is up from April 15 - May 15, so stop by to check it out.

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street
Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 6pm
Thursday 11am to 8pm

Photos courtesy artist / Chelsea Art Museum

Mick Moloney, a Gorgeous Former Synagogue, and Brooklyn Brewery Beer

All of these things came together Tuesday night at a Tenement Talk entitled "If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews." Mick Moloney, an ethno-musicologist, specializes in 19th and early 20th century American music. He's particularly interested in the way that cultures intermingle in song. He's done a lot of work to investigate the American music scene in its early days.

His latest CD focuses on an unlikely cross-cultural collaboration between Irish and Jewish Americans at the end of the 19th century. Musicians, songwriters, and performers easily swapped identities based on the direction the music industry was going... George M. Cohan, for instance, the writer of such classics as "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "You're a Grand Old Flag" was the son of Irish immigrants whose family name was Keohane. His parents were in show business on the Vaudeville stage, so perhaps there was specific intent when they changed their name to Cohan, which at a glance seems like Cohen, a common Jewish name. Working with many Jewish songwriters and performers, Cohan likely took advantage of this misconception to gain a foot hold in his industry. As always in show biz, performers would change their names if it helped to insure their success.

Here's a bit of the title song, written and composed by William Jerome (ne Flannery) and Jean Schwartz:

What would this great Yankee nation
Really, really ever do?
If it wasn't for a Levy,
A Mon-a-han or Don-a-hue,
Where would we get our policemen?
Why Uncle Sam would have the blues
Without the Pats and Isadores.
You'd have no big department stores,
If it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews.

McDonald built the subway and his name we'll not forget.
A word of praise is due to Nathan Strauss.
For pasteurizing baby's milk,
the world owes him a debt.
He's a friend to every kiddie in the house.
Without Big Tim Sullivan what would the Bowry do?
Just ask the man that needs a pair of shoes.
There wouldn't be an East Side in the City of New York,
If it wasn't for the Irish and the Jews.

Below are some photos from our event, held at the beautiful Angel Orensanz Foundation Center on Norfolk Street. Many people asked on Tuesday about the building's history. It was formerly the Ansche Chesed Synagogue (constructed 1849). Click here for a link to a pdf history pamphlet.



Full-sized photos can be found directly on our Flickr page.

Thanks to all who joined us for the event!

- Posted by Kate

More from around the web

Immigration reporter Nina Bernstein on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show, discussing deaths in immigrant detention centers.
[WNYC]

The Museum of the American Gangster has opened on St. Mark’s! Visit during the soft launch in March and receive $10 admission.
[moagnyc.org]

The students at Cooperstown Graduate Program continue their interesting discussion on immigration.
[CRG@CGP]

Corner of Houston and Ludlow in the 1970s, where the gym and Duane Reade are now.
[Flickr]

See some other old pics of the corner, back when it housed Bunnies, a kids' store.
[Bowery Boogie]

The Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago has genealogy classes, poetry readings, and a pub.
[Irish American Heritage Center]

Questions for Curatorial... New York Irish History

A while back I gave a Moore tour and was asked some questions I couldn't answer. As a responsible educator, I went back to the office and talked to our Curatorial Director, Dave Favaloro. So, if you happened to take my tour a few weeks ago and are faithfully reading the blog... here's what you wanted to know!

- Kate

1. Do we know if the other Moore daughters who died are formally, properly buried like baby Agnes?

Yes, all of the Moore children, as well as Bridget and Joseph, are buried in a family plot, which was purchased in April 1869 following Agnes’ death.


2. Were many middle or upper-class Irish moving to New York at the same time as Famine victims?

While few middle or upper-class Irish immigrated to New York during the 1840s and 1850s, by the mid-19th century, the city was home to an Irish community that according to historian Hasia Diner, “contained many economic layers,” including unskilled laborers and skilled craftsmen, as well as the more settled, affluent descendants of earlier Irish immigrants – merchants, physicians, lawyers, and teachers.


3. During the mid-19th century, did people from Northern Ireland immigrant to New York?
 
Although the majority of Irish immigrants who settled in New York during the 18th century were Protestants from Northern Ireland, by the mid-19th century, their numbers paled in comparison to Catholics from the south and west of Ireland.


4. What was the relationship between Catholic and Protestant Irish immigrants in the 19th century?

By the mid-19th century, Catholic Irish vastly outnumbered Protestant Irish in New York City. Relations between the two groups were generally adversarial, and sometimes hostile and even violent.

The worst episodes of violence between Catholic and Protestant Irish in these years were the Orange and Green Riots of 1870 and 1871. In 1870, eight people were killed when outraged Catholics protested during the annual July 12 Boyne Day march, held by Protestant Irish Orangemen to celebrate the victory of Prince William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Tensions within the Irish community had been building for years, as Protestants argued against the Catholic "threat" to American values and their "inability to be good citizens." The following year, plans for the march coincided with the first revelations of the Tweed Ring scandal, in which Boss Tweed and his Tammany followers had taken millions of dollars from the city in political graft. Rumors of violence on both sides prompted the state to provide the marchers with military and police protection, despite attempts by Mayor A. Oakley Hall to ban the parade.

In 1871, threats of violence proved correct when crowds of Catholic Irish lining the parade route along Eighth Avenue began throwing rocks at the marchers. In response, the military accompaniment began to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd, killing sixty-two, mainly Catholics. While the 1871 riot was the last major outbreak of violence against Irish Catholics, Orangemen continued to march for several more years and join organizations like the American Protective Association that espoused nativist ideals.

Colum McCann nominated for National Book Award

We’re thrilled to learn that Let the Great World Spin by our friend Colum McCann is a finalist for the National Book Award. The National Book Foundation hails this work as “[…] the author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.”

Colum McCann, a frequent guest speaker at Tenement Talks, is a celebrated Irish author who not only lives in New York City but also writes about it in beautiful, authentic prose. Let the Great World Spin, the newest addition to his repertoire (June 2009), has already been describe as “one of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years.” (Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times.)

You may have been here for the book launch last July or perhaps you remember Colum from St Patrick’s Day 2008, when he said that he would like to “try and touch on a little bit of the magic of this city. On a day like today, when you are Irish, then you feel like, well, you’re everywhere when you’re in New York.”

- Posted by Ariel & Amanda

Petrosino Square and Kenmare Street, the Lower East Side

Today's post is by special guest-bloggers Michelle and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple and its corresponding blog. Michelle and James will be at Tenement Talks tonight to share more great tidbits about the Lower East Side and New York.

If the rumors are to be believed, the renovation work on tiny Petrosino Square on the Lower East Side is nearing completion. (And don’t worry if you never heard of Petrosino Square. Bounded by Lafayette, Cleveland Place, and Kenmare Street, the square lies in a distinct no-man’s land between SoHo, Nolita, and the Lower East Side.)

Until 1987, this small triangle of land was called Kenmare Square; along with nearby Kenmare Street, these were the only places on Lower East Side specifically named to honor the area’s Irish population. Prior to 1911, Kenmare Street – which is a four-block western extension of Delancey Street – didn’t exist. But with traffic increasing on the Williamsburg Bridge, the city’s board of aldermen decided to cut a street west from the Bowery to alleviate overcrowding. Rather than simply naming the new street Delancey, which would have required a complete street renumbering, the aldermen voted instead to honor Tammany Hall stalwart “Big” Tim Sullivan (and his mother) by naming the street after his mother’s birthplace, Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland.

As Alderman White noted at the time:

“In my boyhood Mrs. Sullivan exercised a motherly care over me as she did over hundreds of boys on the east side. She was one of the noblest women I ever knew, and I registered a vow a long time ago that if I could ever do anything to show my appreciation of what she did for me and other boys I would do so.”

The square was renamed in 1987 to honor police lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, a pioneer in the NYPD’s fight against organized crime. In 1909, Petrosino traveled to Sicily as part of an investigation into the Mafia and was killed by a supposed informant who turned out to be a Mafia assassination. The renaming of the square not only helps mark the area’s Italian heritage, but also its connection to the NYPD whose magnificent former headquarters stands just two blocks south of the square.

Join us for Inside the Apple Tenement Talk tonight, 6:30 PM, at 108 Orchard Street.

Questions for Curatorial: Do You Speak Irish?

What percentage of Irish immigrants to New York in the mid-19th century spoke Irish or Gaelic?

During the mid-19th century, immigrants from the Irish-speaking west of Ireland were less likely to have the resources needed to cross the Atlantic than those from other parts of the island. Nevertheless, according to historian Kevin Kenny, “it is estimated that somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of America-bound emigrants during the famine were Irish speakers. Half of all the famine emigrants came from two provinces of Connacht and Munster, where at least half the population still spoke Irish as late as 1851.”

Figures gathered by historian Kenneth Nilsen suggest that approximately 28% (73,000 out of a total of 259,000) of the Irish living in New York in 1860 were Irish speakers.

Sources: Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (London: Longman, 2000); Kenneth Nilsen, “The Irish Language in New York, 1850-1900,” in Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

This Week's News on Current Immigration

As Ireland’s Boom Ends, Job Seekers Revive a Well-Worn Path to New York (New York Times)
Like many before them, Irish immigrants are traveling to the United States to seek employment, as unemployment in Ireland reaches nearly 12 percent. Many Irish immigrants have arrived on tourist visas and plan to stay illegally, so there are not exact figures on immigration trends. However, anecdotal evidence from Irish-American business owners, construction unions, and landlords in Irish neighborhoods like Woodside and Sunnyside in Queens, suggests that the population of new Irish immigrants is growing.

Illegal immigrants again in the budget spotlight (Los Angeles Times)
In California, where the budget deficit is approximately $26.3 billion, lawmakers are debating whether to cut services to illegal immigrants as well as to their U.S.-born children. It is difficult to determine the net economic impact of California's 2.7 million illegal immigrants, who make up approximately seven percent of California's population. Immigrants contribute to tax revenue, but they cost the state $4-6 billion annually in education, prisons, and health care. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to limit welfare and health care to illegal immigrants and their families, but the Legislature has not passed his plans.

Immigration laws are breaking families apart, deporting too many parents with US-born children (New York Daily News)
The United States Department of Homeland Security released a study showing that at least 108,434 parents of U.S.-citizen children were deported between 1998-2007. In such cases, parents must leave their children behind, or bring the child to a country that may be foreign to them. The study, commissioned by Representative José Serrano, underscores the need for immigration reform that would give judges the discretion to avoid breaking families apart.

-Posted by Penny King

Questions for Curatorial - How Immigrants Handled Finances

When it comes to depositing money and taking out loans, many recent immigrants in New York avoid big banks in favor of local credit unions like the Affordable Loans for Immigrants Campaign and the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union, which support small businesses and allow undocumented workers to open accounts. (Many don't require social security numbers, using other methods to validate customers' identities.) Curatorial Director Dave discusses how immigrants dealt with finances back when 97 Orchard was still occupied.

Was it common for 19th Century Irish immigrants in New York to deposit their money in banks?

In 1873, former 97 Orchard Street resident and Irish immigrant Joseph Moore opened an account with the Emigrant Savings Bank. Given their relatively impoverished condition upon arrival, Irish immigrants appear to have had a surprising propensity to deposit their savings in banks.

The historian of Irish America Joseph J. Lee has written that, “The extraordinary savings surge on which so many immigrants embarked almost immediately upon arrival in New York City – depositing savings, however humble the amounts, on a regular basis for years—and which was presumably replicated wherever comparable institutions where available, may have reflected something of a search for security among people who had seen the price of insecurity paid through eviction and death. In fact, they quite possibly over saved, stinting themselves in order to help bring other family members out through remittances and to build up some protections against what they saw as a callous and unpredictable world.”

Source: J.J. Lee, “Introduction: Interpreting Irish America” in J.J. Lee and Marion Casey, eds., Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States (New York University Press, 2006).


Built in 1908, the Emigrant Savings Bank on Chambers Street served New York's Irish population. Click here for more photos.

The Museum's Spring Gala - Eileen Ivers

Virtuoso fiddler Eileen Ivers and her band Immigrant Soul will be playing on April 21st at the Museum's 21st anniverary gala. The daughter of Irish immigrants, Ivers blends traditional Celtic rhythms with the African and Latin percussion beats she heard growing up in the Bronx. Check out one of the band's live performances below. And if you're interested in buying tickets to the gala (which is being held at the Capitale) contact the Development Department at 212-431-0233 x228 or click here for more info. The Tenement Museum needs your support!

Tenement on Today

Happy St. Patrick's Day to our readers! The Today Show did two episodes yesterday and today all about Ireland and Irish-Americans. One segment, an interview with writer Peter Quinn, was filmed at the Tenement Museum. Although we suggested the restored Moore family apartment, which depicts the living spaces of an Irish family in 1869, the crew chose the Baldizzi apartment (a Sicilian-Catholic family's living spaces from 1935). The average viewer can't tell the difference, and the crew only had to lug their equipment up to the second floor instead of the fourth. Such is the magic of television.

Check out the segment here. You can catch the other segments, including one on our President's Irish ancestry, on The Today Show website.

Facts and Findings - Milk and the urban food supply chain

On our newest program, The Moores: An Irish Family in America, we talk a lot about the consequences of poor milk production in the 19th century. Children drank milk that was spoiled or adulturated with ammonia, chalk, and water. Many died from bacterial infections or simply malnutrition, including Agnes Moore, a baby who lived at 97 Orchard Street in 1869.

Our friends at Saxelby Cheesemongers in the Essex Street Market know a lot about milk production, as befits cheese mongers. Their latest newsletter included this interesting round-up of milk production and dissemination in New York in the mid-20th century:

From the late eighteen hundreds to the 1930's and 1940's, milk trains were the commonest way of supplying urban populations with milk. As cities grew, and farmland in and around them diminished, urbanites began depending more and more on milk from the country. Milk trains were so important and vital to the urban food supply that they often took precedence over passenger trains and frequently caused backups and delays on various lines entering the city from upstate and Connecticut. It is rumored that milk by ferry was tried, and abandoned, for the simple reason that milk lacks sea legs... the jostling of the boat would churn it into butter.

So where did our milk trains come from? Milk was shipped to New York City from the far reaches of New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont, averaging a distance of about 250 miles by train, but sometimes nearing distances of up to 400 miles away. Before dawn in small towns all across New England, farmers would bring their fresh milk (in milk cans) to their local train station or depot. In some special cases, if the farm was far from a town but near to a rail line, the farmer would leave the milk at a 'milk stand' which was an elevated building next to the train tracks where the milk cans could be easily schlepped into the boxcar. Milk trains were cooled by large chunks of pond ice (harvested in the winter and kept in thickly insulated buildings for use in the summer) and kept the fragile delicacy intact for its journey to the city.

In New York, the 'milk yard' was located at 60th Street on the West Side, and the creameries (responsible for pasteurizing and bottling the milk) were located as close as possible to the rail yards. There were creameries in the Bronx and Brooklyn as well, but the largest and most impressive operation was a company called Sheffield's, who set up shop literally alongside the rail lines at 60th St. The milk would arrive in the city around 11:00 pm, be pasteurized and bottled by 2:00 am and sent out for delivery either to dairy stores or on local milk routes.

Tenement Museum records show that a milkman living on Orchard Street was responsible for delivering milk to 97 Orchard in the 1930s, the last decade people lived in the tenement.

Jay P. Dolan on The Irish Americans

Last Tuesday we hosted Professor Jay P. Dolan, author of the first comprehensive popular history of Irish-Americans. Mr. Dolan spoke about his own history, growing up in a working-class home, and tied it to the broader social history of the Irish immigrant story in New York and across the country. His visit to Tenement Talks wrapped up our mini-series on the Irish in New York, which included talks by Terry Golway, Peter Quinn, and Mary Gordon. We’ll offer another mini-series next spring, when we plan to bring back novelist Colm Toibin, among others.

Excitingly, Professor Dolan’s talk was also captured for CPAN’s Book TV, so keep your eyes open for an airing.

Danny Cassidy

At Tenement Talks, we like to think of all of the authors who have passed through our doors as members of the Tenement family. You’re our friends, people we admire, people we look up to, good writers, fantastic historians, great wordsmiths, wonderful speakers.

So we’re very saddened to hear of the death of Danny Cassidy, author of How the Irish Invented Slang, earlier this week. Danny came to do a talk with us last March, along with Peter Quinn and Mick Moloney, and shared his wit and wisdom on the Irish language and American culture. We know even in his absence that his scholarship will continue to influence future historians, linguists, writers, and every day folk like us.

Two of his friends share their memories:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassidy10132008.html

http://irishechoonline.blogspot.com/2008/10/remembering-danny-cassidy.html

The Museum's website also features podcasts of Danny Cassidy talking about the Irish roots of "dude" and "the yellow kid":

http://www.tenement.org/podcasts/dude.mp3

http://www.tenement.org/podcasts/Danny-Cassidy-Yellow-Kid.mp3