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).
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Buried paving stones on the Lower East Side
Questions for Curatorial - Paving Stones on Orchard Street
When was Orchard Street paved? Were street lamps added?
Although there appears to be no exact date recorded for the paving of the Orchard Street block bounded by Delancey and Broome, paving stones likely replaced dirt sometime in the 1850s or 1860s. During the mid-19th century, experiments were undertaken with different paving materials, including macadam, woodblocks, and cut stone blocks. Rectangular, granite paving stones called Belgian blocks (made of trap stone) became widespread in some areas of the city in 1852, replacing common round cobblestones. According to extant prints from the period, gas–fired street lamps could be seen on street corners by the 1860s as well.
Although there appears to be no exact date recorded for the paving of the Orchard Street block bounded by Delancey and Broome, paving stones likely replaced dirt sometime in the 1850s or 1860s. During the mid-19th century, experiments were undertaken with different paving materials, including macadam, woodblocks, and cut stone blocks. Rectangular, granite paving stones called Belgian blocks (made of trap stone) became widespread in some areas of the city in 1852, replacing common round cobblestones. According to extant prints from the period, gas–fired street lamps could be seen on street corners by the 1860s as well.
Monday, September 28, 2009
(Belated) Weekly Immigration News
Immigrants embrace Southern living
(Charlotte Observer, 9/20/09)
Carola Cárdenas left her native Venezuela twice to live in the United States. Both times she moved to cities that have long attracted large numbers of immigrants, first to Los Angeles, then New York. But after four years living in the shadow of Manhattan in nearby New Jersey, Cárdenas, 36, and her husband decided to plant some roots elsewhere. They chose Charlotte - far away from any traditional immigrant gateway.
Bhutan Refugees Find a Toehold in the Bronx
(New York Times, 9/24/09)
Nearly every immigrant group in New York City has a neighborhood, or at least a street, to call its own. But for refugees from the tiny South Asian nation of Bhutan, the closest thing to a home base is a single building in the Bronx — a red-brick five-story walk-up, with a weed-choked front courtyard and grimy staircases.
Constitution center sponsors teen video debate on immigration
(Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/26/09)
Alternating between giddiness and focused attention, a cross-section of American youth debated immigration reform yesterday in an innovative videoconference centered in Philadelphia and sponsored by the National Constitution Center. Challenged by the prompt, "Should the United States reduce immigration?" the selected students from several high schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, and California were linked via closed-circuit TV and watched one another on large, subdivided video monitors.
Latinos bank on bilingual census form to aid count
(Assocaited Press, 9/28/09)
For the first time, the decennial census will be distributed in the two languages to 13.5 million households in predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Latino advocates hope the forms will lead to a more accurate count by winning over the trust of immigrants who are often wary of government and may be even more fearful after the recent surge in immigration raids and deportations.
(Charlotte Observer, 9/20/09)
Carola Cárdenas left her native Venezuela twice to live in the United States. Both times she moved to cities that have long attracted large numbers of immigrants, first to Los Angeles, then New York. But after four years living in the shadow of Manhattan in nearby New Jersey, Cárdenas, 36, and her husband decided to plant some roots elsewhere. They chose Charlotte - far away from any traditional immigrant gateway.
Bhutan Refugees Find a Toehold in the Bronx
(New York Times, 9/24/09)
Nearly every immigrant group in New York City has a neighborhood, or at least a street, to call its own. But for refugees from the tiny South Asian nation of Bhutan, the closest thing to a home base is a single building in the Bronx — a red-brick five-story walk-up, with a weed-choked front courtyard and grimy staircases.
Constitution center sponsors teen video debate on immigration
(Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/26/09)
Alternating between giddiness and focused attention, a cross-section of American youth debated immigration reform yesterday in an innovative videoconference centered in Philadelphia and sponsored by the National Constitution Center. Challenged by the prompt, "Should the United States reduce immigration?" the selected students from several high schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, and California were linked via closed-circuit TV and watched one another on large, subdivided video monitors.
Latinos bank on bilingual census form to aid count
(Assocaited Press, 9/28/09)
For the first time, the decennial census will be distributed in the two languages to 13.5 million households in predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Latino advocates hope the forms will lead to a more accurate count by winning over the trust of immigrants who are often wary of government and may be even more fearful after the recent surge in immigration raids and deportations.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Could Brandeis be Appointed Today?
On Wednesday, September 30, Professor Melvin Urofsky joins us for a Tenement Talk about Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, his biography of the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, who sat on the Court during an electrifying time in US history (1916-39). Professor Urofsky will be guest-blogging the next two days to give us a little bit of insight into Justice Brandeis.Several reviewers of my book ventured the thought that not only would a president not name Brandeis today, but he might not be confirmed, and while I am not completely sure they are right, there is more than a kernel of truth in that observation. One should keep in mind that the 1916 nomination touched off a four-month confirmation battle, and in the end Brandeis received Senate approval because Wilson invoked party discipline and the Democratic majority voted aye.
By the standards of the time, in terms of the type of person normally appointed to the Court, Brandeis was a radical who believed that law should serve not the interests of property but human needs. He was considered a champion of labor.
The last person overtly supportive of labor to be named to the Court was Arthur Goldberg by John F. Kennedy in 1962. More recent Democratic nominees such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor are sympathetic to labor but have no record of being champions of the working person. As for party discipline, that disappeared several presidents ago. Even with sixty votes in the Senate, it is hard to believe that President Obama could get all Democrats to support a controversial nominee.
And, alas, even if the President were willing to make such an appointment and could get Senate Democrats to flex their muscles, who would he name? There is no Louis Brandeis on the American scene today.
Portrait of Louis D. Brandeis by painter Joseph Tepper. Photoengraving on paper. 1939. Harvard Law School Library.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis on Labor Issues
On Wednesday, September 30, Professor Melvin Urofsky joins us for a Tenement Talk about Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and a passionate, outspoken man who sat on the Court during an electrifying time in US history (1916-39). Professor Urofsky will be guest-blogging the next two days to give us a little bit of insight into Justice Brandeis.History records Brandeis as a friend of labor—the man who devised the Brandeis brief to win Court approval of wages and hours laws, the lawyer that both sides trusted in the great New York garment strike of 1910, and who in 1916 received the full-hearted support of labor leaders like Samuel Gompers when Woodrow Wilson nominated him to the Supreme Court.
Yet there is another side of Brandeis as well. As the attorney for the Typothetae, the association of Boston printers, he broke a strike by going to court to get an injunction, the very judicial tool hated and feared by organized labor in the early twentieth century. He debated Samuel Gompers over whether labor unions should be incorporated. Brandeis believed they should be, so they would be both responsible in court for ill-advised actions and also be able to sue when wronged.
Although some of my fellow historians paint Brandeis as a great liberal friend of organized labor, I think they are mistaken. He believed in the right to organize and bargain collectively, but he would have been just as appalled by the excesses of Big Labor after World War II as he was by the actions of Big Business in the progressive period.
- Posted by Melvin Urofsky. Special thanks to Pantheon Books, http://pantheon.knopfdoubleday.com/.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
American Sign Language tour - This Sunday!
Join us this Sunday for:
American Sign Language (ASL) interpreted tour,
Getting By: Immigrants Weathering Hard Times
Sunday, September 27 at 1:00 PM
Discover how immigrants survived economic depressions at 97 Orchard Street between 1863 and 1935. Visit the restored homes of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family, whose patriarch disappeared during the Panic of 1873, and the Italian-Catholic Baldizzi family, who lived through the Great Depression. This tour lasts 60 minutes. Recommended for ages 8 & up.
Tickets: www.tenement.org or call 212-431-0233 ext. 232 or TTY 212-431-0714. ADVANCE TICKETS RECOMMENDED – tour size is limited. Program starts at the Museum Visitor Center, 108 Orchard Street at Delancey. Subway: F/J/M to Delancey/Essex. Bus: M15 to Delancey.
More ASL programs to come in October and November.
American Sign Language (ASL) interpreted tour,
Getting By: Immigrants Weathering Hard Times
Sunday, September 27 at 1:00 PM
Discover how immigrants survived economic depressions at 97 Orchard Street between 1863 and 1935. Visit the restored homes of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family, whose patriarch disappeared during the Panic of 1873, and the Italian-Catholic Baldizzi family, who lived through the Great Depression. This tour lasts 60 minutes. Recommended for ages 8 & up.
Tickets: www.tenement.org or call 212-431-0233 ext. 232 or TTY 212-431-0714. ADVANCE TICKETS RECOMMENDED – tour size is limited. Program starts at the Museum Visitor Center, 108 Orchard Street at Delancey. Subway: F/J/M to Delancey/Essex. Bus: M15 to Delancey.
More ASL programs to come in October and November.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)