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Irish
Contents
Irish Immigration to New York City >The
Irish at 97 Orchard Street > 19th
Century Dublin > Irish Immigrants
in the Workplace > Irish Immigrants
and the Catholic Church in America > Tammany
Hall and Irish Political Participation > Irish
Nationalism > Irish Fraternal and County Organizations >
19th Century Health Care and the Immigrant
Irish > The Irish Wake
Irish Fraternal and County Organizations
The first county society established in New York was the Sligo Young
Men's Association (1849), made up mostly of middle-class Irish.
Immigrants from the counties of Cavan, Kerry, Galway, Monaghan,
and Tyrone formed societies in the 1850s, but the Sligo group was
the only one to survive until the late nineteenth century, the heyday
of county society organization. These early groups served immigrants
in a variety of ways: while all were social and beneficial societies
to some extent, some served other functions as well. For example,
the Fermanagh Republican Guards were a volunteer military society,
and the Donegal Relief Fund's primary mission was to raise money
to aid those back home. Others served as athletic clubs, like the
Meath Football Club, or were made up of people from the same town
in Ireland. The membership of these societies was also varied, as
some were middle-class professional organizations, while others
were made up of working class Irish.1
Despite this variety, county societies were actually fairly obscure
in this period compared to national organizations such as the Ancient
Order of Hibernians (AOH). Strongly working class, Catholic, and
nationalistic, the AOH spread throughout the country, forming branches
by parish, neighborhood and occupation. The Catholic hierarchy and
the Irish press favored the fraternal society because of its ability
to unify the community, diminishing those sectional loyalties that
county groups highlighted. The AOH was so well known, in fact, that
Tammany mayor Abraham Oakley Hall attended St. Patrick's Day parades
decked out in green silk, joking that his initials actually stood
for "Ancient Order of Hibernians."2
During the 1870s, there were at least 18 county societies in the
city, including one made up of Dublin immigrants. Such groups soon
fell into decline and died out, however, due to economic depression,
unemployment, and the resulting drop in immigration. Combined with
the competition from other organizations that offered benefits or
asked for smaller dues, this drop cut off new supplies of members,
as new immigrants were most likely to join county groups. The following
decade, however, saw economic recovery in America and a new outbreak
of the potato blight in Ireland, both of which fueled a new wave
of emigration to New York.3
These new immigrants brought an even stronger awareness of and connection
to events back home and revamped the county societies in the city.
While some groups included American-born Irishmen in their membership,
most admitted only immigrants themselves, and rarely women except
in auxiliaries. For example, when the Dublinmen reorganized in 1887,
they limited it to "natives of Dublin, city and county."
Another Dublin fraternal organization organized in the early twentieth
century was the Dublin Football Club, founded in 1913 from former
members of local clubs called the Kickhams, Geraldines, Parnells,
Keatings, Grocers, and Commercials.4
Given the assertion that older clubs were more middle-class, and
that recent immigrants predominated in the clubs formed in the 1870s-1880s,
it is reasonable to assume that Joseph Moore would probably not
have belonged to a Dublin society. During the period in which he
emigrated, no Dublin clubs were in existence, and by the time one
was formed, he would probably have had little use for membership.5
Beginning in the 1880s, a new breed of county societies began to
develop that not only incorporated the traditional social activities
of its predecessors, but committed itself to Irish political and
cultural issues, along with a much stronger benefits program for
its members. The Kerrymen's Society was one such group no longer
comprised of "faceless emigrants who were lost to the old country
forever, but faithful sons of their county, anxious to improve the
lot of their kin at home." By 1883, there were 21 county societies
within NYC, but their separateness and independence were seen as
an inherent weakness, and leaders of some of the better-organized
county associations began to turn the county societies into a movement
comparable to AOH or Clan na Gael and at the same time tried to
dispel the aura of sectionalism. By the late 1880s, however, the
confederation of county societies needed to reorganize because the
temporarily improved conditions within Ireland robbed the Confederation
of the urgency of its mission. The activities of the Irish county
societies were clearly aimed at the Irish born and toward regaining
a sense of Irish culture. Despite their limited involvement in American
and Irish politics, these organizations played a primarily social
role, filling the void of those who felt the need to remain close
to the old country ways and people.6
1 John T. Ridge, "Irish County Societies in New York, 1880-1914,"
in Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
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