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University of Notre Dame Press - Timothy J. Meagher

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545 pages

English

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Like many American cities, Worcester, Massachusetts, is an enclave of cultural tradition and ethnic pride. Through the intensive analysis of this Irish American community at the turn of the twentieth century, Timothy Meagher reveals how an ethnic group can endure and yet change when its first American-born generation takes control of its destiny. Meagher traces the chaotic and complicated passage of Irish Americans from their status as isolated immigrants, through accommodation in the 1880s and ethnocentric belligerence in the 1890s, to leadership of a pan-ethnic American Catholic people in the early twentieth century. He shows how these shifts resulted from both the initiatives of a new generation and changing relations with Yankee and ethnic neighbors, examining along the way such topics as women's prominence in the local nationalist movement, marriage patterns among the second generation, and cross-party coalitions that Irish Democrats forged with Yankee Republicans. A fourth-generation Worcester native, Meagher examines nearly every aspect of Irish American life in his city to discover how his family and others like them attempted to resolve the dilemma of identity. He analyzes the changing definitions of identities and boundaries over a crucial forty-year period and shows how the rise of a new generation to community leadership brought about a quiet but powerful revolution in people's everyday lives. Inventing Irish America focuses on the cultural transition of Irish Americans from one generation to the next and offers readers new insight into the creation of their identity. By studying one community in generational transition, it sheds new light on all places where ethnic and racial groups struggle to maintain their identities by reinventing themselves through time.

Sujets

Minority Studies

19th Century

HISTORY

Histoire

United States

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Publié par	University of Notre Dame Press
Date de parution	02 avril 2001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780268160241
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	31 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE IRISH IN AMERICA
Studies Sponsored by
the Ancient Order of Hibernians and
the Cushwa Center fr
the Study of American Catholicism ERIC
Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity
in a New England City, 1880-1928
TIMOTHY J. MEAGHER
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
Notre Dame, Indiana o
University of Notre Dame Press
Copyright© 2001 by
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
http://www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Designed by Wendy M c Millen
Set in 11/13.2 Stone Print by Stanton Pub. Services, I nc.
Published in the United States of America
Librry of Congrss Ct al ing-in-Publication Data
Meagher, Timothy J.
Inventing Irish America: generation, class, and ethnic identity in a New England
city, 1880-1928 / Timothy J. Meagher.
p. cm. - (The Irish in America)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-03153-4 (cloth: alk. paper) - lSBN 978-0-268-03154-1 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Irish Americans-Massachusetts-Worcester-Ethnic identity. 2. Irish
Americans-Cultural assimilation-Massachusetts-Worcester. 3. Generations
Massachusetts-Worcester-History. 4. Social classes-Massachusetts
Worcester-1 listory. 5. Worcester (Mass.)-Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series
F74.w9 M38 2000
305.891'6207443-dc21
00-030255
fo This book is printed on acid ee paper. T my mother
ELIZABETH CHRISTINE MCDERMOTT MEAGHER
and my late father
JOHN HENRY MEAGHER
I hope this book rcaptur some o the word that you inherited. �O)(
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
rw
The Immigrant Irish 17
&xJ
The Second-Generation Irish 67
The Search fr Accommodation: The 1880s and Early 1890s 133
Ethnic Revival: The 1890s and Early 1900s 201
The Triumph of Militant, Pan-Ethnic, American Catholicism:
The Early 1900s to the 1920s 269
Conclusion 373
Notes 387
Bibliography 487
Index 503 Acknowled ments g
Worcester is my hometown and, being Irish American, this community is my
community. It is the one I grew up in, and the one I will always remember as
my own. I want to acknowledge the men and women who made up this world
that I tried to recreate, the immigrants and American-born Irish who built
the community that my parents inherited and then passed it on to me. When
I walk in St. John's Cemetery in South Worcester, I feel like I am walking
among fiends, Monsignor Grifn on one side, Peter Sullivan on another,
George McAleer, Walter Drohan, even the intriguingly named Eneas Lom
bard. I am particularly indebted to Richard O'Flynn. the Waterfrd-born
bookseller and ticket agent, whose sense of responsibility fr the communi
ty's history led him to take extensive notes and keep a rich trove of records,
clippings, and pamphlets documenting the history of the Worcester Irish. I
fel a special obligation to him fr he lef those papers, he said, "fr the fture
historian of the Irish in Worcester." Yt I fel responsible to all of those Irish
in Worcester, and I hope that I have recaptured something of their lives. I es
pecially want to acknowledge my own grandparents, who played a crucial
role in this history: James Andrew McDermott, Katherine Agnes Lavin
McDermott, John Henry Meagher, and Margaret Ronayne Meagher.
This book, however, is not only an attempt to recover a frgotten slice of a
community's history, but it is also an to explore new ground in how
historians think and write about the history of the Irish in America and, in
deed, about American ethnic groups generally. I want to thank the scholarly
colleagues who helped me understand about how to write history, and more
particularly, the history of Irish Americans in this era: my mentor and fiend,
Howard Chudacof, and James Patterson, Elmer Cornwell, and L. Perry Curtis
IX x Acknowledgments
fom Brown University; my colleagues who love Worcester history, Kenneth
Moynihan, John McClymer, Charles Esthus, Kevin Hickey, Ronald Formi
sano, Robert Kolesar, Ronald Petrin, Bruce Cohen, Vincent Powers, and
James P. Hanlan. I would also like to thank my fellow historians but also good
fiends James M. O'Toole, Brian Mitchell, Marion Casey, Kevin O'Neill,
Colleen McDannell, Elizabeth McKeown, Christopher Kaufman, Theresa
McBride, James Gilbert, Gary Gerstle, David O'Brien, and especially Lenard
Berlanstein, who heard more about the Irish in Worcester over the last
ten years than any sane person would want to hear. I want to thank Roy
Rosenzweig in particular, who was essential to the early research on this proj
ect, sharing his infrmation, his sources, and his ideas, and who has re
mained both a great source of insights into American ethnic history and a
good and generous fiend long afer he lef Worcester behind. I would also
like to thank Kerby Miller and Philip Gleason, who read this manuscript fr
the Press, recommended it fr publication, and suggested some very usefl
revisions. I want to thank Dr. Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame
fr beginning the publication process and the staf of the University of Notre
Dame Press including Dr. Barbara Hanrahan, Ann Rice, Rebecca DeBoer,
John McCudden, and Ann Bromley fr seeing it through so expertly and
patiently.
Many librarians and archivists made this work possible, and, having
toiled in that work myself, I appreciate how critical they are to all historical
research, not just mine. I want to thank Nancy Gaudette at the Worcester
Public Library, Mary Brown, Nancy Burkett, and Joyce Tacy at the American
Antiquarian Society, James Mahoney fom Holy Cross College Library, and
William Wallace and especially Dorothy Gleason fom the Worcester His
torical Museum. Many of the sources I used remain in private hands and I
want to thank the people who made them available to me: Ancient Order of
Hibernians Division 36, the Knights of Columbus Alhambra Council no. 88,
Msgr. Thomas Daley of St. Stephen's parish, Msgr. David Sullivan of St.
Peter's, Msgr. John Martin of Our Lady of the Angels, Msgr. Frank Scollen of
St. John's, Fr. John Burke of St. Paul's, and Msgr. Roger Vian of the Spring
feld Diocese. A number of people also graciously shared their memories of
this time with me, including Lawrence O'Connell, Peter Sullivan Jr., Eleanor
O'Donnell, William Kelleher, Fr. Thomas McDermott, Arthur Sheedy, F. A.
Jacques, and Mary O'Reilly.
Finally there are the people who encouraged me in this work. Among my
fiends they include Andrea Anderson, Cynthia Robinson, Warren Leon,
Suzi Jones, Frederic Miller, Arthur Y. M. Chen, Hassan Abouseda, Eric H.F. Acknowledgments xi
Law, and Victor Souvanpong. They also include members of my fmily: my
fther's sister, Aunt Margaret Meagher Costello, who steered me to the
Richard O'Flynn papers the day I started this research, as well as my moth
er's sisters and brothers, my Aunt Louise McDermott Salisbury and Uncle
Charles McDermott and especially my Aunt Katherine McDermott and
Uncle Andrew McDermott. Their stories and memories have inspired, illumi
nated, and infrmed this work and reminded me that it was always a story of
real people. I also want to thank my sister, Mary, and my brothers, Patrick, An
drew, Dermot, and Sean, and particularly my mother, Elizabeth McDermott
Meagher. She has believed in this project fom the beginning and never
wavered. i
.
.
1895.
,,� -.-.- ·
r" - - • -Introduction
On the morning of March 17, 1890, the members of the St. Paul's Lyceum
gathered in their clubhouse on Front Street in the heart of Worcester, a small but
growing industrial city in central Massachusetts. They were trying to decide
whether they should join a parade that afernoon honoring St. Patrick, Ireland's
1 patron saint. The debate, Worcester's daily papers reported, was "hot."
These were young men, most of them were American-born, and they were
almost painflly eager to prove that they were good Americans. They had ab
jured drinking liquor, the "curse" of their Irish race as their pastor called it, fr
their Lyceum was a Catholic total abstinence society. They had also made a
name fr themselves locally as baseball players, and their minstrel shows were
fmous throughout Worcester. To many of them the parade was a waste of
time and money, both better spent on building an Irish meeting hall with a
gymnasium, lecture rooms, and a library that could be both a tangible symbol
of their people's progress and a practical aid to its achievement. To some of
them, the parade was worse than the fittering away of precious resources, it
was a provocation or excuse fr the drinking and brawling that besmirched
2 the name of the Irish people of Worcester and everywhere.
Yt most, if not all, of these men did not wish to abandon their past. Many
remained unmarried even into their late twenties and thirties and lived at
home with their parents, dutiflly emptying out much of their earnings on the
kitchen table each week fr the good of the fmily. Moreover, they were good
Catholics, better-instructed certainly, probably even more regularly