Irish County Colonies in New York City (Part I)

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Annie Moore was the first person to enter the United States through its new Ellis Island facility. She arrived in January, 1892 from Co. Cork where she was born. Her parents arrived four years earlier and lived on Monroe Street on Manhattan's lower Eastside. Courtesy of John T. Ridge.


John Ridge is president of the New York Irish History Roundtable. He is the author of many articles and several books on the Irish in the New York City area. His last article, "Going Home-Travel to Ireland from New York" appeared in volume 24 of New York Irish History. His book, Celebrating 250 Years of the BY JOHN T. RIDGE The settlement of New York neighborhoods by Irish immigrants from specific parts of Ireland has been rarely touched upon in studies of the New York Irish. Although not every Irish county sent numbers large enough to slice out their own distinctive urban territory, some of those who came early in the nineteenth century wave of arrivals successfully created miniatures of their old world tucked away in the city of New York. The inhabitants of these county colonies here sometimes had a remarkable influence over their adopted home.


CORK IN NEW YORK There is a natural connection between County Cork and New York. Cork's location on the Atlantic placed it in a position to be major factor in the connection between Ireland and America. The county, according to the New York Sun in 1895, was: .. On the highway of ocean travel between Ireland and the United States, the larger number of emigrants embarking in Ireland who have come to the country passed through it. This has been the means of more closely connecting this county with New York than is the caseof other counties in Ireland, and by keeping open the lines of communication with New York City, the great landing place for Irishmen has made New York a popular and accessible place of residence for Cork men.' The Cork contingent arrived just as New York City was expanding as leading port, and many of the new arrivals found employment along the waterfront. In 1893, it was estimated that there were ?30,000 the district along the East River from just south of the Manhattan Bridge northward to Division and Grand Street. Although there were other large Cork neighborhoods, notably in the "Gas-house district" near the East River above Fourteenth Street, the old Seventh Ward was often the first home for newcomers, as it was for Annie Moore in 1891. The Cork traveler, Jeremiah O'Donovan, on his visit to New York in 1854 and 1855 discovered that at the old downtown gas works "all the superintendents in the whole establishment located in Centre street, all Irishmen and countrymen [were] of my own Cork."2 The heart of the Cork community within the Seventh Ward was "Cork Row," centered on Monroe Street near Gouverneur Street, although sometimes "Cork Row" was alternately placed on Gouverneur Street near Irish County Colonies in New York City (Part I) New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade, was published Corkonians, or Corkies," in Manhattan. The in Spring, 2011. ?2012. Published with permission of Vol. 25, 201I oldest Cork neighborhood was in the John T. Ridge. Seventh Ward, the "Cork Ward," which was NEW YORK 1RISH HISTORY PAGE 59 Henry Street or at the upper end of the Seventh Ward along Cherry Street. The neighborhood took on its distinctive Cork character beginning in about 1837 when ocean vessels of the Black Ball Line tied up directly on the nearby East River piers. The popular theater impresario of the nineteenth century, Ned Harrigan of Harrigan and Hart, popularized the neighborhood in the public imagination in scores of musicals and popular songs.3 In 1891, the New York Sun observed: You've been to Harrigan's Theatre sometime, if you've never been to Cork row. Well, Ned Harrigan was born in Cork row, his Irishmen are Cork row Irishmen, and the larger part of his people are from that vicinity. If you doubt it go up to Cork row of an evening, or a Sunday, and see if Harrigan has not duplicated the Driscolls, the O'Connors, and the Sullivans that go to make up the population.4 Cork Row was described by the 1890s as proud and rich, contented and happy, enjoying a prosperity onewriter attributed to the habit of collecting second-hand items from many of the area's population for resale. It was a very tight neighborhood, especially in the political sense, and it was said never to divide It its vote. It had only two polling places, within a block of one another, and it was said all sixor seven-hundred votes in the Row were always cast and for the same candidates. Ned Harrigan recalled being brought up in Cherry Street, "where Gaelic was the prevailing language."5 The area remained very traditional and was, perhaps, unified by the use of Irish: Cork Row speaks the Gaelic in its common, every-day intercourse. English, however, is the least it can it do when it deals in junk. Of a morning, when one resident meets another resident, the first, pulling his shortstemmed pipe from his mouth, says: "Conus ta tu. "Go maith, " replies the other after removing his pipe from his lips.6 In 1907 Limerickman, Bartly Cronin, recalled sailing from Ireland and stepping off his ship onto a pier at Montgomery Street fifty years before. He walked one block to Cherry Street into neighborhood it "where it was Irish tongues he heard and Irish hands he grasped." He would not stray from Cherry Street for half a century until he was finally carried over for burial to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Before his death he spoke of the day of his arrival in the late 1840s: Most of them who came around that night made him feel pretty much at home. They were all "far ups [from Munster]." There were So many of them that they could keep the pride of province and county, and stand up for it, when natives of other Trish counties took to "blowing too much. If one looked behind him then in Cherry street, he could a spot a Kerryman, but the Corkies were so thick that they gave their name to the block between Montgomery and Gouverneur streets.


Photo: Ned Harrigan was born in Manhattan's Cork Row in October, 1844. With his partner, Tony Hart, he performed comedy and musical sketches based on characters from city streets, before moving on to larger musical productions and shows. Courtesy of Library of Congress.


Vol. 25, 2011 PAGE 60 NEW YORK 1R15H HISTORY Illustration: Map shows Irish county colonies in Manhattan during the 1800s and early 1900s. Combined with strong countybased affiliations, such concentrations of voters in these areas became significant sources of political power and competition. Courtesy of John I. Ridge.


LONGFORD TIPPERARY TYRONE CAVAN Vol. 25, 201I KERRY DONEGAL KERRY BROOKLYN BRIDGE It was said in 1904 that the city's Cork population was "the most homogenous of any county." The only sizeable group of outsiders at its excursion were from neighboring Kerry, and then, "mainly along the borders from East Kerry and West Cork... where kinship and intermarrying bring the people into a close relationship. The Kerry brogue differs somewhat from the Cork brogue, and this apparent difference holds good where only a glotane or small stream separates the neighbors in Cork and Kerry.


Loyalty to the neighborhood was cherished. In 1891 when Norah Hoolihan of Cork Row began to court Michael Barry, the son of a family that had moved from the neighborhood, the entire Hoolihan family stood firmly against a marriage. One morning, Norah left Cork row to do some shopping and when she returned she announced CORK LIMERICK MANHATTAN BRIDGE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE ANTRIM CLARE SLIGO CAVAN TYRONE that she was the wife of Michael Barry. The neighborhood judged the event a "very wicktherefore, represented about a third of ed thing" and agreed that the couple would New York's Irish population for the period have no luck for defying their old customs.8 between 1848 and 1930.9 BROOKLYN Manhattan Irish County Colonies Rosemary Ardolina's book, Old Calvary Cemetery: New Yorkers Carved in Stone, gives ussome interesting data about population size and Irish county origins for the time. Of the 6,376 Old Calvary interments (almost entirely from Manhattan) that indicate county origin for the period between 1848 and 1930, those from Cork numbered 870 or 13.6%. Neighboring County Limerick was second at about 6%, with the remaining Munster counties bringing the percentage from that province alone to 34% of the total Irish. The three other provinces were less represented: 28% from Leinster, 22% from Ulster and about 16% from Connacht. Emigrant Savings Bank depositors from Cork for roughly the same period are 7,382 of 55, 254 Ireland entries, or 13.4%, a remarkably similar percentage to that for Calvary Cemetery Cork interments. Again, the Emigrant records match the Calvary records almost perfectly at 32.4% for all of Munster. Cork and the rest of Munster, New York Irish History page 61 new york?s kerry colony Kerry immigrants predominated in two southern wards of New York, the First and the Fourth, along the East River, where many people worked on the waterfront. Cork was directly north of them in the Seventh Ward. Geographically, the two colonies resembled the position of Kerry and Cork in the old country. In 1896, the writer of an article published in Hibernian Magazine observed: Nearly everyone who knows anything about the City of New York is aware that the Fourth ward, and particularly that portion of it close to the East river front, is a favorable spot for Kerry men and their descendants. Some of the most prominent Fourth warders of the older generation were born in Kerry; some of the newest arrivals in the Fourth ward, which is being gradually Italianized, are Kerry men, too.10 In the western end of the Fourth Ward, along Frankfort Street and vicinity (immediately south of the Brooklyn Bridge today), was a strong Donegal colony which was composed of leather workers who lived and worked in the district. But just west across Chatham Street in the lower part of the neighboring Sixth ward was another Kerry neighborhood in Mulberry and Baxter Streets. The Kerry settlement was blocked for a time from a northward expansion at Baxter Street, near Leonard Street, at a place called ?Bottle Alley.? According to the Herald-Tribune in 1877, the ?alley and the vicinity of Bottle Alley was first peopled by Irishmen from Sligo. But the men of Sligo were driven out by settlers from Kerry. The Kerry men in turn were ousted by the Italians who are now the only residents of the alley.?11 An amalgam of Irish counties, Kerry, Sligo, Tyrone, Longford, and Tipperary predominated in the Sixth and in the Fourteenth Ward, its northern neighbor, which was centered on the old St. Patrick?s Cathedral.


The East River wards, in general, however, teamed with Munster immigrants and their children. Mary Bresnahan, a Kerry immigrant, arrived in the 1840s with her husband and eight children, and remained the rest of her life steps from where she had landed. When she passed away, aged 101, in 1894, she left behind 104 descendants, including 40 grandchildren and 37 great grandchildren. Honora Cronin, in 1882 a 90 year-old from Kerry, and a resident of James Street near the church of the same name, was famous for her quaint sayings, stories, and ?endless entertainment.? Right at home in her neighborhood and surrounded by friends and family, it was reported that she ?has not bothered herself with learning English, she has command of Irish, however, and rattles off her Celtic with great volubility.?12 Kerry Row was located on Cherry Street near Catherine Street. Kerry Hill, an alternate for the original name of Cherry Hill, was along a section of Cherry Street which has now disappeared with the construction of the Alfred E. Smith Houses just north of the Brooklyn Bridge approach.13 A symbol for the Kerry presence in the Fourth Ward was Dan Murphy, who had come to this country in the 1830s to escape a British writ of treason. He lived in the Cherry Hill, or Kerry Hill, district in his house known as ?Kerry Castle,? at the junction of Pearl, Chambers, and Madison Streets. Prospering as a grocer and from shrewd investment in real estate, he earned the gratitude and love of thousands of his poor neighbors by numberless acts of charity, not only as a kindly landlord, but a faithful friend. Years before his death in 1891, he built a monument for himself in old Calvary Cemetery upon which is cut, and still to be seen today, the inscription: ?To Outlast the British Monarchy.?14 irish counties and new york politics It was quickly discovered that in areas of the city where a particular county colony was numerous, alliances based on their common origin could be a useful tool at election Vol. 25, 2011 PAGE 62 NEW YORK 1R15H HISTORY Illustration: Cartoon published in 1871 shows Boss Tweed giving a lesson in "new arithmetic" to city Controller Richard Connollyand promising that it will make him a rich man. Connolly was from Dunmanway, Co. Cork. Courtesy of Library of Congress. time. The politics of New York City in the nineteenth century was largely an ethnic consideration: Protestant native versus Irish Catholic or Irish versus German, for example. However, within larger coalitions based on blood affinity there were divisions that could be exploited for votes by pitting one Irish county or province against another.


Consider the example of Richard Connolly, a native of Cork, an ally of William "Boss" Tweed, and most importantly the Controller (later Comptroller) of New York City from 1867 until late 1871. Tweed, one of the most powerful political bosses the city has ever seen, forged his corrupt ring with the key support of Connolly: Dick Connolly was taken into Tweed's confidence asanecessity. He [Tweed] had to face the world as it was, and not make it anew. Connolly was a powerful man in his ward and district, being from Cork, and that region in those days was full of Corkonians. If you would walk through there and talk against Connolly it would be at your peril. Tweed could not get along without Connolly, and annexed him for the vote he controlled.15 When the Tweed Ring collapsed, Connolly fled to France where he lived the remainder of his life. The New York Times wrote in retrospect: Connolly, while in New York, was a great admirer of Ireland, and especially of the County of Cork, where he was born. While Controller he aspired to the leadership of a society composed entirely of Corkonians, and was loud in his boasts that they should be the only Irishmen recognized in politics in the city. The meetings of their society created such an uproar among the Irish office holders at the time that he was compelled to abandon this scheme.16 The Cork legacy in the life of New York did not end with Richard Connolly. The old alliances were established, and while Connolly could disappear, the political mechanism remained in place, as the New York Sun described in 1893: Vol. 25, 201I SasaNE Par ash. tut 800 co 8017349.77 CAcope / our ant, one /en nit he UPHOLSTERERS SILL nEW I PLUMBERD 1128t .817 BILL 1 116 J fea THE RING ARITHMETIC - AS TAUGHT BY THE MODERN CEASERS. #FARE FERNE PLASTERER! AILL CARPET IN/LA be done 77 0 COUNTY Nor 53++- SAFEN Some geT o NEW YORK 1RISH HISTORY PAGE 63 William R. Grace, the first Irishborn Mayor of the City of New York, elected in 1880, is a native of Cork, and some of his closest political associates, when in active politics in this city were natives of the same county. Ex-Judge Power, his first lieutenant in the antisnap organization it while it lasted, is a native of Cork, and he was one of the first to organize Cork men into a political phalanx, which he did several years ago, having at his back a political organization of Cork men exclusively. The district from which he hailed gave, until reapportioned last year, employment to a very large number of workmen in the gas houses of the vicinity, and so gave to the Sixteenth district the name of the "Gas-house district." A considerable number of the less intelligent, or less fortunate Cork men from the interior towns of that county in Ireland, are gas-house workers here, and every district of the city which has a gas-house contingent has, necessarily, a considerable number of Cork men. Richard Croker, though the most conspicuous native of the County Cork in New York City politics, has always kept aloof from the complications of Irish county politics, and has displayed little of the clannishness which characterizes most Cork men when they are in, or get in, positions of great influence or authority.17 THE ST. PATRICK'S MUTUAL ALLIANCE The organization which served Richard Connolly to muster the Cork and Munster vote in the city was founded in 1869 and was called the St. Patrick's Protective Mutual Alliance and Benevolent Association, later shortened to the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance. The founder and first president was Jeremiah H. Creed, a Macroom native, liquor store owner, officer of the Fenian Brotherhood, and friend of Connolly's. Creed was defeated for local office in 1866, but Connolly, while Controller in 1867, appointed him as Clerk of the Catherine Street Market. Soon after Creed's death in May 1870, he was succeeded by James J. Traynor, later a political appointee in the Surrogate Court, long-time Democratic leader, and close friend and political confidant of John D. Crimmins, the prominent New York contractor and builder whose parents were natives of Cork City. 18 While the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance was initially predominantly a Cork organization, there were some members from other parts of Munster. A tally of death notices for members announced in the various New York papers indicates that the vast majority of members were born in Cork, but occasionally other Munster counties were mentioned. At the Alliance picnic in 1870 the brother of Thomas Murphy, Republican leader of the Seventh Ward but an ally of the Tweed ring, announced that he had personally counted 157 other Murphys (a common name in Cork and Munster) in attendance.


In July, 1871 an answer appeared in the Irish Citizen, a New York Irish weekly edited by the Irish patriot John Mitchel, to a question about the membership policy of the St. Patrick's Photo: William R. Grace was raised in Co. Cork, as were many of his close political associates. In 1880, he became the first Irish-born mayor of New York City. Courtesy of Library of Congress.


Vol. 25, 2011 PAGE 64 NEW YORK 1R15H HISTORY Illustration: O'Donovan Rossa was born in Co. Cork and became a leading figure in the Trish Republican Brotherhood. Exiled from Ireland in 1870 because of his political activities, he arrived in New York City, where he joined the Fenians and Clan Na Gael. Courtesy of John T. Ridge.


Mutual Alliance from a correspondent who complained "of its rules admitting, as he says, only Munstermen into the Association; an exclusion which he calls heartrending." The paper replied by defending their right to do so, saying it was not a bad thing for groups "to draw closer the bond that unites them."19 The Alliance nurtured a number of politicians. Richard Croker, for example, an exalderman from the Twenty-first Ward, was "the leader of the St. Patrick's Alliance (Dick Connolly's secret organization in the ward)." Connolly's influence over the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance was not strong enough to keep its support for Tweed in the Seventh State Senatorial Election in 1871 when the Alliance endorsed the Irish nationalist leader, Cork-man O'Donovan Rossa, for the office. Rossa campaigned in this area as a kind of Irish chieftain of ancient Munster, but lost the race, undoubtedly due to fraud committed by Tweed loyalists.20 Richard Connolly was arrested, as result of the 1871 Tweed fiscal scandal, by the New York Sheriff as he was making preparations for flight. He was detained under watch at the New York Hotel as the question of bail was negotiated. While there, members of the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance visited him: Among the members of the St. Patricks Alliance (the body-guard of Connolly) who called were J.J. Traynor and Patrick Dwyer. They made a long and sympathetic call, and wept profusely on leaving. Threats were made by members of this association that they would manufacture ropes out of the bed sheets and lower Mr. Connolly down through a window over Youman's store on Broadway.?1 More rumors circulated that the Alliance would spring Connolly from the Ludlow Street Jail after his transfer there few days later, but Connolly peacefully secured bail and then fled the country.


After Connolly's fall from power late in 1871, the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance, which had about five-thousand members in Manhattan at its peak, quickly fell into disarray. But these troubles did not stop Alliance members from appearing before the Tammany Hall election committee to ask that one of their fifteen choices for alderman be representative of the Alliance. In January, 1877 two delegations of members appeared before the newly elected Mayor Smith Ely to request political appointments for their members. This was the same year that the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance ratified a new constitution stating that "we must have no provincialism or secret oath bound obligations."22 The St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance sometimes promoted an insurgent candidacy against the regular or Tammany nominee. In an 1874 election for alderman in Brooklyn's Sixth Ward, the regular Democratic candidate, James Dunne, defeated "James Guerin, nominee of the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance" by a comfortable margin. Red Hook, Brooklyn, below Hamilton Avenue, where the St. Patrick's Alliance was strongest, still had sectional divisions as late as an election in 1888 according to the Brooklyn Eagle: "As nearly all the voters are of Irish birth or descent, the sturdy Democracy of Vol. 25, 201I NEW YORK 1R1SH HISTORY PAGE 55 the Twelfth range into factions, which are descriptively called Cork men and Connaught men. "23 The St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance survived into the 1930s, notably in Manhattan's West Village, where it was predominantly Just few years later in 1892, however, the composed of Clare men, and in the old same paper wrote of county factionalism in Brooklyn as a dead issue: The old time query when a candidate aspired to office, "Is he a "far down, a "Corkonian, a Connaught man, etc. is heard no more, for the degenerate sons never saw the land of their sires, and care naught what section a of it a man or his parents came from. The shibboleth in one local contestyearsago, "It'sCorkagainstall Ireland" will be heard no more, although the candidates are yet alive and active in politics. When ex-Assemblyman Tommy Sheridan was candidate he could rely on "far down" a support to a man; ex-Alderman James Donovan had the Connaught men at his back, ex-Congressman 'Reilly held the Corkonians, although not a Corkonian himself, it is said, and ex-Alderman John Curran and ex-Supervisor Peter Bennett counted upon the longtails [from Co. Longford].24 Cork neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn.


The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which had first mushroomed in the 1850s, had deep links with the north of Ireland. It was open to membership to all Irishmen, but the New York City leadership seems to have been predominantly of Ulster and Connaught backgrounds with a strong representation from the western Midlands. The formation of the St. Patrick's Mutual Alliance in 1869 was perhaps a move to increase the political power of Munster exiles in New York in the face of the dominance of the Hibernians where Munster people may have been underrepresented. The AOH threw the Alliance out of the Hibernian-dominated St. Patrick's Day Parade in 1873, probably from embarrassment over the magnificent Alliance displays of costumed gallowglass warriors and splendid floats in 1871 and 1872. TYRONE AND CAVAN While Munster represented about a third of New York's Trish population, the rest of Ireland Illustration: The Ludlow Street jail was a federal prison in lower Manhattan at Ludlow and Broome Streets. In the early 1870s, City controller Richard Connolly was held there, as was Boss Tweed. Courtesy of John T. Ridge.


Vol. 25, 2011 PAGE 66 NEW YORK 1R15H HISTORY Illustration: (Above) William McKenna was from Co. Tyrone and became a Tammany leader in the city's Thirteen Ward on the Lower Eastside. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Ward's heavily Irish population declined dramatically. Courtesy of John I. Ridge.


Illustration: (Below) Like his brother Bernard, John Reilly held public office and was an influential leader in the Seventeenth Ward among fellow voters from Co. Cavan who lived there. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. # JOUN REILLT. The Thirteenth ward, in which for many years Tim Campbell flourished as an important political factor, was an Irish ward almost exclusively, and many of the battles carried on there in local fights turned on the county divisions in Ireland. The largest colony was that of Tyrone men and there were many Cavan men-Congressman Campbell Vol. 25, 201I WILLIAM J. MCKENNA, clearly composed the majority of the Irish in the city, but politically and geographically they were difficult to unite. While Kerry and Cork had distinctive and compact settlements along the East River, the other counties had less distinctive colonies.


Just north of the "Cork Ward" in the area above of Grand Street and close to the East River was the Thirteenth Ward. St. Mary's Church on Grand Street was a landmark in the neighborhood, and an early pastor, probably chosen deliberately by Tyrone-born New York Archbishop John Hughes, was the Rev. William Starrs, a native of Drumquin, Tyrone, who served between 1844 and 1863. The neighborhood Irish were frequently employed in the numerous shipyards along the East River where it hooks northward from the lower wards, but not as longshoremen. According to the New York Sun in 1901, Tyrone men, especially, could also be frequently found in one trade: The Tyrone men came from one of the northern counties of Ireland distinguished for the thrift of its inhabitants and the sale of peat. There is some coal in Tyrone, but the ordinary fuel is peat is and to that fact is due the circumstance that many of the Tyrone men on their arrival in New York engaged in the sale of fuel, coal and wood, coke and charcoal. It is by the sale of charcoal that Tyrone men in New York have become best known and anyone who sees in the streets a large black wagon of the same form of construction as the prairie schooners need study the name and address of the owner very long to ascertain that he iS an Irishman, a Tyrone Irishman usually, and hailing from that part of the Thirteenth ward which adjoins the East River, the boundaries of the Thirteenth ward being Division and Grand streets on the south, Rivington on the north, Norfolk on the west and the East River on the east.25 Three years later, the same newspaper reported on Thirteenth Ward politics: NEW YORK 1RISH HISTORY PAGE 67 was one of these. Tyrone and Cavan are both northern counties of Ireland and the Tyrone men and the Cavan men acted together in politics. Men from the south of Ireland who describe Cavan and Tyrone men as far downs, were found usually on the other side of the fence but, as a rule, the north of Ireland men succeeded-or came pretty near succeeding.%6 The Thirteenth Ward rapidly evaporated as an Irish neighborhood in the last two decades before 1900. William J. McKenna, a native of Gortin, Co. Tyrone, was the Tammany leader there, and its State Assemblyman in the 1880s and early 90s. The Irish by then had moved away from the Grand Street area and McKenna's district had become "the most cosmopolitan in the city, and every race and nationality" could be found in its tenement houses.27 There was another Tyrone and Cavan neighborhood on the Lower East Side. This was centered about Mackerelville, north of Tenth Street and south of Fourteenth Street, the Seventeenth Ward. The largest county element was the Cavan group who gave TO the district a number of political leaders like the Reilly brothers: John, a livery stable owner, and alderman for several terms in the 1870s; and Bernard, Sheriff of New York County, probably the most lucrative public office in the nineteenth century. The brothers were firm political enemies of the Tammany boss and Cork man, Richard Croker. Patrick Keenan, born in Tyrone, was a former plumber and shipyard caulker on the East River piers, and local Democratic Party leader in the district south of Fourteenth Street. He fought Tammany Hall for ten years before a reconciliation which made him a district leader who had a knack for securing non-Irish votes. Keenan served several terms as alderman and was County Clerk between 1882 and 1885.28 The final blow to the Tyrone and Cavan community in the Thirteenth Ward was announced in 1901 under the headline "Good-By, Tyrone Colony," in an article in the New York Sun: One effect of the demolition of the houses standing on the site of the New York approach to the new East River Bridge is the dispersal of the Tyrone colony, which had been estab-MACKERELVILLE TURN-OUT. Illustration: Cartoon published in 1868 depicts John Reilly pulling a dog cart to help turn out supporting voters of all ages in Mackerelville on election day. Courtesy of New York Public Library.


Vol. 25, 2011 page 68 New York Irish History lished in the Thirteenth ward, north of the Hook, for more than a generation. There has been little new immigration from Tyrone. Many of the old charcoal dealers of the Thirteenth ward colony have retired from the business and the work of the new East River Bridge has completed the extinction of this characteristic feature of a New York ward.?29 As quickly as Irish county colonies had come to New York, their end came swiftly and completely in the lower wards of the city. The New York Times published an epitaph on what had been almost one hundred years of Irish neighborhoods in 1910: New York has the largest metropolitan Irish population in the world, but this nationality cannot be said to have a colony. A few of the old families live on Cherry and Water Streets and the neighborhood of Corlears Hook Park, but with the passing of the old families they will doubtless become extinct in the lower east side.30 [New York?s other county colonies will be featured in Part II of this article.] Endnotes Books, Bowie, Md., 1996, p. xv; Ancestry.com, Emigrant Savings Bank Records 10 Hibernian Magazine, Syracuse, April 1896, p. 142 11 NewYorkHerald-Tribune,November24,1877 12 NewYorkHerald,May21,1882;NewYorkHerald-Tribune, July 12, 1894 13 NewYorkTimes,December7,1924 14 NewYorkHerald-Tribune,January14,1891;The Evening World, May 28, 1891; New York World, June 10, 1891 15 Daily Inter Ocean, October 29, 1877 16 NewYorkTimes,January1,1880 17 NewYorkSun,July16,1893.Crokerwas,however, a leader of the St. Patrick?s Mutual Alliance 18 NewYorkHerald,August11,1870;NewYork Herald-Tribune, May 4, 1867; New York Herald, June 12, 1869; New York Herald, December 29, 1866; New York Herald, August 27, 1869 19 IrishCitizen,July1,1871 20 NewYorkTimesSeptember8,1871;NewYork Herald, November 6, 1871 21 NewYorkHerald,November27,1871 22 CommercialAdvertiser,October12,1872;Herald-Tribune, January 30, 1877; Herald, September 22, 1877 23 BrooklynEagle,December13,1887 24 NewYorkTimes,March17,1874;BrooklynEagle, October 23, 1892 25 NewYorkSun,October27,1901 26 New York Sun, October 9, 1904 27 New York Herald, August 7, 1892; Daily Tribune, February 20, 1903 28 New York Times, December 22, 1903; Irish World, May 11, 1907 29 NewYorkSun,October27,1901 30 NewYorkTimes,April3,1910 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 New York Sun, July 16, 1893 New York Sun, July 16, 1893 and O?Donovan, Jeremiah, A Brief Account of the Author?s Interviews with his Countrymen..., Pittsburgh, 1864, p. 93-94 New York Sun, July 16, 1893; Tampa Tribune, December 12, 1914 New York Sun, December 6, 1891 New York Herald, March 25, 1888 New York Sun, December 6, 1891; New York Herald Irish American, September 3, 1904 New York Sun, December 6, 1891 Ardolina, Rosemary Muscarella, Old Calvary Cemetery: New Yorkers Carved in Stone, Heritage Vol. 25, 2011