Irish County Colonies in New York City, Part II

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The first part of this article, published in volume 25 of New York Irish History, covered mainly downtown Manhattan where counties such as Cork, Kerry, and Tyrone staked out neighborhoods that became decidedly their own. The narrow geographic confines of lower Manhattan and the large influx of Irish immigrants during and just after the time of the Great Hunger made the congregation of Irish immigrants into distinctive neighborhoods relatively easy. But a few years later, when there were fewer Irish newcomers spreading out over a substantially bigger area of Greater New York, newer county colonies became more difficult to recognize.

In addition, county colonies were not something that many Irish and Irish-American writers were anxious to record. County distinctions and the separation of Irish immigrants into county enclaves flew in the face of the ideals of Irish patriotism according to some Irish-American leaders, and the existence of county neighborhoods may have been an embarrassment to those who would normally have written about the subject. Moreover, this rising sense of Irish nationality gave the impetus to the attempts in the 1880s and 1890s to organize the existing Irish county societies into one central unified organization to help mitigate what was perceived by some as narrow sectionalism. County neighborhoods were probably well known but not recorded with much frequency in the press. These conditions have made the discovery of county neighborhoods all the more challenging. Finding anything about them has been accomplished only by the careful scouring of hundreds of newspaper articles in the New York press, both the dailies and Irish American weeklies. Indeed, only one major article, written by an unknown writer in the New York Sun in the 1890s, specifically addressed county colonies in the city, but there are many occasional and brief references to their existence in other publications. Unfortunately, the passage of time has concealed knowledge of some of these neighborhoods. For others we have only the barest information. For some counties, even those known to have sent large numbers of immigrants to America, what we know about their patterns of settlement varies greatly. It is probable there were colonies in the city for all the counties except for those at the bottom in immigration rates. In this, Part II, of the present article and in the concluding Part III in next year's journal, we describe by individual county - to the best of existing knowledge - where these settlements were located.

The earliest concentration of Donegal people in New York City was in the area just to the east of City Hall and south of where the Brooklyn Bridge approach cuts into Manhattan. The Donegal community here was linked very Irish County Colonies in New York City, Part II 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, "Irish County Colonies in New York (Part I)" appeared in volume 25 of New York Irish History. His book, Celebrating 250 Years of the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade, was published in Spring, 2011. ©2013. Published with permission of John T. RidgeIllustration: Political "Boss of Brooklyn" Hugh McLaughlin is depicted at right (next to New York "Boss" Richard Croker) in this 1893 cartoon from the magazine Puck. McLaughlin's family members were early settlers of the largely Donegal neighborhood west of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. U.S. Senator David Hill is shown as pleading for a judicial nomination. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Vol. 26, 2012strongly to the leather industry that had been conducted in this area since post American Revolutionary times. George Dougherty, born near Convoy Castle in Donegal, established the first manufacturing works for morocco leather in the city in 1830. According to the nineteenthcentury depositor records of Emigrant Savings Bank compiled by Kevin Rich, a majority (62%) of the Irish-born leather trade workers ("morocco dressers") were of Donegal birth. 1 Of the streets where this Donegal settlement was located, only Frankfort Street, running parallel on the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge still survives, but the vaulted bays under the bridge, which were used for leather goods storage until the 1890s, can still be seen. James A. Kerrigan, an Emigrant Savings Bank trustee, who was a large leather manufacturer and a native of Donegal, was the president for many years of the National Morocco Manufacturers Association at the close of the nineteenth century. Kerrigan at one time employed Patrick "Paddy" Divver who was one of the last of the old time Tammany leaders from the downtown district and a long-time rival of Jerry Hartigan and Fatty Walsh, leaders of the Cork and Limerick faction in neighborhood Fourth Ward politics. 2 The Donegal colony in downtown Manhattan occupied a very small geographic area, and many of the residents began to cross the river to Brooklyn to live in the area (which become known locally as "Irish Town") around St. James Pro-Cathedral where a Donegal colony had long been in residence. The oldest interment in the old churchyard attached to St. James Pro-Cathedral was John O'Connor, a native of Donegal, who died in 1822. Many of the headstones, now mostly illegible, revealed surnames common to Donegal such as Boyle, Breslin, Carlin, Doherty, Gallagher, and Sweeney. The churchyard also had several headstones for members of the Movilleborn McLaughlin family, relatives of Brooklyn's most powerful Democratic leader in the late nineteenth century, "Boss" Hugh McLaughlin. The father of this longtime kingpin of Brooklyn politics was one of the Irish laborers who came to the district to labor on the defensive works built to protect New York from potential British attack at the outbreak of war in 1812. "Boss" McLaughlin commanded a home base in Irish Town, in Irish Town, which ultimately surrounded St. James and was adjacent to the western wall of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and somewhat isolated from the rest of Brooklyn. For years up to about 1900 Democratic Party leaders from this Ward, the Fifth, and from the adjacent Second Ward to the west (such as Owen Colgan, proprietor of a hotel where most of the Democratic Party gatherings were held in the 1830s and 40s) were either born in Donegal or the offspring of Donegal parents. For Donegal people in Brooklyn the area seems to have been a base of power similar to the district across the river in Manhattan where Cork politicians and influence dominated. 3 Donegal people also moved into the area directly south of the Navy Yard, especially in the vicinity of Myrtle Avenue as far east as western Williamsburg. In a rare mention of county origins in Brooklyn parish histories, the Rev. John J. Dwyer, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, wrote of the U.S. Navy Yard influence on the neighbor-Illustration: Engraving published in Harper's Weekly in 1861 shows delivery of cordage for ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Ship building and repair in the Navy Yard provided many jobs in related industries for nearby residents who had emigrated from Donegal. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Photo: The old storage vaults underneath the Brooklyn Bridge along Frankfort Street were once used for leather storage in the nineteenth century. The leather industry employed many Donegal immigrants who clustered in a now vanished neighborhood nearby. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. hood immediately south and east of the Fifth Ward: This government station threw open a great number of positions of more or less lucrative prospects to the mechanical and kindred trades that flourish in the vicin - ity of the ship-building industry, and these new comers were mainly Irishmen from the seaboard counties of Donegal, Derry, Sligo, Galway, Kerry and Waterford.... Among these (early) Irish exiles - mostly from Donegal and Derry - were the par - ents of men whose names have become associated with all that is best in the his - tory of the City of Churches (Brooklyn). 4 Two large businesses, founded by men from the same village in County Donegal, provided employment to many other immigrants from this part of Ireland. Charles Knox, a native of Ramelton, started a hat business in 1840 in Manhattan, but carried on much of the manufacturing in Brooklyn, including the huge hat factory he called "the largest in the world," in the heart of the Donegal colony in the Ninth Ward at Grand Avenue and St. Marks Avenue. The successor to Charles Knox was his son, Colonel Edward M. Knox, who saw service as an officer in the Irish Brigade during the Civil War. Knox hats were worn by most of the prominent men of the nineteenth century including Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and Horace Greely. 5 In the second half of the nineteenth century many of Brooklyn's finest buildings and churches, including the Brooklyn Firemen's Headquarters and the Eagle Warehouse, both of which still stand, were constructed by the Patrick J. Carlin Company, father and son, and a number of Carlin cousins who were also in the construction business. Although the senior Carlin was born in Derry City, his sons were born in Ramelton, Donegal. They all came to America in 1851 and engaged in the construction business for more than three quarters of a century and were responsible for many public buildings including the Brooklyn Post Office, the Brooklyn Vol. 26, 2012 Photo: The massive Knox Hat factory building (built in 1890) in Brooklyn employed many Irish including immigrants living nearby from County Donegal. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. Vol. 26, 2012Museum and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at Grand Army Plaza. P. J. Carlin's Hall at Myrtle Avenue and Clermont Street near the Navy Yard was the headquarters of the Donegal Society in the 1880s and 1890s. 6 A smaller business founded in 1879 by Letterkenny-born Roger Gallagher was a retail carpet store on Myrtle Avenue. Gallagher for over fifty years was an active promoter of Donegal activities in Brooklyn, including the local Hibernian Division 14 which very uncommonly for the A.O.H. was a branch composed of members from one county, Donegal. He also organized a Gaelic football team from "his Donegal men" of the division which was known as the Donegal Celtics. The team achieved championship status in the period just before 1914. 7 At the western edge of Prospect Park was a grassy knoll which in the 1920s became known as "Donegal Hill." It was the favorite assembly point for Irish outdoor socializing, picnics or practicing Irish Gaelic sports for decades afterward. Just how it got its name is not known, but the nearby old Ninth Ward of Brooklyn, centered slightly northeast in St. Teresa of Avila's Parish, was full of immigrants from Donegal up until the early 1960s. So strong was this county element in this area that in 1930 the Donegal Men of Brooklyn organized their own County Donegal Democratic Party Club on Bedford Avenue near Fulton Street. 8 The first county society to be organized in Brooklyn was the County Donegal Society in 1884. For many years it was the center of Donegal activity in the metropolitan area and eclipsed the society of the same name that had been organized in Manhattan. Indeed, it was the Brooklyn Donegal society that mostly attracted their countrymen from across the river rather than the other way around. Up to the 1920s the Donegal Society in Manhattan often took a back seat to the activities of its Brooklyn cousin. Because of a declining membership, the Manhattan society had to be completely reorganized in 1909. The Brooklyn Donegal Society took an especially active role in raising money to support evicted tenants in the land war in Ireland in the 1880s and 1890s. When Father James McFadden of Gweedore, in the heart of the Irish-speaking district of Donegal, was arrested, a defense fund in Brooklyn raised money to send for his defense and for those of nine companions. This led to several trips to America a few years later by Father McFadden who lectured in Brooklyn under Donegal auspices. He was proud to speak in Irish and this sparked an interest in the revival of the language in Brooklyn. In 1906, another visiting priest from Gweedore, Father A. Gallagher, helped organize the Craobh Columcille, a branch of the Gaelic League composed of immigrants from the Donegal Gaeltacht, especially from Gweedore and vicinity. It differed from all the other Irish societies in America, with the exception of a similar society in Manhattan for Cork and Kerry Irish speakers, because all its business was conducted in the Irish language. 9 Donegal furnished more immigrants to Brooklyn than any of the other counties with the exception of County Longford. A curious reversal of the old advertisement "no Irish need apply" appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1901 in the help wanted section for a job in the heavily Donegal Ninth Ward: Wanted - To Do Cooking, Washing and Ironing, a young person; must be experienced, clean Photo: Carlin's Hall at Myrtle Avenue and Clermont Street was the headquarters for the Donegal Association in the 1890s. Many immigrants from the county settled in this neighborhood near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. Vol. 26, 2012 and tidy; one from County Donegal, Ireland, preferred. Call at 213 Sterling Place. 10 Settlement from Donegal, however, was not just in the urban setting of Brooklyn on the western tip of Long Island. In 1826 three Burns Brothers from Donegal and another set of brothers from the same county, Owen Fisher and his brother, cleared a section of Hauppauge in Suffolk County situated between the old Kings Highway at Hauppauge and Smithtown Branch. They were virtual pioneers in the area clearing the land of forest and building houses for themselves. The Brooklyn Eagle in 1880 reported: As the Fishers and Burns had come from the County Donegal in the north of Ireland, their success in America encour - aged others from the same place to try their fortunes on Long Island. At present there are over forty Irish families pursuing farming in this settlement. At least ninetyfive per cent were born in Hauppaugue, and strange as it may appear, it is equally true that the language - the Gaelic - that is spoken in and around the vicinity of Malinhead and Donegal Bay is spoken in many cases as fluently by the younger descendants of the Burns and Fishers as it was by their progenitors when they arrived on Long Island sixty years ago. 11 The last society composed of emigrants from a local area in Ireland to survive in Brooklyn was the Iniskeel-Ardara (Donegal) Club which met in Division 35 A.O.H. Hall on Avenue D in East Flatbush. By the time of its demise in the 1990s only a few of the members had origins in its namesake area. In the Highbridge section of the Bronx, a number of immigrants from Co. Kilkenny found employment on and around the Brown Family Estate. In the 1920s there was still a remnant of this community living in a number of apartment buildings on top of what was called Brown's Hill and centered on Anderson Avenue. The concentration of Kilkenny Irish here gave the name "Kilkenny Hill" to this area. After the Highbridge Houses were built the neighborhood changed ethnically, and the name was practically lost from memory. 12 Although there was a steady stream of Irish from County Waterford to New York City from the mid-nineteenth century, it was not one of the Photo: Although County Kilkenny supplied a smaller number of immigrants than the larger Irish counties, it had an active athletic program that included a prominent 1931 hurling team. Small counties did not have the numbers to colonize entire neighborhoods, but could often furnish a majority of tenants in an apartment house. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. Vol. 26, 2012 counties that furnished the largest numbers of immigrants. There is no record of a Waterford colony within the confines of the City of New York, but just over the border in Yonkers was a Waterford colony that was one of the most concentrated of all county settlements in America. Waterford people began to settle in Yonkers before the time of the Great Hunger, many coming as laborers in the construction of railroads, roads and the Croton Aqueduct. The heart of the Waterford settlement was on the west side of the city marked by the large Irish Roman Catholic parishes of the Monastery Church of the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph's, St. Mary's and St. Peter's. At its heart was Hog Hill, a name at first given to deride the Irish, but what later became a place name that was not only tolerated but accepted with pride. The Irish World in 1904 published a report about the area from a correspondent of the local Hibernian division (Division 14 A.O.H.): The Irish population of Yonkers is almost exclusively from County Waterford and from that part of Waterford called the "old parish" near Dungarvan, hence they delight in the name, "Sean na Pobal" (the old people). Most of them live in one district, and those who wish to ridicule everything Irish have made that district well known by the name "hog hill." There are quite a few people in this district at present who can speak only in the Irish language, and amongst many it is usual to hear Gaelic spoken in everyday conversation. There are about 5,000 people in Yonkers who can speak Irish, but some of these do not display to any marked degree a love for land or language. 13 The Philo Celtic Society of New York recognized Yonkers as good ground to form a branch in 1898. The organizers felt that the branch would soon rival any of the other similar societies in America "as there is a large colony of Irish-speaking people, mainly from Waterford, in that town, who are closer together and should be more easily held together than in a larger city. 14 Yonkers organized its own County Waterford Association in 1907, "the only Irish county organized in Yonkers, their numbers larger than any of the other 31 counties." For many years it outshined the Waterford Association in Manhattan and eventually pulled the Manhattan society out of downtown Manhattan to hold its meetings in northern Manhattan and eventually the Bronx to cater to the Yonkers colony. For many years Shannafubble Hall at Sacred Heart Parish was a center for Irish entertainment and parish activities. The name was an attempt to capture in English the name of the parish in Waterford (an tSean Phobail) where so many emigrants had left to settle in Yonkers. 15 In October, 1873, a twenty-six year old Irish immigrant from Clare suddenly packed up and left Memphis for New York in the wake of a furious yellow fever epidemic raging in that southern city. When he arrived in Manhattan he found a room in the Clare House Hotel on Washington Street on the lower west side. Unfortunately, he did not escape the illness because, for a short time after checking in to an establishment that promised the comfort of the company of people from his native county, he was overcome so suddenly with the disease that he was taken to a local hospital where he died a few days later. 16 Clare people were a noticeable presence on the lower west side from the Battery to just above West Fourteenth Street, hugging the streets along the Hudson River. Hudson, Photo: The County Waterford Drama Society, shown in 1911, presented plays of Irish interest in New York and Yonkers in the years before World War I. Courtesy of John T. Ridge.

Vol. 26, 2012 Greenwich and Washington Streets were streets where they settled, and they pushed northward before concentrating in a close-knit West Village enclave located in the Roman Catholic parishes of St. Joseph's, St. Alphonsus, St. Veronica's and St. Bernard's. At the turn of the nineteenth century and up to the late 1920s, the Clare Men's Association welcomed members to meetings held in Flannery's Hall at the corner of Leroy and Hudson Streets or at Greenwich Hall, Christopher and Hudson Streets. A longtime president, William Crowley, was a local manufacturer of cigars under the "Dalcassian" label, the ancient Irish name for the Clare region. Local societies included the Clareman's Evicted Tenants Association, designed to help farmers driven off their holdings by landlords in Ireland, and the William Smith O'Brien Branch of the Irish National Foresters (Smith O'Brien was a nationalist leader from Clare). It was the last neighborhood south of Fourteenth Street to maintain a strong Irish presence and certainly the only one with a county predominance. The author Caroline Ware wrote of the West Greenwich Village Irish community in the decade before World War II: The [adult] children often lived with their parents and some were occupying their fathers' houses in 1930. These were the Irish who had 'owned Greenwich Village,' had given to one of the principal thoroughfares the nickname of 'County Clare Street,' had monopolized the prin - cipal saloons 'where only an Irishman is allowed in....' 17 In 1902 across the East River in Brooklyn bordering the docks and between Atlantic Avenue and Amity Streets was a fading Clare colony, increasingly mixed with a growing Italian immigrant population from Genoa. A few miles south of this, in the heart of Brooklyn in Flatbush, was an old settlement of Clare immigrant farmers and other immigrants from that county who came to work in the stone yards at Holy Cross Cemetery. The village of Flatbush, once independent of Brooklyn, eventually was swallowed up by Brooklyn and then Greater New York in 1898. Two decades later urbanization marched to the sleepy hamlet and eroded the heavily Irish village, but chain migration continued to bring many Clare immigrants to the area until the 1950s. 18 Another Brooklyn Clare settlement was located in Greenfield, a little village of about four hundred people, once located near Ocean Avenue and Avenue M. The Brooklyn Eagle in 1914 described it as once a place with "pretty rosy-cheeked Irish girls who milked the cows and churned the butter" and added: Most of the oldest residents are natives of Ireland's famous County of Clare. Most of them came to this country in the early sixties. Nearly all worked on the big farms which have since been driven from the Long Island map by the ingress of city people wanting suburban houses. 19 Photo: The former Flannery's Hall, meeting place for the County Clare Men's Association from about 1900 to the late 1920s, still stands at the corner of Hudson Street and Leroy Street in the old Clare West Village neighborhood. Courtesy of Margaret Fitzpatrick.

Illustration: William Crowley, several times elected president of the County Claremen's Association, was the owner of a cigar manufacturing company on the lower West Side that made Na Bocklish Brand Cigars in 1918 and, in a tribute to the ancient name of his home county, the Dalcassian Brand. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. Vol. 26, 2012 In 1896, the New York Sun wrote that "across town, on the west side, below Fourteenth street, north of Ireland men from the extreme north - ern counties of Antrim, Derry and Donegal, are most numerous." The article went on to state that "Antrim men are in largest numbers at Jackson square [in Manhattan] and in the streets leading to it." 20 An Irish Presbyterian church, presumably composed of immigrants from the north of Ireland where that congregation is strongest, was at one time located at Canal and Greene Streets, but by 1853 a dispute erupted among church members over loss of congregation in this downtown neighborhood. The members split into two factions, one of which argued for the relocation of the church to the upper east side of the city where there was more potential for increasing membership. The church, which had been organized in in 1808, remained a congregation until 1894. 21 The biggest Antrim settlement was in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn where immigrants from the Glens of Antrim flocked in the late nineteenth century for jobs in the maritime industry, particularly on tugboats. The three McAllister Brothers, who owned a large fleet of tugs that worked the port of New York as well as other shipping interests, were natives of the Glens of Antrim. From this small section of Antrim came many of their old neighbors and fellow county men; they found employment in the Greenpoint neighborhood where much of the McAllister activity was based. Construction of small vessels took place in Newtown Creek. 22 The County Antrim Association of Greenpoint, which was founded about 1900, was another society that rivaled and often displaced the Manhattan organization of the same name. In the 1920s, Greenpoint had its own County Antrim Hurling and Football Club as well as the Antrim Social Club Players, an amateur theatrical group. The Antrim Association was active until World War II. 23 Greenpoint also attracted in general a large population of north of Ireland Protestant immigrants. At one point, there were two Orange Lodges, most notably the Greenpoint Purple Heroes, meeting in the neighborhood. Many Irish counties supplied thousands of Irish immigrants to the city, but much of the information about where they settled, if they settled in distinctive neighborhoods at all, has been all but lost. Other counties that were famous for the earliest colonies in Manhattan, like Cork and Kerry, sprouted smaller settlements elsewhere in the city as they abandoned their areas of first settlement. Part III of this article, to be published in vol.27 of New York Irish History, will continue the description of the various county settlements in greater New York.

Endnotes 1 Rich, Kevin, Emigrant Savings Bank, Database compiled by Kevin Rich. Twenty-one of the thirty-six Irishborn leather workers were born in Donegal.Illustration: Greenpoint's St. Anthony of Padua Church (shown in an 1897 drawing) was the spiritual home for a large number of immigrants from the Glens of Antrim who found employment chiefly in the maritime industry. The parish hall was also the meeting place of various County Antrim groups like the men's and ladies' societies, the hurling club, and even a dramatic association up to World War II. Courtesy of John T. Ridge. Vol. 26, 2012 2 Brooklyn Eagle, September 20, 1884. Divver, although accounts of his life refer only to his birth in the "north of Ireland," was in all probability a native of Donegal where the surname is fairly common. 3 Brooklyn Eagle, June 14, 1849, December 22, 1884 and December 9, 1888 and Brooklyn Eagle, December 9, 1888, "The Cathedral Ground." The large number of death notices in the Brooklyn Eagle citing Co. Donegal as the place of birth in the second half of the 19th Century was second only those from Co. Longford. An analysis of the Donegal notices (between 1852 and 1902) reveals that more than half of the home addresses lie either in the Fifth Ward or adjacent areas. This would have been the area centered on St. Anne's, St. James Pro-Cathedral, Assumption, and Sacred Heart Roman Catholic parishes. Smaller concentrations were to be found south of Atlantic Avenue in the vicinity of Court Street and in the developing neighborhood in the Ninth Ward in parishes such as St. Joseph's, Nativity and St. Teresa's. (Brooklyn Eagle, Death Notices, 1852-1902.) Eighty-one death notices were found for Co. Donegal that specified Brooklyn home addresses. Of the total, 44 were in the four Roman Catholic parishes just to the west and south of the Navy Yard. The death notices also point to two distinct areas in Co. Donegal from which almost all of the emigrants had their origin. The largest share, 67%, came from the area just west and south of Derry City including Inishowen and in proximity to Lough Swilly. Buncrana, Moville and Raphoe supplied a number of these Brooklyn settlers. Derry City was the commercial center for this area, so emigrants from the city and adjacent Co. Derry seemed to have much in common and settled in proximity to one another in Brooklyn. The second distinct district from where Donegal emigrants came (about 32%) was in the south of the county around Donegal Bay including the towns of Mount Charles, Inver and Bundoran. Only one emigrant of the 61 counted whose origins could be traced came from the large western coastal area between Kilcar and Milford. (Brooklyn Eagle, Death Notices, 1852- 1902.) Of the 61 exact origins that could be counted, 38 came from the northern end of the county near Derry City and 22 from the southern end of the county around Donegal Bay and one other came from Ardara. 4 Tablet (Brooklyn), October 16, 1932, "Our Parish History" by Rev. John J. Dwyer 5 Irish American, April 22, 1895 and New York Tribune, April 20, 1895. 6 Irish World, February 9, 1889 and Brooklyn Eagle, February 14, 1890 and New York Times, May 13, 1925.7 Irish American, May 21, 1910. 8 Irish Advocate, September 28, 1929, Irish Advocate, May 17, 1930, Irish American, May 21, 1910 and Brooklyn Eagle, May 14, 1934. "Donegal Hill" was regularly mentioned by columnists in the New York Irish weeklies, especially during the warmer months. It was, however, a meeting place for Irish from all over Ireland and not just Co. Donegal. 9 Irish World, October 8, 1889 and Irish World, December 3, 1906. 10 Brooklyn Eagle, September 11, 1901. 11 Brooklyn Eagle, January 14, 1880. 12 Interview with John Byrne, Irish Echo Sports columnist, August 11, 1983. 13 Irish World, February 27, 1904 and Irish World, February 27, 1904. 14 Irish World, May 21, 1898. 15 Herald Statesman (Yonkers), August 18, 1916 and November 20, 1973. An examination of 25 obituaries published in this newspaper between 1923 and 1980 indicates that the vast majority of Yonkers Waterford-born deceased came directly to Yonkers from Ireland. 16 The Sun (New York), October 23, 1873 and New York Herald, October 24, 1873. 17 Ware, Caroline F., Greenwich Village, 1920-1930, Riverdale Press, Boston, 1935, p. 204. There seems to have been an especially large number of Clare people from the Kilrush area. 18 Brooklyn Eagle, November 2, 1902. 19 Brooklyn Eagle, November 8, 1914. 20 The Sun (New York), February 29, 1896. 21 Irish American, May 7, 1894. 22 Irish Advocate, November 11, 1916 and New York Times July 26, 1964. 23 Irish Advocate, March 4, 1922, February 21, 1925 and April 4, 1925.Illustration: In 1925, the Antrim Social Club Players presented the "Colleen Bawn" at St. Anthony's Parish Hall. Courtesy of John T. Ridge.