Irish

Watertown

In July of 1630, an English expedition established a colony on the homelands of the Pequossette and Nonantum groups of the Massachusett people. First known as Saltonstall Plantation, Watertown was one of the earliest Massachusetts Bay Colony settlements. While primarily…

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An Irish Shoeworker’s Story

The following account is one of the earliest oral histories with an immigrant shoeworker in Lynn. The interviewee, who is unnamed, was born in 1859 and came to the US in 1866. He was interviewed in 1938 by Jane K…

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A 1922 postcard of the Central Square in Cambridge Mass. The postcard shows a busy street with many people waiting to board the streetcar in the middle of the street. On either side of the street are businesses and individuals walking on the sidewalks.

Cambridge

Central Square became Cambridge's largest commercial center in the early 20th century, serving growing immigrant communities from Ireland, Canada, Portugal, and the West Indies. After World War II, the Square and an adjoining area known as "the Port" would become…

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Frank Storer looks at the camera as he plays piano in the foreground. Behind him, there are three other instrumentalists, playing string instruments. In the background, there are many men and women dancing and talking.

Dudley Street

Frank Storer plays piano to a crowded dance hall at the Intercolonial Club on Dudley Street in the 1950s. It was one of at least five dance halls that featured live music by Irish and Canadian bands in the mid-20th…

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Irish in East Boston

Homes and businesses along Marginal Street (ca. 1900-1910) across from the docks in East Boston, where many Irish laborers lived and worked in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Courtesy of the City of Boston Archives.

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Cholera Report

In the summer of 1849, Boston was engulfed in a cholera epidemic that spread from England to the US via emigrant ships. Irish immigrants were particularly hard hit by the disease, accounting for more than 500 of the 611 recorded deaths…

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