New York Irish History Roundtable

03/31/2026

03/30/2026

Irish Women Protest in 1920 St. Patrick's Day Parade

Carrying a sign with the words of Dublin poet and Gaelic cultural revivalist William Rooney, the strongly Irish nationalist women of the Cumann na mBan proclaimed their militant spirit. Eamon DeValera, the exiled leader of the Irish cause, reviewed the march from the official reviewing stand on Fifth Avenue.

03/28/2026

Gaelic Park Irish Nationalism

In 1958, Gaelic Park in the Bronx was a popular gathering place for young Irish Immigrants. In this photo, two Irish women read the Irish Republcan weekly newspaper "The United Irishman" while a uniformed U.S. army soldier and the head of the Bronx Ancient Order of Hibernians Accordion Band hold the paper for all to read.

03/27/2026

Irish Women Protest at British Consulate, New York, 1920

A group of picketers from the Celtic Players, a group co-founded by Irish-born actress, singer and lecturer Eileen Curran, protested the treatment of Cork Mayor Terence Sweeney outside the British Consulate in New York in August 1920. Curran, who had won acclaim in 1919 in the David Belasco romantic comedy "Dark Rosaleen," later marched with other Irish women activists on the docks and quickly caused a massive unauthorized strike that tied up every British ship in port. Eileen Curran continued into the late 1940s in New York as a powerful advocate for Irish nationalist and Irish language causes.

03/26/2026

The Ladies' Hibernians and Irish Freedom

The colorful old charter for Ladies Auxiliary Division No. 3 of the Ancient Order of Hibernians has survived for decades after this division of the Bushwick section of Brooklyn vanished. Founded in 1912, the Bushwick neighborhood Ladies' Hibernians strongly committed themselves to advocating for Irish freedom. Like many Ladies' A.O.H. divisions across the country, Division No. 3 in 1916 organized a branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom , named after Irish patriotic poet Ethna Carberry. Mary L Girard became simultaneously not only the Hibernian President but the head of the Ethne Carberry F.O.I.F. The Bushwick neighborhood, however, was never known as an Irish stronghold, and both of these Irish societies gradually faded away and became defunct by World War II.

The officers were: President: Mrs. Ellen T. Feeney. Vice President: Mrs. A.T. Girard (her given name was Mary L.). Financial Secretary: Mrs. E. O'Keeffe. Treasurer: Miss Mary Fitzgerald. Mistress-at-Arms: Julia M. Riley. Recording Secretary: Miss Frances Sheils.

03/25/2026

"The Pl***oy of the Western World" - New York Debut 1911 at the Maxine Elliot Theater

At the Maxine Elliot Theater in November 1911 in New York, actors from Dublin's Abbey Theater known as The Irish Players struggled through the New York debut of John Millington Synge's "The Pl***oy of the Western World" while a raucous, largely Irish-American, audience of protesters launched a barrage of rotten fruits and vegetables at them on stage. The Irish touring company of performers, led from the backstage by Lady Gregory, herself a writer of note, not only survived opening night but succeeded in presenting a shocking new image of Ireland to American audiences that devastated the traditional depictions beloved by Irish-Americans. The play's portrayal of Irish women in particular was a revolutionary turnabout to the image of "Kathleen Ni Houlihan", the bold, heroic, and pristine fictional ideal of Irish womanhood of long standing. Instead, the new play featured Irish women who were not only wildly and irreverently assertive, but the unashamed admirers of a boasting patricidal murderer. Irish New York had never known such a cultural confrontation, but the massive protest against the play was never repeated in the city. The play has been staged successfully many times over the years since 1911.

03/24/2026

Irish "War Brides" 1946

Immigration from Ireland was almost completely cut off in the early 1930s due to worsening economic conditions in the United States. Only a trickle of new Irish arrivals came up to 1946, when a new, smaller wave of Irish immigrants began to arrive in New York. Among the first to come was a group of young women who had married American servicemen stationed in Ireland. In 1946, the happy young women, dubbed "war brides," celebrated their arrival with an Irish step dance aboard the American troop ship that brought them to the city.

03/23/2026

Women march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade - 1918

For the first time in the history of the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade, a group of women, 2,500 members and supporters of Cumann na mBan (League of Women), marched up Fifth Avenue. World War I was still raging in Europe and the women's contingent was a timely addition to a parade weakened by the loss of young men to the military. The women's group carried signs relevant to the struggle for Irish freedom. Many members were clad in ancient Irish costume, but all members carried intertwined American and Irish flags.

03/21/2026

Annie Moore, the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island

On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore of County Cork, 17 years of age, became the first immigrant to pass through the new federal immigration inspection center on Ellis Island. She arrived with her brothers, Anthony and Philip, who were 15 and 12, respectively. She was presented with an American $10 gold piece for being the first person to pass inspection at the new facility. Annie and her brothers joined their parents, Matthew and Julia, who had moved to New York in 1888 and lived at 32 Moore Street. She would later marry Joseph Schayer, a German immigrant. They lived on the same few blocks on the Lower East Side until her death in 1924. She had 11 children, of whom only five survived to adulthood.

Annie is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens. Perhaps due to poverty, she was buried in an unmarked grave. Her grave was identified in August 2006. On October 11, 2008, a dedication ceremony was held at Calvary, which celebrated the unveiling of a marker for her grave, a Celtic Cross made of Irish Blue Limestone. Annie Moore is honored by two statues sculpted by Jeanne Rynhart. One stands near Cobh Heritage Centre (formerly Queenstown), her port of departure, and the other, at Ellis Island, her port of arrival (below).

03/20/2026

Hibernian Ladies in 1940

Brooklyn's St. George Hotel was the scene for the annual St. Bridget's Dinner of the Hibernian Ladies of Brooklyn in 1940. Individual divisions of the society were often organized at predominantly Irish parishes around the city. The Ladies AOH membership was a mix of immigrants born in Ireland and New York born Irish-Americans.

03/19/2026

Gaelic League Mission to America, 1914-1915

The struggle to revive the Irish language and culture brought to New York and other cities a tour of artists, musicians, and dancers from the Gaelic League to America during 1914 and 1915. Organized by Nellie O'Brien, granddaughter of Irish patriot William Smith O'Brien and niece of Charlotte O'Brien, who was the inspiration for the Home for Irish Immigrant Girls, the young group of enthusiasts performed traditional Irish music and dance in a manner meant to educate Irish America in the "right way" things were to be done. While their New York venue, St. Gabriel's Parish on East 37th Street, has disappeared, having been replaced by the approach to the Midtown Tunnel, the performance of twenty-year-old Limerick native Teresa Halpin on the harp, violin, as well as her masterful Irish dancing, helped establish an authentic traditional form of Irish music and dance that has remained the standard to this day. Although Halpin once bested the legendary violinist Michael Coleman in a Gaelic League Feis in 1913, she is today virtually forgotten. The young Limerick pioneer has left one small legacy in "Teresa Halpin's Reel," a popular traditional piece of music still played by thousands of musicians around the world.

03/18/2026

Erin Salutes World War I Heroism, 1918

A recurrent theme in the New York Irish weekly newspapers from the 1870s through the 1920s was the use of the allegorical images of Erin in the form of Irish women in ancient Irish dress. In 1918, the Irish World, at one time the largest circulating weekly newspaper in the United States, pictured Erin welcoming the veterans of the famed Irish 69th Regiment home to America after heroic service on the battlefields of France. The figure of Erin in this case represented not only the wartime service of Irish Americans to their country, but a fervent cry for justice for the rights of the Irish people at the post-war Peace Conference about to take place in Paris. It was drawn by artist-cartoonist Thomas Fleming, who was born in Philadephia in 1853 and was a contributor to many New York daily newspapers such as the Sun, the World and others.