A TV documentary on the St. Louis World Fair mentions how John Philip Sousa and his band dominated the entertainment, which included a young John McCormack singing at the Irish Pavilion. It brought to mind a forgotten era when American superstars were not individuals with a current hit record, but band leaders – people with the ability to not only play, but compose, arrange, and lead a musical organization. And, in the beginning, America’s first superstars were the leaders of America’s first bands – her marching Brass Bands and though Sousa was certainly one of them, he was not the first.  That honor goes to a man whom Sousa himself admired and whom he called matchless.   He was a man who, in his day, was called America’s Greatest Bandleader, and The Musician of the People.  Sadly, today few remember his name, though most still know his works, and his life story would be a movie of epic proportions.

It began on Christmas Day, 1829, when a boy was born to the Gilmore family in Ballygar, Co. Galway, Ireland  and thus began the remarkable life of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore. After a difficult childhood, having experienced the horror of Great Hunger in Ireland, he emigrated to America in 1848 at the age of 18. His love of music led him to one of the many Brass Bands that were popular in America at the time, which he joined as a coronet player. He settled in Massachusetts, and eventually became the leader of the Charlestown Brass Band, then the Boston Brigade Band and finally the Salem Brass. In 1856, he started his own band, which he called Gilmore’s Boston Band, and began to change the image of American music. At a time when the prevailing notion was “the louder the brass the better the band,” Gilmore became the first major bandleader in America to conduct brass band arrangements of classics by Mozart, Liszt, and Rossini. When that made everyone sit up and take notice, he extended his repertoire to standard works, one of the most popular of which was his own composition, Seeing Nellie Home,  inspired by his wife Ellen O’Neill, who was organist and choir director at St. Patrick’s Church in Lowell, Mass. Another of his compositions, written for a civil rights leader of the time, was called John Brown’s Body. Most will recognize that as the song to which Julia Ward Howe later rewrote the lyrics to create the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Perhaps his most enduring work was a military march that he wrote to the air of an old Irish anti-war song. Based on the tune, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, Gilmore created the classic: When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.

Despite his great fame as a composer and band leader, his crowning achievements were the organizing and directing of two of the largest music festivals ever held. In 1869, he organized the National Peace Jubilee and later, the World Peace Jubilee. For sheer numbers of performers, nothing has ever surpassed that latter concert which consisted of 2,000 musicians, and a chorus of 20,000 voices. He brought together leading bands from England, France, Germany, Belgium and Ireland. The Irish band, by the way, was one he personally recruited to represent his homeland, after England insisted on sending only one band to represent the Empire, of which Ireland at the time was a part.  Gilmore told the Brits to send an Irish Band or stay home themselves. Such was the power of Gilmore’s name; he not only attracted the world’s best musicians and singers, but he even convinced the renowned waltz king, Johann Strauss, to compose a special piece, The Jubilee Waltz, for the occasion and to make his first trip across the Atlantic to conduct it himself. One of the highlights of the event was the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, with one hundred Boston firemen hammering out the rhythm on blacksmiths’ anvils.

Shortly after this triumph, Gilmore left Boston for New York, where he became leader of the 22nd Regimental Band of the National Guard. For the next 20 years he concentrated on developing what became universally recognized as simply the greatest band in the world. In 1878, he became the first American bandmaster to make a concert tour of Europe. It was a smashing success. He returned to New York, and took over P.T. Barnum’s old Hippodrome building, and renamed it Gilmore’s Concert Garden. It became the showplace of New York where he played nightly to a full house. If you haven’t guessed yet, when he moved on, it became Madison Square Garden.  Everything this man did was colossal. It was Gilmore who originated the tradition of ringing in New Years in Times Square, it was Gilmore who was musical director for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor in 1886, and it was Gilmore who, in 1891 was invited by Thomas Edison to record on wax cylinders, thereby becoming the first band to make commercial recordings. In 1892, Gilmore was named musical director of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but while on a national tour that year, he died of a heart attack on Sept 24 at 62 years of age.

He was mourned by the entire nation, and thousands lined the funeral route from his home on Central Park West to St. Xavier’s Church across town and then to his final resting place in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The great Victor Herbert said that for the hard, but glorious struggle from the old bands of loud brasses and drums which made the most noise possible, to bands which interpret the works of the world’s great composers to satisfy the most exacting musician, most of the glory belonged to Gilmore.  It is sad that although many still know his works, so few remember his name; yet sadder still is that many who do see his name on his compositions don’t even know that P. S. Gilmore was Irish.  Yet he was not only Irish, but one of the Irish who helped to shape America

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2020)

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DID YOU KNOW that in the annals of America’s heroes, there is scarcely a brighter entry than that of the fighting Sullivan brothers?  Born in Waterloo, Iowa to Railroad conductor Tom Sullivan and his wife Alleta, George, Francis, Albert, Joseph, and Madison grew up the best of friends in the closeness of an Irish family and matured into patriotic Americans. It was no surprise, therefore, that when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Sullivan brothers headed straight for the nearest U.S. Navy recruiting office.

Navy policy discouraged family members from serving together, but the Sullivans were determined that nobody would split them up. If the Navy wouldn’t take them, they would try somewhere else. With the demand for recruitment high, and five healthy young Irish-Americans offering to serve, the request was granted, and on Jan 3, 1942, they enlisted. Later, George tried to explain their decision to their mother. His words were tragically prophetic; he said, If worse comes to worst, at least we’ll go down together. In less than a year the worst came to pass.

On the morning of Nov 13, 1942, during the battle of Guadalcanal, east of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, the Sullivans were aboard the USS Juneau when she was hit by a torpedo in her forward engine room. Minutes later another shot hit her weapons magazine. In a violent blinding flash, the ship erupted. In 42 seconds she sank in shark-infested waters; only 10 of her 711 crew members were rescued; the Sullivans were not among them! The sinking of the Juneau was one of the most tragic losses of the war, but the loss of the five brothers shocked the nation.

It was the greatest military loss by any one American family during World War II. The Waterloo Courier reported that, In the history of the Navy, no mother has received a blow as severe as that which has come to this mother. Mrs. Alleta Sullivan endured her sorrow by helping other families overcome their own personal tragedies. Helping others in sorrow kills your own sorrow, she told a reporter. Condolences poured in from every level of society, Presidential letters and visits and even Congressional resolutions could not ease the pain that the nation felt. Hollywood even immortalized the boys in a full-length feature film: The Fighting Sullivans that left those who saw it teary-eyed.

The ultimate tribute, however, came in April 1943 when the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company invited Mrs. Sullivan to christen the U.S. Navy’s new Fletcher-class destroyer, the USS Sullivans (DD537).  It would be a fighting memorial to her sons. The USS Sullivans was the first ship ever commissioned to honor more than one person. The Sullivans were on the sea once more. The USS Sullivans received nine battle stars for service in World War II and two more for service in the Korean action.

On 7 January 1965, USS Sullivans was decommissioned but remained in reserve into the 1970s. In 1977, she was donated to the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park in Buffalo, NY as a public memorial. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986 and today, the decommissioned USS Sullivans sits proudly at Buffalo’s Naval Park with her shamrock flag still waving from her mainmast and a brass plaque on her quarterdeck recalling the vow of the five Sullivan brothers – We stick together!  However, that’s not the end of the story.

The USS The Sullivans (DDG-68), Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer was launched on 12 August 1995. She was christened by Kelly Ann Sullivan Loughren, the granddaughter of Albert Sullivan – one of the brothers. This newest ship to carry the Sullivans’ name was officially commissioned on 19 April 1997 and still carries the name of the five Sullivan brothers across the seas with her official motto: We Stick Together commemorating just a few of the Irish-Americans who made America Great!

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2017)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

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Note: Appropriately on St. Patrick’s Day March 17, 2018 the crew of Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel discovered the wreckage of the Sulivans’s USS Juno after being lost for more than 75 years 

During its period of operation from 1892 till 1954, over 12 million immigrants entered through the immigration station at Ellis Island, a name that was to become synonymous with the “Golden Door” and the “American Dream”. It is estimated that today over forty percent of the United States population can trace their ancestry to an immigrant that entered Ellis Island.

On New Year’s Day Morning 1892 on the deck of the steamship Nevada stood three adolescents, Annie Moore and her brothers Phillip and Anthony. They were perhaps staring at another recent immigrant from France, the Statue of Liberty. The children had made the twelve-day voyage from Cork in the claustrophobic conditions of steerage to be reunited with their parents and older siblings who had traveled on ahead to make a new life in America two years earlier. In addition to the natural apprehension of starting a new life in a strange land, the children had no doubt heard that they would be subject to a series of examinations at the immigration station; they would be checked to ensure they were healthy and then interrogated to ensure they were neither a threat or likely to become “a public charge”. A slight malady or a wrong answer could result in them being returned to the Nevada and a trip back to Ireland alone. It therefore must have been with some anxiety that Annie realized that she would be the first to go down the gangplank.

It must have been quite a shock when Annie now found herself caught up in what we would now call a PR event surrounding the opening of the new immigration station. The New York Times was there and described Annie as “a little rosy-cheeked Irish girl… fifteen years of age.” (Actually, Annie was closer to seventeen years of age. The children’s ages were all misstated on the manifest, perhaps an attempt by their parents to save money on their passage.) Instead of an anonymous immigration agent, Annie was officially registered by the former private secretary to the secretary of the treasury. The Times continued “When the little voyager had been registered Col. Weber presented her with a ten-dollar gold piece and made a short address of congratulation and welcome. It was the first United States coin she had ever seen and the largest sum of money she ever possessed. She says she will never part with it.” This moment was later commemorated in the song “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” popularized by the Irish tenor Ronan Tynan.

Sadly, there would be no fairy tale ending to the life of Annie Moore, her brief moment of notoriety would be a shining moment in a hard and trying life. The statement that Annie would never part with the ten dollar gold piece was likely an invention of a romantic reporter; the coin probably never lasted the day when Annie was reunited with her family who was eking out an existence on her father’s longshoreman salary. She would spend the rest of her life living in a series of tenements near the Fulton Street Fish Market. She would marry the son of a German immigrant who was employed as a bakery clerk. They would have 11 children, but would bury five of them. Annie herself would die at the early age of 47 in 1924; burned out by a life of poverty and struggle.

Annie Moore was initially buried in an unmarked grave in Calvary Cemetery, Queens until it was rediscovered in 2006. Through the efforts of the Irish American community, the grave was marked by a Celtic Cross of Irish Blue Limestone. Some cynics questioned the elaborateness of the memorial given the grim reality of Annie’s life. However, in honoring Annie Moore we honor all the other anonymous Irish men and women who came to this country and sacrificed their present for future generations’ tomorrow while at the same time building America. It is reported that many of the current descendants of Annie’s surviving children are successful and respected members of the community.

It is right and proper that we remember the many great Irish American men and women who gained well deserved distinction in government, the military, the arts and sciences. However in remembering Annie Moore we remember the countless other anonymous Irish Americans who loaded our ships as Annie’s father did, built our railroads, fought our fires, patrolled our streets and taught in our schools.

Annie Moore is a reminder that the success of Irish America comes from sweat, sacrifice, and tears and not “the luck of the Irish”. It is time we reclaimed the struggle and successes of Irish America from the unmarked grave where it currently lies buried in our school’s curricula. She is also a reminder that the “Golden Door” that she once walked through is now unjustly closed to Irish immigrants as it freely swings open to others; a challenge to complete her memorial by seeking a fair and just immigration policy for today’s Annie Moore’s.

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

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Neil F. Cosgrove  ©

This year marks the 31st proclamation of Irish American Heritage Month, let us vow to make this article from 1937 obsolete.

Did you know that an Irish Catholic Priest Rev. Thomas O’Reilly threatened General Sherman with a mutiny by the Irish Catholics in his army if he torched the church district of Atlanta at the start of his infamous march to the sea and that General Sherman backed down and the entire church district was saved, including the City Hall which stood therein? However, Rev. Peter Whelan was just as courageous in another way. Rev. Whelan distinguished himself as a chaplain for the Montgomery Guards, an Irish company established in Savannah for the First Georgia Volunteer Regiment named for America’s first hero: Irish-born Revolutionary General Richard Montgomery. Previously he had been the administrator of the diocese of Savannah where the majority of his parishioners were poor Irish immigrants.   In 1862, his unit was bombarded into surrender by Union forces and though he was offered freedom, Rev. Whelan chose to remain with as chaplain to the prisoners. They were transported to Governor’s Island, NY where meager rations, few latrines and inadequate heating and ventilation soon had the prisoner suffering from pneumonia and typhus. Food and clean clothing were needed so Rev. Whelan wrote to Rev. William Quinn of St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, NY. Rev. Quinn, fearing that the damp, cold prison would seriously harm the 60-year-old Rev. Whelan’s health, secured a parole for him. However, except for an occasional trip to the city to procure necessities for the men, Whelan remained at the prison, saying Mass each morning, visiting the sick, giving encouragement and spiritual guidance to those in need.

On June 20, 1862, a prisoner exchange was arranged and the men were sent to Richmond. Rev. Whelan arrived with the sick on August 8 and was unconditionally released. Upon his return to Savannah, he resumed his post as Vicar General. In May 1864, a missionary priest stopped in to Andersonville prison where Union prisoners were held to see how many Catholics were there. What he saw staggered him and he asked that a priest be provided immediately. The Bishop of Georgia asked Rev. Whelan to go and the 62-year-old priest agreed. He arrived at Andersonville in June – the hottest time of the year and the period of the highest mortality. The camp was like nothing he had ever seen.

The stockade sloped down on both sides to a small stream about a yard wide and foot deep. With no arrangement for sewage disposal, this creek provided water for drinking, cooking, and bathing! Into the creek was also thrown the waste of two nearby Confederate camps as well as the grease and garbage from the cookhouse. The slow-flowing stream soon became a mass of thick pollution. In the center of the camp was a swamp, part of which had been used by the prisoners as a toilet and excrement covered the ground; the smell was suffocating! Some of the very sick who were unable to extricate themselves from the muck along the creek had to relieve themselves there making the creek a further source of disease for all. The prisoners numbered 33,000 when it should have held no more than 10,000. Whelan requested help and each priest who came only lasted about two weeks before giving up.

In late August, as Union General Sherman was about to enter Atlanta, some Union prisoners were transferred to Savannah and Charleston. By late September, Rev. Whelan decided to follow them, but before he left, he contacted a restaurant owner in Macon and borrowed $16,000. He purchased 10,000 pounds of wheat flour, had it baked into bread and distributed it at the prison. The prisoners called it Whelan’s bread and it provided the men with rations for several months. One former prisoner later wrote, without a doubt he was the means of saving hundreds of lives.  Another Union prisoner recorderd “ Of all the ministers in Georgia accessible to Andersonville, only one could hear this sentence, ‘I was sick and in prison and you visited me,’ and that one is a Catholic.”

Whelan returned to Savannah suffering from a lung ailment contracted at Andersonville. He wrote to Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, asking for money to pay back the loan he made to provide bread for Union prisoners as the man from whom he’d borrowed was sick himself and needed the money. Stanton replied that he needed sworn bills of purchase for the flour. Whelan told Stanton to keep the money because he had neither the health nor the strength to run over Georgia to hunt up bills of purchase. He said that God would provide – and in a way He did. Due to his worsening health, doctors advised him to go north to a drier climate. Friends provided him with the funds to make the trip but, preferring justice to health; Rev. Whelan used the money to repay his debt. Rev. Whelan’s last days were as pastor of St. Patrick’s in Savannah where he died on February 6, 1871, at the age of 69. The Savannah Evening News described his funeral procession as the longest ever seen in the city. His splendid iron casket was ornamented with full-size silver roses and a wreath of laurel. 86 carriages escorted the body through the crowded streets to the cemetery. People from all over the city turned out to bid farewell to this beloved priest – Catholic and non-Catholic alike – for he was a true shepherd to those in need, Confederate and Union alike regardless of faith, and a true American hero. He was also one of the Irish who made America great.

Mike McCormack, National Historian (reprinted from 2019)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

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Did You Know that a 72-year-old Irish woman, beloved by millions, was once called the most dangerous woman in America? Her name was Mary Harris Jones, and this feisty little Irish lady was also called the Mother of All Agitators. Born in Cork City, Ireland on 1 May 1837, her family fled the Great Hunger to Canada where she trained as a teacher and dressmaker. In 1861, she married George Jones, an iron molder and union organizer in Memphis, Tennessee. They had four children, but she lost all four and her husband in the 1867 yellow fever epidemic. Determined to survive, Mrs. Jones moved to Chicago where she worked as a dressmaker until her shop was destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871.

After her second heartbreaking setback, this courageous Irish lady took a job as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and United Mine Workers union in 1897. This was a hard time for labor in a tycoon-dominated America where politicians and police controlled the workplace for the giants of industry. In 1876-77, 21 miners in Pennsylvania were given mock trials and executed for union activities as ‘Molly Maguires’ – a name created to paint them as criminal conspirators when, in fact, the only organization they belonged to was the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

Mary Harris Jones, now in her 60s, entered the field of labor. An effective speaker she began organizing mine workers who she called ‘her boys’; they, in turn, called her ‘Mother Jones.’ Her success in organizing mine workers and their families was phenomenal. This petite, white-haired, grandmotherly-looking lady was a radical labor organizer. When she was called ‘the grandmother of all agitators’ by a local politician, she replied ‘I hope to live long enough to be the great grandmother of all agitators!’ She also organized strikers’ wives because she felt that if the wife didn’t share the husband’s beliefs, he wouldn’t stay committed for long. In 1902, she was arrested for ignoring a West Virginia state injunction banning meetings by striking miners. The District Attorney said at her trial, ‘There sits the most dangerous woman in America. She crooks her finger and 20,000 workers lay down.’ According to Clarence Darrow, she was ‘one of the most forceful and picturesque figures of the American labor movement’. When asked for her address, she replied, ‘my address is on the sole of my shoes, it travels with me!’

For months she lived in the most desolate mining camps, sharing her meager belongings with half-starved miner’s families, nursing the sick and cheering the depressed. Not limited to organizing coal miners, she did likewise in the silk mills of Pennsylvania. When she noticed that many of the children had missing fingers and other disabilities from accidents in the mills and mines, she tried to publicize the terrible working conditions of child labor. Newspapers refused to carry her story noting that the mill and mine owners held stock in their papers. She replied, ‘Well, I’ve got stock in these children, and I’ll arrange my own publicity.’ In 1903, she organized 200 children from the mills and mines, many of whom were maimed, to carry banners demanding ‘We want to go to school, not the mines!’ She led this “Children’s Crusade” on a march from Philadelphia to President Teddy Roosevelt’s summer home at Oyster Bay, Long Island. The march took several weeks, and in every town along the way, Mother Jones was ready with a speech telling the public that she was on her way to let the President hear ‘the wail of the children’! He refused to see her, but she got her publicity! Child labor laws soon followed.

In January 1914, she visited Ludlow, Colorado to support miners trying to organize against the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller. She instilled hope in the strikers with her powerful speeches, even though she was now over 80 years of age. The mine owners had her arrested and confined in a psychiatric ward at Mt. San Rafael Hospital. On 21 January, miners’ wives and children organized a march to protest her arrest. Adjutant General Chase, commander of the Colorado Militia, was so furious he gave orders to ‘Ride down those women!’ Mounted troops attacked the march with sabers drawn, injuring many, and Mother Jones was escorted to the state line and told never to return. More than 13,000 miners and their families were evicted from the company shacks, so they set up a tent colony on land belonging to one who supported their cause. The Governor called in the National Guard who were easily bought by the mine owners. In April, the Guard attacked the tent colony of miners and their families resulting in the violent deaths of 75 people including 2 women and 11 children. After the Ludlow Massacre, Mother Jones went to Standard Oil’s New York headquarters to face Rockefeller; the meeting prompted him to visit the Colorado mines and introduce reforms.

Mother Jones remained active in the union movement and her influence opened the door to other female labor leaders like Lenora O’Reilly who went from child laborer to co-founder of the Woman’s Trade Union League; Aunt Sara McLaughlin who rose to the top of the Textile Mill Union as organizer and Julia Sarsfield O’Connor who became the first female officer in the Woman’s Trade Union when she was elected President. The story was repeated again and again. Mother Jones died on 30 November 1930 and her name is still part of labor history. A plaque was erected to her memory in her native Cork city on 1 August 2012. However, most of the lasting tribute to her may be in the world of music. Gene Autry’s first recording in 1931 was ‘The Death of Mother Jones’; Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid’ calls for women to emulate Mother Jones and in 2010, Irish singer/songwriter Andy Irvine, recorded ‘The Spirit of Mother Jones.’ There is one song, however, that has stood the test of time, the first printed version of which appeared in Carl Sandburg’s The American Songbag in 1927. Sandburg noted that the lyrics refer to Mother Jones’ travels among the Appalachian mountain coal mining camps promoting the unionization of the miners. Think of Mother Jones – one of the Irish who helped make America great – when next you sing, ‘She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes, etc.

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2018)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

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Patrick shipped out to Viet Nam as a member of Hotel Company, 2/4 Marines, 3^rd Division. On the night of 18 July 1966, while serving in a forward position at Cam Lo with three other Marines who were sleeping, their position came under grenade attack by enemy forces. The first grenade Patrick was able to kick away where it exploded only to be followed by a second grenade that fell between two of his comrades. Without hesitation and in an unselfish act of valor, Gallagher threw himself on the grenade to personally absorb the full brunt of the explosion and save his comrades. Pinned under Gallagher’s body, the grenade failed to go off. Gallagher continued to lie on the grenade as his three comrades escaped the position despite the fact that two more enemy grenades were thrown into the position to explode around him. His comrades now in a place of safety and himself  still miraculously unhurt, Gallagher then rolled off the grenade at his squad leader’s order and threw the grenade into the nearby river where it immediately exploded upon hitting the water.

For his “extraordinary heroism and inspiring valor” Gallagher was awarded the Navy Cross. It is said that Gallagher was informed at that time that the only reason he had not been awarded our nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, was only that “the grenade had not exploded and killed him, if it had, he would certainly have been a shoe-in.” This account has been verified in by Gallagher’s former Executive Officer who has stated that over his protests the Medal of Honor citation he had written up was downgraded to a Navy Cross before being submitted to a higher authority by his battalion. Again the reason given for not recommending Lance Corporal Gallagher for the Medal of Honor was that Corporal Gallagher’s unselfish act of sacrifice and heroism had not been fatal.  There is no requirement, nor has there ever been, that a person must die to receive the Medal of Honor, the Medal is awarded for the act of valor performed, not what happened to the individual performing it. Certainly lying on a live grenade under fire so that three fellow Marines could escape

Just two months after receiving the Navy Cross and due shortly to return home, Lance Corporal Gallagher was killed while on patrol.

On March 13, 2018, it was announced that the Navy’s newest destroyer, DDG-127, would be christened the U.S.S. Gallagher.  The U.S.S. Gallagher will not only honor the life and service of Cpl. Gallagher but the 21 other immigrants whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam war memorial who though born in Ireland made the ultimate sacrifice for America; in naming a destroyer for Cpl. Gallagher Senator Schumer and Secretary Spencer have worthily honored them all.  The U.S.S. Gallagher will join her sister ships the U.S.S. Barry, named for Wexford immigrant Commodore John Barry who holds commission No. 1 in the United States Navy, and the U.S.S Michael Murphy, named for a descendant of Irish immigrants who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in our Nation’s latest conflict.

Moves are still underway to award the Patrick Gallagher the Medal of Honor that he so justly deserves.

In every war, in every conflict, Irish American men and women have been stalwart in defense of the America that has offered them so much.

Did you know that the Irish played a major part in the victory on the bloodiest day in American history, the victory that let Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation? It was at Antietam on September 17, 1862, and it was the victory that emboldened President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Foremost among Union forces was the Irish Brigade led by Irish-born Gen. Thomas F Meagher. Their story is an extraordinary chronicle of military valor in America’s cause; once when President Lincoln visited General McClellan’s Union camp, he lifted a corner of the Irish Brigade Flag, kissed it and said Thank God for the Irish!

In early August, the Brigade pursued a Confederate division that halted just before the town of Sharpsburg and turned to await the incoming Union forces on the west side of Antietam Creek. The Irish halted on the east side, where Gen. McClellan set up HQ. Meagher wanted to attack, but McClellan waited for more units, but so did the rebels. By September 17, when McClellan finally ordered an attack, the rebels were in the area, in position, and in strength.

At 6 AM, McClellan sent the 1^st, 12^th, and 2^nd Corps in turn across the Antietam, but held the Irish Brigade back to defend HQ. Anxious to get into battle, Meagher watched as the Union forces broke in retreat, one after the other; At 9 AM McClellan finally sent Meagher’s Irish across the creek. Some gratefully soaked their feet which were so swollen that they couldn’t get boots on; they’d been fighting barefoot. Across the creek was a rise, and beyond the rise was 300 yards of open ground which ended at a sunken road. Over the years, farmer’s traffic had worn the road down so that it was 3 feet below ground level, forming a perfect trench, now filled with Confederate troops who devastated the oncoming Union troops with deadly fire. Meagher ordered his men forward and, as they crested the rise, he rode to their front, drew his sword and shouted, Irish Brigade, Raise the Colors and Follow Me!

The Union wounded, strewn across the field from the morning’s carnage, cheered as from the sunken road was heard, The Irish Brigade is coming. The rebels could hear the Irish cheering as the colors appeared over the top of the rise, first the streamers, then the flags: emerald green, then red, white, and blue. Then the Brigade appeared in a perfect line as if on parade, rifles at the ready. The rebels rose up in the sunken road, leveled their muskets and fired. Death struck the Irish front. Every rebel bullet seemed to find its mark as the Brigade crossed the field. The emerald banners of the Brigade were special targets and were repeatedly lifted as color bearers were shot down. Capt. Clooney retrieved the colors of the 88th as they fell and was immediately shot in the knee. Using the staff as a crutch, he urged his men on. Shot twice more, he died enshrouded by the emerald silk of his regimental banner. A young private lifted the flag from Clooney’s body and waved it defiantly at the enemy. The regiment roared its approval and charged into the hail of bullets.

Behind them, Gen. Caldwell led his men across the creek. He saw the 63rd and 88th being shot to pieces but, intimidated by the carnage, held back awaiting Gen. Richardson to arrive and take command. The Brigade, now more than 30 minutes in a fierce face-to-face fire-fight, was being cut to pieces. Meagher rode to the rear and pleaded, For God’s sake, come up and help! Col. Barlow replied I’m truly sorry General, but, my orders are to remain here. Meager angrily rode back into battle and his horse was hit, fell, and rolled onto him leaving him injured. Meagher was carried back to a field hospital, as the ranks of the Brigade slowly diminished and ammunition was running low. There was nothing glorious about this fight, it was a bloody brawl, but Irish gradually got the upper hand. Virtually every rebel officer had been shot and the sunken road that provided them such great cover now looked like a mass grave with rebels covering every square inch of ground. The contest was too much for the rebels; braving the Irish fire, they bolted from the sunken road and fled to the rear. The remaining Irish began to cheer when suddenly, from beyond the fleeing rebels, came fresh reinforcements! They ran into the sunken road, and straight out the other side charging the Irish. Instead of retreating, the Brigade stood fast, leveled their rifles, and fired into the charging rebels breaking their attack with a single volley. As the rebels regrouped for a counter-attack, the surviving Irish looked nervously over their shoulders; where was their relief?

Meanwhile, Gen. Richardson arrived and found Gen. Caldwell hiding behind a haystack. He cursed Caldwell and ordered his men to relieve the Irish. The Brigade, still firing into the Confederates to keep them from regrouping, knew that one more attack would finish them. Then, just as the rebels were climbing out of the sunken road, Caldwell’s men entered the field behind them shouting, three cheers for the Irish Brigade. The Irish saw their reinforcements coming up the rise and a sense of pride surged through them. With a roar, they sprang to their weary feet and led the attack with Capt. Joyce shouting, Forward for St. Patrick and Ireland. This was the final blow! The rebels had fired cases of ammunition into the Irish, only to see them attack again and again with incredible arrogance. Now, just when the rebels thought they had them finished, the Irish had the audacity to attack them! The Confederates broke and ran. Surrounded by dead and wounded comrades, the Irish stood at the edge of that road so dearly bought, and watched them go. Gen. Richardson, transfixed by the carnage before him, watched as the Irish turned their backs on the fleeing enemy. Then, with their tattered and blood-stained flags proudly flying, they formed into ranks, as best they could, and marched down the rise to the cool waters of Antietam Creek amid the cheers of every man in sight. The unattainable sunken road was now the Union front line; that costly barrier that couldn’t be breached had been won by the Irish Brigade, and they gave it the name by which it would evermore be known – Bloody Lane. They were only a few of the Irish who made America great!

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2018)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

#IrishAmericanHeritageMonth

A TV documentary on the St. Louis World Fair mentions how John Philip Sousa and his band dominated the entertainment, which included a young John McCormack singing at the Irish Pavilion. It brought to mind a forgotten era when American superstars were not individuals with a current hit record, but band leaders – people with the ability to not only play, but compose, arrange, and lead a musical organization. And, in the beginning, America’s first superstars were the leaders of America’s first bands – her marching Brass Bands and though Sousa was certainly one of them, he was not the first.  That honor goes to a man whom Sousa himself admired and whom he called matchless.   He was a man who, in his day, was called America’s Greatest Bandleader, and The Musician of the People.  Sadly, today few remember his name, though most still know his works, and his life story would be a movie of epic proportions.

It began on Christmas Day, 1829, when a boy was born to the Gilmore family in Ballygar, Co. Galway, Ireland  and thus began the remarkable life of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore. After a difficult childhood, having experienced the horror of Great Hunger in Ireland, he emigrated to America in 1848 at the age of 18. His love of music led him to one of the many Brass Bands that were popular in America at the time, which he joined as a coronet player. He settled in Massachusetts, and eventually became the leader of the Charlestown Brass Band, then the Boston Brigade Band and finally the Salem Brass. In 1856, he started his own band, which he called Gilmore’s Boston Band, and began to change the image of American music. At a time when the prevailing notion was “the louder the brass the better the band,” Gilmore became the first major bandleader in America to conduct brass band arrangements of classics by Mozart, Liszt, and Rossini. When that made everyone sit up and take notice, he extended his repertoire to standard works, one of the most popular of which was his own composition, Seeing Nellie Home,  inspired by his wife Ellen O’Neill, who was organist and choir director at St. Patrick’s Church in Lowell, Mass. Another of his compositions, written for a civil rights leader of the time, was called John Brown’s Body. Most will recognize that as the song to which Julia Ward Howe later rewrote the lyrics to create the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Perhaps his most enduring work was a military march that he wrote to the air of an old Irish anti-war song. Based on the tune, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, Gilmore created the classic: When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.

Despite his great fame as a composer and band leader, his crowning achievements were the organizing and directing of two of the largest music festivals ever held. In 1869, he organized the National Peace Jubilee and later, the World Peace Jubilee. For sheer numbers of performers, nothing has ever surpassed that latter concert which consisted of 2,000 musicians, and a chorus of 20,000 voices. He brought together leading bands from England, France, Germany, Belgium and Ireland. The Irish band, by the way, was one he personally recruited to represent his homeland, after England insisted on sending only one band to represent the Empire, of which Ireland at the time was a part.  Gilmore told the Brits to send an Irish Band or stay home themselves. Such was the power of Gilmore’s name; he not only attracted the world’s best musicians and singers, but he even convinced the renowned waltz king, Johann Strauss, to compose a special piece, The Jubilee Waltz, for the occasion and to make his first trip across the Atlantic to conduct it himself. One of the highlights of the event was the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, with one hundred Boston firemen hammering out the rhythm on blacksmiths’ anvils.

Shortly after this triumph, Gilmore left Boston for New York, where he became leader of the 22nd Regimental Band of the National Guard. For the next 20 years he concentrated on developing what became universally recognized as simply the greatest band in the world. In 1878, he became the first American bandmaster to make a concert tour of Europe. It was a smashing success. He returned to New York, and took over P.T. Barnum’s old Hippodrome building, and renamed it Gilmore’s Concert Garden. It became the showplace of New York where he played nightly to a full house. If you haven’t guessed yet, when he moved on, it became Madison Square Garden.  Everything this man did was colossal. It was Gilmore who originated the tradition of ringing in New Years in Times Square, it was Gilmore who was musical director for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor in 1886, and it was Gilmore who, in 1891 was invited by Thomas Edison to record on wax cylinders, thereby becoming the first band to make commercial recordings. In 1892, Gilmore was named musical director of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but while on a national tour that year, he died of a heart attack on Sept 24 at 62 years of age.

He was mourned by the entire nation, and thousands lined the funeral route from his home on Central Park West to St. Xavier’s Church across town and then to his final resting place in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The great Victor Herbert said that for the hard, but glorious struggle from the old bands of loud brasses and drums which made the most noise possible, to bands which interpret the works of the world’s great composers to satisfy the most exacting musician, most of the glory belonged to Gilmore.  It is sad that although many still know his works, so few remember his name; yet sadder still is that many who do see his name on his compositions don’t even know that P. S. Gilmore was Irish.  Yet he was not only Irish, but one of the Irish who helped to shape America

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2020)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

#IrishAmericanHeritageMonth #EmbraceYourIrishHeritageAOH

In the history of the Medal of Honor, the United States Highest award for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty“, only 19 men have been awarded the medal twice. Among them is Marine Sergeant Major Daniel Daly, one of only two marines to receive the Medal of Honor Twice for separate acts of heroism and nominated for a third.

Daly was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, on 11 November 1873. He was slight of stature, only 5’ 6” in height and weighing 132 lbs, yet enjoyed an early reputation as a fighter, a reputation he would prove more than deserved.

Daly was part of the U.S. Embassy Guard in Peking when the Boxer Rebellion broke out in 1900. In one of the most memorable acts of that war, the Boxers surrounded the compound of the foreign legations in Peking and laid siege to it for 55 days. At one point, when German Marines of the German embassy were forced back, Daly by himself took a position in a bastion on the Tarter Wall and remained there throughout the night. Subjected to sniper fire and numerous attacks, when relieved in the morning Private Daly was still holding his position with the bodies of numerous attackers surrounding his position attesting to his bravery. For this he was awarded his first Medal of Honor.

Fifteen years later found now Gunnery Sergeant Daly in Haiti fighting against the Cacos. The reconnaissance company of 38 men that Daly belonged to was ambushed by over 400 of the enemy while attempting to ford a river at night. Among the casualties was the mule carrying the company’s machine gun. After getting his men to a good position, Daly returned, alone and under enemy fire, to the river and searched for the gun. He found it, and was able to bring the gun and its ammunition back to the Marine position. Daly then took command of one part of a three pronged assault on the rebel position, killing 75 rebels and scattering the rest. As one of the two officers present noted, “Had one squad failed, not one man of the party would have lived to tell the tale. Gunnery Sergeant Daly, 15th Company, during the operations was the most conspicuous figure among the enlisted men.” Daly was awarded his second Medal of Honor.

However Daly was not finished yet, there was yet the incident for which he is perhaps best remembered in the Marines for. In June 1918 at the battle of Belleau Wood in World War I the Marines were pinned down under heavy artillery barrage and pinned down. At one point the now 44 year old Daly, led a counter-attack with a battle cry that has become Marines lore “Come on, you sons of B——, do you want to live forever?!” Later in the battle, Daly single handedly eliminated a machine gun nest with nothing more than his 45 pistol and grenades. In the course of the battle he was wounded three times.

Daly was recommended for a third Medal of Honor and the NY Times reported it as a certainty.   However, petty bureaucratic politics came into play and a capricious decision was made that the Medal of Honor could only be awarded twice no matter how deserving subsequent acts of valor were.  Daly’s third Medal of Honor was denied solely on this technicality, instead he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross and France’s Médaille Militaire.

Perhaps the greatest tribute was paid by General Smedley D. Butler, the other Marine to win two Congressional Medals of Honor, who called Daly “The fightinest Marine I ever knew.” Offered promotion several times, Daly once remarked “I would rather be an outstanding sergeant than just another officer“.

  When you visit the beautiful city of New Orleans, be sure to visit the old business part of the city where a statue of a woman overlooks a little square at the corners of Camp and Clio streets.  The woman sits in a chair with her arms around a child.  The woman is nither young or pretty and she wears a plain dress with a little shawl.  She is a bit pudgy and her face is a square-chinned Irish face, but her eyes look at you like your mother’s.  It is one of the first statues ever erected in America to honor a woman, for this was a woman unlike any other.

  She was born Margaret Gaffney in County Cavan, Ireland.  Her family emigrated to Baltimore in 1818, but her parents died in a Yellow Fever epidemic four years later leaving young Margaret an orphan at the age of nine.  Left on her own, she never acquired an education and a non-related family gave her a job as household help.  In 1835, she married Irish-born Charles Haughery and they moved to New Orleans where she lost both her husband and a newborn baby to a cholera epidemic.  Margaret was again alone and penniless.

  She found work as a laundress in a hotel and then later in an Orphan Asylum run by the Sisters of Charity.  She became very attached to the children there and devoted her spare time to raising funds for them.  She bought two cows and a delivery cart and sold milk door to door in the early mornings before work, giving her profits to the orphanage.  As profits allowed, she increased the herd and soon she was assigned to manage the orphanage’s herd of 40 cows which provided milk for the children.  She sold surplus milk and raised yet more funds.  On her way back from her rounds, she begged day-old food from hotels and bakeries and left-overs from the homes of the more affluent.  She brought it all back in her cart to the children.  She was so successful that the nuns were able to open several other facilities and Margaret was given a position in the administration of the orphanages. The Female Orphan Asylum of the Sisters of Charity, built in 1840, was largely due to her work.  She would eventually be responsible for opening four more orphanages in New Orleans.

  A yellow fever epidemic in 1853 found her going from house to house, nursing victims, and consoling dying mothers with the promise to look after their little ones. The epidemic left thousands of children homeless, and Margaret channeled all her profits into a new endeavor – the St Vincent de Paul Infant Asylum, which opened in 1862.  At one point, she loaned money to a baker, who soon went bankrupt.  The only way she could recover her money was to take control of the bakery and operate it.  She made the bakery a success and it provided her with a small fortune and jobs for many people.  She supplied all the asylums in New Orleans with what was known as ‘Margaret’s Bread’ at such a low price that it was virtually free.

  When Union General Benjamin Butler occupied New Orleans during the American Civil War, he declared martial law, erected barriers and set curfews.  No one was allowed outside the barriers after curfew.  Margaret distributed food and milk to the needy outside those lines, including hungry soldiers and Confederate prisoners and she continued to do so.  General Butler ordered her to appear before him and admonished her to stay behind the lines, telling her she would be shot if she crossed them again.  Margaret said she would write to President Lincoln and ask if it was his will to starve the poor?  General Butler reportedly stormed You are not to go through the picket lines without my permission, is that clear? Quite clear, answered Margaret defiantly and with such a determined look in her eye that Butler, noting her expression, responded, You have my permission.

  In time, everyone in the city came to know of Margaret, mother to the motherless and friend to the friendless. She was given many titles, including Bread Woman of New Orleans, Mother of Orphans, Angel of the Delta and most affectionately, Our Margaret.  Children all over the city loved her, businessmen were proud of her and many came to her for advice.  She would sit at the open door of the orphanage in a calico gown and a little shawl giving a kind word to everybody, rich or poor, who came by.  Despite the vast sums of money at her disposal, she spent little on herself and was reputed to have never owned more than two dresses at one time – a plain one for everyday use and a simple silk dress and mantle for Sundays and special occasions.  At all times she wore a Quaker bonnet, which became something of a trademark.

  Then, at age 69, Margaret contracted an incurable disease.  She was cared for by her friends, the Sisters of Charity, as people of all classes and denominations visited her.  Margaret Gaffney Haughery died on February 9, 1882.  Her body was laid in state at St. Vincent’s Asylum and thousands queued to pay their respects.  The city newspapers were edged in black to mark her passing, her funeral procession was the largest ever seen with the mayor of New Orleans leading the procession and the Louisiana governor and former governor as pallbearers.

  Almost immediately, a Carrera Marble monument to her was ordered and two years after her death it was unveiled by children from every orphanage in the city.  The cost of the memorial was donated in nickels and dimes  – “No large sums would be accepted” so that everyone would be able to say they contributed.  The statue, sculpted to resemble how she looked sitting in her office door, is engraved with only one word – Margaret!

When her will was read, it surprised many to learn that she had amassed a considerable sum of money through her labors and investments.  It was no surprise, however, that she left it all to the various orphanages throughout the city.  And her will was signed with a cross, for despite her many accomplishments, Margaret never did learn to read or write!

Mike McCormack, AOH National Historian (originally publish 2020)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

#IrishAmericanHeritageMonth

Did you know that the first Gold Medal winner in modern Olympic history was the son of Irish immigrant parents and that Irish athletes dominated Olympic track and field events for the U.S. for the first two decades of the 20th century? The first to win was James Connolly, and he was born on October 28, 1868, in an impoverished section of South Boston. He grew up with a love of sports and when an International Olympic Committee resurrected the ancient Olympic Games to be held in Athens in April 1896, Connolly requested a leave of absence from Harvard to participate and left for Greece. After arriving in Naples, he was robbed and had to take a later train; he arrived just in time for the Games but too late for practice. The first event on opening day was the triple jump, involving three successive jumps.

It was one of the original competitions in the Ancient Greek Olympics. In Ireland, the geal-ruith (triple jump) was also an ancient event, contested in Irish games as early as 1800 BC. Connolly entered and finished more than a meter ahead of his nearest opponent by jumping 44′ 11″. He became the first Olympic champion since 385 AD receiving a First Place Silver medal since Gold medals were not yet established. He went on to take second place in the high jump (5′ 5″) and third place in the long jump (19′ 2″). As for the rest of his team, a total of 14 athletes from the US competed and were the most successful nation with 11 First Place medals. Overall, the American team had 27 entries in 16 events, with 20 of the 27 finishing in the top three places. Back home, the team was welcomed enthusiastically, and Connolly was presented with a gold watch by the citizens of South Boston. After he died in New York on Jan 20, 1957 at age 88, a book on the 1896 Olympics recorded that, James Connolly became the first known Olympic champion since Zopyros of Athens in the 291^st Olympic games held in 385 AD. His memorabilia, including the initial First Place medal in modern Olympic history, is housed in the library of Colby College, Maine.

Connolly inspired more Irish into the Olympics on America’s behalf since Ireland at the time was under Britain and they refused to compete for the Crown. Between 1896 and 1924, a group dubbed by the newspapers as the “Irish Whales” because of their large, muscular appearance won everything from Amateur Athletic Union national championships to the Olympic Games. The Irish Whales were John J Flanagan and Paddy Ryan of Limerick, James Mitchell and Matt McGrath of Tipperary, Pat McDonald of Clare and Martin Sheridanof Mayo.  Sheridan at 6’3″ and 194 pounds was the lightest but what he lacked in girth, he made up for with his athletic accomplishments, winning nine Olympic medals. Matt McGrath was 6′ tall and 248 pounds; Flanagan was about the same. Paddy Ryan was 6′ 5″ and 296, and Pat McDonald was 6′ 5″ and 300 pounds. They were all members of the Irish American Athletic Club, the NY Athletic Club and, except for Ryan, were all members of the NYC Police Department.

Arthur Daly in the New York Times wrote that they got their nicknames on the train trip to the Olympics of 1912 in Sweden. He wrote. Those big fellows all sat at the same table and their waiter was a small chap. Before we reached Stockholm he had lost twenty pounds, worn down by bringing them food. Once, as he passed me, he muttered under his breath, ‘It’s whales they are, not men.’ They used to take five plates of soup as a starter and then gulp down three or four steaks with trimmings.

Flanagan won Gold in 1900, 04 and 08 and Silver in 04; in the 1908 Olympics in London, he broke his own record with a hammer throw of 170 feet, 4.5 inches; the Silver went to the former record holder Matt McGrath. Flanagan later returned to Ireland upon the death of his father. McGrath won Gold in 1912 setting a record that stood for 24 years and in 1924 won Silver setting an unbroken record for the oldest person ever to win an Olympic medal. Mitchell won Bronze in 1904, and Martin Sheridan won Gold 5 times in 1904, 06 and 08.

Perhaps the most memorable legacy of these great athletes was set at the 1908 Olympics held in London where many medals were won by Irish athletes representing America, not the least of which were the Irish Whales. During the Parade of Nations, it was customary for teams to dip their nation’s flags in a show of respect as they passed the ruling monarch of the host country. Martin Sheridan of the American Olympic team was scheduled to carry the American flag. Everyone knew Sheridan held a grudge against the English because of the Great Hunger 60 years earlier so coaches of the Olympic committee replaced Sheridan with Ralph Rose as flag bearer. It should be noted that these Irish athletes also had a strong sense of patriotic pride to their newly adopted country and as the American team approached the Royal Box, Matt McGrath broke ranks and stepped up to the American flag bearer and said, Dip that flag and you will be in a hospital tonight. The flag was not dipped and it caused an international incident. During a news conference later, Martin Sheridan spoke for the entire Olympic team when he pointed to the American flag and said, That flag dips to no earthly king. A precedent was set that is followed to this day. During the Olympic Games or on any occasion on land or at sea, the American Flag has never been dipped to anyone since that day in 1908. In fact on June 14, 1923, the U.S. Flag Code was adopted to read, No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Now, June 14 is remembered as Flag Day and you can look for that historic moment to be repeated at future Olympic opening ceremonies thanks to an Irishman. They were just a few of the Irish who helped to make America great. America’s Irish continued to dominate Olympic throwing events until the 1928 Olympics when the U.S. lost for the first time in the hammer throw event. They lost to an Irishman, Dr. Patrick O’Callaghan, who was competing for the new Irish Free State. He had been trained by John J Flanagan – one of the whales who had gone home!

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2018)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

#IrishAmericanHeritageMonth

Some altered their names like the ancestor of John Hancock who came from Co Down, and like Capt. Daniel Patrick and Robert Feake – first white settlers in what is now Greenwich, CT. They also settled in New Hampshire, where they founded the town of Concord; in Vermont, where their sons would lend strength to the Green Mountain Boys led by Irish-American John Stark and Limerick-born Matt Lyons; in New Hampshire where Capt. Maginnis commanded the militia; and other areas from Maine, home of the O’Briens who would capture the 1st British ship in the coming war, to Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn who had grown up in Co Cork. Philadelphia had a Hibernian Club as early as 1729; it later became the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, whose first President was none other than Stephen Moylan of Co Cork – soon to be one of Washington’s top Generals. In just 1772 and 1773, more than 18,500 Irish arrived and they were no friends of British colonialism.

When protest began about Crown usurpation of civil liberties the Irish were prominent. Among those killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770 was Irish-born Patrick Carr; Boston Tea Party participants met at an inn owned by a man named Duggan; and the tea was dumped at Griffin’s Wharf by a group dressed as Indians, some of whom had a notably Irish accent. While young Irishmen rushed to arms in support of Washington, Irish merchants participated in the deliberations of Councils and in Congress, raised money to feed and clothe the army and advance the credit of the new government. Irish-born Oliver Pollack personally raised over $300,000 which would be more than $8 million today.

On July 1, 1776, after a full year of hostilities, a resolution was presented to break with England and approval of the final draft of a document was made on the 4^th. The Philadelphia State House was packed as Secretary Charles Thomson of Co. Derry read the document explaining why their action was justified. After a full day of modifying copy, Secretary Thomson recorded the changes, and America’s Declaration of Independence was complete. Among the signers were 6 Irish-Americans and 3 native Irish including James Smith, Matthew Thornton and George Taylor who was also a Colonel in his local militia but, sadly, he died while still a delegate to the Continental Congress.

On July 8, the people first heard that historic document read by Col. John Nixon, son of an Irish immigrant from Wexford; it had been printed at great personal risk by Charles Dunlap of Co Tyrone. There would be many more years of struggle before the last battle was fought on March 10, 1783, but America had made her stand. The last battle, by the way, saw Irish-born John Barry defeat the British ship Sybil. He’d been carrying a cargo of gold with which Congress would establish the new Bank of North America with the help of Irish-born Thomas Fitzsimons.

Yes, the Irish were there at America’s birth and the fact that they made loyal Americans is evidenced in writing of Marquis de Chastellux who wrote after the revolution,

During the whole of the war, the English and Scots were treated with distrust even with the best of attachment for the cause, but the native of Ireland stood in need of no other certificate than his accent. While the Irish emigrant was fighting for America on land and sea, Irish merchant’s purses were always open and their persons devoted to the country’s cause, and on more than one imminent occasion Congress itself, and the very existence of America, owed its preservation to the fidelity and firmness of the Irish. Even President Washington wrote that the Irish need that critical moment to shake off the badges of slavery they have worn for so long.

It was perhaps best said by George Washington Parke Custis, grandson of the beloved first President. At a St. Patrick’s Day dinner in 1828, he said,

Ireland’s generous sons, alike in the day of our gloom, and of our glory, shared in our misfortunes and joined in our successes; With undaunted courage (they) breasted the storm which once threatened to overwhelm us; and with aspirations deep and fervent for our cause, whether in the shock of liberty’s battles, or in the feeble expiring accents of famine and misery, cried from their hearts God Save America. Then honored be the good old service of the sons of Erin in the war of Independence. Let the shamrock be entwined with the laurels of the Revolution, and truth and justice, guiding the pen of history, inscribe on the tablets of American remembrance ‘Eternal Gratitude to Irishmen.’

These are just a few examples of the Irish and Irish-Americans who made America great!

Mike McCormack, National Historian (originally publish 2017)

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

#IrishAmericanHeritageMonth #EmbraceYourIrishHeritageAOH

Let’s take them one at a time.  Some claim St. Patrick to be Italian because he was born in Roman occupied territory, and his name was Patricius.  Sadly, the mists of time have clouded the exact location of his birth, but what is concluded from available evidence is that he was born somewhere in Wales around 386 AD.  Patrick himself wrote that the scene of his youth was Banavem Tiburniae (possibly the town of Tiburnia near Holyhead in western Wales), where his father was a member of the governing body.  Other Welsh sources suggest southern Wales near the Bristol Channel at the mouth of the Severn River.  Although Wales was part of the Roman Empire at that time, it was a Celtic country and its people were one race with the people of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man.  As for his Italian sounding name, it was given to him when he was consecrated Bishop and assigned to the mission in Ireland.  Before that time, our patron Saint’s name was Succat, a Celtic name meaning victorious.  There is, therefore, more evidence to suggest that Patrick was Celtic than any other nationality.  He even identified himself as such in his letter to the British prince, Corocticus.

As for the snakes, although a popular legend, it is scientifically known that there never were any in Ireland, to begin with.  His connection with that legend stems from the Viking misinterpretation of his name.  Paud in the old Norse language meant a toad, and when the Vikings heard of a Saint called Paud-rig, who had lived in Ireland before their coming, they concluded it meant toad-expeller.  That was only the beginning, because the legend was reinforced by the Church’s representation of the Devil in the form of a serpent, and statues of Patrick driving the Devil out of Ireland in that form.  The fact that there were no snakes led to the question, “what happened to them,” and the answer was easily found in St Patrick’s traditional statue.  However, Patrick is more revered for what he brought to Ireland than what he drove away.  Yet he was not the first to bring Christianity . . . he was, however, the most effective.

The story began when Patrick was about 16 years old, and Ireland’s High King, Niall of the Nine Hostages, sent warriors to raid the coast of Wales for slaves.  Among the hostages taken was the youth, Succat.  According to tradition, he was taken to Mt. Slemish, Co. Antrim, where he tended the flocks of either a Druid or a Chieftain, according to Ludwig Beiler’s The Life and Legend of St. Patrick.  After six years, Succat escaped following a voice that he heard in his dreams.  He fled to Wexford, found passage, and eventually returned to his family.  There he received his vocation for missionary work in Ireland in three separate dreams – the most notable was one in which the voice of the Irish called to him, “Holy youth, come again and walk among us.”

Succat received religious training at monastic settlements in Gaul, Italy, and the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.  He was ordained a Deacon by Amator, Bishop of Auxerre about 418 AD, and was consecrated Bishop – receiving the name Patricius – in 432 AD.  At the time, there were a few Christians already in Ireland, but without a central authority and in such isolated areas as an island in Wexford harbor where St. Ibar had established his church and school.

In any case, it is certain that Patrick was in Auxerre in 431, when St. Germanus selected Palladius, a contemporary of Patrick’s, as the first Bishop of Ireland, but that mission was short-lived.  According to the memoirs of Tirechan, a cleric in Meath about 690 AD, Palladius died or left within a year.  Patrick was assigned to replace him in 432.  Working to his advantage was the fact that Patrick knew Irish customs and language from his years in captivity and the fact that he was a Celt.  Patrick never condemned the Irish as idolatrous pagans but appealed to their pride.  He explained their traditions in terms of Christianity and was eventually accepted as one of their own.  He converted key people among the nobility and recruited a native clergy.

He began his missionary work in Ulster, built his first Church at Saul, two miles from Downpatrick, and from there journeyed across the land.  Patrick’s own writings and the writings of his contemporaries show him to have been a missionary of extraordinary zeal, energy, and courage, careless of his own safety in his fervor to `spread the nets for God’.  In his own writings, he mentions this `divine impatience’ as well as describing himself as one of the Irish.  For 29 years, Patrick labored among his beloved Irish, converting and baptizing them by the thousands until his death on March 17, 461 AD.  Tradition establishes that he was buried at Downpatrick where he shares the same grave with Saints Bridget and Columcille who were later interred with him to protect their remains from Viking raiders.  He was recognized as a saint in the 17th century by the extension of his feast day to the universal Church calendar.

However, by all accounts, the most momentous part of his legacy is the form of Christianity he left in Ireland for it inspired a life of sacrifice for the sins of man.  That sacrifice, which became known as ‘white martyrdom’ included prayerful solitude, fasting, tedious transcription of sacred documents, abstinence from worldly pleasures which to some meant dressing in coarse garments and sleeping on hard beds with stone pillows, and most importantly, missionary activity.  It was this devotion which led to Ireland becoming the Isle of Saints and Scholars, the University of Europe and the Lamp of the West; and it was his fervor to spread the nets for God that led future generations of Irish monks to travel the continent as missionaries, bringing the light of learning back into the abyss after the Dark Ages and saving civilization.

This then is the man – the Saint – that we honor in March, and it our duty to see that nothing but praise and reverence are attached to his name.  We may celebrate his memory with joy, but remember his love for the Irish, the tremendous gift of faith that he bestowed upon us and the inspiration he provided which benefitted civilization, and celebrate with reverent joy.  We can begin by replacing all references to Paddy’s Day with the proper name of Saint Patrick’s Day for the difference between Paddy’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day is the same as the difference between the office Christmas Party and Midnight Mass.

Kathleen Rita McNulty was born in the village of Creeslough on February 12, 1921, the third of six children of Anne Nelis and James McNulty.  Her father was Commandant of the Doe Battalion of the Irish Volunteers. On the night of her birth, he was arrested and imprisoned in Derry Gaol for two years for his republican activities. On his release, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where James worked as a stonemason and went on to establish a successful construction business, frequently working with Irish American John B Kelly, the father of the future Oscar-Winning actress Grace,

Coming from the Gaeltacht, Kathleen did not start speaking English until she began to attend school.  Her mother encouraged her “to prove that Irish immigrants could be as good, if not better, than anybody.” She proved a bright student and won a scholarship to Chestnut Hill College.

 Kathleen loved mathematics and took every math course available, including spherical trigonometry, differential calculus, projective geometry, partial differential equations, and statistics.  McNulty graduated as one of the school’s few female math majors in 1942.

Graduating at the height of WW II, she soon saw an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer seeking women with math backgrounds.  The U.S. Army was seeking women to perform the grueling and precise calculations to compile firing tables for long-range guns, calculations that needed to be accurate out to ten decimal places.  Kathleen was hired with the official job title of “Computer.”

Within a few months, McNulty was transferred to work with the “differential analyser[sic]” at the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.  The “analyser” was the most sophisticated calculator of the time.  Using the “analyser,” a single trajectory that had previously taken 50 hours to compute by hand could now be performed in less than one hour. Kathleen excelled at the detailed, meticulous work and was soon promoted to supervising calculations. She and other staff members worked six days a week, with the only holidays being Christmas and the Fourth of July.

In 1945, Kathleen and five other women were selected to work at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to develop the programs to run the top-secret 30-ton machine called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the world’s first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer..  ENIAC could perform the calculations that took the “analyser” an hour in less than ten seconds but would require developing a brand-new engineering discipline: Software Engineering.  McNulty is credited with creating “the subroutine,” a block of reusable computer code that can be used again and again rather than being rewritten over and over, to work past some of the limitations of ENIACs early logic circuits.  McNulty would later recall that in making ENIAC a success as the first digital computer, she made herself “the human computer” obsolete.

With the end of WW II, the vital role that Kathleen McNulty and her fellow women “computers” was soon unceremoniously and unjustly forgotten.  When the decision was made to reveal ENIAC as the first digital computer to the world, the role of Kathleen and the other women played in making ENIAC successful was relegated to the shadows.  They were told to act as hostesses to the government officials and reporters covering the event and to “stand by the computer and look good.”

Kathleen McNulty married ENIAC’s designer Mauchly and went on to have five children with him (in addition to raising two from his previous marriage).  While she continued to contribute to the field of computer science, programming several of her husband’s later computers, it was always behind the scenes.  After Mauchly’s death, she late married Severo Antonelli.   

Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli died on April 20, 2006.  She had come along way from the little Irish girl who had come to America not speaking English, and in the process, shaped the digital world we now live in. She deserves to be better remembered, and this is why we have and need Irish American Heritage Month.

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Neil F. Cosgrove  ©

Michael McGovern was born in the townland of Castlefield, near Williamstown, County Galway to John Govern and Bridget Flynn in October 1847.  We don’t know a lot about his early life.  We know that he was educated at a Hedge School. As educating Irish children was often not permitted, secret schools were organized by itinerant teachers.  These schools were usually held outdoors among the hedges; hence they were known as Hedge Schools.

McGovern received an education in the basics, including Latin.  He also learned Irish history by the fireside listening to the older generation tell stories of old Ireland and its fight for freedom.  McGovern was apprenticed to a shoemaker for a time, but he soon found the trade was not to his liking. McGovern sailed for England in 1866, where he was able to find employment in Sheffield as a steel mill laborer. In Sheffield, he also met and married his wife, Anne Murphy, in 1872. 

McGovern joined the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) while there.  In 1880, McGovern had to flee England as his activity with the I.R.B. had been discovered.  He was smuggled into the U.S. to escape capture by British authorities.  He soon was able to send for his wife to join him.  His history in the U.S. picks up about 1882 when he obtained work as a “puddler” at the Catasauqua Steel and Iron Company near what is now Fullerton, in eastern Pennsylvania.    

What is a puddler?  Along with “breaker boy” and “gandy dancer,” it is one of those occupations that no longer exist.  Puddling was a method of turning pig iron into wrought iron. The puddler’s job was to stir the molten metal in a furnace with an iron bar and then gather it at the end of a rod while the molten metal thickened. As you might expect, the labor was strenuous and extremely dangerous. The intense heat and fumes caused puddlers to have a very short life expectancy.

McGovern left the mill in Pennsylvania about 1888-1890 and then moved his family to Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked as a puddler in the old “Siberia Mill” of the Cartwright-McCurdy plant. But, McGovern had other interests during his tenure making iron. 

During his downtime, McGovern would write poems about his work at the mill.  As a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, McGovern was a staunch defender of labor. He wrote about labor’s struggle against management and the importance of labor unions.  He wrote about Ireland and Irish history, as well. McGovern referred to himself as “The Puddler Poet.”

Of course, he did not leave behind his love of Ireland.  He continued his involvement with the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the U.S.  It is believed that he was a member of Clann na Gael.  Many of his poems were published in the Gaelic American, John Devoy’s newspaper.  His poems were also published in the Youngstown Vindicator and The Telegram.

McGovern’s poems fall into three categories: rolling mill rhymes, labor and miscellaneous poems, and amorous verses “to show that a rolling mill man has a heart as susceptible to the purest motives of love as those who have millions wherewith to purchase a title.”

McGovern was also a very active member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Youngstown.  According to James Fahy, “From an A.O.H. point of view McGovern was deeply involved in the work of the Ancient Order and was – in a sense – Ohio’s – A.O.H. Poet Laureate.”

He wrote a poem, Welcome A.O.H. Men, which may have been a greeting to those attending an A.O.H. function in Youngstown.  In it he wrote:

For Ireland’s triumphs and her woes:

For virtues that enhance her glory;
For wrongs inflicted by her foes
That go to make the blackest story.

For love of Freedom, – always her’s;
Which love, may yet its crown accord her

Céad Mile fáilte –Visitors –
True members of her Ancient Order.

In 1899 the Vindicator Press published a book of his poems titled Labor Lyrics.  In the introduction, McGovern wrote, “Puddlers are a boastful class of workmen. I therefore, in keeping with their dignified practice, make the boast that I consider myself the only puddler that ever stood ‘top of the earth’ who had the daring to issue a volume of poems.”

During a strike at the Youngstown mill, McGovern decided to leave the iron industry, and he took a job with the State of Ohio as an oil inspector. He eventually retired.

Thanks to the publication of his poems, McGovern became known nationally as a poet of the labor movement.  But, that was not his only talent; he apparently was also an artist.  He never had any artistic training but managed to produce many paintings.

In 1904 he returned to Ireland for the first time since his departure.  He reportedly came back a little disappointed. “All they did was have parties for me,” he said, “I didn’t get a chance to see the country.”

McGovern continued to write poems right up until his death of a heart attack at age 86 on April 2, 1933, leaving  behind a large number of unpublished poems.  McGovern was survived by his wife Anne, and four children.  He had 21 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.  His wife passed away just a few years later in 1935.

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Then, the Union ship Housatonic was sunk by the Confederate underwater craft Hunley. Though it was unstable and sunk with its entire crew, it verified the importance of Holland’s ideas. Unable to promote interest in Ireland, he left the Christian Brothers and came to America in 1872. He found employment in St. John’s School in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1875, he offered his plan for a submersible boat to the U.S. Navy, but it was rejected as a “fantastic scheme.” He was sure if he could raise the money for a prototype vessel, he could convince the skeptics, but money was hard to find. In 1876, as his brother and other patriotic young Irishmen had done before him, Holland joined the Fenian Brotherhood, a rebel organization dedicated to freeing Ireland from British rule. Here he found interest in his plans for a weapon that could sink the British Navy. Delighted with the prospect of striking a blow for Ireland, the Fenians financed Holland’s project. He constructed a prototype and in 1878 the 14-foot, one-man, Holland I slipped beneath the waves of the Passaic River. Impressed, the Fenians provided $23,000 for a full-sized version. In 1881, Holland completed a 31-foot, 3-man submarine of 20-tons displacement complete with a torpedo tube and fittings for armaments. Spectators stared as the sub went through its trials, and newsmen dubbed it ‘The Fenian Ram’’ in recognition of its origin and purpose. Holland continued to test and refine his design. In 1882, an impatient Fenian leader, John Breslin, stole the Ram and took it to New Haven to be launched; unfortunately, with no knowledge of its operation, it sank, and the project was abandoned.

Holland kept trying the U.S. Government, and in 1895, he finally won a $150,000. U.S. Navy contract to build a submarine, but the Navy insisted on alterations which Holland said would make it a failure. So, while building a sub to their specifications, the headstrong inventor also built the 53-foot, 63-ton, Holland VI to his own specifications. After the predicted failure of the Navy design, Holland floated out his alternative vessel. The trials took place at New Suffolk on Long Island, NY and were a total success. In 1900, Holland VI became the U.S.S. Holland – the first American submarine, and the Holland Torpedo Boat Company received an order for six more.

The brainchild of the tenacious Irish immigrant became the prototype for the greatest submarine fleet in the world and financier Isaac Rice, and others backed Holland forming the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, later a division of General Dynamics. Rice dealt with both the U.S. and British governments, selling them the original patents much to the chagrin of their inventor and the Fenian Brotherhood. Holland spent years in costly litigation trying to reclaim his patents. On August 12, 1914, he died in Newark, N.J. as the Germans and British were readying their respective Navies for war and the eyes of both fleets were submarines, built with Holland’s principles. John P Holland was soon forgotten. For 61 years, he lay in an unmarked grave until public attention was focused on the historical oversight in 1975 and a memorial headstone was erected. Years later, another was erected in its place, and the original stone was transferred to his home town of Liscannor, Co. Clare and dedicated by the U.S. Navy Submarine Force.

As for Holland’s first sub, the Fenian Ram, it would have made Holland proud for it did strike a blow against the Crown; it was salvaged in 1916 and used in a fund-raising campaign for Ireland’s Easter Rising. After that, it ended up in a shed behind the Paterson Museum. In 1988, the office of National Historian of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) learned of its location and asked the museum its intentions. The museum responded that they had a plan, but a lack of funds kept them from creating a proper display. The AOH sponsored a nationwide fund-raising effort and in 1990, presented the museum with a check for $12,000.00. Today the Fenian Ram can be seen as the centerpiece of an elaborate exhibit to Holland in a special section of the Paterson Museum for he truly was one of the Irish who helped make America great.

A long overdue ceremony took place on April 8, 2000, when a monument was also dedicated to the memory of Holland’s accomplishment, at what is now recognized as the first U.S. Submarine Base in New Suffolk, Long Island organized by the U.S. Navy Submarine Veterans.

Mike McCormack, National Historian

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As an Army chaplain, Fr. Francis L. Sampson saw combat in two wars and earned the nickname of “the Parachuting Padre.” His actions during the D-Day campaign would be adapted as part of two major motion pictures, though his actions would be attributed to others.

Fr. Sampson was born in Cherokee, Iowa, the descendant of Immigrants from County Cork.  Fr. Sampson graduated from Notre Dame before entering St. Paul’s Seminary in Minnesota.  He served briefly as a parish priest.  When the U.S. entered the war, Fr. Sampson sought and was granted permission to join the Chaplain Corps of the U.S. Army.  After completing training, he volunteered for the Airborne, though he later admitted he did not know that he would be required to jump or the harsh rigors of the training.  He was assigned to the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division, as the regimental chaplain.

On June 5^th, Fr. Sampson joined his men as they boarded the C-47 aircraft.  He was carrying a prodigious weight, not only the religious articles of a Catholic priest, but the supplies of a medic.  As the plane began to taxi, Fr. Sampson looked at the young men with charcoal-covered faces and wondered how many would survive the night.  He and the men bowed their heads, and he led them in prayer.

As they approached the French coast, the aircraft was buffeted by antiaircraft fire.  One man was severely wounded by flak piercing the plane but insisted he was going to jump with his comrades.  The red light came on, and the paratroopers moved to the door of the aircraft.  The green light came on, and the command “GO” was shouted. Father Sampson exited the door and into the plane’s engines’ prop blast as he plummeted until his parachute deployed. Tracers from enemy machine guns surrounded him. “It will always remain a mystery to me how any of us lived,” he later wrote.   

Fr. Sampson landed in a flooded canal, the heavy weight of his equipment dragging him under.  Fumbling for his knife, he was able to cut himself free from his pack, yet still might have drowned had it not been for a divine gust of wind filling his still attached parachute, which pulled him into shallow water.  Freeing himself from his parachute harness, Fr. Sampson then dove “five or six times” to retrieve his Mass kit and the holy oils for the last rites, items he would sadly need all too soon.  This scene was recorded accurately in Cornelius Ryan’s book “The Longest Day,” but when the film was produced, the incident was inexplicably changed to a fictitious British Army Chaplain.

Fr. Sampson made his way to an aid station at Basse Addeville which was currently under German counterattack. Seeing how grievously wounded some of the men were, Fr. Sampson volunteered to find a surgeon, at times wading through chest-high frigid water and enemy fire.  He Successfully returned with a surgeon and desperately need supplies, only to find upon his return that the unit had orders to abandon the Basse Addeville position leaving those unable to move.

Fr. Sampson volunteered along with a medic to stay behind with the wounded men unable to move.  He was well aware of the risk he was taking; neither side was taking many prisoners in the current fluid situation, and the Germans would view the wounded as a liability.

The Germans realized the position was abandoned the next morning.  Elite German paratroopers entered the village and quickly seized Fr. Sampson.  Despite showing the crosses on his collar and red cross armband, two grim young paratroopers marched Fr. Sampson outside, away from the building.  They placed him against a hedgerow, stepped back, and pulled back the bolts on their submachine guns.  Fr. Sampson later confessed that facing imminent death in nervousness, he began reciting “Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts,” Grace, rather than The Act of Contrition. 

No pair of knees shook more than my own, nor any heart ever beat faster in times of danger

Fr. Francis Sampson

The Priest’s heart must have stopped when he heard a shot and then realized it was not from his would-be executioners but a German NCO running down the road.  Shoving the impromptu firing squad out of the way, the NCO saluted, made a formal bow to the Priest, and then produced a Sacred Heart medallion from under his uniform.  The Catholic NCO took the Priest to an English-speaking German office, who, after a few questions, released the Priest as a noncombatant, leaving the wounded, including some of his own men, to his care. 

For his bravery, Fr. Sampson would be award the Distinguish Service Cross and recommended for the Medal of Honor (see note below).  Fr. Sampson would later humbly dismiss any praise of his heroics, saying, “no pair of knees shook more than my own, nor any heart ever beat faster in times of danger.”  

Finally returning to the rear lines, Fr. Sampson was called upon to perform another act which formed the basis of an award-winning film.    Headquarters had just received orders concerning a young paratrooper, Frederick Niland of the 101^st.  The young man was one of four Irish American Niland brothers serving in WW II; three were at Normandy, the other serving with the Air Corps in the Pacific.  Frederick Niland had just found out that the two brothers with him in Normandy had been killed; he did not know that just before they took off from England, word had come that his brother’s aircraft in the Pacific had been shot down and was presumed dead.  Fr. Sampson was given orders to find the young man and tell him he was ordered home; his family had sacrificed enough.  It was this story that formed the basis of the movie “Saving Private Ryan.”  

“You can take that up with General Eisenhower or the president, but you’re going home.”

Fr. Francis Sampson

Fr. Sampson’s journey to find the last of the Niland brothers was not as dramatic as that of Tom Hank’s, but it had its own challenges. When Fr. Sampson found Niland with his unit and told him that he was to return with him for transport back to the states, Niland refused, saying, “I’m staying here with my boys.” Fr. Sampson would have none of it; “You can take that up with General Eisenhower or the president, but you’re going home.”

Fr. Sampson would jump again with the 101st in Holland during the Arnhem Campaign and be captured while tending to the wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. Father Sampson refused transfer to an Officers POW Camp and, at his request, was confined with the enlisted men in the brutal Stalag II-A in Northern Germany until the end of the war.

 Returning briefly to civilian life, Fr. Sampson reenlisted at the request of the Military Ordinariate, Francis Cardinal Spellman. Fr. Sampson parachuted into Korea, near Sunchon, with the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment and endured some of the Korean War’s heaviest fighting.  Fr. Sampson served in Viet Nam and was appointed the Army’s chief of chaplains in 1967, attaining the rank of major general. He would serve as an Army Chaplain for 29 years and then, after his retirement, a further two years tending his military flock as head of the USO.

EndNote:  Fr. Sampson was recommended for the Medal of Honor by no less a person than General Dwight Eisenhower, but Army Chief-of-Staff George C. Marshall denied the request without explanation.  It is believed that Marshall was implementing an unwritten rule that chaplains were ineligible for the award.  Despite Army chaplains subsequently being awarded the Medal of Honor and recent awards of the Medal of Honor to address similar injustices, Fr. Sampson still is not recognized.

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Neil F. Cosgrove  ©

On the surface, the brothers Thomas Addis Emmet and Robert Emmet were the most unlikely of revolutionaries. They were born (Thomas Addis 1764, Robert 1778) into an affluent family of Ireland’s Protestant ascendency. Their father was the State Physician of Ireland; firmly positioning the family as members of the British establishment. Yet the spirit of the enlightenment ran strong in the Emmet family; they were sympathetic to the struggle for independence of the American Colonies during the Revolutionary War and critics of the disenfranchisement and discrimination experienced by Catholics in their native Ireland.

Both brothers were gifted students and attended Trinity College. They both distinguished themselves for their gifts of eloquence in the College’s debating society. Robert was such an articulate and inspiring speaker that when a debate on the topic of Irish self-determination was scheduled, the school administration brought in their own outside debater in an unsuccessful attempt to undermine Robert Emmet from inspiring his fellow students.

Thomas Addis Emmet graduated Trinity and studied medicine before finding his true calling in law, being called to the Bar in 1790. He quickly established a reputation as a formidable lawyer, particularly in the defense of those charged with political offenses. A passionate believer in ending discrimination against Irish Catholics and extending to them a say in the rule of their own land by means of the vote, Thomas Addis soon became a leading figure in the United Irishman. Thomas Addis was a close associate of Wolfe Tone and both men had a tremendous influence on the young Robert Emmet. When the Dublin Corporation issued a declaration in support of the special privileges of the Protestant ascendancy in 1792, the response of the United Irishmen was their non-sectarian manifesto with Thomas Addis Emmet its principle author.

The actions of the Dublin Corporation convinced the United Irishmen that the only path open to a free Ireland, where all citizens had equal opportunity and voice in their government, was rebellion. Thomas Addis Emmet became a member of the executive of the United Irishman and contributor to the planning of the 1798 Rebellion, only to be betrayed shortly before the rising was to commence by British government informers who had infiltrated the movement. He was arrested and would be imprisoned until 1802; whereupon he went to Brussels in an attempt to lobby the French for support of a new rebellion that was being organized by his younger brother.

Robert Emmet was expelled from Trinity College because of his political views and soon became a leading figure in the United Irishmen in his own right. It was Robert who reorganized the United Irishmen after the failed 1798 and anticipating help from France began planning a new rebellion. Robert had learned well the lessons of the failed rebellion of ’98 and was able to maintain secrecy as regards to its preparations when an accidental explosion at one of the United Irishmen’ arms caches exposed their plans. Forced to launch the rebellion prematurely, it soon degenerated into failure and defeat.

While the 1803 Rebellion was a failure, the trial of Robert Emmet became a lasting, if costly, victory. As the administrators of Trinity College had done before, the British Government felt that Robert Emmett was too key a figure to the cause of Irish Independence to chance to a fair and independent trial. They secretly bribed his defense lawyer with £200 and an annual pension to ensure that a guilty verdict for treason was a foregone conclusion. The Crown though made one critical mistake; they let Robert Emmet speak and that speech has lit a fire in the heart of generations of Irish seeking a free and united Ireland. The closing sentence is the most ringing:

“Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance, asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.”

Robert Emmet was hung and then beheaded on September 20, 1803. In a twist of fate, his wish to lie in obscurity has been granted as his final burial place is still a mystery.

What became of Robert’s brother Thomas Addis Emmett? Heartbroken over his brother’s death and the two failed rebellions, he immigrated to America. His fame as a lawyer preceded him; he was personally invited to practice law in NY by Governor Dewitt Clinton who waived the residency requirements for him. He went on to a successful practice, eventually rising to New York State Attorney General. He was described as “the favorite counselor of New York” by members of the Supreme Court. He argued (and lost) the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Gibbons v. Ogden, which established the right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

Thomas Addis also left a legacy that has echoed down the generations, but of a different kind than his more famous brother Robert Emmet:

• One of his sons and grandsons became respected and influential jurists in their own right.
• Another son was appointed to the Chair of Natural Science of the University of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson.
• His Grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet was a noted physician and Irish American activist. Despite British opposition, upon his death his last wish “to rest in the land from which my family came” was honored and he is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. The large Celtic cross over his grave just outside the visitors center was sculpted by the father of Padraig Pearse.
• Three great grand-daughters were noted artists.
• His great-grandson Robert Temple Emmet was a graduate of West Point who would go on to earn the Medal of Honor.
• Another great-grandson was a 4 time Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Emmet Sherwood, who also won an Oscar for best screenplay for the movie “The Best Years or Our Lives’.

The difference between two nations could not be any clearer. In British ruled Ireland the only opportunity for a great Irishman was to be a martyr for independence; when given the freedom of America, the Irish and their children were able to achieve their full potential and repaid America many fold with the gifts of their energy and drive through the generations continuing to today.

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Neil F. Cosgrove  ©

In 1858, the Fenian brotherhood was founded in America and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Ireland to work for Irish independence.  Britain declared membership in that organization a crime punishable by deportation to her penal colony in Freemantle, Australia.  Seldom in history can one find a story to rival the adventure that brought embarrassment to England and freedom to six Fenians who had been sentenced to that harsh penal colony for life.

It all began in 1871, when John Devoy, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and other Fenians were released from prison in England on a general amnesty forced by public pressure after the Devon Commission authenticated the prisoner’s claims of cruelty and torture. Under terms of the amnesty however, the released Fenians were banished from Ireland; so they headed for America. In New York they joined Clan na Gael, a branch of the Fenian movement.  At the same time, IRB man Thomas McCarthy Fennell arrived in New York in exile after a term at Freemantle, with terrible stories of those Fenians still imprisoned there.  Fennell suggested a plan to liberate the prisoners still incarcerated there when, in 1873, Devoy received a letter from James Wilson, an IRB man still in Freemantle urging his liberation.  Fennell and Devoy brought Fennell’s plan to John Boyle O’Reilly, who had escaped Freemantle in 1869.  He advised stealth rather than force, and the three presented their plan to the Clan in 1873.  At a Baltimore convention the following year, the plan was accepted and fund-raising initiated. As funds trickled in, Devoy and O’Reilly secured a sailing vessel named Catalpa at New Bedford, Mass. and outfitted her as a whailing ship bound for western Australia.  On April 27, 1875, the ship set sail with only one Fenian on board. The rest of the rescue party sailed from San Francisco in September and arrived in Freemantle in November.  Posing as officials on a tour of inspection, the Fenian leaders were given VIP treatment and taken on a tour of the prison facility by the Superintendent.  It was on this tour that they made contact with the Fenian prisoners and arranged the escape.

Catalpa arrived early in 1876 but the scheduled rescue had to be postponed because of the arrival of new prisoners aboard a British gunboat. Catalpa was put in for minor repairs, in order to justify her delay in port, and the rescue was rescheduled for Easter Monday morning, April 17, 1876. On that morning, two rescue parties, each with horse and cart, left the city in different directions but bound for a prearranged rendezvous. The prisoners put their part of the plan in motion: prisoner Robert Granston approached a guard with a note from the Superintendent requesting prisoners James Wilson and Michael Harrington for a work detail at the Governor’s House. They were released and headed for the rendezvous. Prisoners Thomas Hassett and Thomas Darragh headed in the same direction as if going to work. They were joined by prisoner Martin Hogan who made an excuse for a brief absence to the guard of his work detail.

The good behavior of these men had given them a trustee status and this fact, coupled with the fact that escape from this isolated prison was considered all but impossible, accounted for the lack of security. Not long after the prisoners had fled the confines of the prison, their escape was discovered and the race was on to flee the pursuing authorities. At 10:30 AM, the prisoners met the rescue party, got into a waiting whale boat and rowed out toward Catalpa which had not been allowed to sail near the prison. When only two miles off shore, they spotted mounted police ride up to the spot where they had disembarked and take the horses and carts used by the rescue party.

The Fenians continued rowing at a back-breaking pace for seven hours until heavy seas blew up about 5:30 PM – they were still almost 15 miles from Catalpa. They rode out the storm until morning when they spotted the British ship, Georgette, steaming out of Freemantle toward Catalpa. The authorities on Georgette did not spot the prisoners as they lay silently in the water but they ordered Catalpa on her way. As Georgette steamed back to Freemantle, the prisoners leaped to action and struggled off in the wake of Catalpa. Fearing that Catalpa was unaware of their presence the prisoners decided to risk discovery and wave to signal Catalpa before she sailed away. The gamble worked for Catalpa suddenly altered her course and headed for the whaleboat, but a police cutter also spotted the prisoners and steamed toward them as well.

The Captain of Catalpa shouted to Georgette, “If you fire on this ship, you fire on the American flag.”

Captain George Anthony

The game was up and it was only a question of who would reach them first.  Catalpa won the race and the prisoners and their rescue party scrambled aboard.  The police cutter signaled Georgette which returned flying a man-of-war flag.  The Captain of Catalpa, knowing his ship was no match for the speed and armament of the British vessel, raised the American flag and waited.  After a night of accusation and denial, threat and counterthreat, Georgette fired across the bow of Catalpa at 8:30 AM on the morning of April 19.  The Captain of Catalpa shouted to Georgette, “If you fire on this ship, you fire on the American flag,” and ordered his crew to ready themselves for a fight to the finish.  The Captain of Georgette, fearing an international incident,  lingered awhile and slowly steamed away.

When word reached O’Reilly, he released the news to the press.  It was received with celebrations in America and Ireland and anger in England.  A purge of prison officials in Freemantle followed as, in August, 1876, six patriotic Irishmen sailed into New York Harbor in the good ship Catalpa as a result of Irish daring and Yankee grit.

THIS IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH PROFILE IS PRESENTED BY THE ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS (AOH.COM)

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