History

The Irish have had a presence in New York since the first European settlers arrived here — their names can be identified in the still-extant marriage and baptismal registers of some Dutch Reformed Churches. After the British had conquered New Amsterdam and taken it from the Dutch, James, the Duke of York, sent Thomas Dongan, an Irish Catholic and the Earl of Limerick, to administer the Province of New York in 1682. Dongan was the first Irish governor of New York — and the only Catholic one until the 20th century.

There were waves of Irish immigration into New York in the 1700s, other waves following the end of the War of Independence, and again following the War of 1812. The Irish kept up a fairly steady stream of arrivals through the early 19th century, though the largest wave came during the potato famine, which decimated the food supply in Ireland between the years of 1847 and 1855. Untold numbers died of starvation in Ireland, while an estimated 1 million escaped by immigrating to other parts of the world — including the United States.

Life in New York

Initially, most Irish settlements were in Lower Manhattan; later, poorer Irish immigrants lived in the area known as “The Five Points,” often considered the dirtiest, most crime-ridden slum in the city limits. Little remains of the former Irish neighborhoods today.

The Protestant Irish arriving in the 18th and 19th centuries tended to be of a higher economic and social class and were often literate, skilled artisans — they were well received in America. Irish Catholics, on the other hand, had been prevented from getting an education in Ireland, had few skills, were largely illiterate and poor, and weren’t welcomed.

Jobs

Poorer Irish immigrants tended toward menial labor (mines, railroad, road projects, cab drivers). The Irish also favored jobs in public service, including policemen and firemen. Irish women often worked as domestics or seamstresses. Entrepreneurs owned saloons and grocery stores and became clothing manufacturers, stonemasons, and carpenters.

Impact and Legacy

Machine politics, in which most of an entire ethnic group would vote for a particular party or slate of candidates, was often used to build political power by an Irish community that was the object of discrimination and scorn by the “native” population.

Because so many of the Irish who came in the 19th century were Roman Catholics, New York City’s numerous Catholic churches were built largely from the donations of Irish laborers and not financed by the Vatican.

Genealogy Tidbits

The New York Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank was organized by members of the Irish Emigrant Society in the early 1850s and holds some detailed account records of its depositors.

Cemetery inscriptions on tombstones hold clues about the places of origin of Irish immigrants.

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