USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 15
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4 Cf. Boston Catholic Observer, February 13, March 13, 1847; Robert Bennet Forbes, Voyage of the Jamestown ... (Boston, 1847), xxxix, 8.
5 Cf. Cork Examiner, September 2, 1863; Boston Pilot, April II, May 9, 1863.
6 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, June 28, 1862; Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Catholic History of North America ... (Boston, 1855), 148.
7 Cf. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, History of the Irish Settlers in North America (Boston, 1852), 131; Literary and Catholic Sentinel (Boston), March 21, 1835, March 26, 1836.
Cf. Grattan to Fox, February 17, 1841, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/360, fol. 59; Boston Pilot, January 2, 23, 1841, February 26, 1842, July 15, September 30, December 9, 1843; Cork Examiner, March 28, 1842; Dis- sertation Copy, 282.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
Interest waned, however, as Repealers limited their activities to exacting dues. Collections in 1845 were about half those in 1843; and sparsely attended meetings reflected rising dissatis- faction.9 The Boston Irish had been intensely loyal to O'Con- nell;10 but reckless tugging at the lion's tail by Smith O'Brien, Mitchel, and the more active Young Ireland Party, weaned many away, particularly after the old leader's death.11 Finally, the purge of radicals from the Repeal Society in 1847 alienated many prominent members, and transferred to Young Ireland complete control of Irish opinion in Boston, already inflamed by revolutionary hopes.12 Implicit approval by the Church in 1848, however, united conservative Repealers and radicals in the Confederation of the United Friends of Ireland, which resumed collections so vigorously as to provoke strenuous protests from the British ambassador at Washington.13 But failure took the heart out of the movement, and renewed con- servative opposition ended it. Nationalist activity thereafter showed life only in sporadic flurries in the radical press, and in momentary excitement over the exile of O'Brien and his fol- lowers.14 In 1857, the last serious hope vanished with the re- distribution of the funds collected in 1848 and saved for a new insurrection.15
Although residual loyalties rendered immigrants particularly sensitive, appeals from abroad evoked a response from all Bostonians and frequently presented a common denominator for cooperation. Non-Irishmen promptly and generously aided
9 Cf. Boston Pilot, January 3, April 25, May 2, 1846, September 30, 1843.
10 Boston Pilot, May 28, 1842; Cork Examiner, December 24, 1841, July 17, 1844; Boston Catholic Observer, July 10, 1847.
11 Boston Pilot, June 26, 1847.
12 Cf. Boston Pilot, July 31, 1847.
13 Boston Catholic Observer, August 23, 1848; supra, 141. For English pro- tests, cf. Palmerston to Crampton, July 7, 1848, British Consular Correspond- ence, F.O. 5/483, no. 37; Palmerston to Crampton, August 4, 1848, ibid., F.O. 5/483, no. 43; Crampton to Palmerston, August 28, 1848, ibid., F.O. 5/486. 14 Cf. Crampton to Palmerston, October 9, 1848, ibid., F.O. 5/487, no. 122; Bulwer to Palmerston, May 5, 1851, ibid., F.O. 5/528; Crampton to Granville, January 25, 1852, ibid., F.O. 5/544, 112-113; Cork Examiner, February 1I, 1852. 15 Boston Pilot, November 14, 1857.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
Ireland, loading the Jamestown with supplies for the famine stricken land in 1848, and actively participating in relief work in 1863.16 Political sympathy, although more intense within each group, also existed outside it. Germans, Frenchmen, Ital- ians, and, for a time, the Irish combined for common revolu- tionary objectives, thinking in terms of a general struggle of western peoples against tyranny - national in form, but liberal in substance.17
[Thus the recollection of common origin was not a conclusive segregative factor. The group discovered its coherent identity, tested its cohesiveness, and apperceived its distinguishing char- acteristics only by rubbing against the ineluctable realities of existence in Boston. When experience diluted initial differ- ences, newcomers entered smoothly into the flow of life about them. Otherwise, they remained a discordant element in the closely-knit society; reluctant or unable to participate in the normal associational activities of the community, they strove to reweave on alien looms the sundered fabric of familiar social patterns. Since new soil and new homes called for new forms of behavior, they created a wide range of autonomous organ- izations to care for their needy, provide economic and political protection for their helpless, and minister spiritual comfort and friendship to those who found it nowhere else.]
The yearning for familiar pleasures, for the company of understanding men, and the simple sensation of being not alone among strangers, drew immigrants together in tippling shop and bierhaus, and in a wide variety of more formally organized social activities. Of these the most prominent was
16 Cf. Bowen's Boston News-Letter and City Record, February 25, 1826; McGee, Catholic History, 147; Forbes, op. cit., passim; Freeman Hunt, Lives of American Merchants (New York, 1858), II, 279; Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches ... (Boston, 1850), II, 533 ff .; Boston Pilot, April 11, 1863; Measures Adopted in Boston, Massachusetts for the Relief of the Suffering Scotch and Irish (Boston, 1847).
17 Cf., e.g., the annual "democratic banquets" at the International Salon on the anniversary of the February Revolution of 1848 (Der Pionier, February 21, 1861). Cf. also Dissertation Copy, 286; McGee, Irish Settlers, 133; and Grattan to Fox, February 17, 1841, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/360, f. 59.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
the Charitable Irish Society. By 1845 it had completely lost its original character and had settled down to the business of commemorating St. Patrick's day with a grand dinner which annually grew more magnificent until it attained the dignity of a Parker House setting in 1856.18 Few Irishmen could join this venerable association, however. The "bone and sinew" con- centrated in the Shamrock Society founded in 1844, and cele- brated more modestly, but no less enthusiastically, at Dooley's, the Mansion House, or Jameson's.19 In addition, informal neighborhood groups sprang up wherever the Irish settled.20
Canadians gathered in the British Colonial Society while Scotsmen preserved old customs, sported their kilts, danced to the bagpipe, and played familiar games, either in the ancient Scots Charitable Society, the Boston Scottish Society, or the Caledonian Club (1853).21 Germans, who felt that Americans lacked Gemüthlichkeit, established independent fraternal or- ganizations which often affiliated with native ones. Thus Herman Lodge was Branch 133 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and Branch 71 of the Independent Order of Redmen was known as the Independent Order of Rothmän- ner.22 Jews, however, formed none of their own, at first par- ticipating in American and later in German groups.23
No society considered its activities complete without a ball, annual, semi-annual, or quarterly. At Hibernian Hall the Irish
18 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 287; Very Rev. Wm. Byrne et al., History of the Catholic Church in the New England States (Boston, 1899), I, II.
19 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 288.
20 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, May 25, 1861.
21 Cf. Boston Directory, 1853, 379 ff .; Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 59, p. 74. For the Scots Charitable, cf. George Combe, Notes on the United States (Philadelphia, 1841), II, 199; James Bernard Cullen, Story of the Irish in Boston . .. (Boston, 1889), 37.
22 Cf. L. von Baumbach, Neue Briefe aus den Vereinigten Staaten . . . mit besonderer Rücksicht auf deutsche Auswanderer (Cassel, 1856), 183; Der Neu England Demokrat, December 30, 1857, February 3, 1858; Bostoner Zeitung, December 9, 16, 1865.
23 Moses Hays had been Grand Master of Masons at the turn of the century (cf. Columbian Centinel [Boston], June 4, 1791; Lee M. Friedman, Early American Jews [Cambridge, 1934], 18, 19; Carl Wittke, We Who Built America . . . [New York, 1939], 41).
16I
DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
danced to the familiar music of Gilmore's band, while the Ger- mans waltzed in Spring, Odd Fellow's, Phönix, or Turner Hall to the rhythms of the Germania or Mainz's Orchestra.24 Balls were so successful that Germans organized a deutschen Ball- gesellschaft, and the Irish, the Erina Association, to sponsor them; and far-sighted entrepreneurs promoted them nightly to bring business to saloons and halls.25
Picnics were as popular; everyone arranged them. In Green Mountain Grove, Medford, Highland Grove, Melrose, or Ban- croft's Grove, Reading, Germans enjoyed music and dancing, turning and games, absorbed mammoth lunches at ease, and set their children loose to roam in the woods (at half price).26 For similar amusement, the Irish favored Waverly Grove or Beacon's Grove, Winchester, where even occasional fights and riots did not detract from the pleasure of escaping narrow streets and constricted homes.27 For other relaxation the Ger- mans turned to indoor gymnastics through the Turnverein founded by Heinzen and to shooting, climaxed by the annual Turkey-schiessen of the Schutzenverein Germania.28 The Irish preferred rowing and several clubs engaged in vigorous boat- racing, modelled after regattas in Ireland. Run-of-the-mine matches took place in the harbor from Long Wharf to Castle Island, but major contests such as those of the Maid of Erin against the T. F. Maegher, or the Superior of New Brunswick, occurred in the Back Bay while hundreds of Irish spectators watched from along the Mill Dam.29
Militia companies were primarily social organizations, less attractive for their martial exploits than for the small bounty, the opportunity to parade in uniform, and the dinner and
24 Cf. Literary and Catholic Sentinel, January 16, October 8, 1836; Boston Pilot, March 8, 1862, May 25, 1861 ; Bostoner Zeitung, December 9, 16, 1865.
25 Cf. Boston Merkur, January 16, 1847; Dissertation Copy, 289, 290.
26 Cf. references to Der Pionier, Dissertation Copy, 290, n. 50.
27 1 Cf. references to Boston Pilot and Boston Catholic Observer, Dissertation Copy, 290, ns. 51, 52.
28 Wittke, op. cit., 217-219; Bostoner Zeitung, November 11, 1865; Der Pionier, March 11, 1863, September 14, 1864, June 28, 1865.
20 Cf., e.g., Cork Examiner, August 12, 1844; Dissertation Copy, 291.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
speeches that followed target practice and parade.30 Though others joined American companies,31 the Irish formed their own. Their earliest, the Montgomery Guards, had disbanded in 1839 after a dispute, but the Columbian Artillery, the Bay State Artillery, and the Sarsfield Guards took its place by 1852. Dissolved by the governor in 1853 as a result of Know- Nothing agitation, they continued their activities in new skins. The Columbian Artillery became the Columbian Literary Asso- ciation, while the Sarsfield Guards became the Sarsfield Union Association, and their balls, picnics, and lectures suffered no loss in popularity.32
Saints' days furnished an annual social climax. The Scots Charitable Society celebrated St. Andrew's Day at a dinner at which "many a 'bannock' and dish of 'haggis' was eaten, and some whiskey punch was drank." 33 But the traditional St. Patrick's Day dinners of the Charitable Irish and the Sham- rock Societies soon proved utterly inadequate for the Irish. No banquet room was broad enough to comprehend all the sons of Eire, even had they the price of the dinner. Only a spectacular parade could show their full ranks. Led by music, 2,000 marched in 1841; and thereafter, the number of loyal Irishmen and flamboyant bands grew. Mass usually followed, for the Church stressed the supranational, religious aspect of the holiday. But though German Catholics occasionally par- ticipated, St. Patrick remained essentially Irish.34
Immigrant fraternal activities often outlived the needs which originally fostered them, becoming ancillary rather than essen- tial to the lives of the newcomers who did not differ basically
30 Cf. L. von Baumbach, Neue Briefe, 75; Boston Pilot, October 21, 1854; Wittke, op. cit., 174.
31 Cf., e.g., Der Pionier, March 12, 1862 ; Zachariah G. Whitman, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company . .. (Boston, 1842), 345 ff., 351, 37I.
32 Cf. infra, 210; Boston Pilot, July 22, 1854, February 24, April 7, 1855; Irish-American, February 24, 1855.
33 Boston Pilot, December 22, 1855; cf. Combe, op. cit., II, 199.
34 Cf. Boston Pilot, March 20, 1841, March 6, 1858; Der Pionier, March 29, I865.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
from their neighbors. Among some, however, economic status, geographical segregation, and alien culture sustained and rein- forced the initial feelings of strangeness, and magnified the im- portance of organizations in absorbing the shock of contact with foreign society. The Irish were almost alone in founding associations for material betterment, for only they were con- fined to a single economic class by industrial stratification. They unhappily realized their position in the city was distinct from that of any other group - exploited, indispensable, yet lowly and unwanted. Despairing of the prospects around them, persistently questioned,
In the valleys of New England, Are you happy, we would know? Are you welcome, are you trusted? Are you not? - Then, RISE AND GO! 35
some sought escape to the frontier. But desirous as they were of leaving, few had the funds to carry them to the freedom of cheap lands.36 And those wealthy enough to subsidize emigra- tion were unwilling to tamper with an adequate, tractable, and inexpensive supply of labor and votes. Bishop Fenwick's plan for a colony in Maine (1833), the New England Land Com- pany's project for one in Iowa (1851), and the Buffalo Con- vention's day-dream of a new Ireland in Canada, all came to nought.37
Necessarily reconciled to remaining within Boston, the Irish turned to sporadic and largely futile efforts to improve their economic position there. In 1855 more than 200 East Cam-
35 McGee, Poems, 155; Isabel Skelton, Life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Gar- denvale, Canada, 1925), 261. For interest in the frontier, cf. advertisements of western land agents in Boston Pilot, April 24, May 1, 1852, April 2, 1853.
Cf. Sister Mary Gilbert Kelly, Catholic Immigrant Colonization Projects in 36 the United States, 1815-1860 (United States Catholic Historical Society, His- torical Records and Studies, Monograph Series, XVII, New York, 1939), 40.
37 Kelly, op. cit., 37-47, 208, 209, 223-237, 241; Robert H. Lord, "Organizer of the Church in New England ... ," Catholic Historical Review, July, 1936, XXII, 184; John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Church within the .. . United States . .. (New York, 1890), III, 472; Boston Pilot, June 22, 1852; Mrs. J. Sadlier, Biographical Sketch ... (in McGee, Poems), 28; Skelton, op. cit., 270 ff.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
bridge Irishmen contributed $6.00 each and formed the first consumers' cooperative to avoid "the petty domineering of would-be tyrants. . . 7) 38 They turned also to their own countrymen for advice on the protection of their savings, con- sulting first the Bishop and the English consuls, and ultimately establishing banks of their own.39 After an unsuccessful strike in 1843, the tailors established a producers' cooperative under B. S. Treanor, the Young Irelander, which failed, but evolved by 1853 into the Journeymen Tailors' Trade and Benevolent Association. Stimulated by the panic of 1857, the society reor- ganized (1858), and affiliated with a similar group in Philadel- phia.40 Another large sector of unskilled Irishmen formed the Boston Laborers Association (1846) in an attempt to control dock and warehouse employment. Though it lost a serious strike in 1856, it reorganized in 1862 and grew in strength and vitality through the Civil War, remaining distinctly Irish, as did similar societies of waiters and granite cutters.41
Among all groups, of course, there were those who lived from hand to mouth in the shadow of an involuntary and remorseless improvidence. When illness, fatigue, or unemployment cut
38
Cf. Boston Pilot, September 13, 1856.
39 Cf. One Hundred Years of Savings Bank Service . .. (Boston, 1916), II ; British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/397, no. 5; the Columbian Mutual in "Fourth Annual Report on Loan Fund Associations . . . ," Massachusetts Pub- lic Documents, 1859, no. 9, p. II.
40 Boston Pilot, April 24, 1847, July 3, 1858; Norman J. Ware, Industrial Worker 1840-1860 . .. (Boston, 1924), 195; John R. Commons et al., eds., Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), VIII, 275-285; Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor . . . 1877, Massachusetts Public Documents, 1877, no. 31, pp. 85-86; Dissertation Copy, 295. For the strikes, cf. Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1887 ... (Washington, 1888), 1038; John R. Commons, History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1918), I, 566, 576; Irish-American, July 31, September 4, 1858.
41 Cf. "Procession," Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 59, pp. 71, 72. Cf. also Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1887 . . , 1044; Boston Board of Trade, Third Annual Report of the Government . . . 1857 (Boston, 1857), 6-13; Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor . .. 1880, Massachusetts Public Documents, 1880, no. 15, p. 15; Boston Pilot, October 24, 1863, February 6, October 22, 1864; Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor . . . 1872, Massachusetts Senate Docu- ments, 1872, no. 180, p. 57.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
short their labor, these turned not to the cold stranger, but each man to his countryman, each to his old neighbor. Resenting
The organized charity scrimped and iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ,
all were reluctant to rely upon Boston social agencies, even those set up for their special benefit.42 Nor could they fall back upon the organizations of their precursory compatriots, for both the Scots Charitable Society (1657) and the Charitable Irish Society (1737) had early shed their original functions, becoming primarily wining and dining clubs.43
Numerous benevolent enterprises therefore marked the set- tlement of each new group in the city. But not all flourished. Many societies, hopefully launched, soon met disaster in seas of disinterestedness. The Società Italiana di Benevolenza, an early German Charitable Society, a Scandinavian Benevolent Relief Society, and a Swiss group, all failed to survive.44 A British Charitable Society, founded in 1816, and a German Assistance Society, founded in July, 1847, with sixty members, struggled through the period, but always remained small.45 The British organization almost disappeared during the Civil War, while apathy kept down the membership of the German Society, which only spent $300 to $400 annually for assistance. Intimate associations with limited functions, like the Kran- kenunterstutzungsgesellschaft - which provided death and ill- ness benefits - were more successful; and religious institutions
42 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 297.
43 Cf. supra, 160; Boston Pilot, April 3, 1841. In 1857, a suggestion that the Scots Charitable Society organize an office to aid immigrant Scots came to nothing (cf. Scots Charitable Society, Records and Minutes . . . [MSS., N. E. H. G. S.], October 15, 1857, 25). 44 Cf. Constituzione della società italiana di benevolenza, residente in Boston, Massacciussets, Stati Uniti di America (Boston, 1842), passim; Verfassung des deutschen Wohlthätigkeit - Vereins, in Boston ... (Cambridge, 1835), passim; Albert B. Faust, Guide to the Materials for American History in Swiss and Austrian Archives (Washington, 1916), 27; Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 59, P. 74.
45 British Charitable Society for the Years 1849 to 1855. Report . . . (Bos- ton, 1855), 2, 3; Boston Merkur, July 10, 24, 31, August 7, 1847; Der Pionier, January 16, 1862.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
continued to extend charity. But on the whole the non-Irish immigrants failed to develop autonomous eleemosynary activ- ities.46
The Irish, however, segregated in their murky slums, in their lowly occupations, and in their dread of losing religion, never ceased to anticipate harsh treatment from strangers or to dis- trust unknown ways.47 Centuries of struggles had engendered an acute wariness of Protestants, of Protestant friendship, and of Protestant assistance that too often masked proselytization with the guise of benevolence. "Talk to them of the Poor- house and they associate with it all the disagreeable features of the prison-like Unions of their native land. Added to which is the horror, if placed there of being exiled, as they fear, from their priests; and 'they will sooner die in the streets' (such is their language) than go to Deer Island or South Boston. . . . "> 48 This misgiving was, of course, not without justification. De- spite laws to restrict their influence, Protestant chaplains dom- inated the spiritual life of public institutions, controlling the inmates' reading material and religious services, while Catholic priests found great difficulty in securing access even after a resolve of the legislature in 1858 admitted them.49
The horror of dying in a hospital without the ministrations of a priest was not allayed until 1863 when Andrew Carney gave a South Boston estate to the Sisters of Charity for the institution named after him.50 Destitute children, in danger
46 Cf. British Charitable Society for the Years 1849 to 1855, 3; Der Neu England Demokrat, January 23, 1858; Dissertation Copy, 300; Boston Merkur, December 5, 1846, May 9, July 24, 1847; Constitution, By-Laws and Rules of Order of the Hebrew Congregation Ohabei Shalom . .. (Boston, 1855), 8; Der Pionier, January 5, 1860.
47 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, May 15, 184I.
48 Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Annual Report of the Executive Com- mittee . . . 1851, no. 17 (Boston, 1851), 21; cf. also Fifth Annual Report . Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute ... (Boston, 1854), 3; "Cross and Beads . .. ," Boston Catholic Observer, November 8-15, 1848.
49 Cf. Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1844, no. 15, 2-4; ibid., no. 79; Boston Pilot, December 4, 1858; Bishop John B. Fitzpatrick to J. P. Bigelow, May 29, 1850, Bigelow Papers (MSS., H. C.L.), Box VI.
50 Boston Pilot, March 21, 1863; William H. Mahoney, "Benevolent Hos- pitals in Metropolitan Boston," Quarterly Publications of the American Statis-
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
of adoption by Protestants or the state, received earlier atten- tion. In 1833, Sister Ann Alexis and the Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent's Female Orphan Asylum. Accumulating funds from successive fairs and church collections, they finally purchased a building in 1842, and in April, 1858 opened new quarters, donated by Andrew Carney, to house the increasing number of children. The orphanage was exceedingly popular, but at most accommodated only 200.51 Father Haskins' House of the Angel Guardian, established in 1851 for neglected boys, supplemented the activities of the Asylum.52 But since the two combined could care for only a small fraction of those who looked to them for aid, the Irish organized a system of adop- tion by Catholic families.53 However, when the Home for Destitute Catholic Children opened in 1864, more than one thousand gamins between the ages of eight and twelve were still prosecuted annually for vagrancy.54
Financial limitations necessarily relegated the immense prob- lem of pauperism to the government. An early Hibernian Relief Society (c. 1827) was short-lived. The Irish could do little more for the poor than provide much needed clothing through parish societies, and occasional assistance through the Roman Catholic Mutual Relief Society, and, later, through the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.55 The religious character of these associations drove the small group of Protestant Irish into a separate "Irish Protestant Mutual Relief So- ciety." 56
tical Association, June, 1913, XIII, 420; Rev. G. C. Treacy, "Andrew Car- ney . .
," United States Catholic Historical Society, Historical Records and Studies, May, 1919, XIII, 103; Shea, op. cit., IV, 516.
51 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 302, 303, Table XXVI; Lord, loc. cit., 183. 52 Cf. Shea, op. cit., IV, 51I.
53 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, June 3, 1855.
54 Cullen, op. cit., 156; Boston Pilot, June 4, 1864.
55 Cf. T. A. Emmet, Memoir of Thomas Addis and Robert Emmet . . . (New York, 1915), I, 501; Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, January 29, 1831; Bos- ton Catholic Observer, April 17, 1847, October 4, 1848; Constitution of the Boston Roman Catholic Mutual Relief Society . . . 1832 . . . (Boston, 1837) ; Dissertation Copy, 304.
56 Cf. Boston Pilot, June 25, 1842.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
Except for the Negroes who in 1860 opened a home for aged women on Myrtle Street, Beacon Hill, the Irish alone established an independent institutional life. Their strength of numbers facilitated but did not cause separation. By 1865, the Germans, more numerous than the Irish in the year St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum opened, had failed to set up a single permanent agency. Social, economic and intellectual develop- ment gradually eliminated the necessity for autarchy in non- Irish groups, but ingrained in the Irish the insistence upon independent charities conducted according to Catholic prin- ciples.
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