USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 16
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Beyond the range of material needs, each group organized to preserve a precious cultural heritage, enlisting a wide variety of social instruments - churches, schools, newspapers, and clubs. Each cherished distinctive traditions whose chances of survival varied with the strength of the differences developed by experience in Boston. Language was the weakest barrier. Attempts to preserve German were futile. Pastors preached the necessity of learning English, and despite difficulties Eng- lish words inevitably crept into German usage.57 Thrown into continuous contact with neighbors who spoke no German, even purists inevitably "schäkt" hands, referred to "dem fein- sten Köntry der Welt" and "unsere City," and used "no, sörri" and "ohl wreit" as liberally as any Yankee. Business taught them "aber Käsch daun," "Dammädsches," "engahdschd," and "indiht ?. " 58 Some used the two languages interchangeably, and all adapted the forms of one to the other.59 French and German easily became second languages which could be ac- quired by the immigrants' children in the public schools. Sep-
57 Cf. F. W. Bogen, German in America ... (Boston, 1851), 11, 13.
For the use of such words, cf. Karl Heinzen, Luftspiele (Zweite Auflage, Gesammelte Schriften, II, Boston, 1872), 172, 176, 177, 179, 181, 195, 212 and passim ; A. Douai, "Der Ueberfall," Meyer's Monatshefte, April, 1855, V, 241; Der Pionier, January 31, 1861.
59 Thus the Germans adapted the past prefix "Ge" to English words, viz., "hab' ich denn gesuppos't," "gekillt," "getschähnscht" (cf. Heinzen, Luftspiele, 170, 191). For English words in American French, cf. references to Courrier des États-Unis, Dissertation Copy, 306.
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arate organizations, founded on linguistic differences alone, proved superfluous.60
Similarly, the urge to maintain familiar forms of worship was most meaningful when it embodied a vital social difference. Thus although the Portuguese Jews had a synagogue as early as 1816, when Abraham Touro requested "that his religious profession might be recorded on the Town's books - & that he belonged to a Synagogue of the Jews," German Jews erected their own building in 1843 which in turn did not satisfy the Polish Jews who dedicated still another in 1849.61 On the other hand, though German Protestants organized a congre- gation as early as 1839, constructing Zion Church (Shawmut Street, South End) in 1846-47, and a Methodist Church in Roxbury in 1852, they often accepted the facilities of natives. A number of German families, stopping in Roxbury for a few months in 1833, were content to attend St. James Episcopal Church and to send sixty children regularly to Sunday School, and the Reverend A. Rumpff, pastor of the Lutheran Church, worked as a missionary for the Unitarian Fraternity of Churches.62
Within the Catholic Church three nativity groups insisted upon national forms. When the Abbé de la Poterie served his first mass in 1788 to a congregation of between sixty and a hundred communicants, primarily French by nativity, but in- cluding some Irishmen, dispute arose as to the language to be
60 Cf. "Annual Report of the Boston School Committee, 1864," Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 39, p. 164.
61 Cf. Minutes of the Selectmen's Meetings, 1811 to 1817 . . . (Volume of
Records Relating to the Early History of Boston . , XXXVIII), Boston City Documents, 1908, no. 60, p. 171; Abraham G. Daniels, Memories of Ohabei Shalom, 1843 to 1918 . . . (s.l., n.d. [Boston, 1918]) ; Constitution, By- Laws and Rules of Order of the Hebrew Congregation Ohabei Shalom (Boston, 1855) ; Boston Pilot, September 23, 1849.
62 Cf. Lemuel Shattuck, Report ... Census of Boston ... 1845 . . . (Bos- ton, 1846), 123; Boston Merkur, December 19, 1846; Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston . .. (Boston, 1880), III, 444; cf. Journal of the Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in . . . Massa- chusetts . .. 1833 (Boston, 1833), 30; Journal of the Proceedings . . . 1834 (Boston, 1834), 17; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-Third Annual Report of the Executive Committee (Boston, 1857), 3.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
used.63 As soon as the English-speaking Reverend John Thayer appeared in Boston, the Irish seized the church by force, oust- ing the French priest whom the Bishop had delegated "to provide a Preacher for the most numerous part of the congre- gation." 64 Bishop Carroll finally ended the rift in the tiny Catholic community by retiring both Thayer and de Rousselet and installing the French Father Matignon.65 Although the French had once preferred to be buried with Protestants rather than with Irish Catholics, and had felt bitter enough to remove their furniture from the church, the tact and kindly wisdom of Matignon and of the saintly Bishop Cheverus reconciled and reunited the two groups. Small in number, facing no serious problems until the forties, they remained harmonious in sentiment.66
But as immigration increased, the Church acquired a thor- oughly Irish cast, marked by the accession to the episcopacy of John Bernard Fitzpatrick, the Boston-born son of Irish parents, who replaced the Maryland aristocrat Fenwick in 1846, and by an ever larger proportion of Irish-born clergy- men, many from All-Hallows Missionary College near Dublin.67 In its first four decades, the Church had scarcely grown at all. In 1816, Boston contained not more than 1,500 Catholics of all nativities, and Bishop Cheverus felt it could well be served as part of the New York diocese.68 By 1830, only little St.
63 The best account of the early history of the church in Boston is E. Percival Merritt, "Sketches of the Three Earliest Roman Catholic Priests in Boston" (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXV), 173 ff. Cf. also Shea, op. cit., II, 315 ff., 387 ff.
64 Cf. Merritt, loc. cit., 185, 191 ff., 212 ff. 65 Cullen, op. cit., 125; Boston Catholic Observer, April 3, 1847; Leo F. Ruskowski, French Emigré Priests in the United States . .. (Catholic Uni- versity . Studies in American Church History, XXXII, Washington, 1940), II ff.
66 Cf. Merritt, loc. cit., 198-201; Shea, op. cit., II, 435 ff., 617, 621, III, 107 ff .; Boston Catholic Observer, May 29, 1847; McGee, Catholic History, 97 ff .; Ruskowski, op. cit., 121; Frances S. Childs, French Refugee Life in the United States ... (Baltimore, 1940), 40, 41.
67 Cf., e.g., Annales de la propagation de la foi . . . 1865, XXXVII, 485. For Fitzpatrick, cf. Cullen, op. cit., 131, 132. For Fenwick, cf. Lord, loc. cit.
68 Bishop Cheverus to Archbishop Neale, December 19, 1816, quoted in Boston Pilot, February 16, 1856.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
Augustine's Chapel, South Boston (1819), had joined Holy Cross Cathedral, Franklin Square (1801-03). The three churches built in the thirties to provide for the inhabitants of the North End, the South End and Roxbury, and Charlestown could not serve those arriving in the forties. For in 1843, the absolute maximum capacity of all Catholic places of worship, including 2,000 seats reserved for Germans, was still less than 14,000 - clearly inadequate for the Irish.69
Active expansion, however, met the demands. In 1843, the Rev. J. B. M'Mahon opened the indispensable Moon Street Free Church in the heart of the North End slums, the first to accommodate the very poorest. In 1848, the Bishop bought the meeting house of the Purchase Street Unitarian Society for the use of the Irish in Fort Hill, naming it St. Vincent's. Finally, in 1855, the dedication of the Church of St. James, prepared to serve a congregation of 10,000, temporarily settled the problem within peninsular Boston, whose Irish population did not increase sharply thereafter.70
As the Irish spread from the heart of the city, the Church followed, frequently purchasing the empty buildings of dis- placed Yankees. In 1842, they laid the cornerstone of St. John's Church in East Cambridge, and in 1848, opened St. Peter's, Cambridge. In 1844 the Meeting House of the Maver- ick Congregational Society in East Boston became the Church of St. Nicholas, joined before long by St. Mary's, the Star of the Sea, and Sacred Heart and Assumption. In 1845 a new church dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul replaced old St. Au- gustine's Chapel in South Boston, supplemented a few years later by the "Gate of Heaven" Church at City Point (1863). In 1855 a church was built in Brighton and in 1858 one in Brookline.71
69 Cf. Boston Pilot, January 28, February 25, 1843; Shattuck, op. cit., 123; Boston Catholic Observer, April 17, 1847; United States Catholic Almanac, 1833, 46, 47.
70 Cf. Boston Catholic Observer, May 10, 17, 1848; Boston Pilot, January 21, 1843, September 29, 1855.
71 Boston Pilot, May 21, 1842, November 10, December 8, 1855, December 13, 1862, March 28, 1863; Boston Catholic Observer, July 5, September 13, 1848;
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
Thoroughly Irish in character, the Church nevertheless profited by its early quarrels and made special provision for worship by each new national group. By 1840 the French element was thoroughly insignificant, but there were enough German Catholics to require attention. Served at first only by pastors who made occasional trips from New York, and by special masses in the Cathedral, the Germans soon demanded a church of their own. In 1841, they organized Trinity Church and erected a building (completed 1846) on Suffolk Street in the South End, which also served those in Roxbury and East Boston. Disturbed by a quarrel with Bishop Fenwick, however, they built their church slowly and with great difficulty, and remained in debt for many years, for Catholicism did not play the intimate rôle in German it did in Irish life.72
While immigrants might possibly transplant the familiar form of their churches as a matter of habit, they established success- ful independent educational organizations only in response to needs arising in America. Having no Old-World model - schools at home were either nonexistent or State-controlled - they created new institutions to protect a vital cultural differ- ence. A German school system therefore remained a chimerical hope in the minds of isolated individuals. The ambition of intellectuals to establish a great German university in the New World led to fascinating speculations, but to nothing more. German Catholic priests may have given instruction throughout the period, but their attempt to found a formal academy failed; not until 1863 could they even buy a lot.73 And the classes maintained by non-Catholic Germans in Rox- bury and Boston had no more than ninety students by 1860.74
Cambridge Directory, 1865-6, 185; Cullen op. cit., 136; C. Bancroft Gillespie, Illustrated History of South Boston . .. (South Boston, 1900), 67, 73.
72 Cf. Rev. James Fitton, Sketches of the Establishment of the Church in New England (Boston, 1872), 146, 147; Shea, op. cit., III, 486, 488, IV, 145; Boston Pilot, June 25, 1842, January 14, February 25, 1843, May 30, 1846.
73 Cf. Boston Pilot, October 31, 1863; Boston Merkur, June 12, 1847; Boston Catholic Observer, June 5, 1847; Richard J. Quinlan, "Growth and Develop- ment of Catholic Education in the Archdiocese of Boston," Catholic Historical Review, April, 1936, XXII, 32.
74 Cf. Bostoner Zeitung, September 1, 1865; Der Pionier, March 5, 1862.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
Jews provided religious training for their children, but other- wise sent them to the public schools although a six-day teaching week made observance of their Sabbath difficult.
But a separate system was essential to the Irish, for compul- sory education drew their children into the common schools, endangering their Catholic souls. Thus challenged, the Church attempted to cope with the problem even before the first Pro- vincial Council of Bishops in 1829 urged the establishment of truly Catholic schools in each community.75 Sunday Schools, the first line of defense, grew slowly; by 1829 not more than 500 Catholic children received instruction in the whole area. But after 1835 the Young Catholics Friend Society, overwhelm- ingly Irish by nativity, assumed the burden of these schools in Boston, organized branches in the Irish sections of the city, and educated more than a thousand pupils annually. By 1845 there were 4,100 children in Boston Catholic Sunday Schools. And thereafter societies of the same name exercised similar functions in South Boston and Roxbury.76
Parochial schools likewise started slowly, but expanded to meet the influx of Irish. The school Father Matignon is tradi- tionally said to have kept in Holy Cross Church at the begin- ning of the century, probably offered only occasional haphazard instruction.77 In 1820, the Ursuline nuns, with the aid of John Thayer and Bishop Cheverus, set up the first school for girls in their convent near the Cathedral. Although almost one hun- dred pupils attended at one time, it lost contact with the Boston Irish after moving in 1826 to Mt. Benedict, Charles- town.78 There were classes of some sort in the Cathedral in 1826 and 1829, in Craigie's Point, Charlestown, in 1829, and in connection with St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum after 1830, but another permanent formally organized school was not founded
75 Cf. Official Catholic Year Book, 1928, 407.
76 Cf. Fitton, op. cit., 134, 135; Dissertation Copy, 316; Boston Catholic Observer, October 25, 1848; Boston Pilot, November 18, 1854, November 24, 1855; Shattuck, op. cit., 124.
77 Cf. Quinlan, loc. cit., 28.
78 Cf. Boston Catholic Observer, June 5, 1847; Quinlan, loc. cit., 29; Winsor, op. cit., III, 519; [Charles Greely Loring], Report of the Committee Relating to the Destruction of the Ursuline Convent ... (Boston, 1834), 5.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
until 1849, when the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur from Cincinnati established one at St. Mary's, North End. The Sisters extended their activities by 1853 to the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, South Boston, opened academies by 1858 in Roxbury and on Lancaster Street, Boston, a convent on Berkeley Street, Back Bay, in 1864, and, after a quarrel over the use of the Bible in public schools, "Father Wiget's" in the North End in 1859.79
Higher education, less important to the mass of Irish labor- ers, came later. Holy Cross College in Worcester, established in 1843, attracted few Massachusetts residents, for its fees - more than $150 a year - were out of the reach of most.80 But when the Jesuits opened Boston College on Harrison Street in the South End in 1863, the thirty-dollar annual charge and the possibility of living at home enabled more to attend.81 Bishop Fenwick's hopes of founding a theological seminary were not realized, however, and in this period Boston Irishmen still found it necessary to send their children to France or to Canada for instruction leading to the priesthood.82
On all levels, of course, tuition charges limited attendance to those who could pay. Some, perforce, relied upon common schools. But many failed to attend at all, and the insistence upon parochial education often became a shield for truancy, creating a serious problem of child vagrancy.83 But though the principle of Catholic instruction for every child remained an ideal rather than a reality, the Irish resisted the tempta- tion of free public schools, and at considerable cost sponsored their own.
79 Cf. Quinlan, loc. cit., 30, 34; Gillespie, op. cit., 67; Boston Pilot, July 24, 1858; Cullen, op. cit., 134, 136; Moses King, Back Bay District . . . (Boston, 1880), 18.
80 Cf. Massachusetts House Documents, 1849, no. 130, p. 2; Lord, loc. cit., 183. 81 Cullen, op. cit., 135; Shea, op. cit., IV, 515; Boston Pilot, December 24, 1864.
82 For examples, cf. Boston Pilot, January 18, 1862, June 4, 1864; Cullen, op. cit., 132. Cf. also [Report on Dioceses Subject to the College of the Prop- aganda] (MS., B. A. Vat. no. 9565), fol. 132; Quinlan, loc. cit., 30.
83 Cf. Boston City Documents, 1864, no. 30, p. 42; Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1850, no. 55, pp. I ff. For fees, cf. Boston Pilot, August 28, 1858.
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
Among the Irish, educational efforts took special form in the total abstinence societies. Unable to deal with intemper- ance as other Bostonians did, they formed groups to provide non-alcoholic relaxation and entertainment. The earliest (1836) had been non-sectarian.84 But after 1841, these organizations affiliated with the Church, their most active sponsor. Stimu- lated by the visit of Father Mathew in 1849, these groups grew rapidly. In addition to the Hibernian and Father Mathew Total Abstinence Societies, clubs flourished in each parish and suburb, closely interrelated, but having no contact with non- Catholics.85
Irish needs also shaped their less formally organized educa- tion. Though some took advantage of such non-Catholic agen- cies as the adult evening school and the sewing school of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, most turned all their ac- tivities into Catholic channels.86 Thus, the Young Catholics Friend Society early renounced its plan of inviting lecturers without regard to sect; and other groups adopted the same exclusive Catholic policy. The Hibernian Lyceum, the Tom Moore Club, literary institutes, debating societies, and Young Men's Sodalities all applied religious ideas to literature and current events, while the Boston Gregorian Society, formed in 1836 by young Irishmen, applied them to music.87
The French and Germans sponsored similar cultural activ- ities. The Gesangverein Orpheus and the Solo-Club gave popu- lar concerts for many years, and a society founded in 1847 offered numerous lectures and plays. Even earlier, German Jews founded a "Hebrew Literary Society" which met twice
84 Cf. Literary and Catholic Sentinel, April 16, 1836.
85 Thus, even in 1865, at a procession after the death of Lincoln, all 19 non-Irish temperance groups marched in Division 2 and the Irish, in Division 7 (cf. "Proceedings at the Memorial to Abraham Lincoln . . ," Boston City Documents, 1865, no. 59, pp. 69, 73). Cf. also Dissertation Copy, 320.
86 Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-second Annual Report of the Executive Committee ... (Boston, 1856), 7, 8; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-third Annual Report ... (Boston, 1857), 13; Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-fifth Annual Report ... (Boston, 1859), 23. 87 Cf. Dissertation Copy, 320-321; Literary and Catholic Sentinel, Novem- ber 26, 1836.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
weekly for discussions and kept a file of Jewish, German, and English periodicals. In addition, enterprising saloon-keepers found it profitable to keep Lesezimmer where nostalgic coun- trymen could scan the pages of the Berliner National-Zeitung, the Leipziger Illustrierte, and the good-natured Kladdera- datsch.88
Periodicals from home were not enough. Each group at one time or another attempted to develop newspapers to express its own needs in the new world. However, though the press was the immigrants' most powerful educational instrument, it flourished in Boston only to the degree that it satisfied a sig- nificant social need. Since almost all these journals appeared weekly they competed with the superior resources of those in New York and failed unless supported by a group conscious of its identity. Thus, the French, first in the field with Joseph Nancrede's Courrier de Boston and de Rousselet's Courier politique de l'univers (1792-93), were unable to support one in Boston for any length of time because of competition from the splendid Courrier des États-Unis of New York.89 Edited with great care, displaying an unusual regard for taste and accuracy, the latter was the outstanding immigrant newspaper of the period. In turn weekly, bi-weekly, and tri-weekly, it finally became a daily.90 Vying with it, Le Littérateur français (1836), the Petit Courrier des familles et des pensions (1846), Le Bos- tonien, the Gazette Française, all of Boston, and the Phare de New York, could last only a short time.91 Newspapers in other
88 Cf. Boston Directory, 1853, 382; Der Neu England Demokrat, November 21, 1857; Bostoner Zeitung, January 6, 1866; Boston Merkur, December 12, 1846, April 24, 1847; Der Pionier, March 14, 28, 1861.
89 Cf. Courrier de Boston, affiches, annonces et avis . . . , April 23-October 15, 1789; Merritt, loc. cit., 210; Howard Mumford Jones, America and French Culture (Chapel Hill, 1927), 136; George Parker Winship, "Two or Three Boston Papers," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XIV, 57 ff., 76 ff .; Childs, op. cit., 129.
90 'Cf. Courrier des États-Unis, journal politique et littéraire, March 1, 1828, November 14, 1829, November 12, 1839, June 10, April 24, 1851.
91 Cf. Literary and Catholic Sentinel, December 10, 1836; Courrier des États- Unis, April 16, 1837; Boston Almanac, 1846, 145; Le Bostonien, journal des salons (Boston), May 12, 1849 ff .; Gazette Française (Boston), September 14,
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DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS
groups started hopefully, but faded rapidly. Short-lived Span- ish and Italian sheets had little influence.92 After the quick failure of the first British paper, Old Countryman, the Eng- lish depended upon the New York Albion until one of its editors moved to Boston in 1855, and started the Anglo- Saxon. In the same year the European and in 1857 the Scottish-American were established in New York. But none succeeded.93
The only non-Irish immigrant paper that flourished in Bos- ton was founded upon the personality of a brilliant editor. The Boston Merkur (1846-48), and Der Neu England Demokrat (a semi-weekly) had already disappeared when Karl Heinzen transplanted Der Pionier from Louisville and New York to Boston. A fiery radical, of deep culture and acute intelligence, extreme on every social issue, Heinzen, exiled from Prussia, had participated in the 1848 revolution in Baden, and had led a stormy career on several German-American papers. His per- sonal organ thrived in Boston's friendly atmosphere, scarcely affected by the founding of the somewhat more popular Bos- toner Zeitung in 1865, and exercised a deep influence both on Germans and on the Americans like Wendell Phillips and Gar- rison who read it.94
The strongest organs naturally developed among the Irish,
1850-July 19, 1851; Le Phare de New York, echo .. . des deux mondes, Feb- ruary 24, 1851 ff. ; also Henri Herz, Mes Voyages en Amérique . .. (Paris, 1866), 192 ff.
92 El Redactor (New York), March 10, 1828 ff. (apparently founded in 1827) ; L'Eco d'Italia, giornale politico populare letterario (New York), February 8, 1850 ff .; Il Proscritto, giornale politico, artistico e litterario (New York), Au- gust 7, 1851 ff. For others, cf. Courrier des États-Unis, August 2, 1849. 93 Cf. Old Countryman: and English, Irish, ... and Colonial Mirror, Oc- tober 10, 1829; Anglo-Saxon, European and Colonial Gazette (Boston), Decem- ber 22, 1855 ff., September 12, 1856; Boston Pilot, December 29, 1855; European (New York), November 15, 1856 ff .; Scottish-American Journal, January 30, I864.
94 Cf. Boston Merkur, ein Volksblatt für Stadt und Land, November 21, 1846 ff .; Der Neu England Demokrat, October 17, 1857 ff .; Karl Heinzen, Erlebtes, zweite Theil: nach meiner Exilirung (Gesammelte Schriften, IV, Bos- ton, 1874) ; Gedenkbuch, Erinnerung an Karl Heinzen . . . (Milwaukee, 1887), 8, 32; Der Pionier, April 29, 1863, February 28, 1861; Bostoner Zeitung, ein Organ für die Neu England Staaten September 1, 1865 ff.
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who turned to them for news of home, for accounts of their own activities and organizations, and, above all, for sympa- thetic advice, derived from their own ideas, on the strange issues they faced as residents and citizens of a new world. But until the forties, even the Irish had no stable newspapers in Boston and relied on the New York Shamrock, the Western Star and Harp of Erin, and their successors.95 Starting with Bishop Fenwick's short-lived children's paper, the Expostulator, a succession of very Catholic papers ingloriously collapsed.96 The first, edited by the Bishop and Father O'Flaherty, and known variously as the Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel (1829-31), and the United States Catholic Intelligencer (1831-33), failed completely. Its successor, the Literary and Catholic Sentinel, edited by the popular poet, George Pepper, and by Dr. J. S. Bartlett, appeared at the opening of 1835. By the end of the year, to strengthen its appeal to the Irish, it became the Boston Pilot "in honor of one of the most popular and patriotic Journals in Dublin." 97 Subsisting from appeals to the generosity of its subscribers, it lasted through a second year, and gave up. Pepper then attempted to issue a secular paper, The O'Connellite and Irish Representative, but neither that nor his other ventures survived.98
The second Boston Pilot, founded after his death in 1838 to express the interests of the Irish-Catholic population of New England, like its less permanent predecessors, did not pay its way; by the end of the year, it had only 600 subscribers. It staggered on, however, although a meeting of its friends to raise funds was only partially successful. At the end of 1839,
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