KEEPING HOUSE: IRISH AND IRISH-AMERICAN WOMEN
IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1850-1890
By
Jennifer Lynn Altenhofel
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
History
Chair
___________________________
Dr. Alan Kraut
___________________________
Dr. Hasia Diner
___________________________
Dr. Tim Meagher
___________________________
Dr. Andrew Lewis
____________________
Dean of the College
____________________
Date
2004
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
ii
KEEPING HOUSE: IRISH AND IRISH-AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1850-1890
By
Jennifer Lynn Altenhofel
ABSTRACT
This study documents the daily lives of Irish women as
they became part of the social structure of Washington,
D.C. Keeping House examines the evolution of Irish women's
role in nineteenth century Washington, D.C. and notes how
Irish women who came to the capital found domestic jobs
that became rungs in the social ladder they climbed. In
their move from working class to middle-class, Washington's
Irish women formed a new cultural identity that
corresponded with American middle-class values. Responding
to values they brought with them from Ireland, and
combining them with the virtues of American womanhood,
Irish women used their experiences in Washington, D.C. as a
foundation for middle-class association. Keeping House
redefines the Irish woman's place within her ethnic
community and within the community at large that provided
her an opportunity to join the ranks of her fellow American
women.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
.................................................. ii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................ iv
INTRODUCTION: KEEPING HOUSE: IRISH AND IRISH-AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1850-1890 ............................... 1
CHAPTER 1: BUILDING A COMMUNITY: THE IRISH IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 18001850..................................................... 25
CHAPTER 2: THE WILL OF PROVIDENCE: IRISH WOMEN’S IMMIGRATION TO
WASHINGTON, D.C. ........................................... 65
CHAPTER 3: TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY PATTERNS OF IRISH
WOMEN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890 ........................ 108
CHAPTER 4: BROOM AND BOARD: IRISH WOMEN’S LABOR IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
1850-1890............................................... 142
CHAPTER 5: TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS: IRISH WOMEN’S MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY
IN THE CAPITAL CITY, 1850-1890 .............................. 185
CHAPTER 6: “TO KEEP THE PEACE”: IRISH WOMEN AND THEIR CONTACT WITH THE LAW
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890 ............................. 240
CHAPTER 7: “SO THEY MAY NEVER STRAY”: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN
THE LIVES OF WASHINGTON’S IRISH WOMEN ......................... 275
CHAPTER 8: "A LITTLE BAND OF ZEALOUS WOMEN, FILLED WITH CHARITY": IRISH
WOMEN AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN WASHINGTON, D.C. .... 320
APPENDIX ONE: METHODOLOGY ................................... 348
APPENDIX TWO: AGE OF IRISH BRIDES ............................ 352
APPENDIX THREE: NATIONALITY OF MEN MARRIED TO IRISH WOMEN ......... 353
APPENDIX FOUR: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON IRISH WOMEN IN CHAPTER FOUR 355
APPENDIX FIVE: MEDICAL REPORTS FROM COLUMBIA HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN .... 357
APPENDIX SIX: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON WOMEN IN CHAPTER FIVE ..... 359
APPENDIX SEVEN: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON ST. VINCENT DEPAUL SOCIETY
MEMBERS AND THEIR CLIENTS .................................... 361
APPENDIX EIGHT: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON WOMEN IN CHAPTER SEVEN .... 365
APPENDIX NINE: OCCUPATION CATEGORIES FROM
UNITED STATES CENSUS, 1890 ................................. 369
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................. 371
ABSTRACT
iv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1: PERCENT
OF
FIGURE 2: POPULATION
IRISH ARRIVING
OF
IN THE
UNITED STATES, 1820-1850 29
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1800-1850 ............ 45
FIGURE 3: PERCENT OF IRISH IMMIGRANTS OF TOTAL POPULATION OF PRINCIPAL
CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1870-1890 ........................ 72
FIGURE 4: FOREIGN POPULATION
FIGURE 5: IRISH IMMIGRANTS
FIGURE 6: IRISH
AND
OF
BY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890 ..... 74
WARD, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 .. 79
FOREIGN WOMEN
FIGURE 7: FEMALE POPULATION
IN
IN
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 . 88
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 ...... 89
FIGURE 8: AGE DISTRIBUTION OF IRISH FEMALE POPULATION BY PERCENTAGE,
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 ................................ 91
FIGURE 9: IRISH WOMEN
IN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
BY
WARD, 1850-1880 .... 94
FIGURE 10: PERCENT OF MARITAL STATUS BY NATIVITY AND RACE FOR WOMEN OVER
FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1890.................. 116
FIGURE 11: MARITAL STATUS OF IRISH WOMEN OVER FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE,
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 ............................... 117
FIGURE 12: BIRTHPLACE
OF
MEN
WHO
MARRIED IRISH WOMEN, 1850-1889 .. 125
FIGURE 13: NATIONALITY OF FATHERS OF CHILDREN BORN TO IRISH MOTHERS,
1860-1880............................................... 130
FIGURE 14: FOREIGN, IRISH, AFRICAN AMERICAN AND SLAVE WOMEN IN
WASHINGTON, D.C. AND GEORGETOWN 1850-1860 .................... 155
FIGURE 15: IRISH WOMEN TREATED AT THE DOUGLAS MILITARY HOSPITAL BY
ILLNESS, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1862-1864 ....................... 195
FIGURE 16: PRIMARY CAUSE OF DEATH FOR WOMEN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 18741883 BY NATIVITY .......................................... 201
FIGURE 17: CANCER DEATHS OF WOMEN BY NATIVITY AND TYPE IN WASHINGTON,
D.C., 1874-1890 ......................................... 209
v
FIGURE 18: IRISH PATIENTS IN COLUMBIA HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN & LYING-IN
ASYLUM, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1866-1894 ....................... 216
FIGURE 19: IRISH WOMEN ARRESTED IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 1867-1887 BY
MARITAL STATUS ............................................ 263
FIGURE 20: OCCUPATION OF IRISH WOMEN ARRESTED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
1861-1887............................................... 269
FIGURE 21: MARITAL STATUS OF IRISH WOMEN OVER FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE,
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1880 ............................... 328
1
INTRODUCTION: KEEPING HOUSE: IRISH AND IRISH-AMERICAN WOMEN
IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1850-1890
The St. Aloysius’ Parochial and Industrial School of
Washington, D.C. needed help so the Ladies’ Relief Society
of St. Aloysius’ Catholic Church answered the call. In
1876, to commemorate America’s 100th birthday, the Ladies’
Relief Society held a bazaar and festival to raise money
for the female industrial school associated with the
church. Just five years earlier the Ladies raised $8600 for
the school at a similar fair.1 Hopes were high that the
Centennial fair would raise just as much. Many of the women
who helped with both events were Irish and Irish-American.
Maria Conlan, a second-generation Irish immigrant, and her
nieces participated in the fair. They presided at the
centennial table and helped sell goods for the benefit of
others. Margaret Cleary, born in Ireland, and her daughter
Katie, born in Washington, D.C., also worked many nights at
the fair hosting the industrial table that offered dolls
1
“St. Mary’s House of Industry,” Catholic Mirror,
January 21, 1871.
2
for sale. One of the dolls was “the maid of Erin, a tiny
blonde, bearing in her left hand the harp; and in the right
a long green pennant; her attire is… garnished with
garlands of shamrock and emerald ornaments.”2
The Centennial fair lasted two weeks in February and
each night visitors to the bazaar would purchase items
donated by the Ladies’ Relief Society, buy food and drinks
and generally celebrate into the evening. The Washington
City Hibernian Benevolent Society (WCHBS) in support of
their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, attended the
charity fair and created quite a stir. One evening
when every one began to feel blue, and signs of a
dull evening were appearing, the Washington City
Hibernian Association—75 men in full regalia—
marched into the room under the command of
Captain Thomas Montgomery, and of course the
spirituous of as many fair damsels were raised at
once to concert pitch. The Lord loves a cheerful
giver, and the Hibernians recognizing this, made
mirth and charity go hand in hand, and their
visit to the fair will be remembered among the
pleasurable and profitable events.3
Just a couple days after the visit from the WCHBS, Miss
Belle Lucas, a granddaughter of Irish immigrants
2
"Charity Box," Charity Fair Chronicle, no. 2,
February 15, 1876, 4, Box 72, St. Aloysius Catholic Church
Archives, St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.
3
Ibid.
3
financially contributed to the evening and advertised her
and her mother’s dressmaking shop in the Charity Fair
Chronicle, the daily newsletter of the bazaar.4
These Irish and Irish-American women of the Ladies'
Relief Society are examples of immigrant women’s resilience
and adaptability in America, and in particular, Washington,
D.C. The social prominence and status they achieved was a
result of their acculturation to American ideals. The
cultural traits and identities that Irish women brought
with them combined with the cultural traits and identities
of this Southern town. This reciprocal process resulted
when “groups of individuals having different cultures” came
“into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent
changes in the original cultural patterns” of both groups.
5
These groups, Irish women and their employers and
neighbors, shared “continuous first-hand contact” in their
workplaces as domestic and employer. Moreover, this early
experience contributed greatly to the Irish woman’s
identification with middle-class Washington, D.C. The
encounters between Irish women and their employers were
4
Ibid.
Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The
Role of Race, Religion and National Origin, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1964, 61.
5
4
“frequent and intimate” thus functioning to define the
immigrant woman with what she was not and serving to
illustrate what she desired to become.6
As a Southern town Washington, D.C. represents a
singular opportunity to examine the experiences of Irish
and Irish-American women in a non-industrial setting. The
climate, physical setting and “persistence of essentially
rural culture with neighborliness in human relations” sets
the stage for a southern community in the national capital.
This, combined with Washington’s agrarian value system,
created a social structure in Washington, D.C. that used
race relations as a primary mode of socialization. Even
after its antebellum ties were broken with the Civil War,
Washington continued to evidence Southern characteristics
because it “continued to operate under the same cultural
constraints as pre Civil War.”8 Given that the capital was
carved out of the slave states of Virginia and Maryland,
the persistence of race as the primary agent of
6
Kathleen Neils Conzen and David A. Gerber, “The
Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the USA,”
Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 1992, Vol. 12,
Issue 1, 3-39.
7
Immanuel Wallerstein, “What Can One Mean by Southern
Culture,” in Norman V. Bartley, The Evolution of Southern
Culture, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press,
1988, 4.
7
5
socialization is warranted.
9
Sharon Harley notes that “in
terms of its demography, location, history and race
relations, Washington, D.C. resembled much of the urban
South during the late nineteenth” century.
10
As a community
with rural roots, Washington, D.C. moved at a slower pace
than the industrial centers where Irish immigrants
typically settled in the nineteenth century.
From the birth of the nation through 1850 Washington,
D.C. grew from a meager population of 14,093 to 51,687.
Some argued that the city’s growth represented an anomaly.
Whereas most nineteenth-century urbanization was the result
of industry and trade, “Washington was but scantily
supplied with either, yet it continued to grow.”11
Throughout the South in the nineteenth century
industrialization failed to take hold. Washington was no
8
Ibid., 11.
Lois Horton, “The Days of Jubilee, Black Migration
During the Civil War and Reconstruction,” in Francine Curro
Cary, Editor, Urban Odyssey, A Multicultural History of
Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1996, 65.
10
Sharon Harley, “Black Women in a Southern City:
Washington, D.C. 1890-1920,” in Joanne V. Hawks and Sheila
L. Skemp, Editors, Sex, Race and the Role of Women in the
South, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of
Mississippi, 1983.
11
Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National
Capital, New York: Macmillan, 1914-1916, 4.
9
6
different. Textile mills, garment factories and industries
that supported vast numbers of immigrant laborers in the
North did not make their way to Washington, D.C.
While factory work and industrial employment took hold
in the North, a different industry developed in Washington,
D.C.. That industry serviced the domestic needs of the
capital city. Household help, laundresses, seamstresses and
business ownership supported the bulk of Irish women
throughout the nineteenth century in the capital. This
domestic industry provided the avenue for Irish women’s
mobility within the Washington community. In the last half
of the nineteenth century over 5,000 Irish women came to
Washington, D.C. to work in this domestic industry. The
availability of these positions increased with the growth
of the federal city and created a network of opportunity
structures that assisted the upward mobility of Irish women
in and around the capital. Shaped by the confluence of
race, gender and class, these opportunity structures
literally created or denied social mobility to immigrants
and working-class alike.
Olivier Zunz’s work on the effects of
industrialization in Chicago outlines the processes of
opportunity structures. He contends that the paths toward
7
upward mobility for immigrants and others varied throughout
time and throughout the community. These structures
consisted of employment opportunities that evolved with the
onset of industrialization and the twentieth century. This
type of analysis also can serve for employment
opportunities where little or no industrialization
occurred. The opportunity structures Zunz examines regarded
occupation and race as the primary agents that created the
structure. However, this analysis works best for
nineteenth-century men not nineteenth-century women. A
broader application of this concept is necessary.
Whereas men went to work and moved up and down the
“social ladder” based on their occupation, women’s
opportunity structures included more than potential
employment. For the Irish and Irish-American women of
Washington, D. C. these opportunities also included the
available pool of men for marriage and the potential for
social status in their community that church membership and
church activity represented. Because Washington hosted such
large numbers of Irish men the potential for an ethnic
marriage was great. Moreover, the strength of the Catholic
churches in and around the Washington area provided Irish
women with a familiar institution in an unfamiliar setting.
8
The Irish population and the Catholic churches of
Washington provided opportunities for women not typically
associated with mobility. This mobility was more social
than economic but resulted in the same achievement of
status.
Another evolving opportunity structure in the District
centered on the growth of the city as the nation’s capital,
entrepreneurial expansion and the availability of work for
Washington’s newly arrived immigrants. At mid-century these
opportunity structures consisted of domestic service
positions. Homes, hotels and government institutions
offered live-in servant positions for Irish women. However,
the evolving opportunity structures of the growing capital
later provided Irish women with positions of employment
more suited to middle-class women. Although a few Irish
women still worked as servants, others became money
counters and clerks in Federal and District offices. Their
place in the workforce of the federal city, their place as
wife and mother in the District and their parish activities
provided Irish and Irish-American women with middle-class
status in Washington, D.C.
However, Irish women in service positions came to
represent Irish women throughout America. Irish women,
9
stereotyped as Bridget, could cook only potatoes, walked
down stairs backwards as if descending a ladder and
answered the door by yelling through the keyhole.12
Bridget's ignorance of American kitchen gadgetry and her
faithful piety to Catholicism made her the focus of many
employers’ good intentions. And yet, she found a place in
many American homes as she found a place within her
community of immigrant women. Finding work in American
factories and urban centers, Irish women flocked to cities
that provided these types of mass employment. The
scholarship that shapes this image primarily examines
cities with commercial or industrial bases such as New
York, Lowell, San Francisco and Philadelphia that provided
working-class employment to large numbers of immigrant
women. Yet, Irish women did immigrate to non-commercial,
non-industrial cities and became part of many communities
such as Washington, D.C.
Works that examine Irish women’s immigration and life
in America vary from article-length studies that focus on
specific communities to book-length treatises with national
and international themes. One scholar to do so is Hasia
12
Faye Dudden, Serving Women, Household Service in
Nineteenth-Century America, Middletown, Connecticut:
10
Diner who examines the experience of Irish women in the
United States. She notes that Irish women’s migration to
America did not represent a break with their Irish heritage
or a search for a new identity. Moreover, their move to
America was a conscious decision supported by cultural
institutions and practices centuries old in Ireland.
Diner’s contention that Erin’s Daughters is essentially a
study of cultural persistence over time is seen in Irish
women’s continued rule over the home and purse strings in
Irish-American homes and their role in the American
Catholic church.13 Central to Diner’s thesis is the
abundance of economic opportunities available in the United
States--principally domestic service, teaching, business
ownership and religious service--that Irish women used to
gain economic independence. Irish women’s assertion over
their “economic prerogatives” frequently led them up the
ladder into the middle-class.14
Another scholar who examines Irish women’s immigration
on a national scale is Janet Nolan in Ourselves Alone.
Nolan, unlike Diner, contends that Irish women emigrated
Weselyn University Press, 1983.
13
Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America, Irish
Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, xiv-xvi.
11
with marriage and family on their minds. The choice to
emigrate came when the church, economic constraints and
societal restrictions narrowed options for marriage in
Ireland. Nolan identifies Irish women’s motivation for
leaving Ireland by asking new questions of old data. She
finds that the emigration of Irish women between 1885 and
1920 “did not represent a rejection of traditional female
roles, nor did it mean a passive transferal abroad of
intact female roles. Instead, these women emigrated so they
could actively recover their lost importance in Irish
life.”15 For Nolan, Irish women recovered their societal
importance through marriage in America.
Broadening Diner and Nolan’s theses is Kerby Miller in
“For Love and For Liberty: Irishwomen, Emigration, and
Domesticity in Ireland and America, 1815-1920.” Miller
argues that Irish women emigrated in search of domestic
liberty. That is, they immigrated to America seeking the
middle-class status of pre-Victorian America. The women
Miller examines came to America in search of the feminine
version of the American dream: the home and hearth. In the
14
Ibid., xiv.
Janet Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women’s Emigration
from Ireland, 1885-1920, Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1989, 14.
15
12
training they received from Catholic schools in Ireland
Irish women learned the basic skills necessary to run a
household. In these schools they also gleaned a desire for
the home and hearth that after the Famine years in Ireland
became increasingly unavailable to the majority of
marriageable Irish women. The studies by Diner, Nolan and
Miller answer questions about the choices made by Irish
women to emigrate and the lives of these immigrant women
once they arrived in America. However, much of these works
are devoted to the industrial experience of Irish women.
What about the experiences of Irish women who settled in
communities with little or no industrial base for female
employment? Where did they work and live?
In light of this scholarship on Irish women’s
motivation for emigration, much discussion is placed on the
search for home and hearth on American shores. While Diner
contends that Irish women searched primarily for economic
opportunity, and Nolan contends Irish women came to America
in search of lost marriages, this author argues that both
reflect the nature of Irish women’s immigration at
different periods. Irish women who came to America in the
beginning of the century came seeking economic
opportunities not available to them in Ireland. As the
13
century progressed, the needs of the host country changed
so the profile of the immigrant also changed. As the pushes
in Ireland transformed over time, so did the pulls in
America and Washington, D.C.
Responding to these changes, women in Ireland sought
the best market for their skills and needs. Their skills
were initially that of manual laborers and their needs were
economic and social. They needed an abundance of employment
opportunities and economic options for upward mobility.
However, they also required increasing opportunities for
marriage and the options for upward mobility that marriage
meant in the last half of nineteenth-century America. Thus,
this study documents the daily lives of Irish women as they
became incorporated into the social structure of a host
community--Washington, D.C.
This incorporation involved more than just a passive
response by Irish women to their host community. The
incorporation of Irish women in Washington’s social
structure involved a reciprocal process of accommodation
and change by both the immigrant and her host community.
Kathleen Conzen and David Gerber identify this process as
the “invention of ethnicity.” This invention becomes a
“renegotiation of traditions by the immigrant group” and
14
presumes “active decision-making” by the immigrant in
response to the host structure.16 Once Irish women adapted
to these traditions and manners, they were able to use
their experiences to join Washington’s middle-class.
Thus,
Irish women’s ethnicity became a “process of construction
or invention” that adapted and amplified “preexisting
communal solidarities, cultural attributes, and historical
memories. That is” it became “grounded in real life context
and social experience.”
17
In light of this, Irish women
gleaned from Washington society what served their goals
best and contributed to Washington society some of their
traditions and cultural attributes.
Central to the goal of this study are the ways in
which Irish women used Washington’s available employment
and social structure to ascend from the working-class to
the middle-class and how these aspirations were realized or
not realized by Irish women’s choices. Keeping House
examines how Irish women accomplished this in a nonindustrial, non-commercial city. The experiences of Irish
women in Washington, D.C. confirm earlier theses that note
Irish women’s tenure in domestic service. However, the
16
17
Conzen and Gerber, “The Invention of Ethnicity.”
Ibid.
15
evolution of available employment in the capital, and the
access to marriageable men, provided the means necessary
for Irish women to continue their upward climb.
Keeping House redefines the immigrant woman’s place
within her ethnic community and within the community at
large that provided her an opportunity to join the middleclass ranks of her fellow American women. The values
expressed by that middle class of a high material standard
of living and sexual morality corresponded with values
Irish women brought with them.18 This study examines this
transition from Irish immigrant to community member and
notes how Irish women who came to the capital found
domestic jobs that became rungs in the social ladder they
climbed. In their move from working class to middle-class,
Washington's Irish women formed a new cultural identity
that corresponded with American middle class values.
However, just as Conzen and Gerber argue that
ethnicity is an invention, Anne Firor Scott and Stuart
Blumin note that class, too, may be an invention. Consider
the characteristics that often accompany this idea of
middle-class: “income, values, concepts of respectability
18
Merriam-Webster Online dictionary. Definition from
volume published in 1836. Http://www.m-w.com, 1/18/2004.
16
and propriety, education, behavior, self-definition, even
clothing and patterns of church going.”19 Consider that
these would differentiate the Irish woman from her workingclass beginnings to the woman that earned respectability by
adapting her customs to these ideals. Through “such an
eclectic standard, most of the women…by their activities
and behavior contributed to its [middle class] creation.
Inevitably their collective work fed into their own and
society’s notion of what ‘class’ meant.”
20
As the Irish
woman moved from domestic service to business ownership or
government work and as she married and became active in the
community, she contributed to the creation of her new
status as middle-class. Thus, responding to values they
brought with them from Ireland, and combining them with
these virtues of American womanhood, Irish women used their
experiences in Washington, D.C. as a foundation for middleclass association.21
Chapter one describes the community of Washington,
D.C. in the first half of the nineteenth century as a
19
Stuart Blumin, The Urban Threshold: Change and
Growth in a Nineteenth-Century American Community, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1976 and Anne Firor Scott,
Natural Allies, Women’s Associations in American History,
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993, 82-83.
20
Ibid., 82-83.
17
setting for Irish women’s immigration. Through a
description of the settling of Washington, D.C. the city as
a Southern community and a community of immigrants is
established. The early community of the District is
examined in terms of class, race and gender composition
present at the dawn of the new capital. These are defined
through regions of settlement, community activity and
occupation. The Irish citizens in early Washington, D.C.
who became prominent members of the community set a
precedent for the later migration of Irish to the capital
and began a chain of migration that lasted well into the
end of the nineteenth-century. As the capital grew in the
first half of the nineteenth-century, canal and road
construction boomed to accommodate the growing city and its
beginning commercial expansion.
Irish neighborhoods and fraternal organizations sprang
up around the region as Irish men and their families came
to the area seeking work in these newly organized
industries. The Irish who settled in Washington, D.C. in
the formative years of the capital welcomed the arrival of
their fellow Irishmen. Albeit a tenuous relationship, they
forged an ethnic community that served to unite both the
21
See Appendix One for methodology.
18
working and upper class Irish. The ethnic community that
evolved was strong and supportive of its newest arrivals.
In chapter two life in Ireland before and after the
Potato Famine is described. The prevailing theses for Irish
women’s immigration--Diner, Nolan and Miller--are outlined
as a backdrop for the Irish women of Washington, D.C. The
options and opportunities for employment, marriage and
mobility in Ireland are examined in the context of
motivations for emigration to the United States. The author
also compares Washington’s immigrant and ethnic populations
in chapter two. This, with a correlation to other cities
with immigrant populations, places the capital as a host
community within the context of other host cities in the
United States. However, the bulk of this chapter examines
the increasing number of Irish women among immigrant
arrivals in the last half of the nineteenth century. This
is briefly compared to the pre-Famine period, with the
remainder of the chapter focusing on the immigration of
Irish women to Washington, D.C. in particular.
The family life and marital patterns of Irish and
Irish-American women are investigated in chapter three.
This chapter examines the household structure of Irish
women’s homes including household size, marriage patterns
19
and fertility. As Irish women arrived in Washington, D.C.
some were married; others were single or widowed. The
choices of Irish women to marry or stay single are
documented as well as the partners Irish and Irish-American
women chose when they married. Also examined is the
household size of Irish women in light of the numerous
extended family who lived under one roof. Household size
also included the number of children Irish women bore and
the changes in childbearing patterns of Irish women in
nineteenth-century Washington, D.C.
Irish women’s employment opportunities and their
choices within that selection are investigated in chapter
four. As occupational choices within the city expanded and
contracted, the role of the Irish woman in the family
economy changed. This role is examined in the context of
old traditions brought from Ireland and how those adapted
and added to the ideals of American society. As Washington,
D.C. grew in size and prominence, so too did the
opportunities for working-class women’s employment. The
expansion of opportunities for Irish women’s employment
came with the growth of the capital as hotels, businesses
and service institutions such as hospitals, insane asylums
and fire and police departments provided for the needs of
20
the community. Domestic work in these institutions and
business ownership provided the bulk of Irish women’s
employment in this period.
The continuities and discontinuities of this
opportunity structure are examined given the development of
Washington, D.C. after the Civil War. The growth of the
federal city after the Civil War created jobs that hastened
Irish immigrant women’s attainment of middle-class status.
The continued presence of Irish women in domestic service
and prostitution speaks to the options of the poorer
immigrant community. Still, there was upward mobility.
Irish women owned businesses, worked as day laborers or
worked for the expanding local and federal agencies. Irish
women adapted to the changing needs of the city as it grew
throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Chapter five examines the deviant behavior of Irish
women as they became part of Washington's criminal element.
The domestic discord that accompanied many Irish women’s
lives contributed to their contact with the law. Some Irish
women had difficulty accommodating to their host country's
cultural norms. With this difficulty came conflict with
public officials, law enforcement and jail time. Irish
women who were unable to adapt to their new environment
21
often drank to excess, fought with their neighbors and
spouses and stole from others. These deviant behaviors
brought them to the attention of local officials who fined
them for their behavior or placed them in the jail or
workhouse as a remunerative measure.
In chapter six the general health and welfare of Irish
women in Washington, D.C. is examined. The District of
Columbia was not a healthy place to live in the nineteenth
century. Summers were hot and humid causing many deaths
from heat exhaustion and cholera while the winters were
harsh with many dying from pneumonia and tuberculosis.
These harsh weather conditions played havoc with the health
of all of Washington’s residents, but especially for the
overworked and undernourished immigrants that arrived on a
daily basis to America’s capital.
Chapter seven explores the role of Washington’s
Catholic churches in the lives of Irish and Irish-American
women. Initially the church serviced the rich and the poor
and a number of racial and ethnic groups. However, as the
city grew and neighborhoods took on ethnic characteristics,
the Catholic parishes of the capital took on the
characteristics of their neighborhoods. In light of this,
the remainder of the chapter examines the various charities
22
sponsored by the church for the education and care of the
young as well as charity for entire families. Educational
organizations, charity societies and medical institutions
took care of the needy and poor in the parish community.
These organizations distributed their care along ethnic
lines. The Irish network that grew from these charities
continued to serve the needs of the immigrant community and
the larger Irish community in Washington, D.C.
Chapter eight concludes this study by focusing on the
volunteer efforts of Irish Catholic women in the church and
their financial support of that institution. One factor in
middle-class association is the numerous volunteer services
Irish women performed in support of the church. Before
official societies or sodalities (religious societies) were
organized, Irish Catholic women in the District raised
funds in support of the church and provided meals to the
indigent and poor. This continued the evolution of Irish
and Irish-American women from receivers of church
benevolence to givers of church benevolence. The training
and care Irish immigrant women received from the orphanages
and asylums provided by the church also imparted the
organizational skills necessary to begin their own
benevolent associations sponsored by parish churches. It is
23
in this church that the Irish immigrant women of
Washington, D.C. found a place denied them in the Catholic
churches of Ireland.
Meanwhile, the education Irish daughters received
changed from a focus on industrial education in the middle
of the century to a curriculum focused on fine arts at the
end of the century. Where sewing and domestic skills were
taught so Irish girls and women could work for a wage and
earn a living, domestic arts of another kind were taught as
the century neared its end. Fine art, embroidery and the
domestic skills appropriate to a wife who did not work for
a wage were taught in the parochial and private schools
that Irish girls attended. This transition accompanied
Irish women’s move from working-class employment to middleclass employment or no wage work at all.
Finally, this chapter connects the threads woven
throughout the text that document Irish women’s search for
the nineteenth-century feminine version of the American
dream. That American dream included a home, husband,
children and opportunity for church activity that elevated
her status from that of her working-class predecessors. As
Irish women moved from those who labored to hiring laborers
their status in the community rose. Irish women’s status in
24
antebellum Washington, their breadth of presence in the
domestic and service industry, their upward mobility into
federal work and their absence from wage work at the end of
the nineteenth century speaks to Irish women’s realization
of middle-class status. This reciprocal process of
acculturation aided the Irish woman in her search for the
American dream as visions of hearth and home were found in
the ideals of middle-class life in nineteenth-century
Washington, D.C.
CHAPTER 1: BUILDING A COMMUNITY: THE IRISH IN
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1800-1850
John and Mary Rady knew it was time to leave Ireland.
Supporting a family became increasingly difficult and it
was clear to John that the time to leave had come. As the
Rady family boarded the ship that would take them to
America, they noticed it was crowded with passengers,
animals, cargo and crew. Crossing the Atlantic would take
many days but not long into the voyage Mary's contractions
began. She was great with child when they boarded the ship.
After labor and a birth at sea, mother and baby Catherine
were fine. Upon reaching port, the family of four traveled
quickly to their home in the capital of their new nation.
Shortly after settling in Washington, D.C. the Rady’s third
child was born. By 1842 this family of seven lived and
worked in the capital of the United States alongside their
Irish neighbors and friends.22
John and Mary Rady were among the first generations of
Irish immigrants who lived and worked in Washington, D.C.,
22
USMC, 1850.
26
Georgetown and Alexandria, Virginia. Their community in
Washington, D.C. began as Irish communities did elsewhere
in the United States; nineteenth-century industrialization
and the growth of trade brought Irish immigrants and their
families to the capital. Some came seeking jobs and others
followed family members. Although a small number of Irish
men and women specifically chose Washington, D.C. as their
new home, the majority was part of a chain migration that
continued throughout the century. These immigrants created
the infrastructure for later immigrants responding to
social and economic conditions in Ireland and America.
Early in the nineteenth century those who lived in
Washington, D.C. hoped it would become a booming industrial
center. Although this vision was not realized, the growing
economy spurred by the shipping industry in Georgetown and
Alexandria created jobs for working-class men. Other
laboring jobs were created as road construction and
building projects in the city began. A supporting
infrastructure also developed in the city. Service
businesses such as coach makers, liveries, booksellers,
printers, boarding houses and bakers grew to accommodate
the increasing population. For the middle and upper classes
in Washington, D.C. land development, business ownership
27
and government work filled out the employment opportunities
for men.
Observations by Congressmen in the newly growing
capital spoke of the many Irish men and women who inhabited
the city. Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell, a Congressman from
New York, wrote home to his wife remarking that "as I
walked out this morning I observed the sons of Hibernia had
adorned their hats with the shamrock in honor of St.
Patrick, their tutelary saint."23 Other observations
included an article in the Georgetown Weekly Ledger that
noted the arrival of a large number of men and women from
Cork. They were pronounced a healthy lot, ready for
indentured servitude.24 Regarding immigrants such as this
healthy lot, Kerby Miller notes that
“…despite North
America’s real advantages, it is doubtful whether so many
Irish would have emigrated after 1814 had conditions at
home not deteriorated so dramatically.”
13
25
These conditions
Newman F. McGirr, "The Irish in the Early Days of
the District," Records of The Columbia Historical Society,
vol. 48-49 (1949) 93.
24
David Bailie Warden, A Chorographical and
Statistical Description of the District of Columbia, the
Seat of the General Government of the United States, Paris:
Smith, 1816, 192.
25
Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, Ireland and the
Irish Exodus to North America, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985, 204.
28
included crop blights, especially the potato crop that so
many poor Irish relied upon for sustenance. The potato crop
failed in 1800, 1807, 1816, 1822 and 1839. The blight of
1822 greatly affected the Munster region of Ireland and
many people from Cork and Clare suffered much hardship.26
Situations such as these, combined with economic crises and
a breakdown of family ties in Ireland, encouraged Irish men
and women to seek security abroad.
The Irish who came to Washington, D.C. in the
formative years of the capital responded to conditions in
both Ireland and America. Before 1800 Ireland benefited
from the wars in Europe by providing manufacturing and
consumer goods to England and countries on the continent.
However, Ireland’s population exploded with the close of
the Napoleonic wars from about from about four million in
1780 to nearly seven million in 1821. Miller finds that
this growth, combined with changes in farming and tenant
practices, increased the competition between tenants for
farmland and workers for wages. Between the high rents and
the failure of farming to meet the demands of the growing
population, Irish men and women sought emigration as a way
26
Ibid., 205 and Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 4.
29
out of debtor situations.
27
This, combined with England’s
repeal of all restrictions on emigration, helped to send
between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Irish to North America
between 1783 and the Great Famine.
28
Figure 1: Percent of Irish Arriving in the United States, 1820-1850
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
1850
1849
1848
1847
1846
1845
1844
1843
1842
1841
1840
1839
1838
1837
1836
1835
1834
1833
1832
1831
1830
1829
1828
1827
1826
1825
1824
1823
1822
1821
1820
0%
Source: Reports of the Immigration Commission, Statistical Review of Immigration 1820-1910,
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911.
As America expanded industrially, Ireland’s economy
began a series of contractions. These contrasts between
27
Ibid., 178.
30
America and Ireland’s economy encouraged the emigration of
many men and women. However, Miller argues that those
“contrasts had always existed, and the unprecedented size
of the 1815-44 exodus reflected in part the profound
structural and psychological effects of commercial
agriculture on early nineteenth-century Irish society.”
29
This mass exodus was so profound that by 1842 an Irish
newspaper editor declared that “in no former year do we
remember so many persons leaving this country for
America.”
30
The mass exodus the editor described found its way to
the eastern seaboard of the United States. The proximity of
Georgetown and the District of Columbia to Maryland
assisted in the settling of Irish Catholics in the national
capital. Baltimore’s mid-Atlantic placement helped move
immigrants north and south along the eastern seaboard of
the United States. As ports of entry, Baltimore and
Georgetown hosted large numbers of Irish in search of
family and employment. Employment at the docks, and the
accessibility to canal and road construction in Baltimore,
provided work for many an Irishman upon entering the United
28
29
Ibid., 193-197.
Ibid., 201.
31
States. Similarly, Georgetown also assisted immigrant
employment as it was a shipping center for Maryland and
Virginia tobacco. Although it was a small port, Georgetown
was a hub of shipping activity in the early nineteenth
century.
31
This shipping industry was assisted and strengthened
when 220 of the 287 miles of the Potomac canals were made
navigable by 1802. “A boat carrying fifteen tons of cargo
could deliver flour, corn, whiskey, tobacco, furs, timber
and iron ore from the interior ports of Georgetown and
Alexandria.”
32
This economic growth provided jobs for Irish
families arriving in the region. Their presence is noted in
the many neighborhoods of Georgetown that boasted Irish
members.
33
One neighborhood along First Street (N Street)
from Cox's Row to High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) in
Georgetown was known as "Holy Hill because of the great
number of Irish who dwelt in the neighborhood. On Saint
30
Ibid., 199.
Constance McLoughlin Green, Washington: A History of
the Capital, 1800-1950, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1962, 5.
32
C & O Canal National Historical Park, “George
Washington and the Potomac River,” Online, Internet,
Available http://www.nps.gov/choh/co_geo.htm, 5/7/02.
33
Green, Washington, 28.
31
32
Patrick's Day there were parades and fights, and all kinds
of excitement."34
The first Bishop of the premier see, John Carroll,
also represented Irish Catholicism in the newly developing
nation and its capital. He was a second-generation Irish
immigrant. John's father, Daniel Carroll, came from Ireland
to Maryland in 1688.
35
Other Irish citizens came from
neighboring states or settled in Washington, D.C. while
migrating to another city. Late in the eighteenth century
Irishman Thomas Corcoran came to Georgetown while traveling
from his home in Baltimore to Richmond. Thomas Corcoran
emigrated from Limerick in 1783 and settled in Baltimore to
join his uncle William Wilson Corcoran. After entering
business with his uncle in Baltimore, Thomas turned toward
Richmond as a place where he could start his own
enterprise. However, as he traveled through Georgetown “he
was so much pleased with the town he decided to remain,”
and, later, he, his wife and two children moved to a house
on 31st Street just below M Street in Georgetown. Soon
34
Grace Dunlop Ecker, A Portrait of Old George Town,
Richmond, Virginia: The Dietz Press, Inc, 1951, 131.
35
Stilson Hutchins and Joseph West Moore, The National
Capital, Past and Present: The Story of its Settlement,
Progress, and Development, Washington, D.C. : The Post
Publishing Company, 1885, 47.
33
after, Corcoran had a thriving leather and shoe store.
36
Corcoran served as mayor of Washington five times and was a
local judge and "post-master for fifteen years until his
death in 1830."
37
Corcoran's son, William W. Corcoran named after
Thomas' uncle, also prospered in Washington, D.C. In the
tradition of his father, the younger Corcoran served a term
as mayor and eventually went into business for himself.
Although his father's initial trade was leather, William,
in partnership with his brothers James and Thomas, opened a
dry-goods store. Shortly after this initial success, the
brothers helped William begin his own dry-goods store on
the "northwest corner of High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) and
First Street (N Street)."38 Although hit fairly hard by the
depression of 1823 Corcoran eventually began a brokerage
firm that prospered. Following the success of this venture,
he formed a partnership with George W. Riggs and opened an
extensive banking business opposite the "northern front of
the Treasury building."39
36
Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1932)
Vol. 33-34, 149.
37
Ecker, A Portrait of Old George Town, 87.
38
Ibid.
39
Hutchins and Moore, The National Capital, 214-215.
34
Another Baltimore-to-Washington immigrant was Irishman
James Cassin. He came to Baltimore at the age of twenty.
Washington lore claims he immigrated to America because of
the religious troubles in Ireland that sent "so many
emigrants to the new country." Shortly after arriving in
Baltimore, Cassins moved to Georgetown and married Tabitha
Ann Deakins, a young girl from a prominent local family.
40
The Cassins settled in Georgetown and lived on the
southeast corner of Washington Street (now 30th Street) and
Dumbarton Avenue.41 Cassin was a prominent member of local
politics and church activities.
Another Irish businessman who lived in the capital
manufactured soap. Unfortunately, making soap was a smelly
business and not very popular in the neighborhood. The
factory was on G Street between 4th and 5th, northwest.
Neighbors commented that
Mr. O'Donnoghue was a typical Irish gentleman who
took pride in his brogue and the silk hat which
he wore tilted back on his head, summer and
winter. He was evidently braver than Mr. Bates
40
Ecker, A Portrait of Old George Town, 180-181.
Ibid. and Judah Delano, The Washington directory,
showing the name, occupation, and residence, of each head
of a family and person in business; the names of the
members of Congress, and where they board; together with
other useful information, Washington, D.C.: W. Duncan,
1822.
41
35
[who also owned a soap factory just across the
street from O’Donnoghue’s] for he lived in a
substantial, cozy brick house alongside his soap
factory.42
Other Irish men were prominent in local political affairs.
Supervising the building of City Hall at Judiciary Square
was Irishman Thomas Carberry who served a term as mayor and
performed various civic functions throughout the city.43
Carberry remained an important part of early Washington,
D.C. serving on the board of many city committees.
The celebrated architect of capital edifices, James
Hoban, was also Irish. Hoban arrived in the United States
at the close of the American Revolution and settled in
Charleston, South Carolina before coming to Washington,
D.C.
44
The construction work from his designs supported many
an Irish family throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century as laboring jobs provided employment for immigrant
men. Hoban was responsible for rebuilding the White House
after the British burned it in 1812 "and designed and
constructed a number of the finest mansions and business
42
Rev. Page Milburn, “The Fourth Ward,” Records of the
Columbia Historical Society, 33-34 (1932) 65.
43
The Washington Guide, Washington, D.C.: S.A.
Elliott, 1822, 86 and Estelle Helene and Imogene Philibert,
St. Matthew’s of Washington, 1840-1940, Baltimore: A. Hoen
& Co, 1940, 15.
36
buildings in Washington."
45
Hoban also participated in the
community outside of his architectural talents. In 1822 he
was an alderman for the Second Ward of the District and
maintained a position on the Board of Appeal.
46
Examples such as these create a picture of a well-knit
and established community that invited and made welcome
Irish men and women. This tide of acceptance became a part
of early Washington, D.C. These Irish helped to run
community affairs, worked in the local and federal
government and sat on community charity committees. They
became such a part of the community that the differences
between themselves and the original southerners were
noticed primarily during St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. As
mayors, businessmen and church leaders, these Irish men
were part of the infrastructure of the District in its
formative years. As prominent members of the community,
these men and their families forged the first links in a
chain of Irish immigrants that came to Washington, D.C.
later in the century. Their presence in the community
provided support for future Irish immigrants making their
way to the eastern seaboard of America.
44
45
Hutchins and Moore, The National Capital, 157-160.
Ibid., 157-162.
37
The local and federal government helped support some
of these families by employing Irish men. The District
infrastructure included six wards with five Aldermen and
Council Members each, a Board of Health, City
Commissioners, Boards of Appeal and Guardians of the Poor.
In addition to those public offices, the District employed
tax collectors, police constables and numerous inspectors
of various industries. Similar to the District
infrastructure, the Federal government required supervisors
and clerks in its many departments as well. The federal
government expanded a great deal during and shortly after
President Madison’s term in office. During his term the
Army headquarters were moved to the capital while other
government offices and departments continued to grow.47 In
addition to these positions, there were seasonal jobs that
responded to the presence of senators, representatives and
diplomats who lived in the Washington area.
Some of these departments employed Irish men. In 1822
James McCleary worked in the Treasurer’s Department in the
Register’s Office where he recorded pay warrants and the
receipt of payment and money at the Treasury. For this he
46
The Washington Guide, 86-87.
Green, Washington, 79.
47
38
earned $1400 per year. Other federal employees of Irish
descent were Edward Stephens in the Section of Bounty Lands
Office, James Cassin and R. Getty in the Auditor’s Office
of the Navy Department and Christopher Andrews and Henry
Whetcroft who worked in the Third Auditor’s Office of the
Navy Department. None of these men earned less than $1000
per year with some earning as much as McCleary’s $1400 per
year. John Boyle also worked for the Navy Department and
earned $1600 per year while Thomas Arbuckle worked in the
General Post Office earning $1000 per year.48
As politicians and businessmen, the prominent Irish of
the capital cultivated a well-respected reputation.
However, even in the nation’s capital the Irishman as
laborer replaced the well-respected reputation and
represented the stereotype of the nineteenth-century Irish
immigrant. Although Washington, D.C. was not a community
that boasted No Irish Need Apply, the stories of Irish
incompetence and intemperance flourished. Published in the
Washington Star is this caricature of an Irish laborer
fresh off the boat. The story tells of Irishman Richard
48
The Washington Guide, 95-113. McCleary's salary
translates into $21,538.46 per year in 2002 dollars. By
1850, the average salary of a low-ranking government clerk
was $1200 per year. Green, Washington, 213.
39
McCraith who worked for the Dodge brothers at their
Georgetown shipping company. The Dodge brothers prized
McCraith as an exemplary employee who was most reliable and
conscientious. However, this morning, McCraith was too
conscientious. He unfortunately “had that propensity of his
race for getting orders twisted, but his endeavors to do
right were so earnest...that his unintentional errors of
judgment were condoned.”49
McCraith was asked to deliver two sacks of salt to a
customer. One of the Dodge brothers asked McCraith to go to
the warehouse on High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) and back up
the cart close to the door. From the third floor of the
warehouse, McCraith was to load the salt carefully on the
hand truck and wheel it to the window and lit it down by
the fall (Meaning the loading elevator). Dodge asked
McCraith, “Do you get that straight?” “Yis, sir, yis sir!”
replied McCraith. Shortly after McCraith left on his
errand, a man burst into Dodge’s office exclaiming
excitedly
That wild Irishman of yours has raised hell up
the street. He dumped a sack of salt weighing 200
pounds from the third story to the run away with
the wreck. (Enter Richard!) Said the angry boss,
“Now, what the devil have you done?” Richard:
49
Ecker, A Portrait of Old George Town, 242-243.
40
“Yis sir. Didn’t you tell me to let it down by
the fall? I did, sir.”50
Confirming these caricatures was Irishman Daniel
Rountree. A lawyer, Rountree wrote to his uncle that the
newly arrived Irish were a rowdy and illiterate lot.
I am sorry to say that by their fighting and
drunkenness they are disgracing their country in
the eyes of Americans... Now instead of saving
their wages, which are good, living orderly,
keeping themselves and children clad, well, and
clean, they are continually fighting among
themselves; the Kerry men, and Clare men, and
Limerick men: and for no other reason than this,
because they were born in these different
counties.51
Rountree was not far from the truth. The first person
hanged in Washington, D.C. was an Irishman. James McGurk
“repeatedly beat his pregnant wife, causing her to miscarry
twins before dying.” Local papers argued that he was
“neither born nor educated in America and that native-born
Americans rarely committed such violent crimes.”52
50
Ibid.
Rountree Family Letters, Washington, D.C.
Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn, to Dublin, 1851-1907,
Daniel Rountree to Mrs. M. Butler, Ireland 5 May 1851,”
Schrier Collection, Private holdings of Kerby Miller and
Arnold Schrier.
52
Margaret McAleer, “The Green Streets of Washington:
The Experiences of Irish Mechanics in Antebellum
Washington,” in Francine Curro Cary, Editor, Urban Odyssey,
51
41
Naturalization records for Washington, D.C. show that
the Irish comprised the largest immigrant group in the city
throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The
average age of the arriving immigrant was twenty-five with
most of them from Cork.53 In her research on Washington
mechanics, Margaret McAleer finds that the tradesmen and
artisans who applied for citizenship were primarily Irish.
These men apprenticed to others in the community as a means
to continue a trade mastered in Ireland or for the
opportunity to learn a new trade. James Kennedy apprenticed
Irishman Neale Woods as a plasterer. Woods bound himself to
Kennedy until the age of twenty-one during which time he
pledged “to keep his master’s secrets, to not waste the
master’s goods, to never absent himself from service
without permission, to abstain from cards, dice or other
unlawful game, to shun ale-houses, taverns or play-houses
and to remain single.” Kennedy, in turn, agreed to teach
Woods plastering, give him a sum of money and “a freedom
suit of clothes worth twenty dollars.”
54
A Multicultural History of Washington, D.C., Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996, 52.
53
Margaret McAleer, “The Green Streets of Washington”
The Experiences of Irish Mechanics in Antebellum
Washington,” Unpublished manuscript, 16-17.
54
Ibid., 7-8.
42
The Irish who came early in the century were skilled
and semi-skilled laborers rather than common laborers. One
of these, a printer’s apprentice, came from Dublin. James
Fleming came to Washington, D.C. via Philadelphia where he
had completed a printing apprenticeship. In July of 1818
Fleming applied for membership in the Columbia
Typographical Society and was admitted after a controversy
over his apprenticeship was settled.55 Although many skilled
artisans and craftsmen like Fleming came to Washington,
D.C., the skilled and unskilled often worked side-by-side
in the rudest and meanest of occupations.
Whether a lawyer, stonemason or laborer, the newly
arrived Irishman could expect a day laborer's job as the
first position he acquired in his new country. Washington’s
Irish immigrants were quickly harnessed to perform the most
dangerous of manual labor and the most laborious domestic
labor. One young stonemason who came to the capital
described how being a stranger in the country and
unsupported by any friends, ”he had little choice but to
accept an unskilled position in a stone quarry despite the
55
William Stanley Pretzer, The Printers of Washington,
D.C. 1800-1850: Work Culture, Technology, and Trade
Unionism, Unpublished dissertation, Northern Illinois
43
fact that he was a skilled stone mason.” Eventually, Thady
Hogan worked as a skilled mason on the White House.56 Like
many others, though, Hogan’s first job centered on the
strength of his back and the endurance of his vigor. For
many, manual labor was the most accessible form of
employment. So, to “the poor or the plundered Irish
emigrants, the first and pressing necessity was employment,
even the rudest and most laborious kind, as compared with
what they were able to earn in the old country.”
57
The bulk of Irish men’s employment in the early
nineteenth century was found in canal and road building.
Along with African Americans, the Irish were responsible
for the majority of manual labor performed in the District.
Although slaves did not compete with the Irish for wages,
their presence as readily available farm and manual labor
represented competition for Washington’s working-class
community. Green notes that the District “commissioners
found that competent workmen were hard to recruit, possibly
because slave labor kept wage rates lower than in northern
cities; in 1798 ninety slaves made up most of the work
University, 1986, 182. Quote from Columbia Typographical
Society Minutes, July 10, 1818.
56
McAleer, “Green Streets,” 6.
44
force engaged in building the Capitol.”
58
However, for
Washington’s construction purposes, different kinds of
labor demanded different kinds of resources. The presence
of slave labor was not as great a threat to immigrant labor
as that of African Americans.
Researching race relations between African Americans
and the Irish in the South, Dennis Clark finds that
the interaction of Blacks and Irish, never a
sympathetic association in any of the country’s
regions, was further irritated…by the mutual
vulnerability of both groups…The Irish in the
ports, on the railroads, in the mills, and in the
farmlands of the South were in direct competition
with both slave and free Blacks.59
Compounding that tension was an 1840 Virginia law that
prohibited a freed slave from staying in the state for more
than six months. This, along with the growth of jobs in the
capital, encouraged the migration of African Americans to
the District.
57
60
John Francis Maguire, The Irish in America, London:
Longmans, Green and Company, 1868, 215.
58
Green, Washington, 15.
59
Dennis Clark, Hibernia America, Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986, 110.
60
Green, Washington, 175.
45
Figure 2: Population of Washington, D.C., 1800-1850
40000
35000
30000
White
25000
African American
Slave
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
Source: United States Census, 1800-1850.
Although there was an abundance of slave labor in the
region, skilled and semi-skilled Irish men worked in
whatever industry was available. Irish men soon came to
overshadow the hiring of African Americans and the use of
costly slaves for dangerous work. Promises of room and
board satisfied the immediate needs of the transient Irish
workers. Moreover, these men, often working and living away
from their families, sought these employment opportunities
because they provided food, housing and wages.
Employers included the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
Company and the Patowmack Company who hired Irish men
46
through indentures and recruited workers and their families
at the Georgetown and Baltimore docks. As early as 1786 the
Patowmack Company recruited and hired Irish indentured
servants. As testimony to this, Thomas Attwood Digges, from
a Prince George’s county family, confessed that he had
recruited Irish servants but that most of them were newly
released convicts. Between 1783 and 1792 Digges visited
Ireland and recruited servants “for his brother-in-law John
Fitzgerald, a director of the Patowmack Company.”61 The lure
of wages and housing convinced many Irish families to hire
on with the company. The company inserted advertisements in
British and Irish newspapers that offered prospective
workers “meat three times a day, plenty of bread and
vegetables, a reasonable allowance of liquor, and eighteen,
ten and twelve dollars a month wages.”
62
This proved
irresistible to the Irish who lived in a land where meat,
bread and vegetables were scarce.
By 1829 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company began
digging a waterway above Georgetown. In the first year of
the project a large number of African-Americans were hired,
61
44-45.
McAleer, “Green Streets,” in Cary, Urban Odyssey,
47
however, the following years saw them replaced by the newly
arriving immigrants.63
The builders of the Georgetown canal also preferred
Irish labor to that of slaves and African-Americans.
Fifteen years after the initial construction of the canal,
the city began widening and deepening it. At the same time,
the District authorized the macadamizing of Pennsylvania
Avenue, the grading of the President’s square and
construction for piping water into the Capitol. These
provided work for the many Irish men in the District.
Frederick Gutheim notes that almost from the beginning
canal bosses “experienced difficulties with the unskilled
indentured workers who were employed, and especially with
the rebellious Irish immigrants.” If the laborers ran away,
their heads and eyebrows were shaved. However, their
disorderly and rebellious attitudes were fortified by the
daily rationing of three gallons of rum that kept the
workmen drunk most of the day.
64
The primary architect and contractor for early capital
62
George Sanderlin, The Great National Project, A
History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins Press, 1946, 71-72.
63
Green, Washington, 182.
64
Frederick Gutheim,The Potomac, New York: Rhinehart
and Company, Inc., 1949, 254.
48
building projects was Irishman James Hoban. Accused of
preferring “Irish vagabonds” to trained workmen, Hoban’s
reputation as an employer of Irish labor was well founded.65
One of Hoban’s friends from County Kilkenny, Nicholas
Callan, was the overseer for the construction crews.
66
Similarly, Irishman James Dermott worked as surveyor for
many of Hoban’s projects. Dermott’s supervisor objected to
Dermott’s presence on the job because he was known as a man
who “now and then drank to excess and when
inebriated...[became] unruly and quarrelsome.” The District
of Columbia Commissioners supported Dermott, however, as he
worked cheap and they doubted his drinking seriously
affected his work.
67
Other Irish names that appeared on
Hoban’s roles included Casey, Flaherty, Flynn, Kelly,
McCormick, McMahon and O’Neale. No doubt, these factors
contributed to Hoban’s reputation as an employer of Irish
as he provided much for these workmen. Each man received a
free breakfast of “corn bread and one pound of meat or
fish” each day. There was also an on-site hospital staffed
65
William Warner, At Peace With All Their Neighbors,
Catholics and Catholicism in the National Capital, 17871860, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994,
135-136.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid., 134-135.
49
with a doctor. As each worker could consume whiskey on a
regular basis throughout the day, the on-site doctor kept
busy.68
These Irish were among the first District residents
affected by the 1832 cholera epidemic that swept through
most of the nation. Immigrants working on the Washington
Canal and living in Swampoodle--an area about a half-mile
north of the Capitol near North Capitol Street between F
and K Streets--were at great risk for the disease due to
the type of work they performed and their living
conditions. Cholera, caused by the bacterium Vibrio
Cholerae, is found in food or water contaminated by human
feces. Once cholera is contracted, diarrhea, vomiting,
thirst and muscle cramps can develop. The nineteenthcentury mortality rate often reached more than 50 percent
with some victims dying within the first few hours of
manifesting symptoms. Irish laborers working on the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and laying water mains for
government buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue were thought to
be the first victims of the 1832 epidemic.
68
69
Given that
Ibid., 135-138.
Betty L. Plummer, “A History of Public Health in
Washington, D.C. 1800-1890, ”Unpublished dissertation,
University of Maryland, 1984, 48.
69
50
contaminated water is a contagion for cholera, this is
likely.
The immigrant community in Washington, D.C. was
similar to immigrant communities in larger urban centers in
that housing for the newly arrived was often inadequate and
unhealthy. Their contact with canal work and potentially
infected water, in addition to their crowded and unsanitary
living conditions, made Washington’s Irish prime targets
for the contraction of cholera. Between August and December
of 1832, the number of burials at Holy Trinity Church in
Georgetown, where many Irish families attended, doubled
from the same period the previous year.70
Margaret Bayard Smith, a nineteenth-century resident
of Washington, described the living conditions of the
immigrants in letters to her family and friends. Clustered
around the White House and Capitol construction projects
were the “rude shacks of the workers employed in their
erection.”71 She found the immigrants “crowded into wretched
cabins," and, "in some cases they have been found without
bedding, seats or tables--literally lying, sitting and
70
McAleer, “Green Streets,” in Cary, Urban Odyssey, 54-
55.
51
eating on the floor...Thus are they lodged at night after
being exposed all day to the open air.”72 Smith recalled how
these immigrants, working in the midst of disease, were in
continual apprehension of attack “and without any hope
beyond that of being," when attacked by the disease,
"thrown in a cart and carried to a Hospital, which they
fear as they fear the grave itself...Poor souls, when I
think of the hopes that led them from their far off country
across the wide Atlantic and the dreadful reverse they have
met with, my heart bleeds for them.”
73
Due to this emergency, the Board of Health ordered
“contractors working along the Avenue and on the canals to
provide awnings to protect the immigrant laborers from the
sun and heat which they believed to be one of the causes of
sickness among these men.”
74
An Irish priest from Georgetown
College consoled a friend that none of his acquaintances
had been afflicted, but the “poor Irish laborers and others
71
Reverend David Harold Fosselman, Transitions in the
Development of a Downtown Parish, Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1952, 9-12.
72
Harrison Smith, "Forty Years of Washington Society,
Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Harrison Smith,"
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 10, 335-337.
73
Ibid..
74
Ibid., 56.
52
of that class are its more general victims.”
75
At Georgetown
College the figure of an Irishman was hung from one of the
windows to suggest that the Irish brought cholera to the
capital.
76
Also, with the highest incidence of disease among
laborers who worked on the canal and the city’s water mains
and streets, the Board of Health attributed the cholera’s
first infestation to the
large number of foreign emigrants...from Germany
and Ireland, men who neither understood our
language or were accustomed to our climate,
habits and mode of living. From there it was but
a short step to blame “foreigners” for the many
ills--social, political and otherwise--the city
might suffer.77
Citizens and immigrants alike responded to the crises
cholera brought upon the city. Institutional support from
churches and District agencies complemented the efforts of
private citizens who responded to the innumerable needs of
the devastated immigrant community. One Irish
schoolteacher, John McLeod, “established a charitable
organization on F Street, the Washington Relief Society, to
75
76
77
McAleer, “The Green Streets,” 20.
Warner, At Peace, 202.
Ibid.
53
aid destitute immigrants.”
78
The priests of Holy Trinity,
St. Patrick’s and St. Peter’s and Georgetown College and
the nuns of various orders also provided substantial relief
for the destitute ill as the indigent and poor was
afflicted greatly by the epidemic.
This relationship between the Irish community and the
Catholic Church was present from the beginning of the
capital’s history. The five churches that served the early
community established a foundation of church-community
relations that supported Washington, D.C. throughout the
nineteenth century. Holy Trinity established in 1792, St.
Patrick’s founded in 1794, St. Peter’s founded in 1821, St.
Matthew’s founded in 1838 and St. Mary Mother of God
founded in 1848 sustained the Catholic community in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Founding and
prominent members of Washington’s Catholic churches
included many Irish immigrants.
Father John McElroy, a young Irish priest, served at
Holy Trinity in its earliest years and was responsible for
much of its growth. Although initially a church of the
elite, Georgetown’s Holy Trinity soon filled with laboring
immigrants and their families who came to work on the
78
National Intelligencer, January 22, 1831.
54
canal, street and edifice projects. These Irish remained
the largest immigrant group in the Georgetown parish
throughout the nineteenth century. Two prominent members,
the Donoghue brothers from Cork, were well-known
businessmen in Georgetown and Washington, D.C. Peter was a
cloth merchant and Timothy owned a grocery. They and their
extended families consistently filled Holy Trinity’s pews.
The first Catholic Church in the capital, St.
Patrick’s, grew in response to the needs of Irish
immigrants. As Irish men and their families came to
Washington, D.C. for work, Father Anthony Caffry from
Dublin ministered to them in the growing parish. Observers
of the congregation noted
that the worshipers are sincere, and deeply
impressed by the occasion, no one who shall
witness these exercises can for a moment
doubt…Here may be seen genteel persons kneeling
and the side of the day-laborer, who might have
been born in other lands, and at the same time
with persons of color, as if to say, “in the
presence of God all distinctions are forgotten.”80
79
Holy Trinity Pew Records, Box 3, Folder 1,
Georgetown University Archives, Georgetown University,
Washington, D.C. and Catholic Mirror, April 2, 1859.
Timothy O’Donnoghue of Georgetown died on March 25, 1850.
He was born in Cork, Ireland on June 29, 1793.
80
Lorenzo D. Johnson, The Churches and Pastors of
Washington, D.C., New York: M.W. Dodd, 1857, 44-45.
79
55
Other churches grew to serve the more than 7,000 Catholics
that, by 1840, lived within the city limits. St. Peter’s in
southeast Washington, D.C. and St. Matthew’s on the corner
of H and Fifteenth, northwest, provided services for Irish
Catholics in their parishes. St. Matthew’s brought the
Irish residents of the neighborhood a church and Irish
priest, Father Donelan, to shepherd the flock that lived
and worked in the White House area. Fathers Matthews and
Donelan of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church assisted in the
building of St. Matthew’s Catholic Church. Almost the
entire building committee appointed by Matthews was Irish.
Thomas Carberry, Ignatius Mudd and John Callan served on
the building committee while Irishmen Nicholas Callan, Jr.,
Ambrose Lynch and Gregory Ennis helped in other
capacities.81
In antebellum Washington, D.C. Irish women joined
church societies as part of their public profession of
faith. One such women’s society, The Bona Mors, gathered
weekly to pray and reflect on the death of Christ and the
sufferings of His Holy Mother, Mary. Their presence in this
religious society was an act of obedience and devotion to
81
Helene and Philibert, St. Matthew’s, Chapter Two.
56
their faith.
82
Irishwomen Ann Gorman and Margaret Hartford
joined the Society in 1840. Ann and her husband settled in
Georgetown around 1835 when she was thirty-five years old.
Five years later she joined the Bona Mors and was involved
actively in Holy Trinity events.83 She owned a shop in
Georgetown and her daughter Bridget, also born in Ireland,
helped her run the store. Bridget was twenty-two and joined
the Society two years after her mother. Mother and daughter
lived together in their northwest Georgetown home after the
death of Ann’s husband. Susan Ennis, the wife of Gregory
Ennis, a prominent local contractor, was also a member as
were Irishwomen Mary O’Brien and Mary Bogue.
84
Another Catholic institution that supported this
community was the Georgetown Visitation Convent that ran a
pay academy for the daughters of the elite and a benevolent
school for the numerous immigrant girls who arrived daily
at their doors. In 1799 Alice Lalor, Maria McDermott and
82
Holy Trinity Bona Mors Society, 1840-1929, Box 15,
Folder 5, Georgetown University Archives, Georgetown
University, Washington, D.C.
83
Ibid. and USMC, 1850. Ann's two sons and daughter
lived with her. By 1850 Ann was a widow and her newlywed
daughter and son-in-law lived with her. Benjamin F. Goddard
and Maria, ages 26 and 22, respectively, and Stephen age 15
and Edward age 20. Maria was born in New York and Stephen
and Edward were born in Georgetown. Benjamin was a laborer
born in Maryland. In 1850, Ann was fifty years old.
57
Louise Sharpe founded the convent with the assistance of
Father Neale. Alice came from Queen’s County, Ireland.85 Two
Irish sisters from Dublin joined Alice shortly thereafter.
Other Irish women became nuns and made their professions of
faith while living in Washington, D.C. Sister Mary Alice
Lindsey of Ireland did so at Georgetown Visitation, January
29, 1842.
86
Other Catholic support came from St. Vincent’s Female
Orphan Asylum and St. Joseph’s Male Infant Asylum. These
institutions offered a refuge for orphaned children and
children of the indigent and poor. St. Vincent’s Orphan
Asylum and Day School opened in 1825 under the charge of
the Sisters of Charity at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.
The Sisters provided for the spiritual, physical and future
well being of their charges. At St. Vincent’s, orphans from
the town and surrounding country were clothed, fed and
educated. St. Vincent’s devoted money and effort to educate
children whose “parents are unable to educate them,” in
84
Ibid.
Mother M. Benedict Murphy, "Pioneer Roman Catholic
Girls' Academies: Their Growth, Character, and Contribution
to American Education, A Study of Roman Catholic Education
for Girls from Colonial Times to the First Plenary Council
of 1852," Unpublished dissertation, Columbia University,
1958, 60.
85
58
“such branches as may be most useful, as well as supplied
with clothing, and with food during their attendance at
school.”
87
The girls at St. Vincent’s ranged in age from
infancy to adulthood. Although the rules made provision for
the release of an orphan at the age of eighteen, most girls
left the institution earlier with family members, adoptive
parents or were bound out for apprenticeship service. St.
Joseph’s provided a similar service for male children,
specifically infants.
As an extension of church charity, private benevolent
organizations formed to help Washington’s Irish residents.
One such society, the Washington City Hibernian Benevolent
Society (WCHBS) assisted other Irish in need. Irish
fraternal organizations were active and prominent in early
Washington, D.C. The WCHBS began around 1818. Irish tavern
keepers, contractors and laborers were some of the founding
members. The McDermott brothers, coach makers, were
prominent community members as well as founders of the
society. Also prominent members of the WCHBS were Gregory
86
United States Catholic Magazine (1842) 1, 127 and
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 37.
87
“Memorial of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph,
Praying to be Incorporated within the District of
Columbia,” April 8, 1828, 20th Congress, 1st Session, Doc
167.
59
and Philip Ennis, local contractors. Much like other
fraternal organizations, the Society provided insurancelike benefits to members whose dues were paid in full.
Funeral expenses and sick benefits were paid to needy
members. When one of its members died, the group took up a
collection for the widow and children.
The Society was also active in community affairs.
Philip Ennis played a significant role in building St.
Patrick’s Catholic Church and was president of the WCHBS in
1839. The Society fund-raised for Catholic charities by
hosting St. Patrick’s Day fairs where the proceeds
benefited St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum. On other occasions
the Society rallied the Washington, D.C. community to help
those in Ireland suffering from the Famine. At a March
meeting in 1843 the Hibernians committed
that in consequence of the melancholy and
distressing state of Ireland at the present from
famine, it is deemed imprudent to meet at the
festive board on the occasion; but that the
society meet at their hall on the morning of the
17th March, and march in procession to St.
Patrick’s church, and that each member pay
whatever sum he choose towards the relief of the
people of the afflicted country.88
88
“Sketches of Catholic Beneficial Societies,”
Catholic Mirror, April 12, 1879, 6.
60
Of the thirty-two members on the rolls in 1839, fourteen
were part of the Washington, D.C. community in 1850.89
Most of the Irish women who came to the capital in the
first half of the nineteenth century were married. Of those
who arrived single, most were married by mid-century. Some
of these were children of the original Irish settlers who
chose their mates from the Washington community. However,
the majority of married Irish women in early Washington,
D.C. came to the District married. They brought their
husbands and children in tow and found a small community
that welcomed their husbands as businessmen, skilled
craftsmen and laborers alike. Only a small number of Irish
children were present in 1820 with most Irish women in
their thirties. By 1840 younger Irish women joined the
community with most of them married or widowed by 1850.
These women became the starter community for later
generations of Irish women who immigrated to the capital.90
89
The following were members of the WCHBS in
Washington, D.C. in 1850. Francis Barry, William Dowling,
John Downs, William Downs, Gregory Ennis, Philip Ennis,
John M. Farrar, James Fitzgerald, Thomas Gallaher, R.
Hanton, Michael McDermott, Michael Nash, John Shimmer and
Michael Stone.
90
USMC, 1850 and Ronald Vern Jackson and Gary Ronald
Temples, Editors, District of Columbia 1810, 1820, 1830,
1840 Census Index, Bountiful: Utah: Accelerated Indexing
Systems, Inc., 1977.
61
Ellie Moore, part of that starter community, came to
Washington, D.C. with her family early in the nineteenth
century. They lived on the outskirts of the capita, in what
was known as the county.
Ellie was born in Ireland in 1811
and came to Washington, D.C. with her parents when she was
just a year old. She later met David Moore, a
Washingtonian, and settled in the city. They were married
by 1830 and had their first child by the time Ellie was
twenty.91 Another Irish woman who came to Washington, D.C.
in the first decades of the nineteenth century was Julia
English. She arrived in the national capital before her
twentieth birthday, married James English, had several
children and was a widow having not been married ten years
by 1850. She bore her first child in Washington, D.C. and
lived there throughout the nineteenth century.
92
Some Irish women who immigrated to America in the
first half of the nineteenth century came to Washington,
D.C. or Georgetown as a second or third destination. The
Barrys arrived in Pennsylvania by 1822 and soon moved to
the District. By 1825, Francis and Mary Barry lived in the
91
Ibid.
Ibid., Edward Waite, The Washington Directory, and
Congressional and Executive Register for 1850, Washington:
92
62
capital with their three children. The oldest, Louisa, was
born in Pennsylvania but the other two, Norah and William,
were born in Washington, D.C. Francis, like many other
Irish men, was a member of the WCHBS and a vital part of
the community.93 Still other Irish women lived in Maryland,
Virginia, New Jersey and New York before moving to
Washington, D.C. or Georgetown. Although Mary Adams and her
husband arrived in America in 1802, they did not make the
capital their home until 1839. There Mary and her husband
Josias, a local policeman, raised several children.
Other Irish women who made up this early community
were Jane Dobbins, Elizabeth Callahan and Mary Bateman.
Jane married a Washington, D.C. native in 1830. He worked
as a messenger for the federal government. Their first
child John was born promptly one year later.
94
The Callahans
also met in Washington, D.C. Dennis and Elizabeth married
late in December of 1839. Dennis was a member of the WCHBS.
His marriage was roasted at the January 7 meeting of the
Society where “considerable amusement was created among the
Columbus Alexander, 1860 and Jackson and Temples, Census
Index, 1820.
93
Ibid. and "Washington Societies, Sketches of
Catholic Beneficial Organizations," The Catholic Mirror,
January 25, 1879.
63
members present at this meeting by the Secretary, Mr.
Little, announcing that two of their members, Messrs
O'Connor and Callaghan, had lately taken an additional rib,
or in other words, married and taken a wife.”95 Mary Bateman
also was married to an Irishman. She and her husband moved
to Georgetown in 1840 just after their son Thomas was born.
Unfortunately, Mary was soon to raise her family without
the help of her husband Josh. He died a few years later
shortly after their daughter Mary was born. He was buried
in the Holy Rood Cemetery under the direction of Holy
Trinity Church in Georgetown.96
Washington’s Irish community that grew in the first
half of the nineteenth century formed the infrastructure
for later immigrants responding to social and economic
conditions in Ireland. These men and women became the first
links in a chain of immigrants that continued throughout
the nineteenth century. As the early founders of the Irish
community, these Irish became Irish-Americans as they made
their way in the national capital. Evidence of this is
94
Ibid. and St Peter’s Marriages 1822-1871, St.
Peter’s Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.
95
Ibid, and "Washington Societies.”
96
Ibid., Jackson and Temples, Census Index, 1840 and
Holy Rood Cemetery, Box 5, Folder 13, Holy Trinity Church,
Trinity Archives, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
64
found at a meeting of the Friends of Civil and Religious
Liberty where Irish-Americans pledged their loyalty to the
United States while asking for Ireland’s freedom from
Britain’s tyrannous grasp. Commenting on his allegiance to
America and fondness for his homeland, Irishman William
Sampson spoke of when he came to America to “join his
kindred” and what that meant to him as an Irish citizen of
the United States. He went to say,
Am I partial to my native land? Yes, sir, I am,
wherever the interest or honor of my adopted
country does not forbid. But neither that
fondness, nor any feeling of the persecutions I
have suffered for its sake, shall ever make me
swerve in word or deed from the faith that I have
plighted here.97
97
Proceedings of A Meeting of the Friends of Civil and
Religious Liberty, Washington, D.C.: Printed by Peter Force
at the Office of the National Journal, 1826.
65
CHAPTER 2: THE WILL OF PROVIDENCE: IRISH WOMEN’S
IMMIGRATION TO WASHINGTON, D.C.
I conclude by sending ye all
my love and sincere affections
wishing if it be the will of
providence that the few of our
Family that are yeat Liveing
can soon enjoy the Society of
each other in this country as
there is no likelihood of any
of us returning to the land of
our Birth.
Daniel Rountree, May 1851
Washington, D.C.98
On June 27, 1850, William P. Ferguson, Marshall of the
District of Columbia, walked the streets of Washington,
D.C. just as he had for several days and just as he would
for several more. With census forms in a book tucked under
his arm, Ferguson traveled through the neighborhoods of
southwest Washington, D.C. walking door-to-door. As he
visited the many homes, Ferguson jotted notes in his book.
Soon he came upon the home of a bookseller, William
Morrison. Mr. Morrison was married and the father of six
98
Rountree Family Letters.
66
children. The family and their two servants made for a very
busy house. The sisters who worked as servants for the
Morrisons had their work cut out for them. As Ferguson
continued with his work, he visited many homes similar to
the Morrisons. Although he saw nothing out of the ordinary,
William P. Ferguson, census taker, witnessed one of the
major transformations of nineteenth-century America. The
servants, Sarah and Jane Toland, were two of the thousands
of Irish women who came to America in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Sarah and Jane became part of
Washington’s Irish community, just one of the many ethnic
communities that together formed the larger community of
Washington, D.C.99
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century
American race, class and gender relations transformed. The
arrival of thousands of men, women and children from
nations all across the globe changed the social and
economic structures of American life. Most of these men,
women and children were Irish. In 1850, 43 percent of the
foreign-born population in America was Irish. The Germans,
at 26 percent of the foreign-born population, were the
second most numerous with immigrants from England, Canada
99
USMC, 1850.
67
and Newfoundland following. By 1860 more Germans lived in
the United States than in previous decade;, but, the Irish
were still the most numerous foreign-born population in the
United States. Not until 1880 did Germans outnumber the
Irish and by 1890 America’s foreign-born population
represented a more diverse group of nations than it ever
had. The Germans and the Irish, at 30 and 20 percent
respectively, still represented the average immigrant but
an increasing number of foreign-born from Canada, England,
Sweden and Norway lived in the United States.100
The different regions across the United States
reflected the different pushes and pulls that affected this
profound period of immigration. The North Atlantic area
that included the New England states, New York, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania showed a great diversity in the number and
types of immigrants who settled there. This region was the
immigrant nexus of America and its diverse population of
Austrians, Germans, British, Italians, Russians and Irish
reflected that diversity. The proximity of ports and cities
of arrival determined the ethnic and racial composition of
immigrant populations. Hispanics and Asians were prominent
100
Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part III,
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897.
68
in the West while Cubans and immigrants from the West
Indies flocked to the South Atlantic states—primarily
Florida. Literally, the physical geography of the United
States determined, to some extent, the ethnic and racial
profiles of immigrant regions.
Most Irish immigrants, however, lived in the North
Atlantic. Almost two-thirds of the Irish immigrants in
America lived in the New England states, New York, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania. By 1890 just under 10 percent
lived in the West, 22 percent lived in the Great Lakes and
Midwest region and 2 percent lived in the South Central
United States. These states included Kentucky, Tennessee,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and
Texas. A similar proportion of Irish lived in the South
Atlantic region. These states included Delaware, Maryland,
the District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, the
Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. However, few Irish lived in
Florida; the primary immigrant groups in Florida were nonEuropeans who came from Cuba, the West Indies, Spain and
Africa.101
101
Reports of the Immigration Commission, Statistical
Review of Immigration 1820-1910, Distribution of
Immigrants, 1850-1900, Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1911.
69
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century the
pushes and pulls that affect immigration were felt in
Ireland and America. Ireland suffered devastating famines,
massive emigration and a restructuring of cultural and
social ties. From the Great Famine in the 1840s to the end
of the nineteenth century, Irish men and women contemplated
their circumstances at home and abroad finding the former
lacking and the later appealing. Once the potato crop
failed in great proportions, Irish men, women and children
sought refuge in their country’s traditions and religions.
However, this did not solve the physical problems of little
food, work and pay. Thus, between 1845 and 1855 over 1.8
million Irish men and women immigrated to North America. Of
these, almost 1.5 million came to the United States.
Primarily poor, these Irish men and women were tenant
farmers, the sons and daughters of farmers or the sons and
daughters of impoverished fishermen who, literally, were
driven from the land of their birth to seek opportunities
elsewhere. Because of their reliance on the potato as the
staple food crop, many Irish died from starvation and
disease when the potato crops suffered blight many years in
a row. Between eviction from their homes and few available
jobs, it appeared as if the entire countryside of Ireland
70
fled the island and sought hope elsewhere. Throughout the
two decades after the Great Famine, more men and women left
Ireland for distant lands than had left in the preceding
two and one-half centuries. Miller notes that an “entire
generation virtually disappeared from the land: only one
out of three Irishmen born about 1831 died at home of old
age—in Munster only one out of four.”
102
Although the Famine emigration shows a dramatic
increase in the number of Irish men and women who left the
island, they were part of an ongoing pattern of migration
begun well before the Famine. As with any of Ireland’s
potato blights, the number of Irish men and women who chose
emigration rose. However, the effects of the Great Famine
exaggerated these patterns and pushed millions of men,
women and children from their homeland in Ireland to
distant shores. After the initial Famine exodus, Irish men
and women continued to leave Ireland in record numbers.
They looked to North America, Australia and Great Britain
for opportunities no longer available at home. By the end
of the nineteenth century, this type of emigration was a
permanent fixture in the Irish culture.
102
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 291.
71
Throughout the nineteenth century the Irish made their
way to America seeking security in employment and a place
in society denied them at home. New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut
maintained the largest share of Irish-born between 1850 and
1890. Combined, these seven states contained 77 percent of
the United States Irish-born population.
103
Added to those
in the northeast were Irish immigrants in San Francisco and
other western cities, a few mid-western towns and some
across the South in Richmond, Savannah and Charleston.
103
USMC, 1850-1890.
72
Figure 3: Percent of Irish Immigrants of Total Population of Principal Cities in the United States,
1870-1890
70
60
1870
1880
1890
50
40
30
20
10
0
Washington, DC
New York, NY
Chicago, IL
Pittsburgh, PA
Boston, MA
Baltimore, MD
San Francisco, CA
Source: Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants in the United States from 1820 to 1892,
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893.
Moreover, David Ward, in his study of cities and
immigrants, finds that by 1870 Irish immigrants accounted
for 14.3 percent of the total population of the fifty
largest cities in the nation and German immigrants 11.5
percent. This pattern is consistent with other Middle
Atlantic cities that had fewer Germans and more Irish than
73
the average for the fifty largest cities as a whole.
104
Only
Boston, Massachusetts had a greater proportion of Irish in
its city than Washington, D.C. in the last decades of the
nineteenth century. The Irish in Washington, D.C.
outnumbered the Irish even in New York City in proportion
to its residents. However, with the significant immigration
of Southern and Eastern Europeans in the late nineteenth
century, the proportion of Irish in America’s foreign-born
population declined. This disparity tends to mask the
sizable number of Irish still immigrating to the capital.
Roger Daniels, in Coming to America, notes that “the new
Irish tended to settle where Irish pioneers had established
sizable urban enclaves, which contributed to their relative
invisibility.”105 Thus, their invisibility was due to the
overwhelming number of other immigrants arriving in the
United States and its principal cities.
104
David Ward, Cities and Immigrants, A Geography of
Change in Nineteenth-Century America, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971, 79.
105
Roger Daniels, Coming to America, A History of
Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, New York:
Harper Perennial, 1991, 140.
74
Figure 4: Foreign Population of Washington, D.C., 1850-1890
9000
8000
7000
All Others
6000
United Kingdom
Germany
Ireland
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
Source: Statistical Review of Immigration, 1820-1910, Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1911.
Throughout each decade in the last half of the
nineteenth century, Irish immigrants represent the norm for
immigrants in the national capital. Not until 1890 did
Irish immigrants dip well below 50% of the immigrant
population. The peak occurs in 1860 when Irish immigrants
comprise almost 60% of Washington’s immigrant population.
That Irish men and women chose Washington, D.C. as an
interim or final destination is not surprising. The
75
District was not an agricultural center so the Irish, who
literally shunned farming in the United States, found a
home. Their experiences with farming in Ireland heavily
influenced their decisions to abandon rural settings and
seek urban centers. Although a few went to the far west and
Midwest, the majority of Irish immigrants in the last half
of the nineteenth century clustered in the eastern half of
the United States. The established Irish population found
in the Washington, D.C. government and church populations
offered a welcoming hand to Irish immigrants at midcentury. This community offered bonds of kinship and
opportunity that helped ease the transition from postFamine Ireland to America.
Although there were fewer Irish immigrants arriving in
Washington, D.C. by 1890 the Irish community had created a
strong ethnic network in the city. Numbers of second- and
third-generation Irish are difficult to tabulate but the
supporting data found in parish records, newspaper accounts
and Irish associations create a picture of a wellestablished ethnic community that was born from the initial
immigrant community. By 1880 3.2 million-second generation
76
Irish lived in America. More than 50,000 of those lived in
the capital.106
The Irish found a permanent home among the ethnic and
racial mix in antebellum and post-Civil War Washington,
D.C. Those Irish arriving in the first decades of the
century paved the way for later generations of Irish men
and women immigrating to the District in search of family,
employment and homes. As part of a migration chain, the
early generations forged a link for later generations
arrival and settlement in the capital. While America set
about restoring and rebuilding after the Civil War, the
Irish population of the capital continued to grow. With the
large number of construction, canal building and road
building projects in the Washington region, Irish men found
employment and a community accustomed to an Irish presence.
In neighboring Virginia, Andrew Talty, an Irish priest
serving Irish construction workers “begged the headmaster
of his training college in Dublin to “prevail on every
[priest] Coming to this Country to learn some Irish…and…
106
In 1880, over 43,000 females in Washington, D.C.
had one or both parents born in Ireland. Second-generation
males who lived in households with Irish women totaled
5,902. Households where no Irish women lived were not
included in the census count for this study. If I had done
77
retain carefully all of it they possess,” for “I assure you
the Irish wont think anything of them unless they know” the
language.107
The development of Irish immigrant communities marked
a change in the social structure of early Washington, D.C.
Anne Royall, a Washington correspondent, “divided the
inhabitants of the capital into four classes: a small group
which she described as the ‘Better Sort,’ those who kept
Congress boarders and their mutual friends; the subordinate
officers of the government; the laboring classes; and free
Negroes.”
108
The laboring classes Royall described were
primarily Irish men and women. They settled in an area
about a half-mile north of the Capitol near North Capitol
Street between F and K Streets.
This small section of
wooden houses and vacant lots was known as Swampoodle.
109
Samuel Busey, a nineteenth-century Washington
physician, noted that this term originally applied to the
so, the number of second-generation Irish in the capital
would increase.
107
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 298.
108
Anne Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners
in the United States, New York: Johnson Reprint Company
Ltd. (1826) 1970, 155.
109
Keith Melder, Kathryn Schneider Smith and Peter H.
Share, City of Magnificent Intentions, A History of the
District of Columbia, Washington, D.C.: ARE by Intac, Inc.,
1983, 172.
78
settlement along H Street near the Tiber River (between
North Capitol and First Street, northeast), and included
Pearce’s meadow, a great hunting ground extending to the
boundary of the city.
Busey also commented that on the
squares of town between E and F Streets, and bounded by
Fourth and Fifth Streets on the other side, twelve to
fifteen small shanties stood occupied by Irish laborers.
Another Irish enclave south of Virginia Avenue on Twentythird Street, northwest was known as “Chronic Row.”
Busey
remarked that “some of them came from Connaught, from which
the name was corrupted.
The former name was mostly used,
as the people in the row bore the reputation of chronic
drinkers and fighters.”110
110
Samuel Clagett Busey, Pictures of Washington in the
Past, Washington, D.C.: W. Ballantyne and Sons, 1898, 219.
79
Figure 5: Irish Immigrants by Ward, Washington, D.C., 1850-1880
2500
2000
1850
1860
1870
1880
1500
1000
500
0
1
2
3
Wards in Washington, D.C.
4
5
6
7
Georgetown
Source: USMC and Published Census Materials, 1850-1880.
Other Washington neighborhoods supported large
contingents of Irish residents.
An Irish resident of Foggy
Bottom recalled that the neighborhood “was entirely German
and Irish and that the Germans only traded with Germans and
.
80
Irish with Irish.”
111
The Irish of Foggy Bottom worked for
the newly organized Washington Gas and Light Company while
the Germans worked in the breweries.
Foggy Bottom had the
reputation of being a tough part of town and one resident
remarked that “If you pick a fight with an Irishman at 17th
Street, you'd have to fight every other Irishman down to
the river at 27th Street before you could escape.”112
Another area of town around New Hampshire Avenue, 20th and
21st, and M and N Streets, was known as “Paddy Mageetown.”
This consisted of several two-story frames on the north
side of M between 20th and 21st Streets, and two small
brick houses on the latter street. Busey, however, was
unsure if a Paddy Magee existed, but he claimed, “it is
certain it is, the occupants were from the Emerald Isle,
and were good drinkers and a jolly set.”113
Evidence of the Irish in the capital is also seen in
the description of Union Station where
Hurrying through a dirty, cheerless hall, the
traveller passes out of the building into New
Jersey Avenue. He is greted by a series of shouts
and yells which startle and bewilder him unless
111
Suzanne Berry Sherwood, Foggy Bottom, 1800-1975: a
Study in the Uses of an Urban Neighborhood, Washington,
D.C.: George Washington University Press, 1978, 12.
112
Ibid., 12-13.
113
Busey, Pictures of Washington, 221
81
he be a man of uncommon nerve. A dense line of
omnibuses and hacks is drawn up before the
Station, and scores of porters and drivers are
crowded around the station entrance, each and all
yelling at the top of their lungs the names and
merits of their respective hotels. “Metropolitan
‘otel, Sir, best ‘ouse in the City, Sir.”
“National, Sir, National. This way, Sir. Only
first class ‘ouse in Washington.” “Willard’s.
Whose a-goin’ to Willard’s? Every gentleman knows
Willard’s.” “Hack, Sir.” “Carriage, Sir. Take you
anywhere in the City, Sir, cheap.” These, and a
hundred other cries, shouted as only Hibernian
and African voices can shout them, tell the
stranger that he is in the Capital of his
country.114
Other observations include that of Maurice Wolfe, an
Irishman who wrote home to his family about Washington’s
Irish population. He noted that, “there are a great many
people from around Abbeyfeale Coming to this City, I See a
‘Green-Horn’ mostly every Sunday that I go into the
City.”115 The Green-Horns Maurice described made Washington,
D.C. their home. Writing to his sisters in Ireland, he
warned that the District
is not a good place for a Scholar to be now until
this war is over nothing doing but Prepareing
horses for war it is a very good place for young
114
Dr. John B. Ellis, The Sights and Secrets of the
National Capital, New York: United States Publishing
Company, 1869, 24.
115
“Maurice Woulfe, Washington, D.C., to his uncle,
Michael Woulfe, Kil[bre?]thern, Shangolden, Co. Limerick,
14 December 1874,” Private holdings of Kerby Miller.
82
women if they Conduct themselves but half of them
that are here are not doing that this is the most
wicked place I ever saw for Cursing Blasphemy and
other immoral habits...116
He also told them of the hot and humid summers in
Washington, D.C. when he confided that “I am in good
health, but Sweating very hard, as the weather is very warm
here over 90 degrees in the Shade.”117 Affectionately,
Maurice ended his note with encouraging thoughts telling
all that he “received a Very warm reception here from
relations and friends, in fact I dont believe I would be
received as well in Ireland if I went home. They are
dragging me from each other here.”
118
Another Washington Irishman, Daniel Rountree, advised
his sisters of the cultural differences in America when he
told them not to bring any clothing other than what they
needed for the passage over. “In case of sickness they will
be thrown over board. If not they will not Suit in this
Country.”119 Daniel also wrote home to his kin recommending
a shipping line for their trip to America and sending money
to make that trip possible. He counseled his sisters “if
116
117
118
Ibid., “to his uncle,” 25 September 1863.
Ibid., “to cousin,” 9 June 1874.”
Ibid.
83
you Can by any Means get as much as will by your provisions
I will send that amount by the time of your arrival. You
will require very little, as you will be furnished with an
allowance of provisions from the Captain.”120 He warned his
sister Margaret that it could be difficult for her here in
America coming unprotected. Daniel’s experiences foretold
of the hardships immigrants suffered in the United States.
He cautioned his family that “all you people in Ireland are
deceived, or at least you deceive yourselves in your
opinion of this Country... all that I will say is that
persons coming here will find as much hardships and
difficulty as ever they experienced home.”
121
Daniel worked
on public works projects, endured Washington summers
laboring outdoors and had very few kind words to say of
this experience. He concluded by saying that there are some
who “fare well, but that rare Case, for myself I am now in
a fair way bettering myself.”122
Daniel's experiences differed from that of his Irish
sisters. The motivation for Irish women’s American journey
119
Rountree Family Letters, Daniel Rountree to Mrs. M.
Butler, Ireland 5 May 1851.
120
Ibid.
121
Ibid., Daniel Rountree to his brother, Laurence 23
March 1852.
84
varied across Ireland and over time. For pre-Famine
Ireland, most scholars agree that Irish women enjoyed a
secure position in the family economy. Irish women’s
contribution to the family well being was significant and
attained Irish women a consistent presence in the family
economy. However, as the Famine plagued the countryside,
all of Irish society began to question these values. In
this post-Famine period Irish women’s value in the family
economy decreased as their opportunities to earn wages or
trade goods for services lessened. Miller asserts that the
social status of women in Ireland had never been high and
after the Famine “their social status deteriorated as the
decline in domestic manufacturing and the shift from
tillage to pasture farming reduced the value of women’s
contributions to household economies.”123
As farming methods changed to meet efficient
harvesting demands and the cottage industry decreased, the
chance for Irish women’s marriage and employment grew
slimmer; moreover, as the daughters of poor farmers, Irish
women had little to no access to land or dowries and sought
income and husbands in other countries. Deirdre Mageean
122
Ibid.
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 406.
123
85
similarly notes this change in the status of women in
Ireland. She finds that “impartial inheritance, high
marriage age, reduced marriage rate and a decline in the
textile industry… produced a social and economic situation
in which Irish women were particularly vulnerable.”124 Thus,
large numbers of Irish women decided to take their chances
in America with relatives or friends already there.
While Diner contends that Irish women searched
primarily for economic opportunity, and Nolan contends
Irish women came to America in search of marriage, this
author argues that both reflect the nature of Irish women’s
immigration at different periods. Irish women who came to
America shortly after the Famine came seeking economic
opportunities not available to them in Ireland. However, as
the century neared its end, Irish women immigrated to
America seeking social opportunities in marriage also not
available to them in Ireland. For Irish women in America,
these opportunities were not only shaped by class and
ethnicity but by gender. The economic opportunities
available in America in the early part of the century
124
Christiane Harzig, Deirdre Mageean, Margareta
Matovic, Maria Anna Knothe and Monika Blaschke, Peasant
Maids—City Women, From the European Countryside to Urban
America, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997, 11.
86
provided Irish women with employment suitable to working
class women. They worked in domestic capacities keeping
house for others. This was compatible with their cultural
heritage. However, as the century progressed, the
opportunities in America changed and so did the Irish
community in America. The opportunity structures present
earlier in the century that created domestic jobs for Irish
women expanded to include economic and social opportunities
for middle-class status that white-collar work and marriage
brought. One Irish woman noted this when she wrote home to
her female relations in Ireland telling them to join her in
“the country where thers love and liberty.”125
The immigration of the Irish to America was very
female. Irish women outnumbered Irish men as newcomers to
the United States and more Irish women came to America than
any other immigrant group of women. In Washington, D.C. a
fairly even number of Irish men and women arrived at midcentury. But, as the century progressed, the national trend
of more Irish women than men immigrating to American cities
was evident also in Washington, D.C. When writing to his
father about visiting fellow Irish immigrants, Maurice
Wolfe spoke of all the women from home he saw.
125
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 406.
87
I saw Kitty Mara and Joney Maurice on yesterday…
I Called to See Bridget Mara on Saturday last.
She is a Splendid able young woman. She took me
to see her mother and the rest of the family, who
I found all well, She has a splendid lot of young
women...I intended to go and See Mrs. Dunn &
daughter Mary on yesterday but I was Called on to
attend a funeral.126
For the remainder of the century these women and their
Irish sisters comprised the majority of the Irish immigrant
population in America’s capital.
In Washington, D.C. Irish women outnumbered all other
immigrant women combined in the nineteenth century. German,
Austrian, Italian, British and Canadian women comprised
most of the female foreign-born population after the Irish.
126
“Maurice Woulfe, Washington, DC, to uncle, Michael
Woulfe, Gragure, Coolcappa Parish, Co. Limerick, 8 March
1875,” Private holdings of Kerby Miller.
88
Figure 6: Irish and Foreign Women in Washington, D.C., 1850-1880
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
Foreign
Irish
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
1850
1860
1870
1880
Source: USMC and Published Census Materials, 1850-1880
However, the largest group of women to arrive in
Washington, D.C. in the nineteenth century was African
American. Although Irish and other foreign-born women moved
to the District and settled there, African American women
also moved and settled in Washington, D.C. in greater
numbers than all the immigrant groups. By 1880 the majority
of female newcomers were not those born in other countries
but African American women migrating to the capital city.
89
Figure 7: Female Population in Washington, D.C., 1850-1880
70000
60000
50000
Foreign
Irish
African American
40000
Native
30000
20000
10000
0
1850
1860
1870
1880
Source: USMC and Published Census Materials, 1850-1880
The Irish women who settled in Washington, D.C. were
predominantly Catholic. They were in Catholic Church
records when they married, gave birth to Irish-American
children and died. They were in the weekly church
announcements when they were ill, joined church societies
and rented pews for church services. However, a few Irish
women were noted in public records as Protestant. They
married Protestant men who primarily were ministers or
90
members of clergy hierarchy and were married in Protestant
churches.127
Typically immigrant populations are young and
Washington’s Irish-born women were little different. By
1880, 82 percent of the foreign women in the United States
were between fifteen and fifty-nine years old. Throughout
the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, foreignborn women between fifteen and fifty-nine years of age
greatly exceeded the native white and African American
proportions for women that age group.
128
Washington’s Irish
female population was similarly young. At mid-century more
than half were of childbearing age and an additional 18
percent were between forty and fifty-nine years of age.
Only 4 percent of the population was over sixty. Thus, the
127
The female Irish population of Washington, D.C. was
primarily Catholic throughout the nineteenth century. The
public records of this group of women strongly suggests
that they were Catholic and not Protestant. The few
Protestant women that can be located were found in the
census as wives of Protestant clergy. The telling primary
source would be marriage and death records that would
indicate religion. The size of the marriage and birth
records was too large for this study. I do use a sampling
of these records and there were no Protestant Irish women
in the records I was able to use.
128
Special Reports, Supplementary Analysis and
Derivative Tables, Twelfth Census of the United States:
1900, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906,
149.
91
young Irish ethnic community of Washington, D.C. bore the
burden of building the Irish community in the capital.
Figure 8: Age Distribution of Irish Female Population by Percentage, Washington, D.C., 18501880
40.00%
35.00%
1850
1860
30.00%
1870
1880
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
0-19
20-29
30-39
40-49
50-59
60-69
70-100
Source: USMC, 1850-1880
Most of the Irish women who came to Washington, D.C.
in the nineteenth century stayed and made the capital city
their home. In 1860 these women were young falling
primarily between twenty and twenty-nine years of age. As
the century aged a decade, so, too, did the Irish women who
settled in the capital. The most numerous age group in 1870
was the thirty to thirty-nine year olds and in 1880 this
shifted to the forty-to forty-nine year olds. As a host
92
community, Washington, D.C. accommodated its female Irish
population. Given that most of the Irish women who lived in
the capital in 1860 were still in the capital by 1880
attests to the acceptance of Irish women into Washington
society not just as laborers but as community members. Most
of the Irish women who lived in the capital in 1880 had
moved to the city by 1860. Although some new arrivals were
noted in the 1870 census, most of the Irish female
community had settled in Washington by then. This is noted
by the progressive change in cohort populations. These
women stayed in the capital and made the city their home.
They did not have to move out to move up in the community.
The Irish female population in Washington increased by
662 women between 1860 and 1870 but the marriage rates
barely fell in most wards, rose significantly in one and
remained stable in the others. Therefore, as the population
increased, the single-to-married ratio should show a rise
in single Irish women if the new immigrants, and the old,
were unmarried. However, the significant rise of marriage
rates in one ward, and the stability in others, shows that
Irish women in the community married between 1860 and 1870
thus settling in the national capital.
93
By 1880 the Irish women’s community was comprised of a
few pioneers who settled in Washington before 1850, a
handful more who came before 1860 and those who lived in
Washington through two census takings—1870 and 1880.
Between 1870 and 1880 Irish women lose 156 of their
members. The early population that died and a small number
of out-migrations account for this loss. The original links
to the chain were dying off and were not replaced by new
Irish immigrants but by second-generation Irish children
who called Washington their home. The second generation
loses focus in the last decades of the nineteenth century
as the city turned its attention to new types of immigrants
entering the capital. African American and Eastern European
arrivals drew attention as the Irish became Irish-Americans
and were not the Greenhorns that Maurice Wolfe described in
his letters home to Ireland.
Irish women lived primarily in ward four throughout
the nineteenth century. This was pretty much the center of
town around Union Station and Judiciary Square. St.
Patrick’s, St. Peter’s and St. Aloysius’ Catholic churches
served these parishioners. This area also had access to all
the major hotels for domestic jobs and government work with
94
federal buildings nearby. Other wards that housed a
significant portion of Irish women were one, two and seven.
Figure 9: Irish Women in Washington, D.C. by Ward, 1850-1880
1400
1200
1000
1850
800
1860
1870
600
1880
400
200
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Georgetown
Source: USMC, 1850-1880
These populations clustered around Catholic churches
already established in the community. Georgetown’s Irish
lived and worked near Holy Trinity while the Irish in Ward
Four attended St. Peter’s and St. Aloysius’ Catholic
churches. Ward one contained Rock Creek, portions of Foggy
Bottom and Dupont Circle. This population was served by the
early Irish at St. Matthew’s. Ward two was near the
Soldiers Grounds and Howard University. The Irish here
95
generally were poor and lived with extended family in one
house. The last ward with a significant portion of Irish
women was seven. This encompassed the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing, the Tidal Basin and present-day L’Enfant
Plaza. These were primarily single women who worked for the
various government agencies. However, they too lived close
to their house of worship, St. Patrick’s.
As Irish women made their way to Washington, D.C. they
traveled various paths. These migration paths reflect the
changes in nineteenth-century America. The majority of
Irish women who lived in the District in the last half of
the nineteenth century, 70 to 80 percent, settled there
soon after their arrival in America. New York and
Pennsylvania were prominent places of interim settlement
for Washington’s Irish women at mid-century. However, Irish
women followed husbands and fathers on canal and
construction projects. As the century progressed, Irish
women were as likely to have settled in Maryland and
Virginia as interim destinations.129
However, others, those who migrated from the South
after the Civil War, responded to changes in the nation
during Reconstruction. These were primarily the wives of
96
soldiers or military personnel stationed in Washington,
D.C. or wives of ex-soldiers who made the capital their
home after their tour of duty. The end of the Civil War
also brought Irish women to the District seeking news about
husbands, brothers and sons who were missing at the close
of the war. Irish women who came to Washington, D.C. from
the West also followed husbands who served in the military.
The constancy of Maryland and Virginia’s Irish immigrants
reflects the fluidity of the region and the draw of
Washington, D.C. because of available jobs.130
Most of the female Irish population had arrived in the
capital by 1870. Some Irish women died or left Washington,
D.C. by 1880; but, the 1850 community established a safety
net for Irish women who came directly from Ireland or other
parts of the United States throughout the last half of the
nineteenth century. Baltimore provided the nearest port
city with a small portion of Washington’s Irish women
coming from there and New York. A small but steady number
of Irish women continued to live in the Northeast before
settling in the capital with fewer Irish women emigrating
from Pennsylvania as the century progressed. Even fewer
129
130
USMC, 1850-1880.
Ibid.
97
Irish women emigrated from the west, Midwest and parts of
the south (excluding Maryland and Virginia) after 1870.
Irish women from the Midwest did not come to the District
until late in the century. They were primarily single women
in search of civil service employment in the burgeoning
federal bureaucracy that accompanied Reconstruction
Washington.
131
The New York-to-Washington, D.C. link was a small part
of Irish women’s migration chain to Washington, D.C. Ann
St. Clair and Ann Parkinson, along with their families,
migrated to New York from Ireland, then to Connecticut
finally settling in the capital. The St. Clairs came to New
York by 1853. Ann’s husband John was a stonecutter from
Scotland; they lived in New York for ten years before
immigrating to Connecticut and lived there almost six years
before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1870.132
The Parkinsons also immigrated to New York. They lived
there through the 1850s and moved to Connecticut by 1854
where they lived through the early 1860s. By 1870 they,
too, settled in Washington, D.C. Ann’s husband Anthony was
born in England and worked as a general laborer. Ann’s
131
132
Ibid.
Ibid.
98
oldest daughter worked in the Treasury Department while her
younger two children attended school. They lived in a
region of the capital that contained Columbia Heights and
present-day Federal Triangle. The Parkinsons boarded other
government workers and their families in their home as well
as a few laborers and blue-collar workers.
133
As a typical
Irish enclave, the New York Irish provided a temporary
residence for Irish immigrants making their way to other
destinations.
Mary Thompson was born in Ireland in 1796 and came to
New York when she was thirty-one and had her son Peter. Her
husband Robert was a painter by trade and also was born in
Ireland. All of Mary and Robert’s children were born in
different states until they settled in Washington, D.C.
Another New York-to-Washington immigrant was Brigget
Haggerty who lived in the District in 1850 with her husband
William, a grocer, and their two children ages sixteen and
fourteen. The oldest was born in New York and the youngest
in Virginia.
They bore Patrick in New York in 1834 and
moved to Virginia within the next two years.134
133
134
Ibid.
Ibid.
99
Some Irish women who settled in Washington, D.C. lived
in an eastern port city for a time or lived in other states
besides their port of entry and settled in the capital
after one or two children were born. Johanna McNamara was
married to Daniel, a brick and stonemason. They came to the
United States through Canada and settled in New York and
Pennsylvania before making Washington their home. They
entered the United States by 1845 and son James was born in
New York. They stayed there a couple years and then moved
to Pennsylvania by 1848. The McNamara family followed canal
and construction work eventually settling in the capital.
Daniel’s brother Patrick also lived with them near the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing.135
Some Irish women migrated a great deal traveling to
and from several states before settling in Washington, D.C.
Mary Buckley lived all over the eastern half of the United
States. She started out in Massachusetts, moved to
Pennsylvania, then New York, back to Massachusetts, back to
New York and then to Virginia. After Virginia, she moved to
New Hampshire, back to Virginia and finally settled in the
District. She, and William her husband, arrived in America
135
Ibid.
100
by 1842 and moved state-to-state finally settling in the
capital after eighteen years.
The Lawrence’s also moved up and down the eastern
seaboard but the family went back to Ireland for a few
years. They came to Massachusetts in 1843 and settled
there. From Massachusetts they went to New York and lived
there only a few years before immigrating to Washington,
D.C. After 1851, the family moved back to Ireland for
several years and then returned to Maryland by 1858 and
settled in Washington by 1860.136 These women came to
Washington, D.C. after settling in typically Irish
enclaves. After living in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and
New York these Irish women moved to Washington, D.C. where
they also found an Irish enclave but they found an Irish
enclave in a southern city instead of a northern urban
center.
A handful of Irish women came from the territories
where they were married to soldiers stationed across the
Midwest and plains. An even smaller number came from
destinations further west such as California, Arizona and
Oregon. One family that came from the West was the Hagans.
Ann and her husband Michael were both born in Ireland and
101
moved to Kansas in 1858. They lived there only a short
while and then moved to Utah. By 1864 the family was in
Washington, D.C. and lived at 317 13 ½ Street, southwest.
Ann’s oldest daughter Mary worked at the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing while Michael and his son John
worked as laborers and sixteen-year old Sarah attended
school.
137
The patterns of Irish women's immigration to
Washington, D.C. changed over time. At mid-century families
followed husbands while they worked canal and road jobs.
However, as the century progressed families came to the
capital as a second or third destination. Because the
District was able to offer temporary jobs and shelter,
Irish women used these opportunities to fit their needs.
Widowed women were able to return to the capital given the
safety nets the early Irish community and church
established. Also, given the fluidity of the population
between Maryland and Virginia, the capital offered workingclass women the means and opportunities for quick
employment and housing.
136
137
Ibid.
Ibid.
102
By 1870 some of the Irish women settling in the
capital came with husbands still in the military. One
military family was the Smiths. Charles was born in
Scotland while his wife Dora was born in Ireland. Charles
was an officer in the United States Army. Their American
journey began in New York in 1872 with the birth of their
first child. The Smiths moved shortly thereafter to Wyoming
where they lived through 1876. From there the family moved
to Utah for a couple years and then on up to Maine in 1879.
Just one year later, Charles was stationed in Washington,
D.C. where the family lived at 1313 N Street, northwest.138
Johanna Dodderd’s husband was also military; he was a
Marine sergeant from Maryland. Johanna had her first child
in Pennsylvania, moved to California during the early part
of the Civil War but returned soon to Washington, D.C. Her
second child was born in 1862 and her third child was born
in 1866. Johanna’s husband was absent much during the Civil
War serving some distance from their home. Their fifth
child, Sarah, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1870 after
Johanna's husband returned from his tour of duty.139 Similar
to the non-military families presented in this study, these
138
139
Ibid.
Ibid.
103
women, too, began in typically Irish regions but used the
military instead of canal or factory work as their family
support.
The Neujahrs, another military family, came from the
south and the Dakota Territory. Much like the poverty draft
of today, Irish men joined the military as a means to an
end. The military provided wages, housing and skills that
could later be used in a civilian occupation. In this way,
Irish women also used the military as a means to an end.
They achieved mobility through marriage to military
personnel. Bridget Neujahr was one such woman. Bridget’s
husband Frederick was born in Prussia and worked as a
watchman. Their first child was born in Alabama in 1854,
their second child was born in Missouri in 1858 with their
third child born in the Dakota’s in 1860. With the close of
the war in 1865 the family moved to Washington, D.C. and
settled there through 1880. They lived in the Foggy Bottom
region near the White House.
Another military family whose breadwinner was a
watchman was the Zells. Both James and Mary were born in
Ireland and came to Washington, D.C. in 1864. They lived in
the capital for a few years then moved to Louisiana in
1868, on to the Dakota territory in 1872, over to Minnesota
104
in 1875 and back to the Dakotas in 1878. By 1880 the Zells
settled in the District where their eldest daughter Katie
worked in the Government Printing Office. Their oldest boy
worked as a messenger while the younger children attended
school or stayed at home. They lived at 117 G Street,
northwest.
140
Both the Neujahrs and the Zells used the
military as a means to an end. The husbands in both
families used the military to learn and trade and used that
experience once they left their military service. Both
husbands worked as watchmen in Washington, D.C. to support
their growing families.
The number of Irish women who bore children in a
foreign country and then came to the capital became
increasingly smaller as the century progressed. Ann McGuire
lived in Canada before coming to America. She and her
husband Peter came to Canada by 1839, moved to Vermont
shortly after that and settled in New York by 1843. In New
York the last of their three children were born and by 1860
the family settled in Washington, D.C. The McGuire’s lived
in the District through the 1870s where Peter was a
watchman and a member of the St. Vincent De Paul Society at
St. Aloysius Catholic Church.
140
Ibid.
105
Although the McGuire’s came through Canada, other
Irish women lived in England before coming to America.
Catherine Sullivan and her husband John traveled to England
and lived there a short time before coming to the capital.
They lived in Washington, D.C. by 1855, moved to New York
by 1858 and were back in the District by 1860 and lived
there through 1880.
141
These families represent the link
between Canada and England to New York as a typical Irish
migration route. Often the Irish used Canada and England as
an interim destination. For these families, New York was
also used as an interim destination before their final
destination of Washington, D.C.
The borders between Maryland and Virginia were
accommodating given the migration of families back and
forth. Ellen Harkins started out in Maryland in 1831,
migrated to Virginia and back to Maryland before settling
in Washington, D.C. Ellen’s husband was a general laborer
and their migration followed the building of canals, roads
and construction projects in the Washington area. Their
migration back and forth across the borders speaks to the
fluidity of the region. Mary Sullivan’s family also moved
in and out of the Mid-Atlantic region. They first lived in
141
Ibid.
106
Washington, D.C., then Virginia, then Maryland and back to
the capital. Mary’s husband Patrick was a laborer and their
son Andrew was a blacksmith. They lived at 11 Frederick at
34th Street in Georgetown. All of their daughters were at
home with Catherine working as dressmakers. They started
out in Washington, D.C. in 1852, moved to Virginia by 1857,
Maryland by 1860 and were back in the District by 1880.
142
The Fergusons and the McCartys also traveled back and
forth across the borders of Maryland and Washington, D.C.
The Fergusons arrived in Maryland at the close of the Civil
War and lived there until 1868 when they moved to the
capital. Just a couple years later the family moved back to
Maryland and then returned to the District when Alatia was
widowed. The McCartys also moved back and forth and Mary
also was a widow. She and her children arrived in Maryland
by 1871, moved to the capital a short time later in 1873
and then were back in Maryland by 1877. After Mary was
widowed, she returned to Washington, D.C.
by 1880 to live
at 504 L Street, southwest with her young children ages
nine, seven and three.143
142
143
Ibid.
Ibid.
107
The early years of the nineteenth century saw the
immigration of married Irish women and their families to
Washington, D.C. In the national capital the pushes and
pulls that affected immigration varied over time as
employment opportunities and social customs changed from
that of the antebellum South to post-Civil War life. The
needs of the city changed throughout the century so the
Irish population that came to the city was different from
their predecessors. A large cohort of single Irish women
came to the capital to take advantage of the jobs the city
provided and the stability the Irish Catholic community
offered. These opportunities provided the means for Irish
women to restore their place within their ethnic community
and within their host community. As the federal and city
government grew, so too did the economic and social
opportunities for Irish women.
108
CHAPTER 3: TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
PATTERNS OF IRISH WOMEN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890
It was a beautiful spring morning. The sky was clear
and the air was crisp and clean as they walked up North
Capitol Street. It was a perfect day for Michael and Mary.
Their dearest friends Matthew McDonough and Catherine Walsh
walked with them up the stone steps and into the building.
It was only right that they be here to share this day with
them. They met with Father in the chapel where the ceremony
would take place. Father cleared his throat and solemnly
asked Michael, “Do you take Mary Tohy, here present, for
your lawful wife according to the rite of our Holy Mother,
the Church?” Michael responded with, “I do.” Father turned
to Mary and asked, “Do you take Michael Callahan, here
present, for your lawful husband according to the rite of
our Holy Mother, the Church?” Mary answered, “I do.”
Michael and Mary joined hands as Father asked Michael to
repeat these words, “I, Michael Callahan, take you, Mary
Tohy, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this
day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,
109
in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” After
Michael finished, Mary repeated the same while Father
blessed them and sprinkled them with Holy Water. Father
then blessed their wedding rings saying, “Our help is in
the name of the Lord,” with Michael and Mary responding,
“Who made heaven and earth.” Father then said, “O Lord,
hear my prayer,” and Michael and Mary again responded
saying, “And let my cry come to you.” As Father said, “The
Lord be with you,” Michael and Mary spoke in unison, “And
with your spirit.” As the ceremony continued, Father
sprinkled each ring with Holy Water and gave the rings to
the bride and groom to place on their spouses’ ring finger.
At the end of the ceremony Father prayed for the couple
saying,
We beg you, Lord to look on these your servants,
and graciously to uphold the institution of
marriage established by you for the continuation
of the human race, so that they who have been
joined together by your authority may remain
faithful together by your help. Through Christ
our Lord.
And all present said, “Amen.”144
Michael Callahan and Mary Tohy were married in the
Spring of 1879 in St. Aloysius Catholic Church in
110
southwest, Washington, D.C. Michael was a thirty-year old
Irish immigrant from County Galway who worked as a gas
house man in the capital city. Mary also hailed from County
Galway and was just five years younger than her husband-tobe.145 Mary and other Irish women in Washington, D.C.
continued and adapted marital and familial patterns begun
in Ireland. They married at later ages as the nineteenth
century neared its end; they married their own for the most
part; they began having smaller families like their
American counterparts; and, they continued to live with
their siblings and extended family. Although Irish women
viewed marriage “as an economic arrangement that ought not
to be rushed into too young and too precipitously,” Irish
women in the capital married at greater rates and chose
marriage more often than their Irish sisters throughout the
United States.
146
American social norms and Irish culture combined in
the United States, thus, the lost importance of women in
144
“Marriage Ceremony,” Archives of the Archdiocese of
Washington, D.C., Hyattsville, Maryland.
145
Marriage Returns, Certificate #3155, District of
Columbia Archives, Washington, D.C., “Mean Temperature of
the District of Columbia, 1874-1890” and “Mean Humidity of
the District of Columbia, 1874-1890,” Health Officer,
Annual Report, 1890, Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 1891, p. 183
111
Irish marriages was restored with marriage in American
households. Those households, some found in Washington,
D.C. in the nineteenth century, offered Irish women a home
and community that accommodated their cultural heritage and
encouraged its sustenance and growth. The inheritance that
marriage brought for Irish women changed because of the
social and economic opportunities present in the capital.
The choice to marry or stay single in Washington, D.C.
transformed this inheritance. Thus, Irish women’s motives
for emigration--financial independence and cultural
stability—remained intact among Irish women as they
emigrated abroad and searched for a community where these
goals could be met.
Marital and family traditions in Ireland changed
throughout the nineteenth century and were affected by the
Famine and the massive emigration of Irish men and women.
Marriage rates for Pre-Famine Ireland show that most women
over fifteen years of age were married. However, as the
century progressed and the effects of the Famine took hold,
Irish women remained single or emigrated as a solution to
social and economic troubles. The rate of marriage dropped
from 7.0-8.0 per thousand in 1840 to 4.0 per thousand in
146
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 45.
112
1890. Only 38 percent of women in Ireland were married;
consequently, by the end of the nineteenth century over
two-thirds of Ireland’s population was single and at least
a quarter of the women who lived in Post-Famine Ireland
never married.147
Families in nineteenth-century America varied by race,
class and ethnicity. However, most were two-parent
families. By the end of the nineteenth century American
social norms called for a family whose wife worked from her
home in a domestic capacity or did not work for a wage. She
supervised servants to assist with the daily care and
maintenance of her home. She cared for a small number of
children, much smaller than her eighteenth-century sisters
and she shared those responsibilities with a husband who
left her home everyday to work. This nineteenth-century
family comprised four to five members and a household staff
in a home that the father owned. These middle-class ideals
determined the ways in which immigrant families adapted to
American social norms.
However, Carl Degler finds that families, immigrant
and native, were more similar than dissimilar in the
147
Special Reports, Twelfth Census, 386 and Miller,
Emigrants and Exiles, 403-406.
113
nineteenth-century. He argues that most immigrant families
“were nuclear in structure—that is, they consisted of two
parents and their offspring. Very few of them contained the
grandparents, or the aunts that the old sociology of the
family referred to as the extended family.”148 He also notes
that native women married more often, had fewer children
and married younger than their foreign-born counterparts.
But, most of the differences between families turned on
class not race or ethnicity. Working-class families had the
added burden of both parents and most of their children
working for a wage while attempting to maintain middleclass ideals. Family decisions were based often on what was
best for the unit as opposed to the individual. This family
economy required participation from every member. Thus,
family and kinship relationships “remained the familiar and
flexible core of a dynamically changing environment,
thereby easing the stresses of migration and facilitating
the adjustment to a modernized urban and industrial way of
life.”
149
148
Carl Degler, At Odds, Women and the Family in
America from the Revolution to the Present, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980, 134.
149
Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic
Revolutions, A Social History of American Family Life, New
York: The Free Press, 1988, 86.
114
Immigrant families throughout the United States, along
with African Americans, comprised the majority of these
working-class families in the nineteenth century. Steven
Mintz and Susan Kellogg contend that “families were the
basic resource in effecting the immigrants’ transition to
their new environment.”
150
However, different groups
responded differently to the pressures that immigration and
labor brought. Immigrants who came with their families
differed in family structure than those who arrived single.
Prior to the Civil War most immigrants in America were of
Irish, German and English descent. However, after the Civil
War men and women from southern and eastern Europe made
their way to America as well. The cultural differences
between these groups contributed to the diverse ways their
families responded to American social customs.
Compared to other immigrant women in the United
States, the Irish married the least and delayed marriage
the most. Along with the Italians and French, the Irish had
the lowest marriage rates of groups from western Europe.
Irish women in nineteenth-century America, while they
married earlier and more often than their relatives at
home, “still married later and less frequently than any
150
Ibid., 87.
115
other native- or foreign-born group.”
151
Diner finds that
"the low rate of marriage, born of the economic necessities
of rural Irish life remained a common practice among the
Irish people who had chosen to leave Ireland."
152
Furthermore, Irish women had a higher proportion of femaleheaded households than other ethnic groups. Degler finds
that this difference was due to religion. The Irish were
primarily Catholic and “could not divorce and remarry.
Hence they resorted to desertion to a greater extent than
non-Catholics.”153
Much like their counterparts throughout America, women
in Washington, D.C., immigrant and native-born alike,
conformed to nineteenth-century social norms and sought
marriage. Most women over fifteen years of age in the
capital were married. Moreover, by 1890 more than half of
the first generation of immigrant women in Washington, D.C.
was married as well. The opposite was true for the second
generation, however. More than half of the second
generation was single. This reflects the youth of this
cohort and the changes immigration brought to Washington’s
151
152
153
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 513.
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 46.
Degler, At Odds, 135.
116
population.
154
Similar to second-generation immigrants were
African American women. They, too, had a substantial number
of single women; and, although native-born women were also
single in great numbers, almost half were married.
Figure 10: Percent of Marital Status by Nativity and Race for Women Over Fifteen Years of Age,
Washington, D.C., 1890
60
50
Single
Married
Widowed
Divorced
40
30
20
10
0
Native White
2nd Generation
Foreign White
African American
Source: United States Census, 1890, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1898.
The family and marital patterns of Irish women in
Washington, D.C. changed throughout the nineteenth century.
In 185, one-quarter of Irish women over fifteen years of
154
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 1890.
117
age was married. These Irish women, who came to Washington,
D.C. in the first half of the nineteenth century,
immigrated as wives. However, as Irish immigrants made
their way to the capital city an influx of single Irish
women changed these ratios. Some single Irish women who
came to the capital before the Civil War married; others
stayed single.
Figure 11: Marital Status of Irish Women Over Fifteen Years of Age, Washington, D.C., 18501880
2500
2000
Married
1500
Single
Widow
1000
500
0
1850
1860
1870
1880
Source: USMC, 1850-1880
However, by 1870, 72 percent of Irish women over fifteen
years of age were married. The Irish women who arrived in
118
Washington, D.C. single married in great proportions. Their
search for cultural stability was secured in the capital
city through marriage. Whereas the 1850 and 1860
measurements reflect a changing population born of the
post-Famine migration, the 1870 and 1880 measurements
demonstrate how Irish women adapted to American social
customs and became part of the community through marriage.
By 1880 more than half of Irish women over the age of
fifteen were married.
This is consistent with Diner’s analysis that
“traditional Irish culture stressed the centrality of the
woman in her home with her husband and children.”155 In
Washington, D.C. this cultural tradition was maintained.
Given that Irish American culture was constructed, Irish
women incorporated, adapted and amplified “preexisting
communal solidarities, cultural attributes and historical
memories.”156 Thus, when Washington’s Irish women married
more than their immigrant sisters throughout the nation,
they adapted their unique experience to the cultural
construct created between them and their host community.
155
156
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 52.
Conzen and Gerber, “The Invention of Ethnicity.”
119
By 1891 only 38.3 percent of Irish women in America
were married.157 Evidence of this is found in David
Gleeson’s study of the Irish in the South. He notes that
“the experience of the famine frightened Irish people
against the idea of marrying young and having many
children, and this fear had a profound impact on Irish
families in America.”
158
While Irish immigrants throughout
the South “were less likely to marry immediately,”
Washington’s Irish women married sooner and in greater
proportions.159 However, by the end of the nineteenth
century, the marriage rates of the Irish female population
closely resembled the marriage rates of the native
population.
One change in marriage and family patterns was the age
of first marriage. At mid-century women in Ireland married
quite young. Over 70 percent of married Irish women were
under twenty-five years of age in 1864 but by the end of
the century that dropped to 50 percent. The age for first
marriage rose in the last half of the nineteenth century in
Ireland from twenty-five to thirty-three for males and from
157
Special Reports, Twelfth Census, 391.
David Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815-1877,
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001,
56.
158
120
twenty-one to twenty-eight for females.
160
Furthermore, in
American cities Irish women also married at an older age
than their American-born counterparts. Degler notes that
immigrant women married at older ages than native-born
Americans. The native-born “had always had an earlier age
of marriage and a higher proportion of married persons than
Europeans, this pattern would seem to be a continuation of
practices among groups recently arrived in a new
culture.”161 Moreover, by the end of the century Irish women
throughout the United States continued their cultural
practice of late marriage.
However, throughout the last half of the nineteenth
century the age of first marriage for Irish brides,
fluctuated with the constant arrival of Irish women.
Between 1850 and the Civil War most Irish women married
when they were between the ages of twenty-five and thirtyfour.162 Only 20 percent of Irish brides in these fifteen
years before the war were under twenty-five years old.
Charles Bastable and Mary McGinn represented this small
159
Ibid.
Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 403-406.
161
Degler, At Odds, 134.
162
See Appendix Two for further information regarding
age of marriage for Irish brides.
160
121
group. They married in Washington on January 2, 1853. Mary
was twenty-one when she married Charles and by 1860 they
lived in ward one of the capital with their six-year old
daughter Mary and five-year old son Walter.
For the next decade the age of marriage shifted to a
younger population. This reflects the changes in the Irish
female population as a whole with the last of the Famine
immigrants arriving in the District and the post-Civil War
migration of women to work in the capital. Bridget
McAlister and Patrick McCormick were part of this group.
Bridget was twenty-one when she married Patrick in
September of 1869; Patrick was twenty-eight and from
Ireland. Again, the twenty-five to thirty-five year old age
group comprised almost half of all first marriages for
Washington’s Irish brides. However, this younger cohort,
fifteen to twenty-five years of age, began marrying more
often with the arrival of young Irish females to the city.
The established social and economic infrastructures in the
national capital provided the jobs and social contacts
necessary for new immigrants. Specifically, Washington’s
opportunity structures for Irish women encouraged marriage
for women of all ages.
122
By 1880 Irish brides fit the general pattern of Irish
women’s delayed marriage that is typical of late
nineteenth-century Ireland and other metropolitan regions
in the United States that supported large contingents of
Irish women. Eliza Joyce was one of these. She married
Patrick Jordan when she was forty on June 16, 1873. Eliza,
and other Irish women in the capital, delayed marriage for
several reasons. First, they delayed marriage as a
consequence to immigration. The first and foremost task was
food and shelter. Typically this was found in a domestic
service position. As such, the Irish female immigrant was
involved immediately in work and marriage was postponed
inevitably with the need for work and the wages work
brought. A second reason for delayed marriage was cultural.
The lessons of the Famine were learned well and Irish women
postponed the economic relationship marriage brought.
When immigrant women across the United States married,
they primarily chose husbands from their own ethnicity and
religion. Donna Gabbaccia notes that “for Poles and
Italians, endogamy (marriage within the group) might mean
123
marrying a boy from the home village or home region.”
163
Throughout America immigrant women from many nationalities
married men from their homeland and religious background.
However, immigrant groups where religion and language were
not prohibitions married outside of their group.
164
This
primarily affected immigrants from England and British
Canada. In 1880 Cohoes, New York “almost 40 percent of
English-born and native working men married outside their
ethnic group, while only 2 percent of the French Canadians
and 7 percent of the Irish of that same working class
did."
165
Like their Irish brothers in Cohoes, New York, Irish
women in Chicago also married their own. Church records
reveal that Irish women, given the choice of Irish, Polish
and Italian men, still chose Irish men. Mageean contends
that Irish women’s “lack of social intercourse with these
groups and language difficulties, as well as distrust or
distaste for intermarriage, seem to have kept exogamy to a
163
Donna Gabaccia, From the Other Side, Women, Gender
and Immigrant Life in the U.S. 1820-1900, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994, 71.
164
Degler, At Odds, 133.
165
Ibid.
124
minimum.”
166
Ray Burchell notes this similar pattern of
endogamy for Irish women in San Francisco. He finds that
"among first-generation Irish... there was no growing
tendency to look outside the Irish-born group for a
spouse."167 Irish women throughout the United States married
their own.
In Washington, D.C. Irish women’s marriages to Irish
men confirm this cultural persistence. Overwhelmingly Irish
women chose Irish men as husbands. Consistently throughout
the nineteenth century Irish women immigrated with Irish
husbands or married Irish men after they settled in the
capital. Even second-generation Irish women primarily chose
Irish and Irish-American men as their husbands.
168
These
women went to church with
166
Harzig, Mageean, Matovic, Knothe and Blaschke,
Peasant Maids—City Women, 231-232.
167
R.A. Burchell, The San Francisco Irish, 1848-1880,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, 79-81.
168
See Appendix Three for further information
regarding age of Irish brides.
125
Figure 12: Birthplace of Men who Married Irish Women, 1850-1889
250
200
Ireland
United States
150
Other Foreign Country
100
50
0
1850-59
1860-69
1870-79
1880-89
Source: Source: USMC, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880; and Annual Report of the Board of Health of
the District of Columbia, 1872-1876, Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1877;
Report of the Health Officer of the District of Columbia, 1878-1890, Government Printing Office:
Washington, D.C., 1891; Marriage Records of St. Peter’s Catholic Church, 1850-1871, St. Peter’s
Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.; Marriage Records of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 18501871, Trinity Archives, Georgetown University Archives, Georgetown University, Washington,
D.C.; Marriage Records of St. Aloysius Catholic Church, 1871-1902, St. Aloysius' Catholic
Church Archives, St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.; District of Columbia
Marriage Records Index, District of Columbia Marriage Records and Sampling of District of
Columbia Marriage Certificates, District of Columbia Archives, Washington, D.C.
other Irish—the Germans had their own church—and they
worked with each other as domestics and laborers in
government institutions, hotels and other private
businesses. They also lived next to each other. The
geographic distribution of the Irish community throughout
126
the capital put Irish women in contact with Irish men and
literally segregated Irish neighborhoods from that of the
native or other foreign populations.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century Irish women
married their own less often and men from the United States
and other countries more often. Burchell found this true
for the San Francisco Irish as well. As the century neared
its end, Irish women in San Francisco increasingly married
men from the United States. He noted that "in nearly thirty
years the pattern of marriages changed in only one
apparently significant respect, the increasing choice from
the American-born."169 Margaret Henson did so in Washington,
D.C. She married Thomas Brown of New Hampshire on October
31, 1872 and lived in ward seven with their five children
born between 1872 and 1880.
Moreover, by 1890 Irish women marry Irish and native
men at about the same rate. The Santes family bore this
out. Mary Ann married Michael, a Washington, D.C. native,
and they lived in ward three with their two children,
Mary’s mother-in-law Mary Catherine and her sister-in-law
Agnes. However, the proportion of Irish women who chose men
from Washington, D.C. as their mates decreased in 1870 and
127
1880 while the proportion of husband/fathers from other
parts of the United States increased. This identifies the
number of migrants from other parts of the United States
coming to Washington, D.C. after the Civil War. Some Irish
women chose these men as their husbands.
Although most husbands were native to Ireland, some
husbands came from all over Europe and south of the border.
Irish women who married men from other countries primarily
married men from England. Mary Reed did so; but, others
married men from Germany, Scotland, Mexico, Spain, Bavaria
and Canada170. As the century progressed, Irish women in the
District increasingly married men from other countries.
This trend is confirmed in the decrease of Irish brides
marrying Irish grooms. Also evident is an increase in the
number of men from other countries that marry and bear
children with Irish women in 1870 and 1880. These
husbands/fathers came primarily from countries where
Catholicism was practiced.171
Just like their mothers before them, second-generation
Irish women overwhelmingly married men with Irish heritage.
Over 62 percent of husbands of second-generation Irish
169
170
Burchell, San Francisco Irish, 79-81.
USMC, 1850-1880.
128
women could claim one or both parents as Irish. Moreover,
of the 1,423 second-generation Irish women who were married
in 1880, almost half were married to men whose mother and
father were born in Ireland. Agnes McDermott and Eliza
Faherty, both second-generation Irish immigrants, married
Irish men. Agnes’ husband, John, was born in Ireland and
Eliza’s husband William was a second-generation Irish
immigrant born in Maryland.172 Husbands, whose parents were
born in a foreign country other than Ireland, primarily,
came from England. Most of these men, although from England
or Scotland, had Irish names. They represent those who
emigrated from Ireland to England and then America.
Husbands whose parents came from the Washington area-Washington, D.C., Georgetown, Maryland and Virginia-comprised almost 20 percent of second-generation marriages.
Very few husbands came from outside of the Eastern half of
the United States.173 This continued pattern of endogamy
speaks to the successful search for cultural stability that
Irish women sought as they came to America. This pattern,
literally, was passed on to their daughters who sought the
very same thing. It was not until the end of the century
171
172
Ibid.
Ibid.
129
that Irish women and their daughters began to look outside
of their community for husbands.
Fathers of children with Irish mothers were primarily
Irish. Throughout this period Irish women continued to
marry and bear children more with Irish men than all other
groups combined. In 1860, 91 percent of the fathers of
children born to Irish mothers were also Irish. This
pattern continued in 1870 and 1880 where 83 percent of
fathers of children born to Irish mothers were Irish.174
Moreover, Irish women continued to arrive in the capital
with Irish husbands and children in tow. Those who came to
Washington, D.C. unmarried primarily chose Irish husbands
as well to
173
174
Ibid.
Ibid.
130
Figure 13: Nationality of Fathers of Children Born to Irish Mothers, 1860-1880
1800
Ireland
1600
United States
1400
Washington, DC
1200
Other Foreign
Country
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1860
1870
1880
Source: USMC, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880; Annual Report of the Board of Health of the District
of Columbia, 1872-1876, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877 and Report of the
Health Officer of the District of Columbia, 1878-1890, Washington, D.C., Government Printing
Office, 1891.
father their children. The trend to marry outside of the
group was relatively new and relatively small, therefore it
is likely that children with Irish mothers would also have
Irish fathers.
Most Irish-American children who lived in Washington,
D.C. were born in the District. Although a few hailed from
Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, over 80
percent of second-generation Irish children were born in
the capital.175 This, too, speaks to a cultural stability
175
Ibid.
131
Irish women attained in the national capital. They settled
in the city and stayed there to marry and raise children.
Irish women and their children did not have to move out of
the District to move up.
In each decade after 1850 over 95 percent of secondgeneration Irish children were born in only a handful of
places. The majority of children, after Washington, D.C.,
were born in Maryland and Virginia with the remainder
coming from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York. Even
through 1880 less than 5 percent of Ireland’s secondgeneration daughters in the capital were born outside of a
typically Irish region. Those born in England, Wales,
Scotland and Canada were children who came with immigrating
parents. Those from Maryland and Virginia continued to
represent the fluidity of the region and those from
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York represented
strongholds of Irish populations.176 The established Irish
community in the national capital attracted other Irish
immigrants to the city.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century,
the fecundity of Irish women decreased; Irish women bore
fewer children as the century neared its end. Irish
132
families in America were smaller than their homeland
counterparts. Thus, the cultural adaptation of Irish women
can be seen in the decreasing number of Irish-American
children born in the capital. Similar to their Americanborn counterparts, Irish women decreased the number of
children they bore. This demographic transition paralleled
one taking place throughout America. Mintz and Kellog note
that by the end of the nineteenth century, “women had
further reduced the number of children born to three or
four, spaced them closer together, and ceased childbearing
at earlier ages.”177 This reduced the average family size by
fifty percent over the course of the nineteenth century.
178
In Washington, D.C. Irish women had an average of five
children in their homes. Although there were households
that contained ten to fifteen children, these were
exceptions. Even through 1880 Irish women continued to
maintain three to six children in their home as the norm.179
The spacing of Irish children mirrored the typical
nineteenth-century pattern with children being born one to
two years apart. In 1881 and 1882 the average number of
176
177
178
Ibid..
Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 51.
Ibid., 109-110 and Degler, At Odds, 81.
133
children in District households with Irish mothers was
five. Although a handful of Irish mothers bore as many as
thirteen children in their lifetime, the majority of Irish
women bore three children in the last half of the
nineteenth century.180
Irish women’s households in the capital varied in size
throughout the nineteenth century. With the decreasing
number of children born to Irish women, household
structures changed. However, Irish households in America
continued family patterns begun in Ireland by housing
several generations and extended family in the same home.
Older sons and daughters, aged aunts and uncles as well as
grandparents lived in households with their children and
relatives. Examining the construct of Irish households in
the District shows how Irish women adapted to American
social norms by bearing fewer children in their lifetime
but retained some of their cultural heritage by living with
extended family.
179
181
Ibid.
Report of the Health Officer of the District of
Columbia, 1878-1890.
181
USMC, 1850-1880.
180
134
At mid-century most Irish women in the capital had
eight or fewer members in their household.182 The Brenans
and the Mahers lived with each other and their boarders.
The wives were sisters. Irish Doctor Brenan and his Irish
wife lived with the Maher’s and each of their children. The
Brenans had two children, both born in England, and the
Maher’s had four children born in Ireland, Pennsylvania and
Washington, D.C. James Maher’s older brother, Edward also
lived with them as well as a handful of boarders and
extended family.
183
This example of cultural continuity
notes how Irish women accommodated their social customs to
a new environment.
Throughout the next two decades major changes took
place to the family structure throughout America and are
reflected in Irish households in Washington, D.C. The
typical American family was smaller and thus so was the
typical American household. However, the sizes of Irish
households decreased at a much slower rate than their
native-born counterparts. While Irish women bore fewer
children, their households still comprised a nuclear family
and extended family. This included the Gillies who lived in
182
183
Ibid.
Ibid.
135
ward one of Washington, D.C. The Gillie household consisted
of husband and wife, Thomas and Annie, along with their two
children, Thomas’ brother Michael and their mother
Bridget.184 By 1880 this pattern of continuity and change
remained consistent for Irish women in Washington, D.C.
Different from their native-born counterparts, the
structure of Irish women’s families included the nuclear as
well as the extended family.
Another extension of household construction included
female-headed households. This was new for Irish women. One
of the changes to Irish culture in America was the rise in
female-headed households. Although some women headed their
own households in Ireland, Irish women in America suffered
the vagaries of immigrant life and thus headed their own
households more often than their sisters in the homeland.
The Irish had the largest number of female-headed
households of almost all immigrant groups throughout the
nineteenth century. Only African American women outpaced
Irish women in the proportion of female-headed
households.185
184
USMC, 1850-1880.
Report of the Health Officer of the District of
Columbia, 1878-1890.
185
136
Female-headed households comprised households of
married women whose husbands worked outside of the
community, married women whose husbands deserted, single
women who lived with each other and widowed women. Diner
finds that with “so many widows, with so many deserted
wives, it was only natural that the Irish-American world
contained a large number of female-headed households,
families supported and controlled by women.”186 In cities
throughout the United States, Irish women often headed
their own households. Compared to the German, British and
Native-born households in Milwaukee, Irish women headed
their own households more often and did so with a large
number of children in tow.187 In Philadelphia more Irish
women headed their own households than any other white
group. The only group that outnumbered them in 1870 was
African American.
188
In Buffalo, New York a significant
portion of Irish women also lived in female-headed
households. Diner noted this pattern for Irish households
186
Ibid., 61.
Kathleen Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836-1860,
Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1976, 51-52.
188
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 61.
187
137
throughout America. Between 1855 and 1875 most Irish homes
had a woman at their head.189
Similarly, in Washington, D.C. female-headed
households comprised a significant portion of the Irish
community. Most of those households were not wives who had
been deserted by husbands but widows. Between 1850 and 1880
less than 2 percent of married Irish women claimed a head
of household status. However, between 1850 and 1880 Irish
widows comprised from 14 to 21 percent of Irish
households.
190
This is a significant portion of the
immigrant community. Nonetheless, widowhood was not an
experience limited to Irish women. Mintz and Kellog note
that “children were orphaned and many husbands and wives
were prematurely widowed. High mortality rates tore at the
very fabric of family life. Altogether, early death would
disrupt between 35 and 40 percent of all American
families.”191 African American families were affected most
by early mortality. In Philadelphia in 1880 the proportion
of households headed by African American women was “still
twice what it was for native whites; it was almost twice
189
190
191
Ibid.
USMC, 1850-1880.
Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 104.
138
the proportion among Irish, and over 2.5 times the
proportion for German households.”192
In Washington’s Irish community widows headed over 90
percent of female-headed households
193
. In 1850, widowed
Irish women had large households. These were homes where
Irish women took in boarders to make ends meet. Throughout
the next thirty years a significant number of Irish widows
lived with their extended families. If you include
stepmothers, grandmothers, sisters, sisters-in-law,
mothers, mothers-in-law, cousins and aunts, 177 Irish
widows lived with their extended families. Fewer than 5
percent of Irish widows boarded in someone else’s home.
194
This suggests that, by 1880, the Irish community in
Washington, D.C. was well knit.
Of the 107 widowed women who headed their own
households in 1880, only one-quarter lived alone.195 The
Irish community came to the aid of Irish widows and was
arranged such that Irish widows who had children in their
homes were able to care for their families with the help of
others. Jane Murphy was a widow in 1880 and headed her own
192
193
194
Degler, At Odds, 130.
USMC, 1850-1880.
Ibid.
139
household that consisted of three children and a boarder.
196
All of her children were at home with Jane as their sole
support. Ella Liston also was widowed and supported one
child and her widowed mother in ward four. Her eighty-four
year old mother, Mary Conden, and twelve-year old son,
James Liston lived with Ella. She had lived in the capital
since 1860.197
Widowed Irish mothers and mothers-in-law often lived
with their children and grandchildren. Elizabeth McMahon
lived with her daughter’s family in ward one. She lived
with Patrick and Cecelia Kane and their two children along
with one boarder, Michael McDonald, who worked with Patrick
as a stone mason.198 The Coyles continued this practice with
their mother in 1860. Catherine lived with her son, Dennis,
and his family; Dennis and Mary had two children and he
worked as a laborer from their home in ward four.199
The decline in the number of widows who headed their
own households in 1880 was accompanied by a small growth in
the number of married and single women who headed their own
195
196
197
198
199
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid..
Ibid.
140
households.
200
The married women lived with their young
children, their in-laws and their grown children and still
headed their own households. Only ten of the married women
who headed their own households lived alone in 1880.
201
Most
of them boarded tenants in their homes and lived with their
children and extended family. Desertion accounted for only
a handful of Irish women’s households in the national
capital. It is unclear whether the husbands abandoned their
families, worked outside of the District or were ill in a
hospital somewhere in the city. Many women from across the
United States came to the capital in the decades following
the Civil War to be by the side of a husband or brother in
the Soldier’s Home, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital or Providence
Hospital.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century the
resilience of Irish women is seen in the ways they adapted
to American social norms and the ways in which they
retained their Irish heritage. While Diner notes that
“Irish women exchanged their roles as wage earner and
income producer to that of wife and mother with a degree of
circumspection,” Irish women in Washington, D.C. belie this
200
201
Ibid.
Ibid.
141
conclusion.
202
The choosing of Irish men for husbands, the
decreasing fecundity of Irish women and their household
structure of extended family confirm the many continuities
and changes in the Irish-American family. Arriving in a
host community accustomed to an Irish presence, and finding
employment and a social structure that accommodated
newcomers, assisted Irish women’s transition from immigrant
to community member. The capital community encouraged this
transition by providing Irish women husbands appropriate to
their ethnicity and religion and a social and economic
infrastructure that encouraged acculturation.
202
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 64.
142
CHAPTER 4: BROOM AND BOARD: IRISH WOMEN’S LABOR IN
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890
Not again. Don’t they know she’s busy. It never ends.
From the moment the sun begins to rise until it is well
gone to China, Bridget works and works. Someone is still
knocking on the door. After an exclamation and subtle
curse, Bridget rushes to answer the door. As she hurries
the knocking becomes more persistent. Finally, Bridget
reaches the door and yells “hello” through the keyhole. The
caller is aghast. How could anyone do such a thing? Bridget
eventually opens the door to greet the guest but not until
she is much embarrassed and realizes her error. Oh, well.
It won’t happen again. Later in the day Bridget is upstairs
making the beds. There are too many beds to make, too many
children to watch and too many meals to cook. Bridget’s day
is long and her chores seem to never end. The door again.
Someone is knocking. This time Bridget remembers to greet
the guest properly but she forgets another ever so familiar
habit. As she comes down the stairs, Bridget walks
backwards. Accustomed to climbing down a ladder, she fails
143
to walk forward down the stairs. Aargh. Someday she’ll
remember all these little things and be American. Then
everyone will know Bridget’s arrived when she has her own
home and hires someone to answer the door for her.203
For Irish women Washington, D.C. was a place to become
American. This small town evolved from a quiet Southern
village into a bustling metropolis and became one of the
nation’s largest cities in the nineteenth century, and as
such, received its share of Irish immigrants. The bustling
metropolis did not attract Irish women for its burgeoning
factory work but for its unique opportunity structure that
offered Irish women domestic employment.
Washington’s
industrial magnet was not the factory work of the north or
the farms of the south, but a domestic industry that
serviced the vastly expanding needs of the capital city.
Washington, D.C. grew in leaps and bounds after the
Civil War. Between 1860 and 1870 the population of the
capital almost doubled. With the crises of the war the
infrastructure of the city expanded to meet those needs and
continued to expand after the war was over.204 As the city
urbanized in the last few decades of the nineteenth century
203
204
Adapted from Dudden, Serving Women.
Green, Washington, vii.
144
many groups congregated in the capital in the hopes of
making their causes known to Congress. As the city grew in
size and prominence so, too, did the opportunities for
working-class women’s employment. The expansion of
opportunities for Irish women’s employment came with the
growth of the District as hotels, businesses and service
institutions such as hospitals, insane asylums and poor
houses provided for the needs of the federal community.
Domestic work in these institutions and private homes
provided the bulk of Irish women’s employment in antebellum
Washington. However, after the Civil War employment in the
Government Printing Office (GPO), the Treasury Department
and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing provided jobs for
Irish women as well.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century the
expansion of the federal government, accompanied by
industrialization, took hold across America and provided
jobs for the many unskilled immigrant women arriving in the
United States. Thus, the scope of the federal government
grew and entered directly into American homes. Before the
Civil War Americans “felt the federal government’s presence
only when their mail was delivered,” but after the Civil
War Americans “experienced it daily through pensions,
145
patronage, patents, claims, schools, and even free seeds
from the new U.S. Department of Agriculture.”205
Factories, small shops that provided goods and
services to growing communities and an expansion in
agricultural production contributed to the increasing
opportunities for women’s employment. Immigrant women used
these opportunities and comprised the bulk of the female
working-class labor in the nineteenth century. In her
research on immigrant women Donna Gabbacia finds that
foreign-born women and their daughters comprised over half
of American female wage earners before 1900. While nativeborn women left farming, domestic service and factory work
to labor in their own homes, “foreign-born women found
their own niche” in this female occupational hierarchy that
accompanied America’s industrial growth.
206
Throughout the United States when immigrant women
worked for a wage they usually did so in domestic service.
The newer the immigrant female was to America the more
likely she worked first in domestic service. By 1890 over
60 percent of all foreign-born women who worked for a wage
205
Kathryn Allamong Jacob, “ ‘Like Moths to a Candle’:
The Nouveaus Riches Flock to Washington, 1870-1900,” Cary,
Urban Odyssey, 82.
206
Gabaccia, From the Other Side, 46-47.
146
did so in domestic service while just over 30 percent
worked in manufacturing and less than 5 percent worked in
trades.207 As an occupation that provided a wage and
shelter, domestic service was an obvious choice for the
newly arrived in America. Moreover, ethnic practices and
cultural traditions often restricted the occupational
choice of immigrant women. However, a few ethnic groups—
Russians, Italians and French Canadians--exhibited cultural
traits that discouraged immigrant women from seeking
domestic service.
208
Gabbacia notes that Russian Jewish and
Italian women avoided “domestic service because of their
cultural proscriptions against female contacts with
outsiders,” while other scholars contend “that Italian,
Jewish and some other women who migrated as parts of
families wanted jobs that allowed them to live at home.”
209
Regional differences also contributed to the
occupational choices available to immigrant women. In the
northeast factory work complemented domestic service as an
option for immigrant women’s employment. In the Midwest,
farming was added into the occupational structure for women
207
Eleventh Census, 526-531.
Reports of the Immigration Commission. See Appendix
Nine for occupational categories and census definitions.
209
Gabaccia, From the Other Side, 48.
208
147
due to the available land and agricultural industry.
However, in Chicago, Irish women found service positions in
abundance. Mageaan’s research on immigrant women in Chicago
notes that although few “Irishwomen had the culinary skills
and experience… for upper-middle-class homes in America,
American families could not afford to be choosy. Domestics
were in short supply.”
210
In the west some agricultural work was available to
working-class women but in the urban centers domestic
service was the primary occupation for immigrant women. In
San Francisco Irish women worked as domestics throughout
the city. The industry and trade that accompanied San
Francisco’s growth contributed to immigrant women’s
employment; thus, the occupational choices of immigrant
women turned on the opportunities created in the region’s
economy. In the south, agriculture provided employment as
well for immigrant women. However, the more southern a
state, the less likely immigrant women would be found in
wage work; African American women replaced them.211
210
Harzig, Mageean, Matovic, Knothe and Blaschke,
Peasant Maids—City Women, 238.
211
Statistics of the Population of the United States
at the Tenth Census, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1883, 800-807 and Compendium of the Eleventh
148
In the mid-Atlantic states of Virginia and Maryland
and in Washington, D.C., industry and urbanization
flourished and immigrant women found employment in domestic
positions and manufacturing. By 1880 in Virginia, over 70
percent of employed women Virginia worked in a domestic
capacity. In West Virginia and Washington, D.C. over 80
percent of working women served in the professional and
personal services. These occupations included clerking for
the government, domestic service positions, teaching and
boarding or restaurant ownership. In Maryland, German women
worked in these service occupations, but in Washington,
D.C. and Virginia, the domestic and personal services
employed primarily Irish and African American women.212
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century
Irish women often worked as domestic servants in American
homes. Harriet Martineau, a nineteenth century social
critic, noticed that Americans "soon find it impossible to
get American help at all, and they are consigned to the
tender mercies of the low Irish; and every one knows what
Census: 1890, Part III, Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 526-527.
212
Ibid.
149
kind of servants they commonly are."
213
Others observed
similar circumstances. Throughout his travels in America
Thomas Colley Grattan noted that Americans soon replaced
native-born servants with what he called the “fastincreasing tribes of Irish immigrants.”214
These fast-increasing tribes were depicted as lazy,
slovenly and stupid. Often they were personified as
"Bridget" the Irish maid. Bridget represented all female
Irish domestics. She was unkempt, unskilled and uneducated.
Bridget could not cook to her employer’s satisfaction
because her experience with cooking suited her only to
boiling potatoes. Grattan commented that Irish women
particularly knew little or nothing of cooking and they
soon adopted the “thick, greasy, salt sauces common to the
country; they roast or boil a joint in the ordinary
fashion, but are altogether ignorant of the lighter and
more graceful appurtenances of a repast.”
215
In addition to
her inept cooking, Bridget spoke funny and her mannerisms
were quaint. Her deep devotion to Catholicism could be won
over to Protestantism if only her employer would show her
213
Harriet Martineau, Society in America, Volumes 1-3,
London: Saunders and Otley, 1837, Volume 3, 136.
214
Thomas Colley Grattan, Civilized America, Vol. 1,
London: Bradbury and Evans, 1859, 269.
150
the way.
Domestic treatises, pamphlets and advice manuals
perpetuated this stereotype as they offered advice to both
the servant and the employer. The author of Plain Talk and
Friendly Advice to Domestics languished over the difficulty
to find a maid any other than an Irish girl. She described
her Bridget as "sixteen, short and thick, and wearing
habitually rather a dazed expression of countenance…She
never outgrew the puzzled and vacant air while living with
me, and she acted very much in accordance with her
looks."216 In spite of this, the author continued, she was
willing to work with her Bridget and train her. However,
after three days of experiment--on Bridget’s
part, to comprehend the uses of the most common
articles, and the way to use them, and on my
part, as to the elasticity of my patience and the
probable limit of my continuance in well-doing-Bridget struck for higher wages!217
Although Irish women were depicted in this manner,
their presence in Washington homes and public institutions
deters an acceptance of this myth. Even in President
215
Ibid.
Plain Talk and Friendly Advice to Domestics with
Good Counsel on Home Matters, Boston: Phillips, Sampson and
Company, 1855, 69-70.
217
Ibid.
216
151
Buchanan’s White House Irish women outnumbered those
employed for live-in domestic service.218 Of the five women
who lived and worked in the White House four were Irish.
Bridget Kane and Margaret McHugh did laundry and Mary
Carlton and Margaret Walsh worked as servants for the
President and his family.
219
Such was the case in
Washington, D.C. where factory work and industrial
employment were limited but domestic service positions
found in abundance. Because of the nature of domestic
service Irish women found employment as servants more
readily available than shop or factory work.
Working as a domestic upon arriving in the capital
provided Irish women with food, shelter and a wage.
However, the goal of Irish women’s employment did not
remain in domestic service. Throughout the last half of the
nineteenth century Irish women moved in and out of domestic
service. They moved in to domestic service upon arrival in
the city and moved out of domestic service into marriage or
other employment in the city. They moved from the unskilled
manual occupations in domestic service and into semiskilled and skilled occupations in Washington, D.C.
218
USMC, 1860.
Ibid.
219
152
businesses and government bureaucracies. This occupational
mobility was accompanied by social mobility. Irish women in
the District used their employment as a means to an end.
That end was a successful transition to Irish American.
This was achieved in two ways. Either she achieved upward
mobility in her community through marriage and her absence
from wage work or she moved from manual labor to skilled
positions that changed her status within the community.
Other immigrant groups in the capital offered little
competition for the jobs of Irish women. German and Italian
women made up the largest portion of female immigrants
after the Irish. The German and Italian women of the
capital posed little threat to the occupational structure
of female immigrant employment. The small proportion of
German and Italian women, and the social customs of these
immigrant groups, altered the pattern of domestic service
in Washington, D. C. German and Italian women tended to
work for their own ethnic group or within their family
unit. At the Heurich mansion German women were hired along
with African Americans. No Irish women were found in the
Heurich home as servants. Research on the Heurich family
showed that the “living arrangements for the domestic staff
153
revealed the social relations of the time.”
220
These social
relations did not include Irish women as servants in the
German family's home.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century
competition for domestic and laboring jobs in Washington,
D.C. came primarily from African American women. Although
African American women significantly outnumbered Irish
women in the capital, Irish women’s presence in homes as
domestics and the extent of their service in public
institutions left little room for African American women in
these positions. Most live-in domestic positions for
government institutions and public businesses went to Irish
women throughout most of the nineteenth century. African
American women certainly worked as servants and in domestic
capacities for these employers, however, they lived-out
where Irish women lived-in and received room and board on
top of their wage.
Patterns of replacing African American servants with
Irish workers are evident in Washington, D.C. Just as Irish
men replaced slaves and African American men who dug canals
in the early nineteenth century, Irish women replaced
220
Mona E. Dingle, “Gemeinschaft und Gemütlichkeit:
German American Community and Culture, 1850-1920,” in Cary,
154
slaves and African American women in live-in hotel and
institutional work. Although female slaves worked as
servants in Willard’s Hotel in 1841, they were not
represented in occupation statistics in 1850. Slaves and
African American women worked for the hotels but they were
not accounted for in public records.
221
The population of slaves and African American women at
mid-century also discouraged their competition for workingclass jobs. One reason was the Compromise of 1850. It
outlawed the slave trade in Washington, D.C. thereby
reducing the number of available slave women for service.
Thus, the number of slaves in the District decreased
between 1850 and 1860. Also restricting the growth of the
African American community in Washington, D.C. were preCivil War codes that the city enforced against the African
American population. The city council required a fiftydollar bond for every African American in the capital. Each
African American who applied for residency in Washington,
D.C. was required to report within five days of arrival to
pay the bond or be sentenced to the workhouse or removed
Editor, Urban Odyssey, 120.
221
USMC, 1850.
155
from the city.
222
Figure 14: Foreign, Irish, African American and Slave Women
in Washington, D.C. and Georgetown 1850-1860
7,000
6,000
Foreign
Irish
5,000
African American
Slave
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
1850
1860
Source: USMC, 1850-1860
However, during and after the Civil War African American
men and women came to the national capital in great
numbers. They came seeking the help and protection of the
federal government. After the war African American women
began to take jobs left by Irish women. Between 1860 and
1870 the African American population almost tripled; and,
222
Green, Washington, 181.
156
by 1890 African Americans continued to be about one-third
of Washington's population.223
The change in status for African Americans pre and
post Civil War played a role in Irish women’s move up the
mobility ladder in Washington, D.C. African Americans later
replaced the Irish not just in service positions and in
manual labor but also on the lower rungs of that mobility
ladder. Race and class played a role in this transition.
Before the Civil War Washington operated very strictly on
race and class as indicators of social status. The
influence of slavery and Southern traditions on the
national capital emphasized the social divisions based on
race and class. However, after the Civil War class becomes
the primary indicator of status. Understandably, the old
traditions of slavery influenced the social structure, but
class and government influence replaced the old standard of
race throughout the last half of the nineteenth century. As
the “new Washington” replaced the “old, provincial,
southern city,” Washington, D.C. residents claimed a new
status as well. They claimed a city with a national,
223
71.
Horton, “Days of Jubilee,” in Cary, Urban Odyssey,
157
cosmopolitan flair
224
The nouveaux-riche who came to the
capital employed the many African American men and women in
positions previously held by Irish women. They were
replaced with the new stereotype of servant—African
American.
However, not until 1880 are Irish servants
overwhelmingly replaced by African American. Until then,
Irish women lived-in and most African American women lived
out. The hotels, homes and public institutions in
Washington, D.C. who hired Irish women as live-in servants,
hired African American women as day laborers and those who
lived out. As the tide in Washington changed from pre-war
to post-war, living-in did not serve the Irish woman in her
search for middle-class respectability. However, living-in
did serve that function for African American women. The
transition from living-out to living-in during the
nineteenth century provided African American women similar
solutions to housing and wages that living-in provided for
Irish women when they arrived in the capital.
The breadth of Irish women’s service in Washington
extended beyond private residences. Hotels, colleges and
other public and private institutions hired Irish women as
224
Ibid.
158
domestic servants, laundresses and seamstresses. Hotel work
in Washington, D.C. was extensive considering the number of
District residents who needed this type of housing. John
Proctor Clagett, the author of Washington, Past and
Present, noted that by 1867 “Washington had more hotels in
proportion to its population than any other city in the
world.”
225
Each decade hotels cropped up to meet the needs
of the expanding capital city and to provide shelter for
congressional members and those who worked for the
government. Although a few District hotels hired African
American, native white and other immigrant women, if Irish
women were employed, others probably were not. In 1850 the
Farmer’s Hotel and Willard’s hired only Irish. The
National, United States, Union, Irving, King’s, Lang’s and
Gadsby’s Hotel hired primarily Irish.226
As one of the largest and oldest hotels in the
capital, the National Hotel occupied a prominent place in
the community. One nineteenth-century author of Washington
society recalled how “the National Hotel was the first
building in Washington, of large dimensions, for public
225
John Clagett Proctor, Washington, Past and Present,
New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1930,
783.
226
USMC, 1850.
159
accommodation, a few rods from Brown’s or the
Metropolitan…Clay died at the National, and Buchanan took
the mysterious sickness there.”227 Throughout the Civil War
the Supreme Court of the United States lived at the hotel
and, as such, the National Hotel represented prestige for
many District residents.
228
Charles Dickens, in American Notes, wrote about the
National Hotel that
whenever a servant is wanted, somebody beats on a
triangle from one stroke to seven, according to
the number of the house in which his presence is
required; and as all the servants are always
being wanted, and none of them ever come, this
enlivening engine is in full performance the
229
whole day through.
The servants who ignored Dickens’ bell summons were Irish
women. In 1850 just over half of the National Hotel
employees were Irish. Of the women who were hired, all but
two were Irish.230 This pattern continued through 1860 and
227
By the author of “The New World Compare With the
Old,” Historic Sketches of Washington, Hartford,
Connecticut: James Betts and Co., 1879, 296-297.
228
Barry Bulkley, Washington Old and New, W.F. Roberts
Co: Washington, D.C., 1913, 56-60.
229
James B. Goode. Capital Losses: A Cultural History
of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings, Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979., 168-169.
230
USMC, 1850.
160
1870. Of the forty-six women employed by the National Hotel
in 1860 thirty-six were born in Ireland. The remaining ten
were of German or United States birth. By 1870 all of the
live-in domestics hired by the hotel were Irish.231
Jourdan’s and the Western Hotel and Indian
Headquarters hired African American women instead of Irish
women in 1850 and a few hotels employed native women
instead of Irish women.232 In Georgetown and in the smaller
hotels African American women were preferred over Irish as
live-in domestics. These institutions, because of their
size and location outside of the immediate capital, had no
need to cater to the standards that hotels within the
capital observed. Hotels outside of the capital area
catered to a different clientele thus the laborers in those
establishments were different as well. Moreover, in hotels
where Irish women lived-in, African American women and
others were hired as day laborers for many jobs. However,
the servants on record and the ones seen up front by guests
in the establishment were Irish. By 1880 most of the hotels
in Washington and Georgetown hired fewer live-in servants
and more day laborers. Although single Irish women were the
231
232
USMC, 1850-1870.
USMC, 1850.
161
typical hotel servants in 1880, slowly native white and
African American women replaced them as live-in servants.233
At the Arlington, Willard, St. James, Hillman House
and the hotels run by Cooke and Tenney, the native white
women hired along with the Irish immigrants were also
Irish-- the second generation. These second-generation
women were born in Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia and Illinois.
Maggie Davis, who was
born in Illinois, had an Irish father and a mother born in
New York. Other than Maggie, all the second-generation
women hired by these hotels had an Irish mother and father.
Thus, the Irish-hiring network extended not just to the
immigrant generation but to the second generation as
well.
234
Similar to the larger hotels of the capital were
employment patterns at Georgetown College. As one of the
most prestigious institutions in the Washington area
Georgetown College offered a broad education to the area’s
elite. Latin, philosophy and the typical regimen of a
nineteenth-century education was offered to a select few
boys and men. Georgetown College and the Visitation Convent
233
234
USMC, 1850-1880.
Ibid.
162
employed sixteen women in 1850 to wash, cook and clean.
Twelve of these women were Irish. Ten were employed at
washing and sewing, one in the workhouse and dairy and the
last "employed at sewing."235 The remaining women were from
the Maryland and Virginia area with only one African
American employed among them. They served between 200 and
300 men including the faculty and students as well as the
nuns at the Visitation Convent.236 This continued in 1860
when Jane O'Farrell, Angelica O'Gannon, Catherine Sullivan
and sisters Mary and Fanny Pettit were five of the nineteen
women who cooked, cleaned and sewed for the students and
faculty of Georgetown College and Visitation Convent; only
one was not born in Ireland.237 Again, in 1870, thirty-one
of the fifty-eight female employees of Georgetown College
and Visitation Convent were Irish immigrant women and five
were second-generation Irish.238
Other service positions were found in the District and
Federal government. Two chief employers were St.
Elizabeth’s and the Columbia Institute for the Deaf and
235
USMC, 1860.
Stephen J. Ochs, Academy on the Patowmack:
Georgetown Preparatory School, 1789-1927, Rockville, MD:
Georgetown Preparatory School, 1989, 17.
237
USMC, 1860.
236
163
Dumb [later renamed Gallaudet University]. These
institutions not only provided wages but room and board for
those who worked as washerwomen, cooks, attendants to
inmates as well as other domestic-service positions.
Working as cooks and laundresses, Irish women kept the
institution’s inmates fed and clean. Mary Burke worked a
few years for St. Elizabeth’s as a laundress and cook as
did Elizabeth Campbell and Mary Scott.239 As an attendant to
the inmates of St. Elizabeth’s, Catherine Callaghan was
expected to keep “patients comfortable, well-groomed, and
clean at all times.”240 She cared for these patients before,
during and after the Civil War earning ten and twelve
dollars per month. Other duties included “correcting bad
posture, instructing and amusing them with conversation and
readings, soothing and calming them when irritated and
encouraging and cheering them when the patient was
melancholy or depressed.”241 Catherine Hussy, Eliza Maher
and Mrs. Mary Ryan also were responsible for about ten
238
Ibid. and USMC, 1870.
United States National Register, 1857-1869, New
York: Scribner and Sons, 1857-1869 and USMC, 1850 and 1860.
240
Frank Rives Millikan. “Wards of the Nation: The
Making of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, 1852-1920,” unpublished
dissertation, George Washington University, February 1990.,
62.
239
164
patients each including the violent, incontinent and
physically disabled.242
Employee turnover at St. Elizabeth’s was
extraordinary. Of the 116 Irish women who worked for St.
Elizabeth’s between 1857 and 1869 only fifteen worked for
more than one or two years. Of the fifteen who stayed with
St. Elizabeth’s longer, only three worked more than three
or four years with the institution. Of the women listed in
the 1860 manuscript census as employees for the
institution, none appear in the United States Register as
employees in 1861.
243
Because the institution provided
housing, a wage and contacts within the city for
employment, St. Elizabeth’s encouraged the movement of
Irish women into the community. Similarly, in 1870 St.
Elizabeth’s hired fifty-one women to attend, cook and clean
for the inmates. Thirty were born in Ireland and another
241
Ibid.
Ibid. These names, salaries and employment dates
come from the manuscript census and the United States
National Register, 1857-1869.
243
The Register was a government publication that
recorded the names, personal information, job title and
salary history of federal employees. It also listed similar
information for several Washington, D.C. public
institutions.
242
165
dozen had Irish names.
244
Thus, St. Elizabeth’s became one
step in the ladder for job security and social mobility in
Washington, D.C.
The Columbia Institute for the Deaf and Dumb also
hired Irish women as servants and attendants. Of the nine
female employees in 1870, eight were Irish immigrants and
the ninth was a second-generation Irish woman. Margaret
Fitzgerald found a home in the Columbia Institute for the
Deaf and Dumb where she cooked for the inmates throughout
the Civil War earning twelve and fifteen dollars per month
above her room and board.245 Other public institutions--the
Soldier’s Home, the Washington Almshouse and the Washington
Hospital--also hired Irish women. Of the six female
employees at the Soldier’s Home, five were Irish. The only
non-Irish employee was a German woman who cooked for the
veterans. Similarly, the Washington Hospital hired two
Irish women to assist with patient care. Julia Boyle and
Catherine Crawhigh worked with two other women throughout
244
USMC, 1870.
These wages come to $164.38 and 205.38 (in 2002
dollars) for twelve and fifteen dollars a month
respectively. . From CJR Inflation Calculator. Online.
Internet. Available website
http://www,cjr.org/resources/inflater.asp. Accessed
5/13/03.
245
166
1850.
246
Other occupations of Washington’s Irish women included
sewing positions where they worked as seamstresses and
tailoresses from their home. Ann Morris supported her two
young children as a dressmaker and Mary Ambrose practically
had a sewing factory in her home. Mary was a dressmaker as
were Mary Dailey and Eliza, Anna and Mary Rogan who lived
in the Ambrose home.247 Most Irish seamstresses lived in
ward four throughout the last half of the nineteenth
century. Ward four was the demographic center of the Irish
population for most of the nineteenth century as was
Georgetown and wards one and two. These three areas
contained the largest number of Irish in the national
capital. However, throughout the city Irish daughters,
sisters and sisters-in-law lived with their families and
sewed for a living. By 1870 and 1880 over half of
Washington’s Irish seamstresses lived in wards one, two and
four.248 In these geographic centers of the Irish community,
Irish women worked out of their homes and many daughters
worked as dressmakers and seamstresses from their mothers’
homes.
246
247
USMC, 1850.
USMC, 1850-1880.
167
Another factor in those who sewed were the educational
institutions where Irish girls received extensive training
in sewing and fine embroidery work. St. Rose’s Industrial
School and the many parochial schools in town where Irish
girls attended stressed the importance of this domestic
skill in their curriculum. Therefore, Irish girls who lived
at home could sew for a living and support themselves and
supplement their family’s income. This was expected of
Irish daughters to be part of the family economy. In this
way Irish girls acculturated and adapted their social
customs to those of their host nation.
The predominant businesses among Washington’s Irish
women were boarding houses and markets. There were only a
handful of Irish boarding houses in 1850 but that number
grew throughout the next thirty years. Irish women in wards
three and four had boarding houses. They ran boarding
houses alongside the larger hotels. Jane Taylor, Isabella
Walker, Susan Crawford and Jane Hyatt, all over forty years
of age, ran boarding houses primarily in the downtown
region of Washington, D.C. By 1880 twenty Irish women owned
boarding houses. These women ranged in age from twenty-nine
to seventy-six and housed anywhere from eight or nine
248
USMC, 1850-1880.
168
patrons up to fifteen or twenty in each home.
249
Additionally, many married and widowed Irish women
informally rented rooms in their homes as their
contribution to the family economy. The growth and decline
in the number of Irish boarding houses in Washington’s
wards did not correspond to the changes in the Irish female
population but rather the growth in some wards and decline
in others corresponded to the changes in Washington’s
population as a whole and the growth of the city as host to
senators, representatives and their entourages.250
All-female boarding houses often doubled as a place of
business for prostitution. Donna Siefert notes this in her
archaeological study of Washington’s red-light district.
She finds that “the brothel is a distinctive type of
household, composed of boarding women who live together in
their workplace. The brothel differs from other
boardinghouses, where boarders go out to work.”251 Although
small in number, several Irish women ran brothels through a
female boarding house and worked with other Irish
prostitutes. Dr. Ellis, a Washington physician and local
249
250
USMC, 1850-1880.
Ibid.
169
society critic, commented that these “houses of ill-fame
are numerous, and are scattered all through the city” and
few of them “are superbly furnished, and are conducted in
the most magnificent style. The women are either young, or
in the prime of life, and are frequently beautiful and
accomplished.”
252
Ellen Reynolds, a forty-five year old
Irish immigrant, owned a brothel in ward two and employed
four girls. Two girls were second-generation Irish
immigrants. Ellen owned $5,000 worth of real estate and
claimed $1,000 worth of personal property. Irish immigrants
Catherine Donovan and Ada Worthing also operated houses of
prostitution. However, by 1880 few Irish women claimed
prostitution as their occupation.253
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century,
Irish women owned and operated a variety of stores
including candy stores, clothing stores, dry goods stores,
stores with fancy goods and groceries. Most of these stores
made enough money to support Irish women and their
households. Some Irish women used their business as a
supplement to the family income, however, most Irish women
251
Donna J. Siefert, “Within Site of the White House:
The Archaeology of Working Women,” Historical Archaeology,
Vol 25, No. 4, 82-108, 83.
252
Ellis, Sights and Secrets, 458-459.
170
relied on their business as the primary means of support
for the family. Irish women predominantly owned groceries
over all other kinds of business. Sarah Kough, a thirtyyear old single woman, owned a grocery while Mary Burns
supported her two young children, Mary age ten and
Catherine age twelve, as a shopkeeper.
254
Although only Georgetown boasted of an Irish woman’s
shop in 1850, by 1860 and throughout the remainder of the
century, Irish women owned shops and groceries all over
town. In 1860 45 percent of Irish women who owned shops
operated a grocery store while that proportion rose to 84
and 87 percent in 1870 and 1880 respectively. Most of these
shops operated in ward seven of the capital. These were
small shops that serviced the surrounding Irish
neighborhoods.
255
Grocery ownership and their geographic distribution
paralleled the growth of the Irish population. Irish women
opened and operated grocery stores in their ethnic
community. As the Irish population spread throughout the
city, so did their businesses. The growth of Irish female
businesses served to solidify the ethnic community within
253
254
USMC, 1850-1880.
USMC, 1860.
171
the capital. This effort of ethnic cohesion provides an
example of what Conzen and Gerber call the “process of
ethnicization.”256 Thus, this spatial dimension to Irish
women’s identity is found in their participation within
their community in behaviors that were considered
acceptable., i.e. participation in the public economy.
Irish women who were professionals or semi-skilled
worked in many occupations. Some were clerks for the
government or local businesses; others worked as midwives,
nurses and teachers. Some worked in professions typically
reserved for men such as printing. The unique structure of
Washington’s printing industry allowed women to be a part
of that field because of their experience in the federal
government and its many printing offices. A few Irish women
worked as supervisors in their positions over other
employees or prisoners when they worked as prison matrons.
However, 90 percent of Irish women who worked in semiskilled or professional positions in Washington, D.C.
worked for the government as clerks or employees of the
Government Printing Office (GPO), Bureau of Engraving and
255
USMC, 1850-1880.
Kathleen Conzen and David A. Gerber, “The Invention
of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the USA,” Journal of
American Ethnic History, Fall 1992, Vol. 12, Issue 1, 3-39.
256
172
Printing or the Treasury Department. Moreover, in 1870 and
1880 almost 70 percent of Irish women who worked for the
federal government were single. Only a handful of Irish
women who worked for the federal government were married.257
Thus, the burgeoning federal government provided work for
single Irish women that removed them from the homes of
others and moved them from one category of labor to
another.
Irish women worked for these government departments
using the many machines involved in the printing process.
Some worked as feeders, folders or binders. They printed
government documents, made money and were part of the chain
of government service that began after the Civil War. The
growth of the GPO after the war assisted Irish women’s move
from domestic service into the semi-skilled and
professional positions offered in government service.
Stanley Pretzer, in his study of the printing industry in
Washington, D.C. notes that
between 1860 and 1880 the contours of the
printing trade in Washington were drastically
altered… the Civil War increased the demand for
information and promoted the growth of the
federal bureaucracy… The government responded to
the increasing demand for governmental work and
its rising cost by establishing its own printing
257
USMC, 1850-1880.
173
office. This office immediately dominated the
trade.258
Irish women who worked as feeders in the GPO “supplied
paper sheet-by-sheet to a printing press.”
259
The process
for feeding the paper into the printing machines was
extensive. Rollers were brought into the room and set into
the press. Ink was poured into the fountain and sheets of
paper were readied for the press. Mary Clemmer Ames, a
Washington society matron, observed the entire process. She
noted that “the young woman who is to ‘tend’ mounts to her
perch. The steam-power is applied, and the printing begins.
The maiden takes in her hand a single snowy sheet, and
spreads it on the inclined plane before her.”260 After the
pages were fed and printed, they were moved to the third
floor of the GPO where 375 women operated the machinery
that folded the printed pages.
Irish widow Lucy Russell worked on one of the eleven
folding machines on the third floor.261 She was part of “an
army of maidens, whose deft and flying fingers fold the
258
Pretzer, “Printers of Washington, D.C., 279.
Ibid., 357.
260
Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington,
Hartford, Connecticut: A.D. Worthington and Co., 1873, 530532.
259
174
sheets, and make them ready for the binder.” Lucy earned
two cents per hundred folds and in a busy month, she could
earn up to twenty-five dollars.262 Once the printed pages
were folded, they were sewn and readied for binding. Ames
noticed that there were “long rows of women chiefly young
girls” who sat at tables beside wire frames that held down
and marked the piled-up folios.
263
Government work in the capital also included those who
worked for the Treasury Department as money counters and
copyists. Irishwoman Mrs. Bernard counted the freshly
printed money.264 A typical day for her started with a
package of bundled banknotes. These “packages were placed
upon the tables in front of every alternate chair, as two
counters worked upon each package, and the day’s work was
piled up on another long table that occupied one end of the
261
USMC, 1850-1880.
Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington,
Hartford, Connecticut: A.D. Worthington and Co., 1873, 527528, “The Government Printing and Binding,” The Printers’
Circular, Vol. V, No. 2 (January 1871) 458-461, 459-461 and
Jane W. Gemmill, Notes on Washington or Six Years at the
National Capital, Washington, D.C.: Brentano Brothers,
1884, 206-207.
263
Ibid.
264
USMC, 1850-1880.
262
175
room.”
265
There were “four on a sheet, one thousand sheets
in a package” and they were separated into hundreds by long
narrow strips of white paper. Each counter would bend the
“upper right-hand corner, and, moisten her finger on the
wet sponge, count and examine the sheets.”266 After she
counted one batch of money, she would hand the money to
another counter who would reverse the corners, count and
examine the other half of the sheets, ”stacking them up in
front of her until the thousand were counted and examined.
Then their names were signed and the package removed to be
strongly tied up by the messengers."
267
Money counters
worked from nine in the morning until three in the
afternoon with a half-hour break for lunch at mid-day. By
three in the afternoon over 50,000 notes were counted. This
pace came to 9,090 notes each hour, 150 notes each minute
and two and half notes each second. Ames observed that Mrs.
Bernard and her cohorts could “count four thousand legal
tender notes in twenty minutes.”268
Irish women who worked for the federal government as
265
Martha Lemon Schneider, A Government Countess, A
Novel of Departmental Life in Washington, New York: The
Neale Publishing Company, 1905, 26-28.
266
Ibid., 32.
267
Ibid.
176
money counters often moved up the ranks in government work
as clerks or copyists. As a temporary employee for the
Treasury Department in 1865, Mrs. Ann Blake found permanent
employment with that Department, also in the Register’s
Office, Loan Office and worked there throughout the
nineteenth century. She earned $900 per year.
269
Others in
the Treasury Department worked as clerks and copyists. Mrs.
H. Sheilds and Mrs. Anne Taffe earned $900 per year as
copyists as did Jennie Devlin Reilly who copied text for
the Office of Commissioner of Customs in the Third
Auditor’s Office. She started with a salary of $720 and
eventually earned $900 per year. Mary F. McDermott worked
as a clerk in the Post-Office Department in the Dead-Letter
Office and Mrs. Marian Goodall worked as a copyist in the
Quartermaster General’s Office for almost twenty years
after the Civil War. Mrs. Katherine [GB] Ensworth worked
also as a copyist and clerk but for the Internal Revenue
Bureau of the Treasury Department. She began with a salary
of $600 per year and earned $900 per year at the end of her
268
Ames, Ten Years in Washington, 327-328.
United States National Register, 1865-1879, New
York: Scribner and Sons, 1866-1880.
269
177
tenure with the Department.
270
School teaching, outside of religious service, was a
very small part of Irish women’s work in Washington, D.C.
Only 10 percent of Irish professional women worked teaching
in an elementary school or giving music lessons. Although
teaching was a socially acceptable occupation for single
women, public school teaching was reserved for the native
white population of women. Throughout Georgetown and
Washington, D.C. Irish women as public school teachers were
rare. Although Elizabeth N. Attridge taught public school
but she was in the minority where her fellow Irish sisters
were concerned.271 The teaching that Irish women did in the
capital was primarily the purview of nuns with gender
divisions circumscribing the education of girls by nuns and
the education of boys by priests. This left little room for
Irish women to choose teaching as their primary occupation
in the District.
Throughout the nineteenth century Irish women who
served Washington, D.C. in one of the many religious
270
A $600 salary becomes $12,500 in 2002 dollars; a
$720 annual salary becomes $15,000 in 2002 dollars and a
$900 per year salary becomes $18,750 in 2002 dollars. From
CJR Inflation Calculator. Online. Internet. Available
website http://www,cjr.org/resources/inflater.asp. Accessed
5/13/03.
178
communities supervised orphans, taught children and ran
hospitals. Primarily living in Georgetown at mid-century,
Irish nuns lived and worked among the Washington community.
The Sisters of the Visitation, Sisters of the Good
Shepherd, Sisters of Charity, Little Sisters of the Poor,
Sisters of the Holy Cross, Sister of Notre Dame and the
Sisters of Mercy ran orphanages, hospitals and teaching
institutions in the city. In the last half of the
nineteenth century Irish and Irish-American women comprised
forty percent of all female religious servants in
Washington, D.C272. Whether teaching, orphan care or
hospital work, these Irish Sisters watched over the
Catholic community of Washington, D.C.
At mid-century the Visitation Convent in Georgetown
provided a benevolent school for poor children and a
boarding school for those who could afford it. The
benevolent school served about 150 students at mid-century
and about 100 by the late 1880s. Over half of the nuns were
Irish immigrants.273 Also, about nine Irish nuns taught
girls at the Holy Cross Academy in the northwest. The
Academy, located at 1312 Massachusetts Avenue, northwest,
271
272
USMC, 1850.
USMC, 1850-1880.
179
was a private school run by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
After the Civil War when many of the military hospitals
were closed, Irish nuns returned to teaching. Sisters of
Mercy Lucy Duffy and M. Agnes both taught at the parochial
school associated with St. Aloysius Catholic Church.274
Several asylums were organized to care for orphaned
children and children of the poor. The Sisters of Charity
and Sisters of the Holy Cross staffed St. Vincent’s Orphan
Asylum, St. Ann’s Infant Asylum and St. Joseph’s Male
Orphan Asylum. At St. Vincent’s, Irish nuns Sister
Frederica and Sister Remegius cared for children alongside
three other nuns from Maryland and New Hampshire in 1850.
275
The Irish nuns that cared for Irish girls outnumbered all
other nationality groups in the Asylum in 1860. Caring for
children from their own country, Sisters Doyle, Martin,
Murphy and Kellaher, to name a few, worked daily to assure
the education of young girls in St. Vincent’s. Sister
Catherine O'Keefe was responsible for the education of
Abigail Driscol, Jane Kelly, Margaret McMahon and many
273
274
275
USMC, 1850-1880.
USMC, 1850-1880.
USMC, 1850.
180
other Irish girls who found refuge in St. Vincent’s.
276
Several Irish nuns also cared for infants at St. Ann’s
Infant Asylum. Sisters of Charity Philomena Donahue, Rose
Keany and Agnes Kelihan lived and worked at St. Ann’s on
the corner of K and Pennsylvania. In 1882 the nuns cared
for sixty infants. Other Irish nuns worked at St. Joseph’s
at 14th and H streets, northwest. There the nuns taught and
cared for approximately 100 orphans and seventy day
scholars from the late 1860s through the 1880s.277
Rising to the emergency needs of the Civil War, many
nuns organized, established and ran hospitals throughout
Washington, D.C. The Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St.
Joseph, Sisters of the Holy Cross and the Sisters of
Charity ministered to soldiers and citizens alike in
military hospitals throughout the Washington region.
278
Early in the War, several Irish Sisters of the Holy Cross
worked to open St. Aloysius Hospital that converted the
church into a military hospital. For a year Irish Sisters
M. Theodore (Kearns), M. Rose (McDermott) and M. Alice
276
USMC, 1860.
The Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's
Directory, Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, Jr., 1849-1889.
278
George Worthing Adams, Doctors in Blue, The Medical
History of the Union Army in the Civil War, NewYork: Henry
Schuman, 1952, 184.
277
181
(Flannery) served at the hospital until it closed October
1863.279
Throughout the Civil War the Sisters of Mercy and
Sisters of Charity ran the Washington Infirmary (later
renamed the Douglas Military Hospital). As the Sisters of
Mercy were founded in Ireland, many of the nuns who served
as nurses in the Washington Infirmary/Douglas Hospital were
Irish. Under the watchful eye of Irishwoman Sister M.
Collette O'Connor, the nuns cared for the wounded and
injured soldiers as well as impoverished citizens who could
not pay for care.
280
The Douglas Military Hospital and the
Stanton Hospital (later Providence Hospital) relied on
Irish nuns for their operation and administration. At the
Douglas Military Hospital Sister M. Isidore, who was born
in Dublin and immigrated to Brooklyn when she was twelve,
worked in the Infirmary.281 Others working in the Douglas
Military Hospital were Irish Sisters M. Magdalen Healy and
M. Lucy Duffy who came to the United States as a child and
279
Our Mother House: Centenary Chronicles of the
Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana: Saint
Mary's of the Immaculate Conception, 1941, 1-3.
280
Kathleen Healy, R.S.M., Sisters of Mercy,
Spirituality in America, 1843-1900, New York: Paulist
Press, 1992, 78-79.
182
was raised in Montgomery County, Maryland.
282
Providence Hospital, still operating in Washington,
D.C. today, also began in response to Civil War needs.
Initially opened as the Stanton Hospital, four nuns from
the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh arrived to take over the
operation of the hospital. Shortly thereafter, four more
nuns arrived to assist with the hospital. George Barton, in
his history of nuns who served in the Civil War, observed
that “the Sisters had 450 wounded men under their care in
the Stanton Hospital at one time, and after the second
battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, a number of
Confederate wounded were laid side by side with those whom
they had wounded.”283 Almost all of the nuns at the
Stanton/Providence Hospital were Irish or second-generation
Irish. These women formed the core of what later became
Providence Hospital. Some of them stayed to run the
Hospital in later years; others stayed long enough to serve
during the war and see the hospital opened for community
281
Sister Mary Loretto Costello, The Sisters of Mercy
of Maryland, 1855-1930, St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book
Co., 1931, 4-6.
282
Ibid.
283
George Barton, Angels of the Battlefield, A History
of the Labors of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil
War, Philadelphia: The Catholic Art Publishing Company,
1897, 201-203.
183
services. The first four administrators of Providence
Hospital were Irish: Sister M. Sarah Carroll served from
1861-1865; Sister Loretto O'Reilly served from 1865-1869;
Sister Agnes McDonald served from 1869-1870; and, Sister
Beatrice Duffy served from 1870-1899.284
At mid-century Irish women worked primarily in service
positions. As live-in domestics they worked in local
hotels, public institutions and private homes. As the
population of Irish women shifted to more single women than
married women, the occupations of Irish women changed.
Service positions outnumbered all other occupations for
Irish women in 1860. Proportionately more Irish women owned
their own business or boarding houses by 1860 and more also
sewed from their home or worked as a semi-professional in
the community. However, by 1870 service positions began to
lose their prominence among Irish women and more of them
worked from their homes or did not formally work for a wage
and kept house similar to their middle-class counterparts.
Throughout the United States Irish women continued to work
as servants, even in the North Atlantic region. Of Irish
284
Samuel Zola, MD, John A. Long, MD, Phillip A.
Caulfield, MD, Providence Centennial Book, 1861-1961,
Washington, D.C.: Providence Hospital, 1961 and USMC, 18501880.
184
servants throughout the nation, over 80 percent worked as
servants in the North Atlantic in 1890.285 However, only a
small proportion of those lived in Washington, D.C. The
unique structure of the community provided service jobs for
these immigrant women upon their arrival; however, they
opted out of service and into marriage as the century
progressed.
Thus, throughout the last half of the nineteenth
century Irish women owned shops, worked as domestic
servants and served others. Irish immigrant women in
Washington, D.C. worked as servants, chambermaids,
boarding-house keepers and grocers. Teaching was only a
minor part of Irish women’s employment in the capital and
the typical factory experience of immigrant classes was
completed with the advent of government service after the
Civil War. This southern community welcomed Irish women
into the ranks of employment where they served the
Washington, D.C. community as well as their own.
285
526-527.
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 1890, Part III,
185
CHAPTER 5: TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS: IRISH WOMEN’S MORBIDITY
AND MORTALITY IN THE CAPITAL CITY, 1850-1890
Katherine could not believe it. She could not
recollect ever having been sick a day in her life. Her
health had always been good. About three years ago she
noticed a lump in her right breast but it was not painful
so it was soon forgotten. However, when her husband
accidentally bumped her breast she noticed a severe pain
but it, too, passed. A few weeks after her clumsy husband
bumped her, she noticed a small lump, about the size of a
walnut, in the same place as the last one when she weaned
her child three years ago. The lump continued to grow and
became painful. Katherine went to the new hospital for
women and saw a doctor who noticed that her right breast
was enlarged and the entire gland around her breast
appeared to be a mass of disease. On August 15, 1866
Katherine’s right breast was removed with much of the
surrounding tissue. She was released from the Columbia
186
Hospital for Women less than a month after her surgery and
almost four years later Katherine was still cancer free.286
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century,
Katherine’s health and welfare, as well as the health and
welfare of her fellow Irish women in Washington, D.C.,
improved. In the early years ill health and the vagaries of
immigrant life played a large role in the health and
welfare of the District’s Irish women. But, as the end of
the century neared, better living conditions, more
consistent employment and an increasing rise in their
standard of living helped maintain healthy Irish families.
The illnesses these immigrants suffered upon arrival to the
United States were typical of newcomers who lived in poorer
neighborhoods that were overcrowded and often unsanitary.
Immigrant illnesses upon arrival were also typical of
America’s working classes in that the physical demands of
their labor often led to illness or physical deterioration.
Judith Leavitt and Ronald Numbers note that diet, housing
and personal hygiene contributed to the general health of
286
J. Harry Thompson, A.M., M.D., Report of the
Columbia Hospital for Women, Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1873, 166.
187
immigrant populations.
287
As such, these indicators of
immigrant health become markers of immigrant mobility. Much
like changes in occupation and neighborhood that provide
evidence of upward or downward social mobility, immigrant
health also provides evidence of this movement.
In America illness and disease were associated often
with class in America. Moreover, the newest immigrants
faced illness and disease in different proportions from
their native counterparts. Respiratory and digestive
illnesses plagued the working and immigrant classes. The
types of labor they performed, the extended hours they
labored and the outdoor conditions in which most of them
worked contributed to the large proportion of respiratory
illnesses of the working classes. Similarly, the living and
working conditions of the immigrant and poorer classes
contributed to the large proportion of digestive illnesses
among them. The unsanitary and overcrowded conditions of
their neighborhoods added to the potential for bacterial
diseases. However, cancer, mental illness,
obstetric/gynecologic illnesses and the detrimental affects
287
Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers,
Editors, Sickness and Health in America, Readings in the
History of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978, 10.
188
of aging shaped the lives of immigrant and native-born
alike.
In Washington, D.C. ill health and disease affected
women of all classes, races and ethnicities; however,
illness and death primarily affected those unaccustomed to
the region. Women born outside of the Washington, D.C. area
suffered disease and death at greater rates than those born
within the Washington, D.C. area. Even the native-born
population from outside of the region died more often than
those born within the region. The national capital was not
a healthy place to live in the nineteenth century.
Virtually a city created out of a swamp, the hot and humid
summers and freezing winters of the national capital
contributed to the mortality rates of all peoples in the
region and specifically affected immigrants and newcomers
unaccustomed to the drastic conditions of their new home.
However, mortality rates for all populations improved
throughout the last half of the nineteenth-century and
those in the District lived longer and healthier lives than
their counterparts earlier in the century. Expanded medical
services and public health mechanisms and improved living
conditions contributed to the declining mortality rate.
189
Medical care for illness and disease in the United
States did not develop fully until after the Civil War. In
the first half of the nineteenth century the primary mode
for medical care consisted of private physicians visiting
patients in their home or seeing patients on a fee-forservice basis. However, for the indigent, immigrant and
working classes, publicly supported physicians,
dispensaries and government institutions provided much of
their medical care. Unfortunately, the mechanisms for the
distribution of this care were scarce and relied on secular
and church officials to target those for service. Thus,
medical care was doled on a scale of civic morality which
meant many immigrant and working-class women did not
receive medical care due to their religion or traditions.
As part of immigrant care, hospitals offered
outpatient services in dispensaries that provided medical
care and medicine for the working-class poor. Charles
Rosenberg notes that by the 1840s immigrants “soon
constituted a disproportionate part of the dispensary’s
clientele.”288 Nineteenth-century physicians often commented
on the Irish as part of this immigrant class of patients.
In the New York City Dispensary, 68 percent of patients
190
served in 1853 were Irish. In Philadelphia, just four years
later, “Irish patients doubled that of the native born.”289
Rosenberg contends that these immigrants were targeted as
the ones who brought illness and disease to American
shores. In addition to their outsider status, Rosenberg
finds that “the unfamiliar attitudes and habits” of
immigrants “often added to their troublesomeness; they
ignored hygienic advice and often defied the physician’s
simplest requests.”
290
Moreover, the Irish were refused
service in some American hospitals. At Massachusetts
General the Irish were largely excluded from the hospital’s
services in the nineteenth century.
291
In Washington, D.C. medical care for all classes
consisted of private physicians, public physicians in local
hospitals, public dispensaries and military hospitals.
Throughout the Civil War private and military hospitals
sprang up overnight to care for the sick and injured
soldiers flooding into the city. However, a few of the
288
Ibid., 157-171.
Ibid.
290
Ibid.
291
Morris J. Vogel, “The Transformation of
American Hospital, 1850-1920,” 105-116 in Susan
David Rosner, Health Care in America, Essays in
History, Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
289
the
Reverby and
Social
1979, 107.
191
military hospitals cared for Washington’s civilians who
were sick and injured. Among these civilians were Irish
women who lived in the city and used the medical services
of the military hospitals when care from local hospitals
was not available. District hospitals that provided care
for Irish women included the Washington Infirmary, the
Douglas Military Hospital, Columbia Hospital for Women,
Providence Hospital, the Freedmen’s Bureau Hospital, the
United States Naval Hospital and the Government Hospital
for the Insane (hereafter referred to as St. Elizabeth’s).
The Washington Infirmary, a city hospital for the
poor, housed about a dozen Irish women in 1860.292 These
were poor women who had no visible means of support and
were cared for by the Infirmary. Primarily servants, these
women worked and lived in a transient environment. Leaving
one household to work in another, or being fired from one
household and searching for employment and housing in
another, left some Irish women with no home or assistance
when they became ill. Thus, the staff of the Washington
Infirmary cared for them. Ellen Dacy and Mary Clepenghan
stayed in the Infirmary until they were well.293 As
292
293
USMC, 1860.
Ibid.
192
servants, their access to healthcare depended primarily on
government-sponsored care or their employer’s willingness
to pay for that care. Others finding medical aid at the
Infirmary were Irish prostitutes. Jenny Gray, a twentyyear-old prostitute, received medical care from the
Infirmary in 1860.
294
However, by 1880, Catherine Crawhigh
and Julia Boyle, unemployed servants in their thirties,
were the only female Irish patients in the Washington
Infirmary. Other institutions in the city that served the
middle and upper classes of Washington society fulfilled
Irish women's needs for medical services.295
However, throughout the Civil War military hospitals
provided much of the medical services for Washington’s
immigrant community. Early in the Civil War, the Douglas
Military Hospital was one of the makeshift hospitals that
attended to the many soldiers serving in the Union Army.
Just like the emergency rooms of public hospitals today,
the Douglas Military Hospital cared for the indigent and
transient. The Douglas Military Hospital began under the
direction of the Sisters of Mercy. With the administration
of a military medical staff, the Sisters treated those who
294
295
Ibid.
USMC, 1850.
193
entered the Douglas Military Hospital. The Hospital
serviced approximately forty to sixty patients per month
but the patient-load sharply increased with the needs of
the war in the capital city.296
Between March of 1862 and February of 1864 the Douglas
Military Hospital served as a facility for Irish women’s
medical care. Throughout these years the Douglas Military
Hospital treated 231 Irish women.297 With the Sisters of
Mercy working as nurses at the Hospital, Irish women found
a familiar Catholic face in the facility. At the Hospital
they treated everything from tonsillitis to dysentery while
delivering babies and treating the children of Irish women
admitted to the hospital. The hospital delivered thirteen
Irish babies and transferred a small number of Irish women
to St. Elizabeth’s, Providence Hospital and the Washington
Almshouse throughout the two years the Hospital served nonmilitary clients. These were patients the Hospital could no
longer care for or who were sent to other institutions that
296
“Charitable and Reformatory Institutions in the
District of Columbia,” 69th Congress, 2d Session, Senate
Doc No. 207, February 14, 1927.
297
Field Hospital Registers, List of Government
Civilians and Non Resident Paupers, Douglas Military
Hospital, Vol. #311, March 1862-Feb 1864, Record Group 94,
Entry 544, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
194
serviced indigent needs.
298
Irish women were treated often for sexually
transmitted diseases at the Douglas Military Hospital.
Syphilis and gonorrhea were the primary illnesses of Irish
patients with sexually transmitted diseases. Given the
large number of Irish prostitutes who followed the soldiers
camped in and around the city, this was not surprising.
Private hospitals and some of the public hospitals did not
treat women who lived such a life. Shunned and isolated to
certain districts of the city, medical care for Irish
prostitutes was relegated to the army because this was the
population the prostitutes served. The increase of
prostitutes in the city, and the infamous General Hooker’s
Division, shared its proportion of Irish women. These
women, prostitutes Maggie Moran and Lizzie Smith among
them, looked to the Douglas Military Hospital to provide
them with medical services.299
298
299
Ibid.
Ibid.
195
Figure 15: Irish Women Treated at the Douglas Military Hospital by Illness, Washington, D.C.,
1862-1864
Injuries/Accidents
4%
Debility
14%
Nervous System
3%
Cancer
1%
Heart Disease
2%
Alcohol-Related
2%
Contagious Diseases
24%
Digestive Complaints
17%
Breathing Related
2%
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
16%
Female Related
15%
Source: Field Hospital Registers, List of Government Civilians and Non Resident Paupers,
Douglas Military Hospital, Vol. #311, March 1862-Feb 1864, Record Group 94, Entry 544,
National Archives, Washington, D.C.
However, the mortality rates for sexually transmitted
diseases contradict the picture created by the Douglas
Military Hospital records. Although 16 percent of Irish
women treated at the Hospital were diagnosed with sexually
transmitted diseases, Irish women died very little from
196
those illnesses. African American and native-born women
died at a much higher rate from syphilis and gonorrhea than
did Irish women. By 1880 African American women comprised
33 percent of the female population of Washington, D.C. but
62 percent of deaths from sexually transmitted diseases
between 1874-1883. Less than 1 percent of Irish and other
foreign-born women died of syphilis or gonorrhea in
Washington, D.C. for the same time period.300 Thus, the
chastity so stereotypical of Irish women in their homeland
followed them to America.
This aspect of cultural persistence benefited the
health of Irish immigrant women. In America, Irish women
rarely participated in sexually deviant behaviors.
Throughout the United States, Irish women “retained much of
the sexual behavior they had exhibited in the homeland.”
301
Diner notes that “as queen of the kitchen, Bridget might
have been dirty and disorganized, ignorant and tempestuous,
slightly dishonest and strikingly inebriated, but she was
always chaste.”302 The chastity of Irish women and their
lack of participation in sexually deviant behavior account
300
"Deaths from Principal Diseases by Age, Sex, Color
and Nativity,” Health Officer Annual Reports, 1874-1883,
Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1884.
301
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 114.
197
for their virtual absence in death from sexually
transmitted diseases.
Other illnesses treated by the Douglas Military
Hospital followed the typical fare of present-day urgent
and emergency care centers. Stomach-related illnesses,
fevers, menstrual-related complaints, pregnancy and a
general ailing health comprised the bulk of Irish women’s
care at this facility. However, some women came seeking
relief from breathing-related illnesses. Although
respiratory illnesses were part of the capital climate, Ann
Daly notes that diagnoses for respiratory illnesses
affected women more than men. As the weaker sex, “pulmonary
tuberculosis, affecting the lungs, was in many ways revered
as an ethereal illness becoming to delicate and sensitive
females.”303 Fifty-year old Irishwoman Ann McGuire suffered
with tuberculosis for three months before she died in her
home at 216 22nd Street, northwest.304 Moreover, a sampling
of the death certificates and the annual reports of
Washington’s Health Officer note that respiratory-related
illnesses were the primary cause of death for Irish women.
302
Ibid., 117.
Ann Dally, Women Under the Knife, A History of
Surgery, New York: Routledge, 1992, 97.
303
198
Respiratory-related illnesses include pneumonia,
tuberculosis and asthma.
Compared to other women in Washington, D.C.—both
native and other foreign-born--Irish women died from
tuberculosis at a much greater rate. Domestic service
positions in hotels, hospitals and other public facilities,
teaching and religious service placed Irish women in direct
contact with large numbers of people. This contact
contributed to the vast proportion of Irish women who
contracted tuberculosis. Another factor in Irish women
contracting tuberculosis was their predilection toward
alcoholism. The effects of chronic alcohol addiction on
Irish women’s bodies left them weakened and susceptible to
tuberculosis.305 Between July of 1859 and June of 1860
forty-two Irish women died. Of those whose occupations were
listed, all worked in a domestic capacity as a servant or
laundress and they died primarily of tuberculosis.
Catherine O'Leary, a twenty-six year old nun, also died of
tuberculosis. She suffered with her condition for four
months before her death in February of 1860.306 Her
304
“Deaths from Principal Diseases by Age,” and USMC,
Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880.
305
USMC, Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880.
306
USMC, Mortality Schedules, 1860.
199
consistent contact with the public contributed to her
contracting tuberculosis.
In 1870 forty-three Irish women died.307 Again,
tuberculosis and respiratory-related illnesses were the
primary agents of death for Irish women in the capital.
Between July of 1869 and June of 1870, 47 percent of Irish
female deaths were attributed to respiratory-related
illnesses. These included tuberculosis, asthma and
inflammation of the lungs. Mary Barret died in February of
1870.
308
She was forty-eight and died of tuberculosis.
Although less than 6 percent of the population by 1870,
Irish women like Mary Barret comprised over 8 percent of
those who died from tuberculosis and other respiratory
illnesses.309 Only African American women suffered at a
greater rate than did the Irish. The threshold of poverty
and neglect for African American women was even lower than
it was for Irish women in the District.
Dysentery also contributed to the mortality of Irish
women in the Douglas Military Hospital. Mrs. White survived
two days in the hospital before she succumbed to dysentery
and Mrs. Tait spent her last two weeks in the Hospital with
307
308
USMC, Mortality Schedules, 1870.
Ibid.
200
dysentery before dying of diphtheria.
310
By the time these
women reached the hospital their stamina was weakened and
the condition of their illnesses had progressed to a point
of no return. Again, the Irish died at a greater rate than
their population, however, all populations of women were
susceptible to dysentery. The sanitation of Washington,
D.C. was of great concern to public officials as women from
all groups suffered from stomach-related illnesses. Only
native white women died at a lesser rate than all other
groups of women. Their neighborhoods and access to homes
outside of the city helped to prevent their exposure and
susceptibility to the diseases so rampant in the District
throughout the Civil War.
309
USMC, Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880.
Field Hospital Registers, Douglas Military
Hospital.
310
201
Figure 16: Primary Cause of Death for Women in Washington, D.C., 1874-1883 by Nativity
500
450
Washington, D.C.
400
U.S. Birt h Excluding Washingt on, D.C.
Ireland
350
Ot her Foreign Birth
300
African American Born in Washington, D.C.
African American Born Out side of Washingt on, D.C.
250
200
150
100
50
0
Digestive
Illnesses
Fevers, Typhoid
and Malarial
Sexually
Transmitted
Diseases
Heart Diseases Female-Related
Illnesses
Suicide and
Insanity
Nervous
System, Brain
Related
Respiratory
Related
Alcohol Related
Source: “Deaths from Principal Diseases by Age, Sex, Color and Nativity,” Health Officer
Annual Reports, 1874-1883, Government Printing Office: Washington, D.C., 1884.
Another factor of treatment at the Douglas Military
Hospital was alcohol-related illnesses. Many Irish women in
the District were arrested for crimes related to
drunkenness and hospitalized for alcoholism. Those that
slipped through the cracks often ended up in military
hospitals. These women came to the hospital drunk while
others came to the hospital poisoned from the amount of
alcohol ingested. Entering the Douglas Military Hospital to
dry out were Mary Wilson and Margaret Dodd. Mary was
202
“discharged at three hours, soon as able to walk” and
Margaret came to the Hospital on October 31 “half-drunk”
and left the hospital a few days later.311 These women were
ill, but not to the point that they required lengthy
hospitalization. Although a few women did stay for a period
of months, most were out within a few days to a few weeks.
After receiving medication and care for their illnesses,
they reentered Washington society and returned to their
places.
Some Irish women in the Douglas Military Hospital died
from alcohol-related illnesses. Mary Blake entered the
Douglas Military Hospital on August 3, 1863 and was
pronounced dead one week later of alcohol poisoning.
312
Although only 5 percent of the female population in the
District in 1880, Irish women died at a rate of 28 percent
of the female population between 1874 and 1883 from alcohol
poisoning. Other non-residents, those of United States’
nativity born outside of Washington, D.C., comprised 25
percent of alcohol-related deaths. Other foreign-born women
and African American women rarely died of alcohol-related
illnesses in Washington, D.C. throughout the nineteenth
311
312
Ibid.
Ibid.
203
century.
313
Alcoholism and the consequent illnesses from
this disease affected the ill-adjusted newcomer from
Ireland more often than other immigrant groups. The deviant
behavior that accompanied Irish women to America was
excessive drinking and the consequences of that behavior
are reflected in their mortality rates from alcoholism.
Throughout the Civil War Irish women also required
medical attention because of the military.
Accidents and
injuries occurred as Irish women worked for the military in
munitions factories. This happened for a substantial number
of Irish women when the Washington Arsenal blew up in 1864
and killed them while they were working. The Superintendent
of the munitions factory at the Washington Arsenal left
fireworks to dry out in the sun. Unfortunately, this was
right next to the powder works. The intense heat of the
Washington summer ignited a rocket and it flew through an
open window directly into a warehouse where 108 women were
making rifle cartridges. Many of these women were Irish.
The deaths and injuries from this accident were numerous. A
few days later the women were buried on Congressional Hill
as President Lincoln led the ceremony.314
313
314
“Deaths from Principal Diseases by Age.”
Goode, Capital Losses, 297-298.
204
However, death from accidents was only a small part of
Irish women’s lives in the capital. Mary Curtin’s fall from
a second-story window fractured her thigh and caused
internal injuries that eventually killed the forty-six year
old housewife. After two days of suffering from her
injuries, Mary died on June 14, 1885. Other injury-related
deaths involved burns. Bridget McDonough, Mary Walsh and
Elizabeth Brady were killed from burns they received and
infections from the burns. Mary Walsh worked in the
Treasury Department. She was single and had lived in the
District for seventeen years with her widowed mother,
brother and sister. Mary was the primary source of income
for the family as her younger brother was in school and her
mother and sister did not work outside of their home. She
died on July 2, 1875 from an infection that set in after
she was burned at work.315
Two military hospitals that served Irish women after
the Civil War were the United States Naval Hospital and the
Freedmen’s Bureau Hospital. In 1880 Ellen Daley and Annie
Murphy found refuge and assistance for their medical needs
at the Naval Hospital. Ellen was born in Ireland and worked
as a cook; Annie was a second-generation Irish immigrant
315
USMC, Mortality Schedules, 1880.
205
born in the capital and worked as a laundress. Only twenty
and twenty-one, these women were cared for by the Naval
Hospital in southeast Washington, D.C.316 The transient
nature of their employment contributed to their need for
public aid.
Services provided by the Freedmen’s Bureau assisted
Irish women as well as African Americans. Mary Patterson
and her son spent some time at the hospital while Mary
recuperated from childbirth. Mary was an Irish widow and
homeless. She and her son John found refuge in the
Freedmen’s Hospital and are examples of the vulnerability
of poor women in general, and Irish women in particular, in
nineteenth-century urban centers.
317
As the century
progressed fewer Irish women sought the services of
Washington’s hospitals for the poor and found service
elsewhere in hospitals appropriate to up and coming Irish
Catholic girls.
The Columbia Hospital for Women, another mechanism for
immigrant health in Washington, D.C., treated many women at
the behest of the institution’s generosity. In the first
316
USMC, 1880.
Ibid. Mary Patterson was thirty-five, a widow born
in Ireland. She was maimed and unemployed. Both her parents
317
206
seven years of operation more Irish women received care
from the hospital than all other non-native patients
combined. Given that Irish women were the largest nonnative female population in the city, this is not
surprising. However, Columbia Hospital sought to relieve a
burden that plagued the community. With large numbers of
women coming to the city
in search of relatives and friends, or for
information from the departments, Washington
medical facilities were stretched to capacity.
The Board of Directors concluded that anxiety and
fatigue, as a natural consequence, caused
suffering and disease and hundreds of women,
prostrated by sickness, and without means, were
thrown upon the charities of the residents of
Washington...The absolute want of a hospital
exclusively for women was apparent.318
This purpose was served by Columbia Hospital for Women and
Lying-in Asylum that cared for many women in Washington,
D.C.
Irish women at Columbia Hospital sought treatment for
a variety of female ailments. From delivering babies to
surgery for breast cancer, Irish women found medical care
at the hospital. Mary Donohoo delivered her son Charles in
May of 1875 and stayed to recuperate from the delivery.
were born in Ireland. Son John was under one year of age
and born in Maryland.
207
Mary was a second-generation Irish immigrant married to a
Washingtonian.319 Another Irish patient was a forty-three
year old mother of eight who had breast cancer. Her medical
history showed no miscarriages, she nursed all her children
and “enjoyed good health until within the last two of three
months.”
320
The patient’s mother was also in “perfect
health” and no family member had cancer. The woman
complained of pain in her breast and under her right
shoulder that showed a number of tumors. A small tumor was
discovered about three years prior to this visit, but the
new tumors, in size and number, caused pain. After
examining the patient, the doctor concluded that her entire
breast was a “mass of intensely hard nodules.”321
On March 15, 1867 the Irishwoman’s breast was removed
along with the affected tissues surrounding it. Eight days
later the stitches were removed and she was discharged.
Unfortunately, the following May she was admitted again
with more “hard nodules” and two cancerous masses
surrounding the once removed tissues. On May 28 that same
318
Thompson, Columbia Hospital, 3.
USMC, 1880.
320
Minutes of Consulting Board, 1876-1891, Columbia
Hospital for Women, President’s Office, Columbia Hospital
for Women, Washington, D.C.
319
208
year she died. Upon examining the body, the doctors
discovered cancerous lungs, an atrophied kidney and a
peritoneum covered with “small hard masses” believed to be
cancerous. The doctor’s records revealed a woman of
supposed good health with no family history of breast
cancer who succumbed to a “rapidly fatal, acute, malignant
disease“ that “developed all over the system in a few
months.”322 This death was not unusual. When Irish women
died of cancer in the last half of the nineteenth century,
they did so most often of breast and uterine cancer.323
321
Ibid.
Thompson, Columbia Hospital, 168-169.
323
“Deaths from Cancers of White Female Population
Only, September 1, 1874 to June 30, 1881”, Health Officer
Annual Report, 1882, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1882, 208.
322
209
Figure 17: Cancer Deaths of Women by Nativity and Type in Washington, D.C., 1874-1890
180
160
Washington, D.C.
140
U.S. excluding Washington, D.C.
Ireland
120
Other Foreign Born
African American born in Washington, D.C.
100
US African American excluding Washington, D.C.
80
60
40
20
0
Breast
Uterus
Ovary
Stomach
Liver
Face, Head, Mouth
and its Contents
All Others
Source: Health Office Annual Reports, 1874-1890, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1893.
However, Irish women died from cancer at a lower rate
than their other foreign-born sisters and the nativeborn.324 The disparity in mortality between native and
foreign-born is due partially to diagnoses and partially to
longevity. The native-born population lived longer than did
the foreign-born. Their extended life span contributed to
the differences in diagnoses between the groups. Irish
324
Ibid.
210
women died at younger ages and therefore did not live long
enough to contract cancer or have it diagnosed by a
physician.
The medical records of the Columbia Hospital for Women
are filled with accounts of Irish women’s devastated
health, the effects of frequent pregnancies and births and
overwork. Most of the obstetric/gynecologic deaths were due
to complications involving childbirth. Mrs. Mary Shea was
one such woman. She was born in County Clarke, Ireland and
was the thirty-five year old wife of a laborer. She lived
in the capital for fifteen years but died on August 17,
1874 after she became septicemic from a miscarried baby.
Mary was unaware that the baby had died in-utero and her
infection began a couple days before her death. The
doctor’s notes upon cause of death showed that medical aid
was “called in too late to render necessary assistance.”
She died in her home at 125 H Street, southeast.325
Compared to other groups of women in the District the
Irish suffered from obstetric/gynecologic illnesses and
death from those illnesses far less than their counterparts
in the city. African American women died from
325
Death Certificates, Box #35, D.C., District of
Columbia Archives, Washington, D.C.
211
obstetric/gynecologic illnesses far more than all other
groups of women in the capital. Poverty and access to
health care predicated the death rates for African American
women. However, poor diet and complicated births also
predicated death rates for many women. Due to their diets
and complicated births, some Irish women suffered from
visico-vaginal fistulas. Fistulas developed wherever the
baby’s head pressed too long against the soft tissues of
the vagina during delivery. Difficult deliveries often
occurred in foreign and working-class women due to diets
that lacked Vitamin D and their inadequate exposure to
sunlight for the absorption of vitamin D. The lack of
vitamin D often caused rickets deforming and flattening
“the pelvis, making the passage of the baby’s head
difficult or impossible.”326
For Irish women whose diets were insufficient in
Vitamin D, and who birthed babies at home, these types of
326
Daly, Women Under the Knife, 22-23. The National
Institutes of Health notes that “exposure to sunlight is an
important source of vitamin D. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from
sunlight trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin (7,8).
Season, latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, and
sunscreens affect UV ray exposure (8). For example, in
Boston the average amount of sunlight is insufficient to
produce significant vitamin D synthesis in the skin from
November through February.”
http://www.cc.nih.gov/ccc/supplements/vitd.html#sun.
212
fistulas were common. These fistulas were caused typically
by a childbirth where the head of the baby became wedged in
the soft tissues and was not
“moved onwards by the
mother’s exertions in labor.” If the baby’s head pressed
“too long on the soft tissues, the blood supply to those
tissues" was cut off and gangrene developed.
327
The tissue
that eventually died from a lack of oxygen sloughed off.
This left a hole in the vaginal area that led to continual
and permanent incontinence.328
Visico-vaginal fistulas were serious injuries for
nineteenth-century women. As such, surgery became the
primary cure. Daly notes that with the “advent of ether and
chloroform as anesthetics, surgical solutions to female
problems became quite popular. But many conditions from
which women suffered could be alleviated only by
surgery.”329 Margaret Kearney was treated for dropsy
(congestive heart failure; edema) and a general exhaustion
previous to a surgery for a visico-vaginal fistula at
Columbia Hospital. However, on August 28, 1880 Margaret
died. The forty-five year old housekeeper had suffered for
327
328
329
Ibid., 22-23.
Ibid.
Ibid., 142.
213
over six months with the fistula and eventually died from
the consequences of the surgery.330 Many times the cure
contributed to mortality as much as the disease.
Another illness typical of immigrant communities was
herpes of the cornea. A thirteen-year old Irish girl was
diagnosed with herpes of the cornea at Columbia Hospital.
331
She was treated for inflammation from the illness that
could cause a scarring of her cornea. The symptoms included
pain, red eye, decreased or blurry vision and/or fever
blisters. In the nineteenth century herpes of the cornea
was thought to be caused by immoral, unhealthy living
conditions. Partially right, doctors of the nineteenth
century treated these patients as social pariahs explaining
their illness on intemperance or other lifestyle choices.
Lifestyle also became a preeminent cause in the minds
of nineteenth-century physicians as to the numerous Irish
cases of trachoma. Dr. Busey, a Columbia Hospital physician
and an outspoken critic of immigration, noted that the
Irish, and those of Irish descent, comprised more than half
330
Death Certificates, Box #35, District of Columbia
Archives, Washington, D.C
331
J. Harry Thompson, A.M., M.D., Report of the
Columbia Hospital for Women, Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1873, D. Webster Prentiss, A.M.,M.D.
214
of patients diagnosed with trachoma. He concluded that
their "mode of life" was a chief factor in the cause of
trachoma and contended that
if we follow these people to their homes, we
shall find among them an almost national
predilection for living upon an equal footing
with domestic animals, such as cows, pigs, goats,
dogs, and geese, and giving them free entree into
their houses. The result of this is an
accumulation of filth and a contamination of the
atmosphere which no physician who has ever been
unfortunate enough to spend the night with a
midwifery case, amid such surroundings, will
easily forget.332
Because trachoma is caused by the bite of a host fly
containing a bacteria-like parasite, conditions conducive
to flies would inherently become part and parcel of such a
diagnosis. The infected eye was probably inflamed, pussy
and painful. After the eye was inflamed for five to seven
days, pus appeared and the eyelids would swell, tear and
become increasingly sensitive to light. Unfortunately, most
of the Irish women diagnosed with trachoma did not seek
treatment early enough; they were seen in a later stage of
Attending Surgeon, “District of Columbia Hospital for Women
Report,” 401.
332
Ibid., 415.
215
trachoma where granulation of the eyelids and the cornea
had begun.333
At the Columbia Hospital it was not until the last
decades of the century that other non-native women in the
community figured prominently in the services the Hospital
offered. By 1890 the proportion of Irish women served by
the Hospital dropped to 4 percent from its original 30
percent between 1866-1872.
333
334
Ibid., 401 and 414. See Appendix Five for further
information regarding Dr. Busey’s trachoma cases.
334
Ibid.
216
Figure 18: Irish Patients in Columbia Hospital for Women & Lying-In Asylum,
Washington, D.C., 1866-1894
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1877 1878 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1892 1894
Source: J. Harry Thompson, A.M., M.D., Report of the Columbia Hospital for Women,
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873; "Board of Directors Proceedings, 18661884," Columbia Hospital for Women, President’s Office, Columbia Hospital for Women,
Washington, D.C. and Annual Reports, 1866-1894 Columbia Hospital for Women and Lying-In
Asylum, George Washington University Special Collections, George Washington, University,
Washington, D.C.
This turn about began around 1877, just two years after the
hospital’s board of directors declared that
the out-door relief to the sick poor shall be
limited to patients who come strictly under the
requirements of the charter...whereas the
217
district commissioners have failed to make any
allowance to this institution for medicine
furnished by the dispensary to the out-door poor
of the District of Columbia, and there being no
provision in the charter to extend aid to any but
a restricted class, i.e. those suffering from
diseases peculiar to women, it becomes necessary
to discontinue the general dispensary.335
As the century progressed the Board of Director’s fears
became reality. District and Federal agencies were less
willing to finance public health care.
By 1875 Washington, D.C. Commissioners cut off funds
to Columbia Hospital for their care of the indigent.
Consequently, Columbia Hospital cut off its care to a large
portion of Washington’s poor.
336
These included some Irish
women whose salaries barely covered living expenses, let
alone costs for medical care. Never again did the hospital
care for the large number of Irish women that it did in its
first years of operation. This is partly due to the opening
of Providence Hospital. This was a Catholic hospital
staffed by several orders of nuns. The religious nature of
Providence Hospital, and the shifting of District and
335
"Board of Directors Proceedings, 1866-1884,"
Columbia Hospital for Women, President's Office, Columbia
Hospital for Women, Washington, D.C. Record dated September
16, 1875.
336
Ibid.
218
Federal dollars, drew Irish women and their families to
Providence and away from the Columbia Hospital for Women.
Initially a response to Civil War needs Providence
Hospital in southeast Washington, D.C. continued to care
for Irish women throughout the nineteenth century. After
the Washington Infirmary was closed to the public, having
been taken over for a military hospital, Providence
Hospital filled the needs of Washington, D.C. residents who
still required a medical facility for the poor.337 This
response by government officials secured a permanent place
for Providence Hospital within the community. Although
private rooms and paying patients were heartily admitted,
Congress assisted the hospital by providing money for the
treatment of the poor. Early in Providence Hospital history
Congress annually appropriated $12,000 for the support and
treatment of the poor as the hospital took in any patient
that needed care.338 Throughout the last half of the
nineteenth century Federal and District money continued to
support Providence Hospital. This accounts for the decline
in the number of Irish women serviced by the Columbia
Hospital for Women. After 1875 fewer Irish women received
337
Thompson, Columbia Hospital, 3.
219
care at the women’s hospital; moreover, the Catholic nature
of Providence Hospital contributed to the declining numbers
of Irish patients at Columbia and the rising numbers of
Irish patients at Providence. The Sisters of Charity
provided not only medical aid but spiritual aid as well.
Some of the first patients in Providence Hospital were
Irish. Mary Donnelly entered the hospital on September 6,
1861 complaining of a fever. The twenty-seven year old
Irish housekeeper was discharged the following day.339 Irish
teachers, servants, wives and mothers came to Providence
for cures to what ailed them. Rheumatism, tuberculosis and
ill health sufficed to send Irish women to Providence
seeking medical treatment. Irish women of all ages, marital
status and occupations came to Providence seeking the
comfort and care of the Sisters of Charity.
340
In 1880
almost half of the female patients in the Hospital were
first or second-generation Irish.341 For these women,
Providence Hospital proved to be the key to their health.
338
Medical Register of the District of Columbia, 1867,
Washington, D.C.: Blanchard and Mohun, 1867, 30.
339
Photocopy of Patient Register No. 1 found in Zola,
Providence Centennial Book.
340
USMC, 1880. See Appendix Six for further
information on these patients.
341
Ibid.
220
The Directors and Sisters of Charity at Providence insisted
that "no one is refused admission except in cases of
insanity or diseases of a contagious character, thus
fulfilling in every particular the requirements of a
General Hospital."342 Thus, Irish women found assistance for
their physical health at the Catholic Providence Hospital
but were turned toward public institutions for their mental
health.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century
Washington, D.C. ranked first as the region with the most
institutionalized insane persons per 100,000 inhabitants.
343
Although in 1850 the District did not rank in the top ten
states with the most insane per 100,000, between 1860 and
1890 the city ranked first with four times as many
institutionalized residents per 100,000 than the national
average. In 1860 the United States’ average for number of
insane per 100,000 inhabitants was 76.5. However,
Washington, D.C. housed 272 insane residents per 100,000.344
Throughout the Civil War only 2 percent of that population
342
Twenty-first Annual Report of Providence Hospital,
Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C.: Gibson Brothers,
Printers, 1883, 7-8.
343
Henry Hurd, Editor, The Institutional Care of the
Insane in the United States and Canada, Volume I, New York:
Arno Press, 1973, 418. Originally published 1916
221
comprised military personal. By 1890 Washington, D.C.
exceeded all other states again in number of insane persons
per 100,000 residents. Although the United States’ average
was 170 persons per 100,000 in 1890, the District housed
685 insane inhabitants per 100,000 residents.345
This population primarily comprised white native and
foreign-born residents in the city. The
institutionalization of slaves and African Americans was
not common in the nineteenth century. Racial and ethnic
boundaries determined the composition of nineteenth-century
insane asylums. Although insanity and mental illness
affected slaves and African Americans, nineteenth-century
officials did not commit resources to their mental health.
Dr. William Drewry of the Central State Hospital in
Petersburg, Virginia found that
during slavery there were doubtless many mildly
insane and weak-minded and senile Negroes, who
were cared for by their owners and never
reported…Old inhabitants tell us that before the
‘60’s an insane Negro was a rarity, and the facts
all go to show that the disease was by no means
prevalent among the race. The regular, simplelife, the freedom from dissipation and
excitement, steady and healthful employment,
enforced self-restraint, the freedom from care
and responsibility, the plain, wholesome,
344
345
Ibid.
Ibid.
222
nourishing food, comfortable clothing, the openair life upon the plantation, the kindly care and
treatment when sick, in those days, all acted as
preventive measures against mental breakdown in
the Negro.346
Dr. E M. Green, a nineteenth-century contemporary of Dr.
Drewry, noted similar findings. In his hospital, the
Georgia State Sanitarium in Milledgeville, Green noted that
drug-induced psychoses were more common to African
Americans than other racial or ethnic groups. However, in
regards to racial admissions,
In the white race even the high grade imbecile
sooner or later finds his way to an institution
where his talents may be put to the best
advantage, but in the Negro a moderate mental
defect is apt to be less noticeable. As a rule
the true condition is not appreciated until an
episode of some kind renders commitment
necessary. For these reasons the number of Negro
patients assigned to the imbecile and idiocy is
347
smaller than the white.
Thus, the social construct of race in the nineteenth
century predetermined much of the patient load of insane
asylums.
This aspect of immigrant health services in the
nineteenth century focused on the insane asylum as a home
346
347
Ibid., 373-374.
Ibid., 376.
223
to the socially vulnerable, chronically ill and the aged.
Typically, however, the immigrant comprised a large
proportion of inmates in these facilities. As a coping
mechanism to immigrant hardships, insane asylums housed men
and women who did not adjust to their host society. This
consequence of acculturation is not unique to the
nineteenth century. Recent studies regarding immigrant
mental health note similar patterns for Mexican and Hmong
immigrants. Each of these groups suffers mental illness in
greater numbers than the host community. Scholars infer
that the hurdles to cultural adaptation increase the
potential stresses on mental health and intensify
depression and paranoia.348
As such, a stay in an insane asylum was not uncommon
348
For a discussion of current immigrant mental health
issues see Renata Kokanovic, Alan Petersen, Vlasta Mitchell
and Susan Hansen, “Care-giving and the Social Construction
of ‘Mental Illness’ in Immigrant Communities,” Perth,
Western Australia: Eastern Perth Public and Community
Health Unit, 2001; Kaomi Goetz, “Hmong Face Cultural
Hurdles to Mental Health Care,” Minnesota Public Radio,
August 27, 2001,
http://news.mpr.org/features/200108/27_goetzk_shaman/;
Patricia McBroom, “Adapting to American Society Causes
Mental Illness to Double among Mexican Immigrants, finds UC
Berkeley Study,” 09/14/1998,
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/98legacy/09-141998; and “Is Living in America Bad for Your Mental
Health,” Reuters,
224
for Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. As late as
1896, “one out of three inmates of the New York insane
asylum hailed from Ireland.”349 Other observations noted
“that Irish women, who often married late and came to
America alone in search of work as domestics or teachers,
seemed more homesick for the parents and siblings they left
behind than did Irish males.“
350
These conditions
precipitated depression or melancholia for Irish women.
Diner notes that at least two-thirds of the Irish in mental
institutions were women.351 Similarly, a physician on
Blackwell’s Island attributed the large number of Irish
women who suffered insanity to “environmental strains
rather than to a predisposition to mental instability.”352
However, other nineteenth-century physicians regarded
the large proportion of Irish mental patients as consistent
with the Irish culture. They noted "that the habits and
condition and character of the Irish poor… operate more
unfavorably upon their mental health, and hence produce a
http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/studies/society_cau
ses_m.
349
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 109.
350
Ibid.
351
Ibid, 110.
225
larger number of the insane in ratio of their numbers."
353
Given that many Irish women worked as domestic servants in
the homes of others, their ties to the community became
tenuous. This, coupled with poverty, added to the stresses
on mental health that Irish immigrant women suffered. The
emotional effects of acculturation and assimilation caused
some Irish women to collapse under that strain.
Poverty, alcoholism and immigrant status contributed
to the decisions by District officials to commit Irish
women to St. Elizabeth’s. Public officials sent most of
those they apprehended to the Psychopathic Department of
the Washington Asylum Hospital. Patients were kept there
indefinitely. Patients suffering from acute conditions that
were temporary were not committed. However, those who had
severe, “well-defined psychoses” were sent to St.
Elizabeth’s. From there, public officials allowed the
inmate to be kept for 30 days.354 The public officials
352
Alan Kraut, Silent Travelers, Germs, Genes and the
“Immigrant Menace,” Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1995, 40.
353
Edward Jarvis, Report on Insanity and Idiocy in
Massachusetts, by the Commission on Lunacy, Under Resolve
of the Legislature of 1854, Massachusetts House Document
No. 144 (1855) 61-62, quoted in Gerald N. Grob, The Mad
Among Us, A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill,
New York: The Free Press, 1994, 62.
354
Hurd, Institutional Care of the Insane, 265.
226
responsible for inmate commitment included police officers,
court officials and health department officers.
A large number of Irish patients committed to St.
Elizabeth’s were alcoholic. Intemperate, verbally combative
and often melancholy, these women were removed from their
homes or the streets of the city and placed in St.
Elizabeth’s to dry out or live out their days. Other Irish
women at St. Elizabeth’s were the socially vulnerable;
these were old women with no homes who suffered from
Alzheimer-like senility and could no longer care for
themselves. Some Irish women suffered bouts of depression
due to hormonal fluctuations with their cycles and were
diagnosed with menstrual-related hysteria. Other femalerelated social outcasts were women who suffered post-partum
depression. Granted, some Irish women in St. Elizabeth’s
truly suffered from mental illness, but the majority of
Irish women in St. Elizabeth’s were social outcasts or
women whose role and function in society was ambiguous.
They were no longer productive members, incapacitated in
one way or another, and thus, found refuge with others like
themselves.
Moreover, St. Elizabeth's served as a home and refuge
for the elderly, indigent and social misfits. The Irish
227
patients served in the female portion of St. Elizabeth’s
were limited primarily to indigent women. Comprising 20
percent of patients in the first years of the Hospital’s
operation, these Irish women, in many ways, represent the
present-day version of the homeless alcoholic on the street
corner asking for money and food.
355
As indigents some Irish
women were placed with the hospital as a means to keep them
off the streets and out of the jails They were placed in
St. Elizabeth’s by District officials with only a small
portion entering on their own or placed by relatives. Not
part of the criminal element, and not able to work for
their keep in the poor house, St. Elizabeth’s Irish women
recuperated or found a permanent home in the institution
that cared for them.
St. Elizabeth’s treated many Irish women in its first
years of operation. In 1862 Irish women comprised 27
percent of the female patients treated at St. Elizabeth’s
and by 1889 only 18 percent. From 1855 to 1890, 226 Irish
women were institutionalized in St. Elizabeth’s. Thirty-one
of these entered the institution on more than one occasion
355
Records of the Medical Branch, 1855-1955 and
Registers of Cases, 1855-1941, , Entry #64, and Register of
Female Patients, 1866-1933, Entry #65, Records of St
228
with several living in the institution on three separate
occasions, thus, the aggregate total is 195. Twenty of
these women were classified as civil and independent; they
admitted themselves or were admitted by family. The
remaining 175 women were indigent; they had no visible
means of support and were thus institutionalized until such
time that family could care for them or they died.
356
Most Irish women institutionalized for alcoholism in
St. Elizabeth’s were married. From the hospital’s opening
throughout the nineteenth century, only one widow and one
single Irish woman were admitted for alcoholism. Twice in
two years Johanna Brosnan stayed at St. Elizabeth’s to dry
out. Her first occasion lasted three months and the second
five and a half months. Each time her diagnosis was acute
dipsomania (alcoholism) with a condition of intemperance.
Her first drinking bout that assisted her placement in St.
Elizabeth’s lasted for two weeks just as did the second
bout.357
Edward Jarvis, a nineteenth-century physician from
Massachusetts, remarked on the connection between Irish
Elizabeth's Hospital, Record Group 418, National Archives,
Washington, D.C.
356
Ibid.
357
Ibid.
229
drunkenness and their propensity toward mental illness. He
commented on the dipsomania diagnoses noting that
"unquestionably much of their insanity is due to their
intemperance, to which the Irish seem to be peculiarly
prone."358 Other observers noted that the dual condition of
poverty and domestic discord often led Irish women to
drink.
359
“Alcohol addiction posed a major problem for the
female immigrant from Ireland. Irish women, for example,
made up 59 percent of all California almshouse inmates in
the 1890s but “they made up 72 percent of those female
paupers who drank in excess.”360
These diagnoeses turned on marital status.
Married
women comprised 86 percent of the diagnoses for dipsomania
with widows at 14 percent and only one single Irish woman
admitted for alcoholism.
361
Single women who were drunk or
alcoholic were placed in the jail and workhouse as
remunerative or rehabilitative measures for their behavior.
However, married women had a larger stake in the social
358
Grob, The Mad Among Us, 62.
Diner, Erin's Daughters, 112.
360
Ibid., 113.
361
Records of the Medical Branch, 1855-1955 and
Registers of Cases, 1855-1941, , Entry #64, and Register of
Female Patients, 1866-1933, Entry #65, Records of St
359
230
structure and their sobriety was necessary to the
maintenance of the family, household and community. This
stake in society changed the way the community dealt with
alcoholic married women.
Mrs. Ellen Dailey entered St. Elizabeth’s suffering
from acute dipsomania. In September of 1872 Ellen was
intoxicated for approximately seven days before she entered
the hospital. Ellen was thirty-five, married and had
several children at home. The physicians corresponded with
her husband, Michael Daily, updating him as to his wife’s
recovery. In early October they informed him that his wife
“appears to be well and is quite anxious to go home and
take care of her children. Please come over to the hospital
at an early day and confer with me in respect to taking
your wife home.”362 By October 18th Mr. Dailey wrote to the
hospital informing them he would arrive soon to pick up
Ellen and take her to their southwest Washington home.363
Mrs. Mary A. McLaughlin also entered St. Elizabeth’s
to become sober. To help her do so, the doctors at St.
Elizabeth's Hospital, Record Group 418, National Archives,
Washington, D.C.
362
Ibid. and Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital,
Entry # 11, “Letters dated October 1872 to Mr. Michael
Dailey,” National Archives, Washington, D.C.
363
Ibid.
231
Elizabeth’s kept her mind busy by occupying her hands. The
physicians asked her husband who worked at the Patent
Office to purchase “one pair shoes, a new shawl, eighteen
yards of merino for a dress, eight yards canton flannel for
underwear and a new bonnet.”364 These items were meant not
just to clothe Mrs. McLaughlin but to be used in her
recovery as a sewing room was provided for the inmates as
part of their rehabilitation and recuperation.
365
Within two
months Mary was released and pronounced fully recovered.366
Unique to married and widowed women in St. Elizabeth’s
were obstetric/gynecologic illnesses. Some of these appear
to be post-partum depression and, from their description, a
few are severe cases of pre-menstrual syndrome or
menopausal ailments. These diagnoses were not uncommon in
the nineteenth century. Victorian society assumed woman
would be mentally unstable because her body was physically
unstable given her unique female organs. The female was
seen "as driven by the tidal currents of her cyclical
reproductive system, a cycle… reinforced each month by her
364
Ibid., Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Entry
#11, “Letter dated October 15, 1872 to Mr. William G. A.
McLaughlin,” National Archives, Washington, D.C.
365
Millikan, “Wards of the Nation,” 136-137.
366
Register of Female Patients, 1866-1933, Entry #64
and #65, Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital.
232
current menstrual flow."
367
As such, diagnoses of depression
and melancholy were common to many types of women. One such
woman was Nellie Doody. She stayed in St. Elizabeth’s for
almost twenty years after a childbirth experience two years
prior to her admission in November of 1881. At the age of
thirty she collapsed under that strain and stayed in St.
Elizabeth’s until her death in 1907.368
Another Irish woman who stayed until her death was
widow Mary E. Crocker. Her diagnosis was puerperal mania, a
condition brought about by childbirth-related
complications. Mary entered St. Elizabeth’s on February 24,
1869 at the age of thirty-three and died there forty-seven
years later. Her condition never improved. Others, however,
recovered from their post-partum depression, as did Alice
O’Grady who stayed in St. Elizabeth’s for a few months. In
December of 1889 she was admitted to the hospital suffering
from chronic melancholia for approximately two years. She
returned home the following February to care for her
family.369
367
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct,
Visions of Gender in Victorian America, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985, 183.
368
Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital Entry #64 and
Entry #65.
369
Ibid.
233
Other Irish women experienced short bouts of
childbirth-related depressions. Johanna Foley suffered for
two weeks with a puerperal depression before she entered
St. Elizabeth's and stayed for four months to recover. She
was released late in the summer of 1873 to return to her
family. Not so, however, for Mary O’Conner whose child died
in December of 1868. The emotional trauma from that death
pushed Mary over the edge and by December of the following
year she was admitted to St. Elizabeth’s and diagnosed with
chronic dementia. This forty-seven year old mother suffered
under the strain of her daughter’s death and lived in St.
Elizabeth’s until her death in 1872.370
Irish women suffering from menopause were few compared
with other obstetric/gynecologic conditions. Only two women
were diagnosed with menopause of climacteric conditions in
the last half of the nineteenth century. This condition
referred to the years of a woman’s life in which she
experienced menopause and the hormonal fluctuations that
accompany it. Mary Glynn underwent menopause when she was
forty-seven and lived in St. Elizabeth’s for six and a half
years. She suffered from chronic melancholia throughout
that time but was pronounced recovered and released in
370
Ibid.
234
December of 1889.
371
Also diagnosed with menopausal depression was Mrs.
Mary Bowler who entered St. Elizabeth’s three times
throughout her adult life. In October of 1884 Mary was back
in the institution for a couple months suffering from
menopause-related afflictions. Sixty-nine year old Mary
suffered from ill health for six years before her last
admittance into St. Elizabeth’s and was diagnosed with
chronic melancholia. She recovered from this bout but
returned to St. Elizabeth’s October of 1889 and did not
leave the institution until her death in 1915.372 The
consequences of acculturation and assimilation, combined
with menopause and old age, contributed to Mary’s
confinement in St. Elizabeth’s.
The number of Irish women suffering from menopausal
depressions should have been much greater. In the
nineteenth century "menopause was seen as a physiological
crisis…that marked the beginning of a period of
depression."373 The causes of severe depression during
menopause were "shaped by a woman's preceding sexual
experiences…if a woman had followed a sound regimen
371
372
Ibid.
Ibid.
235
throughout her life and had no predisposition to malignant
disease, menopause could bring with it a golden age of
health."374 Irish women had anything but a sound regimen
given the conditions entering immigrants faced. However,
the unique position for Irish immigrants in the capital was
the host community already acclimated to an Irish presence.
This Irish presence mediated for its female immigrants in
this way as well.
Those suffering from dementia were few in number
compared to other diagnoses. Mrs. Mary Buckley entered St.
Elizabeth’s on June 5, 1873 and died one year later on June
20. She was widowed for three years prior to her admission,
and at forty-two, her life ended with little fanfare. Dr.
Hamlin, an assistant physician, wrote to Mary’s son,
Patrick Buckley at 1825 H Street, northwest saying,
I regret to have to inform you that your mother,
Mrs. Mary Buckley, died very suddenly at half
past twelve o’clock today. There had been no
change in her condition lately, and this morning
had been walking and going about as usual up to
the very minute of her death. She was heard to
fall and died almost instantly. She had seemed as
well and made no complaint the whole morning. The
cause of death was undoubtedly apoplexy. I hope
you will, if possible, give your immediate
373
374
Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 191.
Ibid.
236
attention to the removal of your mother’s
remains.”375
Mary lived at St. Elizabeth’s just less than a year
suffering from chronic dementia and the deteriorating
conditions of old age.
Serving as a rest home for the elderly, St.
Elizabeth's admitted Irish women who suffered from
Alzheimer-like symptoms or the deteriorating conditions of
old age. In the last half of the nineteenth century, nine
Irish women over sixty years of age were diagnosed with
senile dementia and admitted to St. Elizabeth’s.376 One of
the widows, Mrs. Johanna Barry, was admitted to St.
Elizabeth’s on two occasions. She lived with her son and
daughter-in-law and was placed in St. Elizabeth’s by her
family. The first admission lasted only three months but by
the end of that same year she was back in St. Elizabeth’s
where she died five months later. Upon her death Dr.
Nichols wrote to her son, Mr. John Barry of northwest
Washington, D.C., saying that his mother
375
Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital Entry #64,
Entry #65, and Entry #11, “Letter dated June 20, 1874 to
Mr. Patrick J. Buckley.”
376
Ibid.
237
died very suddenly this morning between four and
five o’clock. The night watch was in her room at
ten minutes past four, and she was alive and
apparently as well as usual. Then at five o’clock
her door was opened, but it was noticed within a
few minutes that she did not get up and dress
herself as was her custom, and on going to
ascertain the cause of her delay she was found
dead. She has been as well as usual of late and
no change has been noticed in her except that she
has been growing more forgetful. The cause of her
death was undoubtedly apoplexy. There is no
evidence of any pain or struggle, and it is
probably that she was asleep when the attack came
and never waked.377
Other Irish women with senility-like diagnoses suffered
from a condition labeled “old age”, others from apoplexy
(paralysis due to a stroke) and some from domestic anxiety.
Catharine Manahan, sixty years of age, lost a large sum of
money and was unable to find substantive employment at her
age and abilities; she found a home in the institution for
about two years after she was admitted to St. Elizabeth’s
suffering from domestic anxiety. Catharine struggled
through a year of financial troubles and was placed in St.
Elizabeth’s for permanent care. She remained there until
her death in 1886378.
377
Ibid. and Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital,
Entry #11, “Letter dated May 7, 1874 to Mr. John Barry.”
378
Records of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital Entry #64
238
Unlike Catharine, Honora Hurley and Margaret Johnson
returned to their homes and did not remain at St.
Elizabeth’s on a permanent basis. Widows Honora Hurley,
seventy years old, and Margaret Johnson, eighty-six years
old, left the institution after brief stays. Honora was
released to her family unimproved from her condition of
senility. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law.
However, Margaret lived alone with a boarder. She was
released recovered after a stay of one month and seven
days.379 Each of these women depended on the circumstances
at home. Anecdotal evidence shows that Irish women in
Washington, D.C. who lived with their daughters or lived
alone returned home more often than did Irish women who
depended on their sons and daughters-in-law.
As immigrants, Irish women experienced the hardships
of poverty and illness in Washington, D.C. Exposure to
contagion and working long hours contributed to the poor
health and mortality of the newly arrived. However,
throughout the last half of the nineteenth century Irish
women’s health and welfare improved. Increased access to
medical facilities with the military hospitals throughout
the Civil War and Providence Hospital after the war
379
Ibid.
239
contributed to a healthier population of Irish women in
Washington, D.C. Moreover, their shrinking numbers in
government hospitals also speaks to an upward social
mobility as Irish women’s access to health care
transitioned from public institutions to private
institutions. Over time, Irish women’s morbidity and
mortality improved more than that of their immigrant
partners from the first half of the century.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century,
Irish women adapted to and changed their environment in
Washington, D.C. Thus, their morbidity and mortality
paralleled that of their native counterparts. No longer
immigrant in status, Irish women represented the norm in
health for the capital and not the deviant. Other races and
ethnicities replaced Irish women on the lower rungs of the
ladder in regards to health. As Irish women’s standard of
living rose, and their housing improved and longevity
increased, they maintained healthier families as they made
their way in Washington, D.C. and became part of the host
community.
240
CHAPTER 6: “TO KEEP THE PEACE”: IRISH WOMEN AND THEIR
CONTACT WITH THE LAW IN WASHINGTON, D.C., 1850-1890
They were not pleased with each other. Johanna and
Julia had been bickering with each other the entire day.
Unfortunately, Johanna’s husband John stepped right into
the middle of their fight. By the afternoon of that hot
July day, John found himself at the wrong end of Johanna
and Julia’s anger. Both women attacked John, were arrested
and charged with assault and battery for their trouble.
Because Johanna was married to the man she attacked, she
was released to the custody of her husband. However,
because Julia was not married, she was required to pay a
bail to the court to “keep the peace.”380 Neither Johanna
nor Julia appeared in any Washington, D.C. arrest or court
records after this event. As newcomers to the national
capital they learned what was expected of them in their new
home. Irish women were expected to conform to Southern
standards of civility and genteelness. A physical fight on
380
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887, Record Group 351,
#125, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
241
a front porch did not satisfy that conformation. This
“renegotiation of boundaries” took place in Washington as
Irish women transformed their cultural heritage that
condoned female violence to that of the District that did
not.381 The “real life context and social experience” of
Johanna and Julia’s fight reconstructed their ethnic social
norms to that of their host community. Johanna and Julia
learned one of the many lessons of immigrant life on their
journey from Irish immigrant to Irish American.
Nineteenth-century American prison reformers and
professional criminologists “remarked frequently on the
predilection of Irish women toward crime and their
excessive appearance” as prison inmates.
382
Washington, D.C.
was not so different. Irish women moved in and out of the
local prisons and federal jails within the District. The
charges brought against them ranged from murder or
accessory to murder to profanity and threats against
neighbors; however, Irish women were convicted most often
of crimes related to drunkenness. A rowdy lot, these women
were arrested in the streets of the city for their drunken
381
See Conzen and Gerber “The Invention of Ethnicity”
for a discussion of the social construction of ethnic
identity.
382
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 111.
242
and disorderly state. Additional charges of fighting and
profanity usually accompanied the original charge. Although
single women outnumbered the conviction rates of married
women, marital status played little role in those who
imbibed and caused trouble in public.
In general, women’s criminal activity in the
nineteenth century is difficult to ascertain. The double
standard applied to men and women socially also applied to
the sexes legally. In their study on crime in America,
Frank Browning and John Gerassi note that “women were taken
to be creatures of the senses (as men were supposedly
governed by reason and therefore more tractable).”383 This
double standard played out on the streets. Police officers,
all male, mediated female conflicts thereby limiting the
number of female arrests and convictions. Because women
were “creatures of the senses,” their criminal activity was
disregarded as emotional reactions to stimuli or
environmental conditions. Women were often remanded to the
custody of the male head of the house instead of the courts
or jail. Police officers referred much of women’s criminal
383
Frank Browning and John Gerassi, The American Way
of Crime, From Salem to Watergate, A Stunning New
Perspective on American History, New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1980, 130.
243
behavior back to the man of the house as fathers, husbands
and brothers were responsible for the behavior of
daughters, wives and sisters. Thus, the arrest and
conviction rates of women belies the actual amount of crime
committed by women in the nineteenth century and obscures
the role criminal activity played in their lives.
Economic and social class shaped the composition of
female criminals found in American arrest books, jails and
workhouses. The working classes and poorer classes of women
in America were arrested and incarcerated more often than
their wealthier counterparts. Moreover, racial and ethnic
tensions compounded the arrest and conviction of female
suspects. Because foreign women typically displayed the
double burden of poverty and ethnic newcomer, they were
identified more often than their native counterparts.
Language barriers and immigrant cultural norms also
participated in exacerbating ethnic tensions. Although “the
kinds of deviant behavior that Irish women demonstrated
were culturally acceptable within the Irish worldview,”
they were not culturally acceptable within the American
worldview.384 For some Irish women, this transition from
Irish immigrant to Irish American was troubled and
244
manifested in behaviors American society deemed deviant.
Throughout the nation, arrest and conviction rates for
women prior to the Civil War turned on class, nativity and
race. Only Arkansas, Iowa and New Hampshire had no foreignborn women incarcerated at the time of the 1850 census.
Other states reported varying degrees of immigrant crime.
In Texas, foreign-born women significantly outnumbered
native white and African American women for crimes
committed but Utah showed the reverse. States where
foreign-born women comprised a significant portion of crime
were California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Missouri, Oregon, Vermont and Wisconsin.385 However, for
Southern states the majority of reported and recorded crime
tells of the racial tension present in the South in the
last half of the nineteenth century. In each Southern
state, African American women were consistently arrested
and charged for all types of crime in greater numbers than
their native and foreign sisters. Furthermore, African
American women were imprisoned in greater proportions than
native women in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and
384
385
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 114.
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 5.
245
Louisiana.
386
The racial and ethnic composition of a state’s
population determined the profile of the woman arrested and
convicted of crime. In states where African Americans
represented the bottom of the social scale, they were
incarcerated more than other groups. In states where
immigrants represented the bottom of the social scale, they
were incarcerated more than other groups.
Post-Civil War comparisons between native white,
African American and foreign-born female populations
throughout the United States similarly show that African
American women were charged, convicted and jailed in much
greater proportions than other female racial and ethnic
groups. In Southern states such as Alabama throughout the
last half of the nineteenth century, African American women
were jailed three-to-one over native white women and
remanded to the workhouse in greater proportion than any
other racial or ethnic group. In South Carolina, only
African American women were in the state workhouse and in
Maryland, of the twenty-four women in the workhouse twentytwo were African American; the remaining two women were
foreign-born. Similar statistics reflect the proportions of
386
Report on Crime, Pauperism and Benevolence in the
United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Washington,
246
female prisoners in other southern jails. In Virginia, West
Virginia, Georgia and Florida, African American women
outnumbered all other women as prisoners and, in some
Southern states, were the only women incarcerated in state
prisons.387 Again, race and class shaped the composition of
female criminals found in American arrest books, jails and
workhouses.
However, in California, Indiana, Louisiana,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York,
Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington state foreignborn women were convicted and incarcerated in greater
proportions than the native female population.
388
Again, the
racial and ethnic composition of a state’s population
determined the profile of the woman arrested and convicted
of crime. Furthermore, the diverse immigration in the last
half of the nineteenth century continued to place the
newest arrivals on the bottom of the American social scale
and thus garner the attention of law enforcement. However,
even with this diverse immigration, the African American
female was arrested and jailed in greater numbers overall
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893.
387
Ibid.
388
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 5.
247
than her immigrant sisters.
389
Crimes committed by foreign-born women typically
varied with their nationality. The Immigration Commission
Reports noted that German and Italian women committed
violent crimes, where Irish women stole on many levels and
committed crimes against the city. Overwhelmingly, Irish
women stole items through forgery schemes or on grand
scales committing burglary, larceny or receiving stolen
goods. However, Austrian-Hungarian women committed suicide
or were convicted of abandoning their children and German
women were convicted of attempted suicide and abortion.
While Irish women had disorderly houses like their native
counterparts, it was not to the degree that the stereotype
offered.390 The differences in crimes committed by immigrant
women express the varying degrees of assimilation pressures
on the various groups of immigrants and their reactions to
those pressures.
Throughout the Civil War some Irish women came to
Washington, D.C. with their soldier husbands and loved
ones. Others, following the wartime camps as prostitutes,
drinking buddies or washerwomen traveled with units and
389
390
Report on Crime.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, 370-377.
248
became part of their informal company. Thomas Lowry notes
that the “area now occupied by Federal Triangle was then
thirteen blocks of vice, a dense warren of low saloons,
boisterous brothels, and hide-outs for pimps, thieves and
pickpockets.”391 Irish women often operated these houses
throughout the Civil War. “D Street alone had houses
managed by Maggie Murphy, Sally Murphy, Mary Taylor” and
Mollie Mason to name a few.
392
Mary Kenan was a thirty-two year old Irish prostitute
who spent her time with the soldiers in Washington making a
living. However, on April 3, 1862 she stepped over the
bounds of acceptable behavior. She and three soldiers from
a unit near the capital became a public nuisance. Their
presence in the District was disruptive and brought them to
the attention of the Metropolitan Police. For their
misdeeds, Officer Burnham arrested Mary and her soldier
companions that afternoon. Justice Clayton sentenced Mary
to sixty days in the workhouse and the three soldiers were
taken to their camp and turned over to their commanding
officer. The officer ordered them into the quarry house for
391
Thomas P. Lowry, M. D., The Story the Soldiers
Wouldn’t Tell, Sex in the Civil War, Mechanicsburg, PA:
Stackpole Books, 1974, 62.
392
Ibid., 63.
249
an undisclosed amount of time.
393
These incidents were frequent in the District during
the war. The capital gained a reputation during the Civil
War as the city that harbored the most criminal elements in
all the Union. The crime rate skyrocketed during the war
and a special police force was created to deal with the
increasing crime.394 Because numerous regiments had business
in and around the city, they and their families came to the
capital for news of their loved ones and others. This rise
in the national capital’s population increased this
potential criminal element. The local police made over
1,300 more arrests in 1864 than they had in 1862. Although
some of these criminals were deserters, much of that crime
involved Irish men and women. Philip Jordan notes that
“politicians and city officials inevitably blamed blacks,
but the fact is that far more Irish were arrested than
blacks. Nor were the police able to curtail street
crimes.”395
Irish women disobeyed Washington, D.C. laws and found
themselves before a judge when they flagrantly imbibed,
393
394
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
Browning and Gerassi, The American Way of Crime,
44-47.
395
Ibid.
250
were disorderly in public or fought in the streets. In the
first six months of 1862 Susan Dugan was arrested at least
six times, each for drunken and disorderly behavior. Her
last arrest included her cursing at the arresting officer
who charged her with profanity as well. Her first arrest
was late January; after that she remained out of the public
eye for a few months but was back in trouble by early March
and continued to be a nuisance through the middle of
June.396
Susan’s alcohol troubles were much like other Irish
immigrant women throughout the United States. In New York’s
almshouses in the 1890s Irish women made up 72 percent of
those confined for drunkenness.397 Reports from the
Immigration Commission confirmed those findings. The
immigrant composition of New York and Chicago prisons
showed that the Irish comprised 36.7 per cent of those
committed for intoxication. Canadians, a frequent
nationality for second-generation Irish immigrants,
comprised 22 percent of those jailed for drunkenness. The
Immigration Commission concluded that “although
intoxication sends to the penal institutions more than a
396
397
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 113.
251
third of the Irish alien prisoners and more than a fifth of
the Canadian, it plays a relatively unimportant part in the
commitments of the alien prisoners of most of the races.”398
Obviously, alcoholism was an Irish problem.
The Metropolitan Police of Washington, D.C. dealt with
this daily. With the large number of camp followers and
families joining soldiers during the Civil War, the
population of the capital swelled to include a number of
residents that, in peaceful times, would have been asked to
leave. Susan Dugan was one of them. Throughout her arrests
and incarcerations she was fined consistently. On two
occasions her Scottish husband was arrested with her. And,
on another occasion, so was her son. Officer Cornelius
Noonan arrested the family for drunken and disorderly
conduct. Although the charges against fourteen-year old
James were dismissed, both Susan and her husband Daniel
were fined $5.94. Each time the Dugan’s were arrested they
paid their fines.
399
Although Susan Dugan was married, most repeat
offenders were itinerant, single women who came to the
District during the Civil War. In search of relations,
398
399
Reports of the Immigration Commission, 191.
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1860.
252
employment or the extracurricular activities of soldiers,
these women caused trouble and much of it. Drunk in the
streets, disorderly and generally troublemakers, these
women kept the city police busy and the jails full.
Margaret Price was arrested four times just in the month of
June. In 1862 she was charged with prostitution, disorderly
conduct and drunk and disorderly. Her first arrest at five
in the morning for disorderly conduct cost her $3.94. Later
that evening, around seven, Margaret was arrested again for
disorderly conduct and required to pay $1.06 for her
infraction. Her last two arrests on June 17 cost Margaret
$3.94 and $5.94 respectively.400
Other Irish women who found themselves at the mercy of
the courts were Eliza Connelly, Ellen Nash and Cordelia
Maloney. Each of these women was drunk in public, profane
or generally a nuisance in her neighborhood. Between 1862
and 1865 Eliza Connelly was arrested at least five times
for drunkenness, vagrancy or other behaviors deemed
unacceptable by Washington standards. Eliza was poor and
District Police recorded her state of mind as "crazy" in
their arrest logs. Diner notes this behavior for many Irish
women throughout America in the nineteenth century. They
400
Ibid.
253
drank much more “heavily and with much more serious
consequences for their health than they had in Ireland.”401
Eliza Connelly was one such woman. She made her way to
the capital in early 1862 where on January 2, 3 and 9 she
was an overnight guest of the Metropolitan Police. Eliza
found shelter with the officers as she lodged these three
evenings at various police stations. However, a few days
later she was arrested again for drunk and disorderly. She
was unable to pay the fine of $1.94 and sentenced to the
workhouse for ninety days by Justice Thompson. Her
incarceration at the workhouse did not last the full ninety
days because Eliza was back on the arrest books by March 2
of that same year, again for drunkenness. The charges were
dismissed but did not stay dismissed for long because she
appeared before the judge three days later and her behavior
was punished this time with another stint in the
workhouse.402
Eliza surfaces throughout Washington, D.C. arrest
records less consistently after her last incarceration. By
1865 Eliza was no longer homeless and worked as a servant.
Unfortunately, she again became drunk in public on November
401
402
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 113.
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887
254
8 and was arrested several days later for vagrancy. Eliza
lost her job and no longer had a home to call her own. Her
previous day’s drunkenness and present vagrancy convinced a
judge to again send Eliza to the workhouse.403
Eliza Connelly represents the handful of Irish women
in Washington, D.C. who did not transition well from
immigrant to accepted community member. Diner notes that
“Irish women adhered to a behavioral code that deviated
markedly from that celebrated ‘cult of true womanhood’ that
commanded American women to lead lives of sheltered
passivity and ennobled domesticity.”404 Eliza’s inability to
conform to nineteenth-century standards of female conduct
caused her to remain part of the immigrant element that so
many social reformers criticized.405 Some Irish women did
not make the transition from immigrant to accepted
community member.
Ellen Nash and Cordelia Maloney fared little better
than Eliza. Cordelia had a short stay in the District of
Columbia. She arrived in the capital around March of 1862
and floated in and out of the city jails throughout the
following three months. Cordelia’s first two arrests were
403
404
Ibid.
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, xiv.
255
for drunken and disorderly conduct and with each offense
she paid a fine to stay out of the workhouse. However, in
April Margaret Bresnehan accused Cordelia of stealing and
in June charged her with assault and battery. Cordelia was
incarcerated after her series of arrests.406 These crimes
were typical of Irish women throughout the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. The Immigration Commission
Reports of 1911 note that Irish women were convicted more
often of crimes related to drunkenness than any other
crime.
407
This pattern continued in the national capital
throughout the Civil War.
The local police visited Ellen Nash frequently as
well. Between December of 1861 and May of 1862, Ellen
appeared before a judge seven times. Each time Ellen’s
arrests included a charge of drunkenness along with
disorderly conduct or profanity. The initial charge of
profanity in 1861 included Ellen’s husband Michael. He
worked as a laborer and was arrested with her again in
March for disorderly conduct. Each was fined $1.94 for
their behavior. Just a month later, Ellen was charged again
and fined four additional dollars for her disorderly
405
406
Ibid., 157.
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887
256
conduct. Thirty days after that Ellen appeared before the
judge pleading her case for yet another infraction. The
judge convicted her of disorderly conduct and remanded a
fine of $1.94. By this point Ellen could not pay her fine
and was sentenced to the workhouse to labor off her
sentence.
408
These families experienced hardship adjusting to life
in America. The transition from immigrant to community
member involved many aspects of change to Irish ways of
life. Although the Irish in Washington, D.C. kept much of
their worldview as they adapted to American ways, the
pressures and strains of mixing cultures often resulted in
the drunkenness and domestic discord displayed by Eliza
Connelly, Ellen Nash and Cordelia Maloney. These deviant
behaviors, while not necessarily deviant in Ireland,
separated the immigrant from the general community and kept
her on the outside.
Resolving the conflicts of Irish women who fought
verbally and physically was a fairly consistent function
for Washington’s Metropolitan Police. The arrest books are
407
Reports of the Immigration Commission, 370-377.
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1870. See
Appendix Four for further information regarding these
families.
408
257
filled with the complaint of one party one day and the
arrested party returning the complaint later in the day or
the day after. Husbands also were drawn into the fray. This
was the case with Johanna Kane and Mary Connell. The two
Irish women fought on May 4, 1862. The women lived in the
same dwelling with another family, shoemaker Patrick Lang
and his wife Margaret. Each family had one small child with
some money to their names. They were not destitute even
though they all lived in the same dwelling.409
Living in such tight quarters brought the families in
close contact with each other and Johanna and Mary
exchanged coarse words. The wives threatened each other so
their husbands filed complaints against the others’
spouses. These complaints came a half-hour apart and were
handled by Officer Eckloff. Both women were brought before
Justice Clayton who ordered a bail collected to keep the
peace. If the women were brought before the judge again,
their bail would be forfeited and they would find
themselves in jail or the workhouse. As neither was a
suitable conclusion to the dispute, the women discontinued
409
USMC, 1860-1870.
258
their threats against each other and kept the peace.
410
This incident expresses the dichotomy for immigrants
and their adaptation in a host country. The Kanes and the
Langs stayed in the Washington community and made the
transition to Irish American where the Connels did not.
This example identifies what Milton Gordon classifies as
civic assimilation meaning the immigrant became an
accepted, full-fledged member of the society.411 The
acceptance of the Kanes and the Langs into the Washington
community was part of a series of processes where the
community and the immigrant renegotiated traditions,
customs and behaviors. In this way immigrants did not
necessarily lose their cultural identity, but adapted it to
what we now label as a hyphenated-American. Irish women are
one of the first examples in America of this reinventing of
ethnicity when they made this transition from Irish
immigrant to Irish American.
While the Kanes and the Langs moved up, the Connels
moved out. The Kane’s had lived in the capital since 1856
and the Langs since 1859. Throughout the last half of the
nineteenth century the Langs gained property and by 1880
410
Ibid. and USMC, 1860. See Appendix Four for further
information regarding these families.
259
they not only owned a home but employed an Irish cook, a
servant and had a widowed Irish woman and her two small
children living with them. Patrick Lang, head of the Lang
household, was a shoemaker and worked as such throughout
this period. The Kane's role as intermediaries for new
residents identifies their household with a permanent
status where the Connels are identified with a temporary
status. The Kanes and the Langs became part of the capital
community while the Connels disappeared from community
records.412
Although John Kane worked as a laborer for much of
this time, he worked as a cart driver by the end of the
nineteenth century and Johanna did not work for a wage.
From 1860 through 1880 the Kanes housed other families in
their home and assisted others in the transition from
newcomer to community member. In 1860 the Kane’s housed the
Langs and the Connells and in 1870 they housed the
Caldwells.413 Each of these families was newcomers from
Ireland and found temporary residence with the Kanes. The
Kanes provided an intermediary refuge for other Irish
immigrants making their way in the District.
411
412
Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, 71.
USMC, 1850-1880.
260
Another neighborhood disagreement was that of Annie
Dalton and Bridget Barrett. Bridget was fairly affluent and
owned and operated a grocery store in Washington, D.C.
These women charged each other with disorderly conduct and
found an officer and judge to support them. On January 17,
1873, Annie charged Bridget with disorderly conduct.
Bridget was arrested at about ten in the morning and fined
five dollars that she paid. But, the following day, Annie
was arrested for disorderly conduct by Officer Hawkins and
also fined five dollars. Annie paid her money and escaped
jail time. What was the point of dispute? Was this a fight
on a front porch; did the women disagree about a purchase
in the grocery store?414 Although these women were combative
within the Irish community in Washington, there is almost
no record of this type of combative behavior with those
outside of the Irish community. Irish women confronted
Irish women. There are only rare instances recorded of
Irish women fighting with women outside of their ethnic
group in the capital.
Bridget and Annie’s disagreement was typical of Irish
413
Ibid.
Ibid. A five dollar fine translates into
approximately seventy-five 2002 dollars. All figures are
414
261
women's contact with the law. Although the disagreements
usually did not result in assault and battery, some did.
Mary Connell beat Honora Maniso in July of 1871 and was
fined five dollars for her part in the fight. The assault
and battery Mary committed against Honora was not tolerated
in Reconstruction Washington. Although a wife and mother of
three, Mary beat another woman. Her position in the
community was threatened by her behavior.415 The value
conflict between Mary’s ethnic community and that of the
host society kept her outside of acceptance within that
community. Until her behavior conformed to the host group,
she would continue to be an outsider.
A few wives were charged with assault and battery upon
their husbands. Mary Toomey assaulted her husband in
February of 1873 and was arrested by Officer Grant. She
found herself before a judge who required her to pay a
five-dollar fine. She paid the fine and there is no mention
of her or James after this event in their marriage.416 This
type of physical aggression by Irish women was not
2002 dollars converted on website
http://www.cjr.org/resources/inflater.asp accessed 5/13/03.
415
Ibid. See Appendix Four for further information
regarding these families.
416
Ibid. See Appendix Four for further information
regarding these families.
262
uncommon. Throughout the history of Ireland, women played
an active, physical role in Ireland’s political struggles.
One psychological study of Irish children noted that “the
women as well as the men are great fighters… with hand-tohand encounters… hair-pulling, scratching, biting, tearing
of clothes, and smashing of furniture.”
417
Documenting the
events of the New York Draft Riots of 1863, observers
similarly noted that Irish women were as physically
aggressive as Irish men. Thus, it is not surprising to
learn that some of these cultural habits persisted in the
national capital of their new home.
Married women were convicted of assault crimes threeto-one over that of single women. Married women were not
expected to behave this way in nineteenth-century America.
Gentility, physical gracefulness and ladylike qualities
encompassed the attributes of a married southern women.418
However, Irish immigrant women did not fit this ideology
417
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 112.
See Caroline Matheny Dillman, Southern Women, New
York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1988; Virginia
Bernhard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Theda
Perdue and Elizabeth H. Turner, Editors, Southern Women,
Hidden Histories of Women in the New South, Columbia,
Missouri, University of Missouri Press, 1994; Virginia
Bernhard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Theda
Purdue Editors, Columbia, Missouri, University of Missouri
Press, 1992.
418
263
with their presence in manual labor and their physical
aggression toward each other.
Although physical aggression
was tolerated and expected for men, women
Figure 19: Irish Women Arrested in Washington, D.C., 1867-1887 by Marital Status
160
140
120
Single
100
Married
80
60
40
20
0
Assault Crimes
Drunk and
Disorderly
Disorderly Conduct
Fighting
Larceny
Liqour Violations
Other
Vagrant
Source: Sampling of Record Group #352, Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887, National Archives,
Washington, D.C.
were not expected to express physical violence.
Furthermore, single Irish women may have been isolated from
each other while they lived and worked in homes as domestic
servants where married Irish women lived and worked next
door to each other. Thus, the arrests and convictions of
264
married women in Washington, D.C. are evidence of Irish
women in transition from their cultural norms in Ireland to
the cultural norms in an American community.
Most of the assault actions of married Irish women
appear to be neighborhood confrontations that escalated
into physical violence. One example is a neighborhood fight
that broke out between Margaret Stevens, Catharine Diggins
and Johanna Malone midnight on June 21, 1862. Margaret and
Catharine were charged with assault and battery against
Johanna. Justice Clayton held Margaret and Catharine in
jail for court. Twenty-one year old Margaret and forty-year
old Catherine spent many hours in jail for their alleged
crime against Johanna.419
Other Irish women who came to the capital upon the
tide of the Civil War stayed after a few bouts with the
law. These women found a permanent home in the District
after an initial adjustment period. Over a twenty-two year
period Mary Moriarty was arrested at least thirteen times.
A prostitute, Mary was usually arrested in January and
February. Given the intemperate weather in Washington
winters Mary may have needed a warm, dry place to rest.
January and February of 1871 were cold in Washington, D.C.
265
as the mean temperature for January was thirty-two and
February only thirty-five.420 These weather conditions may
have contributed to Mary’s meager existence and been the
impetus she needed to drink heavily. Whatever her
rationale, Mary was arrested ten of the thirteen times for
drunken or drunken and disorderly behavior. She was
convicted, more often than not, and spent time in the
workhouse when she proved unable to pay her fine. Mary
rarely paid the bail necessary as security for her behavior
but, instead, spent a regular fifteen days in the workhouse
for each infraction. However, by the 1880s the disposition
of Mary’s confinement changed. The arresting officers no
longer recorded her occupation as prostitute but as
housekeeper. At fifty, maybe Mary no longer worked as a
prostitute. Either way, she was again drunk and disorderly
and spent fifteen days in the workhouse for two more
infractions.421
Crimes of this nature proved to be the chief factor in
Irish women’s contact with the law throughout the last half
of the nineteenth century. However, a handful were arrested
and convicted of prostitution in the District. They
419
420
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
"Mean Temperatures," 183.
266
averaged thirty years in age with the youngest nineteen and
the oldest forty-two. A major factor for women who worked
as prostitutes during the Civil War was that it
supplemented dropping wages. Brown and Grassi found that
“at the government-owned armory, a seamstress who had been
paid seventeen cents for making a shirt in 1861 got only
fifteen cents in 1864 when prices had quadrupled. By that
time she was getting only eight cents from private
contractors.”422 Prostitution typically served as a means to
supplement income or as a last resort for wages. The
infamous Hooker's Division in the District provided Irish
women with this type of supplemental wage. Located in the
triangle “below Pennsylvania Avenue near the Treasury, a
section that promptly came to be known as ‘Joe Hooker’s
Division’.”
423
With many regiments camped in and around the
city, Hooker’s Division had plenty of work and provided
Irish women with occupational anonymity and an opportunity
for supplemental wages.
Just under half of the cases of prostitution were
dismissed, some were sent to the workhouse when they were
unable to pay their fines, a small number paid their fines
421
422
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1880.
Browning and Gerassi, American Way of Crime, 194.
267
of $3.94 and a few appealed. The Metropolitan Police also
locked up prostitutes to allow them to sober up and then
released them the following day. Ellen Long, one prostitute
who paid her fine of $3.94, later accused Catherine Collins
of practicing prostitution. Forty-two year old Catherine
was arrested on February 11, 1867 but was later sent home
as the case was dismissed.
424
Irish women were arrested for larceny-related crimes
that included the theft of large and small amounts of
property. This was typical of Irish female crime even into
the early twentieth century. The Immigration Commission
Reports of 1911 note that Irish women were jailed for some
sort of larceny more than any other crime they committed.
Out of all immigrant groups, Irish women committed larceny
more often. This played out in Washington, D.C. as well.
Mortimor Clark charged Mary Nichols, a prostitute, with
petty larceny. Mary was fined five dollars and fifteen days
in jail after Officer Barnes brought her before the
judge.425 What she stole was not noted in the arrest records
but her conviction was swift and sure. However, most of the
larceny cases brought before a judge were dismissed and did
423
424
Green, Washington, 251.
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
268
not see the light of day after a he reviewed the evidence.
Irish women who could not pay their fines, or whose
appeals were turned down, were sent to the Washington
Asylum where they labored in the workhouse to pay off their
fines. This jail-time alternative effectively discriminated
against the poor. The poor were sent to the Washington
Asylum as the only alternative and rehabilitative measure
available to nineteenth-century adjudicators. In 1860 a
handful of Irish women who were convicted of small crimes
and unable to pay their fines were incarcerated. Of twentyeight female prisoners, seven were Irish-born.426 Most Irish
women incarcerated for not paying their fines were
servants. The transient nature of their work and the lack
of substantial wages helped keep these women in the
workhouse as petty criminals.
427
If the convicted woman was
found mentally unstable, she was shipped to St. Elizabeth’s
for rehabilitation or housing. Indigence, combined with
breaking the law, proved doubly harsh for Washington’s
Irish women.
425
Ibid.
USMC, 1860.
427
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1860,
1870 and 1880. See Appendix Four for further information
regarding these families.
426
269
Figure 20: Occupation of Irish Women Arrested in Washington, D.C., 1861-1887
Business Owner
8%
Laborer
1%
Housewife
6%
None
11%
Servant
55%
Prostitute
19%
Source: Sampling of Record Group 351, #125, Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887, National
Archives, Washington, D.C.
Throughout the Civil War, Irish women often failed to
procure appropriate business licenses, sold alcohol without
a proper license to do so, sold alcohol on Sundays or, the
worst offense of all, sold alcohol to soldiers. These women
turned tidy profits and were not forthcoming with the
270
city’s share of the profits. One of the most profitable
Irish women in the Washington, D.C. area was Margaret
Gormley who owned a grocery. Margaret was well established
in the Georgetown community and provided a refuge to many
Irish men and women new to the capital. Irish families
floated in and out of her home throughout Margaret’s
lifetime. However, on a few occasions, she too, was
arrested and brought before a judge for failing to take out
a business license for her grocery. For that crime against
the corporation of Washington Margaret would take out the
license in court and pay for court costs.428 However,
Catharine Gormley, Margaret’s daughter, was not so
fortunate. Catharine received two sentences for selling
liquor without a license and not having the proper business
license. Two days later she was arrested again, fined
$10.94 for not keeping a business license and sentenced to
the workhouse for ninety days when she proved unable to pay
that fine.429
428
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1860.
Margaret was forty-seven, kept a store and had real estate
worth $10,000. She was born in Ireland and lived with four
of her children. John was twenty-seven and a carpenter born
in Maryland. Margaret was nineteen and Catharine was
sixteen; both were born in Washington, D.C. Mary was
fourteen, born in Washington, D.C. and attended school.
429
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
271
Crimes against the corporation of Washington were
typical of the native female population in the last half of
the nineteenth century. The Immigration Commission Reports
noted that native women committed these types of crimes
most often.430 The status in these types of crime--versus
the crimes of disorderly conduct, theft and drunkenness-implies a community member with business ownership or shop
proprietorship. Margaret and Catharine had made the
transition from immigrant to community member when they
were charged with these crimes. As established community
members they were no longer in transition. They had made it
and behaved much like others in their community who were
born and raised in America.
Throughout the capital Irish women were arrested and
convicted of selling liquor on Sunday and selling liquor
without a license. Ellen Fitzgerald, an apple vendor, was
charged with selling liquor early one Sunday morning. She
posted bail for her court hearing. Selling liquor without a
license also posed a serious threat to the offender. Fines
of up to $105 accompanied these convictions. Mary Reynolds
discovered this the second time that she was caught selling
liquor without the proper licenses. In July of 1871 Mary
430
Reports of the Immigration Commission, 370-377.
272
was fined twenty dollars for doing so; but in January of
1873 that fine increased to $105.431
Mary Murray, on the other hand, did not abide by the
liquor laws in Washington, D.C. and consistently ignored
them. She learned her lesson the day she was caught selling
liquor to soldiers and failing to procure the appropriate
licenses. Mary was fined twenty-five dollars and paid
security in court as a measure against her repeated
offense. As a tavern keeper, Mary learned the value of
keeping the proper licenses as her bread and butter came
from keeping her tavern open. She could not do that from
jail.
432
However, female crime in nineteenth-century
Washington, D.C. was primarily African American. Charged,
convicted and jailed in greater numbers than any other
ethnic or immigrant group, African American women filled
District jails and local workhouses. In the capital in
1890, only 11 percent of women in the workhouse—a
remunerative option to jail--were foreign-born where the
remaining 89 percent were African American.433 What helped
Irish women in Washington, D.C. was the large number of
431
432
Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887.
Ibid.
273
African American women who migrated to the city before and
after the Civil War. This new population, and the racial
tension that Reconstruction brought to the city, drew
attention away from Irish women. As the lower rungs of the
social ladder filled with African Americans, the Irish
were, by default, moved up the ladder. The arrest and
convictions of Irish women decreased significantly after
the Civil War. Ayers notes this in his study of the
Southern criminal justice system. He finds that “the fall
in immigrant prosecution and incarceration may well have
owed something, too, to the preoccupation of police and
courts with blacks. Even the Irish, after all, were
white.”434 Moreover, the decreasing arrest and conviction
rate of Irish women speaks to their new role in the
community and their use of safety nets previous immigrants
provided.
As the century progressed, Irish women were arrested
less often for crimes that accompanied domestic discord.
Instead, when they were arrested, charged and convicted of
crimes these crimes were generally against the corporation
433
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, Report on Crime.
Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and
Punishment in the 19th Century American South, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984, 198.
434
274
of the city of Washington. This transition from blue-collar
crime to white-collar crime accompanied the Irish woman’s
transition from immigrant newcomer to Irish American.
Gordon’s category of civic assimilation was reached with
the absence of a “value and power conflict.”435
This
absence is noted as Irish women no longer participated in
the physical aggression that received attention from the
local police but engaged in “value and power conflicts”
similar to that of their native counterparts. Evidence of
this acculturation is also seen in the decreasing number of
Irish women arrested and convicted of any crime throughout
the last half of the nineteenth century in Washington, D.C.
As newcomers replaced the Irish for the city’s attention,
Irish women received less attention for their criminal
behavior and more attention for their efforts at
maintaining and establishing the community of Washington,
D.C. By the end of the century, Irish women had learned
what was expected of them in the national capital and
adapted to new cultural norms.
435
Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, 71.
275
CHAPTER 7: “SO THEY MAY NEVER STRAY”: THE ROLE
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE LIVES OF
WASHINGTON’S IRISH WOMEN
On November 17, 1861, Alfred Shaw and Irishman Peter
Owens walked to the home of Mrs. Mary O’Neill on
Massachusetts Avenue between New Jersey and North Capitol
streets. Earlier in 1861 Mary’s husband Cornelius died. His
job as a laborer completed the family’s meager income;
however, without that income, Mary’s family lived tenuously
at best. After the death of her husband, Mary moved her
family from their home at 312 Fourth Street, northeast to
their less expensive residence on Massachusetts Avenue. The
visiting committee from the St. Aloysius St. Vincent de
Paul Conference of Washington, D.C., Brothers Owens and
Shaw, called upon Mrs. O’Neill to scrutinize her worthiness
for adoption into their charity ranks. As they gathered in
the home of the illiterate widow and mother of five, the
visiting committee discussed with Mary the state of her
finances and assured her that she and her family would be
proposed for adoption into the Conference. This meant extra
276
money, groceries and coal for her family’s well being. At
the next meeting of the St. Aloysius Conference of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society, Brothers Owens and Shaw attested
to the merits of Mrs. O’Neill’s family and the truly
deserving need of the children and widow. Consequently, the
family was adopted into the Conference. Each week Mary
received forty cents from the Conference to help meet
expenses. Due to the harsh winter of that year, the
Conference extended extraordinary relief to the O’Neill
family in the form of extra coal for heat and shoes for the
children.436
Seven months went by and the Conference continued to
provide the much-needed assistance to the family until June
30th when William Kennedy announced to his fellow Brothers
that Mrs. O’Neill had passed away. Irishman Timothy Foley,
one of the Brothers of the Conference, took ten-year old
Daniel and three-year old Dennis home to live with his
family. John, who was five, stayed with his Uncle John
Connor. The oldest child, Mary, was thirteen. She and five-
436
Parish--St Vincent de Paul Society 1861-1871, Box
40, , Archives of St. Aloysius Catholic Church, St.
Aloysius Catholic Church, Washington, D.C. The St. Vincent
de Paul Society was divided into parish Conferences. Each
parish had a branch of the Society that was called a
277
month old Patrick stayed with Mrs. Collins on Second
Street. While the children were watched over in their
respective places of care, the Conference debated their
fate. Daniel and Dennis were fine where they were. The
Brothers discussed apprenticing Mary to a domestic
situation so she could learn a skill and become selfsupportive; however, further debate and discussion would
wait until the next meeting. Over the next two weeks, John
was bound to another family for adoption while Mary and
baby Patrick were placed at St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum run
by the Sisters of Charity. The Conference sent fifty cents
to the Asylum each week to purchase milk for baby Patrick.
All seemed well with the five children of Mrs. O’Neill
until October 5, 1862. Mary did not apprentice out to a
family but stayed at the Asylum to work with the Sisters.
John’s adoption did not work out; he lived with the Fathers
at St. Aloysius’ for a short time, but was with his uncle
on a permanent basis by that October. Baby Patrick died.
The Conference regretted the unhappy circumstances life
thrust upon these children, but they continued to take care
Conference. The members refer to each other as Brothers in
the nineteenth-century fashion of fraternal associations.
278
of their own.
437
The events that unfolded in the lives of Mary, Daniel,
John, Dennis and Patrick were repeated in a small number of
Irish households throughout the capital. One of the
admirable aspects of this story is the contribution of
Irish church members to the well being of their fellow
Irish neighbors. In many ways the Catholic churches of
Washington, D.C. supported immigrant communities in the
various parishes. Through formal means with institutions
overseen by priests and nuns or through lay missions such
as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, these charity works
provided a community network of kith and kin that laid the
foundation for Irish women’s well being in the city.
Through donations of rent, outright cash, coal and wood or
groceries, parish charity organizations kept many Irish
families afloat who suffered unemployment, unsteady
employment, illness or, in the case of Mary O’Neill’s
children, death. Just like the opportunity structures
created by the growth of Washington labor, the Catholic
churches of the capital became another mechanism for Irish
437
Ibid., USMC, 1860 and 1870 and William Boyd, Boyd’s
Washington and Georgetown Directory, Washington, D.C.:
Taylor and Maury, 1860. See Appendix Seven for further
information regarding the Foley family and their sponsors.
279
women’s upward mobility.
Throughout the nineteenth century the American
Catholic Church provided Irish immigrants with a familiar
institution in an unfamiliar setting. Local parishes
throughout the United States offered Irish immigrants a
community that assisted in the immigrants’ transition to
Irish American. In New York, Chicago and other cities with
large populations of Irish immigrants the parish church
came to represent a connection with Ireland. For Chicago’s
Irish, ”the parish became the closest thing to an ethnic
village.” The Irish immigrant was able to retain his
ethnic identity through the parish structure, and
the parish became the center of community. As in
Ireland, it served not just religious needs but,
through schools and social and charitable
societies, social needs as well… Finally, the
church was instrumental in “Americanizing” the
Irish and in facilitating their mobility.438
Parish churches in New York offered Irish immigrants
similar assistance. In New York the Transfiguration Church
was crucial for Irish immigrants in the Sixth Ward. Jay
Dolan notes this in the baptismal and marriage records that
“reflect the hegemony of the Irish, and the list of parish
438
Harzig, Mageean, Matovic, Knothe and Blaschke,
Peasant Maids—City Women, 225.
280
officers resembles a roll call of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians.”439
Washington’s Catholic churches also filled with newly
arriving Irish immigrants and provided a mediating
influence for Irish immigrants living in Georgetown and the
District. Although initially a church of the elite,
Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church soon filled with
laboring immigrants and their families who came to work on
the canal, street and edifice projects of the capital city.
These Irish remained the largest immigrant group in the
Georgetown parish throughout the nineteenth century. Two
prominent Irish members, the Donoghue brothers, were wellknown businessmen in Georgetown and Washington. Peter was a
cloth merchant and Timothy owned a grocery. They and their
extended families consistently filled Holy Trinity’s
pews.
440
Father John McElroy, a young Irish priest, served
the Irish immigrant population in its earliest years and
was responsible for much of its growth.
St. Patrick’s, the first Catholic Church in the city
439
Jay P. Dolan, The Immigrant Church, New York’s
Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1975, 46.
440
Holy Trinity Church, Pew Rents, Holy Trinity Pew
Records, Box 3, Folder 1, Georgetown University Archives,
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
281
of Washington, D.C., grew in response to the needs of Irish
immigrants. As Irish men and their families immigrated to
the capital for work, Father Anthony Caffry, a Dublin
immigrant, ministered to them in the growing parish. St.
Patrick’s formed a unique role for the downtown Irish as
the church that spawned St. Vincent’s Orphanage to care for
Irish children. Added to St. Patrick’s were two Catholic
churches also built to meet the needs of the growing Irish
population. St. Peter’s in northeast Washington, D.C. and
St. Matthew’s on the corner of H and Fifteenth, northwest,
provided services for Irish Catholics in their parishes.
St. Matthew’s brought the Irish residents of the
neighborhood a church and priest to shepherd the flock that
lived and worked in the White House area. Even as late as
1873 Father White remarked that St. Matthew’s was still a
largely “foreign and transient population.”441
The first pastor of St. Matthew’s was Irishman John P.
Donelan. He, along with Irishmen Thomas Carberry, Ignatius
Mudd and John Callan, were responsible for erecting the
building while Irishmen Nicholas Callan, Jr., Ambrose Lynch
and Gregory Ennis assisted with church growth. Along the
441
Notitiae, 1873, St. Matthew’s Catholic Church,
Archives of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.,
282
outskirts of Swampoodle, the Northeast area where Irish
laborers and their families lived in the nineteenth
century, was St. Aloysius. This church, if any in
Washington, D.C. boasted of Irish origins. Throughout the
nineteenth century Irish immigrants and their families
comprised two-thirds of this parish’s residents with the
original land donation for the church building given by
Irishman Ambrose Lynch.
Much of the church building in the Washington, D.C.
area was the result of Irish men and women needing
parishes. For the young and old of the capital the Catholic
churches provided spiritual, physical and moral support.
This support specifically targeted, however, the spiritual
life of parishioners. The role of the church, through this
network, focused on sustaining parishioners “so they may
never stray” from the church. Charity and education focused
on the spiritual and secular needs of parishioners. Bishop
Carroll and bishops that followed him, along with the nuns
and priests dedicated to serving the Washington community,
took their role in that community seriously. Summed up by
The Catholic Mirror in 1867 is the primary goal of Catholic
service. The spirit of Catholic charity must provide “not
Hyattsville, Maryland.
283
only for the welfare of the soul, it also looks after the
wants of the body.”442 Christ’s decree that the church take
care of the widows and orphans was manifested in the
Catholic churches of Washington, D.C. that supported its
immigrant parishioners in the form of charity and
education.
Another part of these kith and kin resources was the
education of the immigrant and the young that the church
performed. This was done to achieve two ends: one was
spiritual and the other more pragmatic. If the immigrant
and the young were taught skills, they would become selfsufficient members of a community. These early pioneers of
Catholic charities saw this when they “did not recognize a
clear line of demarcation between education and charities.
The education of the young and the care of dependent and
neglected children went hand in hand.”
443
The education of
the young also accomplished the goal of assisting Catholic
youths in not straying from their faith. Educating the
children of immigrants fostered their climb up the ladder
of social mobility. This dual assistance of charity and
442
Catholic Mirror, December 28, 1867.
John O’Grady, Catholic Charities in the United
States: History and Problems, Washington, D.C., National
Conference of Catholic Charities, 1930, 32.
443
284
education became part of the continuum of immigrants’
experiences in nineteenth-century Washington, D.C.
Throughout the nineteenth century in the capital
poverty was almost synonymous with immigrant. However,
cultural mechanisms—namely the Catholic church and ethnic
charity organizations--worked to keep Irish women out of
poverty or at least supported through poverty until such
time that they were self-supportive. Irish women became
poor when they lost their jobs, lost their breadwinner or
fell ill. Any and all of these circumstances propelled
Irish women already on an economic edge further down the
slope.
Public institutional support for the indigent and
impoverished in the capital was relegated to various
agencies in the city government. Nineteenth-century
government mechanisms for the indigent and poor included
jails, workhouses, hospitals and insane asylums. Other
government institutions to oversee the care and maintenance
of the poor were the charity arms of local hospitals that
were partially supported by city money. However, the city
was not generous: Washington, D.C. was a small town on the
brink of bursting into something big. Not until the close
of the Civil War did the District receive the kind of
285
attention and money necessary to build a substantial
infrastructure for city maintenance. Most of the financial
support for that infrastructure came by congressional
allocation. Throughout the nineteenth century that
allocation was limited and controversial. Often
Congressional financial support for the District was too
little, too late.
Washington institutions that had primary contact with
indigent Irish women include local workhouses, poorhouses
and asylums. The majority of Irish women housed in the
Georgetown and Washington, D.C. poorhouses were indigent.
Commitment to the Asylum came under the careful scrutiny of
the police and local magistrates; the person in question
must be vagrant, idle or with no visible means of support.
With these criteria met, the Metropolitan Police brought
the person in question before a judge, the judge weighed
the evidence that proved vagrancy, idleness or no visible
means of support and placed the said person into the
custody of the intendant of the Washington Asylum.444 Thus
444
Webb, William Benning. The laws of the Corporation
of the City of Washington: digested and arranged under
appropriates heads in accordance with a joint resolution of
the City Councils, together with an appendix containing a
digest of the charter and other acts of Congress concerning
the city, Washington, D.C.: R.A. Waters, 1868.
286
accomplished, these women, if physically capable, worked
for their keep. This practice ensured, according to the
laws of Washington, D.C. that all persons committed to the
Asylum learned to work. It was assumed that although some
poor had fallen upon hard times and were deserving of
Washington charity, some did not want to work or had no
skills or training to do so. The Asylum solved this dilemma
by placing all capable bodies into the hands of an
intendant so they could work or learn to do so.
However, very few Irish women were housed in
Washington’s public institutions for the poor throughout
the last half of the nineteenth century. Catholic charities
worked in concert to assist Irish women and keep them out
of public institutions for the poor; but, a handful of
destitute Irish women slipped through the cracks and ended
up in public institutions. Twenty-three year old Mary Grey
and thirty-nine year old Ann Fagan were the only Irish
women in the Georgetown poorhouse in 1860 and Mary
Connelly, Maggie Logan, Mary Dyer and Ellen Smith were the
only Irish women there in 1870.445 The Washington Asylum,
the District’s version of the poorhouse, also had few Irish
women. In 1850 Ellen Loobey was the only Irish woman out of
287
twenty women. Of the sixty-five women in the poorhouse in
1870 fourteen were Irish.446
The same continued in 1880
with only a small number of Irish women housed in
government institutions for the poor.
447
Most of the Irish women in the poorhouses were
unemployed. Ellen Holland had not worked for a year.
Desperate for food and clothing, she was placed in the
Asylum. Seventy-one year old Nora McDonough and eighty-year
old Margaret Cashmore also had not worked for a year. By
1880 the predominant number of women in the Washington
Asylum were elderly or widowed women who listed their
occupation as servant. These women were the most vulnerable
of the Irish population and their circumstances proved
such.448
One Catholic charity that cared for the elderly was
the Home for the Aged of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Established just before 1880, the Sisters took in elderly
patients when all other means were exhausted. Those
accepted into the Home were penniless with no other
options. In 1880 almost half of the women cared for by the
445
446
447
USMC, 1870.
Ibid.
USMC, 1880.
288
Sisters were Irish. There were sixty-three women in the
Home for the Aged and thirty-one of these were born in
Ireland. The youngest Irish woman in the home was sixty and
the oldest was eighty-four. Some of the women were
disabled. Most of the disabilities listed were insanity
however a few of the women were blind and one was maimed.
Nora Black, Johanna McNulty and Mary Foley were blind. Mary
McCarthy, eighty, was maimed. All thirty-one of these Irish
women lived at the corner of H and Third Street,
northeast.449 At the Home for the Aged the Catholic Church
took care of its own.
Poverty also came about when husbands and family
breadwinners were killed or injured. On December 18, 1865
an explosion at the Washington Arsenal killed and wounded a
large number of laborers. There were so many men injured
that J. G. Benton, Major of Ordnance and Brevet Colonel,
requested funds to relieve the suffering of the remaining
family members. In an appeal to Congress, Commander Benton
noted that
448
USMC, 1880.
Ibid. and Sadlier’s Catholic Almanac and Order for
the Year of Our Lord, 1880-1890, Sadliers: New York, 18801890.
449
289
Ellen Fealy, the wife of Thomas Fealy, is the
mother of nine children, two of whom are married
and two learning trades; each of these latter is
earning three dollars and fifty cents per week.
She owns two small frame houses and keeps a small
store. The youngest of her family is five years
old. The four youngest are females, aged,
respectively, five, eight, ten and twelve
years.450
Ellen and her family had lived in Washington, D.C. since
1853. Before the war Ellen lived with her husband and nine
children in ward five. Ellen’s first five children were
born in Ireland. Dennis, nineteen, worked as a laborer with
his father and Hannah, sixteen, worked as a washwoman with
her mother. This family economy included both parents and
their two eldest children. The youngest children, Timothy,
Thomas, Patrick and Ellen attended school.
451
The financial
assistance Congress provided helped fill the gap left by
Thomas’ death.
Another Irish family affected by the explosion was
the Reardon’s. Patrick Reardon, head of the household, was
killed in the explosion. The Commander reported to Congress
that the widow “has one child four years old, has no
property, pays rent and has no means of support.” Five
years later Catherine had $300 of personal property that
450
Goode, Capital Losses, 297-298.
290
the government gave her for the death of her spouse. She
converted that money into a grocery that supported her and
her daughter Jane.452 Another who suffered the loss of a
breadwinner was Mary McGarry. She and her husband Peter
owned a small store before his death in the explosion. The
Commander noted that she had one child, a boy eight months
old, paid rent and kept a small store. Congress
appropriated $300 for Mary and her son. The store was
assessed at $2500 in 1870 and Mary had $200 in personal
property. By 1880 Mary and her son Andrew lived at 330 A
Street, northeast and Andrew attended school.
453
To those of Catholic faith, however, the government’s
care for the indigent and poor was an aside to their own
efforts. Irish Catholics in the capital took care of their
own. To subject their parishioners and fellow Catholic
neighbors to the rigors and potential of Protestant
proselytizing was anathema. Catholics must help their own,
thus keeping Catholics within the fold. For Irish
immigrants, this Catholic support often meant the
difference between survival on the streets and a home. As a
leg up on other newly arrived Washingtonians, the church
451
452
USMC, 1880.
USMC, 1870.
291
provided the institutional infrastructure that the city did
not. As a means to upward mobility, the Catholic Church
provided a network of kith and kin that assisted in the
economic mobility of many Irish churchgoers.
One of the Catholic charity organizations that
supported this Irish community was the St. Vincent de Paul
Society in Washington, D.C. First and foremost, the parish
Conferences relieved suffering due to poverty. However, the
goals of the Conferences went beyond relieving immediate
suffering and looked toward the future. They insisted that
“while our Society is by no means a proselytizing one, yet
no more exalted work of charity can be done than to win
over souls to the Holy Mother Church when the happy
opportunity presents itself to our members.”454 On the
member rolls were a variety of men, young and old,
professional, skilled and unskilled. Almost all of these
men were married and the women they assisted were either
married with an absent husband or widowed. Although an
occasional man appeared on the relief rolls, the majority
of people helped by the Conference were women and children.
453
USMC, 1880.
Rev. Daniel T. McColgan, A Century of Charity, The
First One Hundred Years of the Society of St. Vincent De
454
292
These vulnerable souls were the focus of the Society and
received tuition to send their children to school or
financial support to bury their dead.455 Throughout the
Civil War the Conferences visited soldiers in the Douglas
Military hospital to distribute Christian manuals, copies
of the Annals of the Propagation of the Catholic Faith,
tracts and medals.
456
Even in the midst of the Civil War,
the Irishness of this Conference was apparent. On April 26,
1863 the Conference reminded its members that “next Sunday
the collection would be for the relief of the sufferers in
Ireland.”457
The first St. Vincent de Paul Conference was founded
in St. Matthew’s parish in 1857 and in the following forty
years fourteen parishes established Conferences and
continued to support parish communities through
remunerative and material means.458 The Conferences aided
Paul in the United States, Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing
Company, 1951, 214.
455
Parish--St. Vincent de Paul Society, 1861-1871, Box
40, March 9, 1862. The burial for the two children of Mr.
Gordan paid for by St. Aloysius St. Vincent de Paul
Conference, April 20, 1862. Asked for by Brother Ratcliff.
456
Ibid. Brothers Duffy and Liegel went to the
Hospital.
457
Ibid. Stated by the President.
458
McColgan, Century of Charity, 225. Parishes founded
St. Vincent de Paul Conferences in the following years: St.
293
and counseled the poor in their own homes, cared for
deserted orphans, rescued Catholic children from Protestant
schools and provided for their support in Catholic schools
and asylums.459 The Catholic community of Washington, D.C.
heartily supported these endeavors through contribution
collections at Sunday masses. Encouraging attendance at
these particular masses, the Catholic Mirror in February of
1879 reminded parishioners that
all the collections in St. Patrick’s and St.
Aloysius” Churches next Sunday will be for the
benefit of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul,
the members of which are called upon so much by
the poor as to necessitate an appeal to the
charitable. The severity of the winter and
consequently increased amount of suffering has
depleted their funds, and they now justly ask
those more favored with the world’s goods to help
them to mitigate the sufferings of God’s poor.460
The following week noted a column of thanks for the
generous support of the Conference and encouraged continued
financial contributions.
Throughout the nineteenth century parish Conferences
supported Irish immigrants around the city. Many families
Matthew’s in 1857, St. Patrick’s in 1860, St. Aloysius’ in
1861, St. Peter’s in 1864, St. Dominic’s in 1865,
Immaculate Conception and Holy Trinity in 1866 and St.
Stephen’s in 1868.
459
Ibid., 214.
294
received subsidies of rent, food and fuel. Mrs. Kinnigan
and her family received rent money and food while Mrs.
Shanahan’s family received approval for adoption from
Robert Mulcahy’s visiting committee.461 Hanorah Hurley and
her three children also received support from the
Conference. She, her husband and three children came to the
District of Columbia about 1850 to join her parents, Morris
and Joanna Nalligan. They lived on the East Side of Second,
between F and G Streets northeast with Hanorah’s two
younger sisters and brother, Bridget, Margaret and Peter.
Hanorah’s husband Daniel worked as a brick and stonemason
to support his family.
462
Shortly after the Hurley’s arrival in the District,
Hanorah gave birth to their son Daniel. However, ten years
later Hanorah’s husband was no longer in her home and her
mother had passed away. By 1860 Hanorah outlived her son
Frank and tried to provide for her family by working as a
washerwoman. Soon after Frank’s death, two Brothers of the
Conference visited her home and recommended her family for
adoption into their charity ranks.
460
The Conference
Catholic Mirror, February 1, 1879.
Parish--St. Vincent de Paul Society, 1861-1871, Box
40, December 1, 1861 and USMC, 1860.
462
Ibid. and USMC 1850-1860.
461
295
continued to grant extraordinary relief to the mother of
three over the next four years. Unfortunately, by 1864
Hanorah’s father died and just one month later Hanorah
herself became very ill. The Conference provided $7.25 as a
death benefit for her father; but that was little use to
Hanorah as she died one month after her father.
463
As a fairly exclusive organization for the Irish, the
nineteenth-century St. Vincent de Paul Conferences rescued
many Irish women from the poor houses, jails and insane
asylums as evidenced by the sheer lack of Irish women in
these institutions. Irish women in Washington’s poor houses
were less than that of other typical Irish immigrant cities
such as Boston and New York. Over a twenty-year period only
eighteen first or second-generation Irish women were placed
in the Washington or Georgetown poorhouse.
464
By 1870 the
number of Irish families served by the St. Vincent de Paul
Conference dwindled. The majority of women, men and
children the Conferences assisted no longer needed the
extra forty or fifty cents each week.465
463
Ibid., USMC, 1850, 1860 and 1870 and Waite,
Washington Directory. See Appendix Seven for further
information regarding the Hurley family and their sponsors.
464
USMC, 1860-1880
465
Parish--St. Vincent de Paul Society, 1861-1871, Box
40, Report from December 18, 1870
296
Through the support of the Conferences these families
could now support themselves. Apprenticing children to
local businessmen and craftsmen, sending children to school
and finding housing meant that Irish families no longer
needed the weekly benefits from the Conferences. Left on
the charity rolls was the elderly or newly arrived
immigrant. Ellen McDermott lived not too far from the
church. She, her daughter and granddaughter especially
needed the help of the Conference. In 1870 Bridget, Ellen’s
daughter, washed clothes for a living and the twelve-year
old granddaughter, Mary, attended school. Both mother and
daughter were born in Ireland while Mary was born in the
District of Columbia.466 As a washerwoman, Bridget earned
little and the Conference provided fifty cents extra each
week that often made the difference between life as the
working poor and life in a public institution.
Success stories attributed to the assistance of the
St. Vincent de Paul Conferences were abundant throughout
Washington’s Irish community. Mary Shannahan, who received
money and coal in the 1860s, was on her own by 1870. In
1860 Mary washed clothes for a living and provided for her
family with the help of the Society. By 1870 she was
466
Ibid. and USMC, 1870.
297
keeping house like her middle-class American counterparts.
Mary was fifty and her eldest son apprenticed to a
carpenter, her eighteen-year old apprenticed to a
blacksmith and her seventeen-year old was employed as a
cart driver. Even Mary’s youngest, her daughter Mary,
attended school.
467
Other success stories include Mary
O’Neill’s boys. John worked in his uncle’s grocery while
Dennis and Daniel attended school. These children, with the
financial and moral support of the Irish Catholic
community, found homes and work after the death of their
mother.468
In light of the O’Neill’s successes, Irish-American
came to equal middle-class in Washington, D.C.. The
combining of their traditions and heritage with that of
their host community created an Irish-American that
participated in the ideals, incomes, values, behavior and
education represented by the nineteenth-century middle
class. The O’Neill children were able to make this
467
Ibid. and USMC, 1860
The Shannahan family lived at H street, between North
Capital and First Street East. Their case was transferred
from St. Patrick’s Conference. Mary Shannahan, Irish
washerwoman, was thirty-six, John was ten, Michael was
eight, James was five, Daniel was seven and Mary was three.
All of Mary’s children were born in Washington, D.C. By
1870 Mary still lived in Ward Four but was keeping house.
298
transition because of the support from the Catholic church
in Washington and its parish charities.
The second arm of charity that the Catholic Church
extended to Irish immigrants was that of education.
Charity, in conjunction with education, opened the gateway
to immigrant success. With the remunerative support at
home, Irish children could attend school instead of work in
the family economy. Another alternative was the job
opportunities that awaited the trained child. Initially
this support came in the form of charity day schools or
orphanages that housed children for respite or permanent
care. The orders of nuns that typically operated these
institutions regarded the schools as important tools “for
raising the immigrant above his present economic level…They
would teach the children trades so that they might return
to the community life, self-respecting and selfsupportive.”469 In Washington, D.C. the dual mechanism of
charity and education was found in St. Vincent’s Orphan
Asylum and Day School, St. Rose’s Industrial School for
Girls and St. Mary’s House of Industry.
St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum and Day School opened in
468
469
USMC, 1860-1880.
O’Grady, Catholic Charities, 100.
299
1825 under the charge of the Sisters of Charity at St.
Patrick’s Catholic Church. The Sisters provided for the
spiritual, physical and future well being of their charges.
At St. Vincent’s orphans from the town and surrounding
country were clothed, fed and educated. St. Vincent’s
devoted money and energy to educate children whose “parents
are unable to educate them,” in “such branches as may be
most useful, as well as supplied with clothing, and with
food during their attendance at school.”470 The girls at St.
Vincent’s ranged in age from infancy to adulthood. Although
the rules made provision for the release of an orphan at
the age of eighteen, most girls left the institution
earlier with family members, adoptive parents or were bound
out for apprenticeship service.
No children of Irish birth stayed at the City Asylum
between 1850 and 1880 but a predominant number of Irish
children lived at St. Vincent’s.471 The religious nature of
St. Vincent’s, its geographic location and its symbolic
representation in Irish culture played a significant role
in Irish families’ decisions to house their children with
the Sisters. St. Vincent’s, because of its Catholic
470
471
“Memorial of the Sisters of Charity .”
USMC, 1850-1880.
300
origins, had an exclusive arrangement for the immigrant
Irish of the capital. The alternative to this solution was
benevolent societies operated by city agencies or private
institutions. However, each of these provided a Protestant
education along with the typical regimen of housekeeping
courses. The Washington Female Union Benevolent Society
provided such a service to the District’s indigent and
needy. Within their by-laws were religious instruction
requirements; however, for Irish Catholics in Washington,
D.C. the best place for their children was in the care of
Catholic priests and nuns, not well-intentioned Protestant
society matrons.472
As respite care, St. Vincent’s offered temporary care
for children of the poor. Supported by the community, the
girls were described as having
bright and cheerful faces...who, but for this
refuge of innocence, would be thrown upon the
precarious charity of a selfish, noisy, bustling
money-loving world, and be environed by dangers
and beset by temptations at almost every step in
the journey of life.473
472
Female Union Benevolent Society of Washington City;
Washington, D.C., Constitution and by-laws of the Female
Union Benevolent Society of Washington City, Washington,
D.C.: Printed by Gales and Seaton, 1839.
473
“Our Washington Letter,” Catholic Mirror (1871) 22.
301
St. Vincent’s prepared Irish girls for their place within
the community as daily life consisted of housekeeping for
the maintenance of the community, tutoring in academic
work, lessons in sewing and music and religious training.
The girls were instructed daily “in such branches as are
calculated to make them ornaments to, as well as useful
members of, society.”
474
At times, however, girls left St. Vincent’s before a
culminating graduation. Those who left St. Vincent’s with
family stayed with the Sisters for an average of three
years. Most of the girls were left with the Sisters by a
parent and picked up by a parent several months or years
later. These families were newcomers to the city and had a
difficult time supporting their children. The Asylum
offered immigrant parents an opportunity to establish
themselves in the community. Irish girls released to family
were left with the Sisters of Charity as a temporary
measure and stayed no longer than five or six years. Most
often it was a shorter period of a few months. The
lengthier stays were very young children who left in later
years with a relative or found employment with a
benefactor. Of the fourteen girls released to non-family,
474
“Memorial of the Sisters of Charity.”
302
only one was adopted. The remaining thirteen left with a
benefactress with the intended purpose of learning a trade
or they left on their own to “take a situation.”475
Washington laws condoned and encouraged such duties of
orphan asylums and placing-out agents. As children of a
drunkard, vagrant or pauper or children whose parents were
bringing them up in “ignorance and vice, sloth and
idleness, or who suffered them to be employed in begging or
holding horses for hire at public places” could be bound
out to “respectable housekeepers, mechanics or farmers.”
476
Up until the age of sixteen these girls would stay in their
homes of indenture or placement. However, the child was to
be taught and “instructed in such branches of education as
may to them seem necessary and reasonable.”477
St. Vincent’s provided this solution. However, not all
of the Irish girls bound out to service found the happy
homes for which they hoped. At a special meeting of the
Board of Directors, the case of Minnie Collins was brought
forward. Miss Collins was in the custody of Francis Pasey,
475
Records of St.
Catholic University of
University of America,
1860 and 1870.
476
Webb, The laws
Washington, 296-297.
Vincent’s Female Orphan Asylum,
America Archives, Catholic
Washington, D.C. and USMC, 1850,
of the Corporation of the City of
303
presumably to serve as a domestic in the home.
Unfortunately, Minnie was not properly cared for and the
institution wished to have her returned so they might
continue her training. Mr. Galt, a local merchant who
served as the President of the Board of Directors, asked
that the family return her to the asylum because of bad
treatment.
478
To prevent this type of mistreatment, the
Board of Directors, under the careful and assertive
direction of Irish Sister Blanche Rooney, set about to
extend the stay and training of girls at St. Vincent’s in a
new school, St. Rose’s Industrial School for Girls. As a
solution to the mistreatment of placed-out girls, and
accomplishing the educational goals of Catholic charities
in Washington, D.C., St. Rose’s Industrial School
represented the continuing legacy of Catholic charity for
immigrant women.
Primarily a school for the teaching of sewing,
477
Records of St. Vincent’s Female Orphan Asylum.
Journal of the Proceedings of the Board of Trustees
of St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, Volume Two, Meeting Minutes
of May 23, 1887, Box 11-23-15-1, Daughters of Charity
Archives, Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Galt was a thirty-six year old local merchant who
lived in Ward Four. His real estate was valued at $36,000
and personal property of $15,000. He was born in Maryland
and married to Harriet of Vermont. In 1870 they had three
children.
478
304
needlework and tailoring, St. Rose’s began with three girls
and one Sister of Charity in the attic of St. Vincent’s.
From this modest beginning came an institution that trained
Irish women for occupations suited to domestic situations
and gave them the foundations for married life. Irish girls
entered St. Rose’s at the age of thirteen after finishing
training at St. Vincent’s.
479
When they reached the age of
twenty-one they were on their own. The two-fold objective
of the institution, charity and education, assisted Irish
girls in earning their support whether through skills
taught or job placement as St. Rose’s was “designed for the
proper training of poor little orphan girls in the
honorable pursuits of industry, and to qualify them for the
various respectable avocations of life.”480 Asking for
contributions, the Catholic Mirror noted that “in the
proposed institution the orphan children will be taught
useful trades, and thus be better prepared to provide for
themselves in life.”481 To guard their souls and train them
up to be responsible Catholic women formed the crux of
479
Ibid.
“News Items,” Folder, Box 11-23-14, Daughters of
Charity Archives, Emmitsburg, Maryland and “St. Vincent’s
Industrial School,” Catholic Mirror, August 19, 1871.
481
“Our Washington Letter,” Catholic Mirror (1871)
Vol. 22.
480
305
Irish girl’s vocational schooling at St. Vincent’s Orphan
Asylum and St. Rose’s Industrial School.
St. Rose’s was established as an industrial school
because indentures and placing-out did not satisfy the
goals of Catholic charity in the national capital. The
intent and purpose of indenture was to provide training for
those placed-out. However, like Minnie Collins and other
girls, this was not the case. Thus, the industrial school
of St. Rose’s was established to provide a place “where the
larger orphans might be taught some useful trade and thus
qualify them to become respectable members of society.”482
Sister Blanche Rooney’s efforts, and those of her Board of
Directors, responded to the call that “the present care of
the orphans is no more your duty than their education and
preparing them for future independence and usefulness--in
truth, the latter is the greater purpose.”483
At St. Rose’s, girls were given a “good English
education.” For those girls who displayed a given talent,
the Sisters provided an academic education. However, for
the majority of Irish girls at St. Rose’s, an academic
482
“Meeting of Board of Directors” Box 11-23-15, Item
Number 1. Daughters of Charity Archives, Emmitsburg,
Maryland.
483
“Journal of the Proceedings.”
306
career was not in their future but “bookkeeping, clerking,
all kinds of plain sewing, fancy work, dressmaking,
cloakmaking, bonnet making all varieties of millinery,
housekeeping, housecleaning” and laundry were subjects
appropriate for the proper young Catholic woman.484
Originally, St. Rose’s offered a seven-year course in
dressmaking as “these girls were to be admitted without
distinction of creed and were to be instructed in plain and
fancy sewing and dressmaking, and in general duties of
housekeeping.”
485
The Irish girls who reached sixteen at St.
Vincent’s found a home in St. Rose’s where they learned
skills to serve them a lifetime. Graduating as a
seamstress, working for the institution or finding a
suitable husband granted immigrant children, and children
of Irish immigrants, an opportunity to rise above their
status as the newly arrived and take their place among
Washington society.
By the 1870s the charity school for the indigent and
484
“The Sisters of Charity, St. Rose’s Industrial
School and St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum,” News Item Folder,
Box 11-23-14, Daughters of Charity Archives, Emmitsburg,
Maryland.
485
Children Welfare League of America, “Report of a
Study of St. Rose’s Technical School of Washington, D.C,
1937. Various Reports Folder, Box 11-23-14, Daughters of
Charity Archives, Emmitsburg, Maryland.
307
poor that ran out of the Asylum served a large number of
girls in the Washington community and provided an education
parallel to that of the pay academies. The finer arts of
painting and music accompanied the industrial and academic
courses offered through the Asylum. Descriptions of the
graduation ceremonies noted the accomplishments of these
young women as they performed for audiences and displayed
their works of art, lace work and fine embroidery. Susan
Burns and Bridget Carroll, both daughters of Irish
immigrants, won special recognition in 1871 for their works
of art. Described by the Catholic Mirror the “beautiful
specimens of tapestry, embroidery, and needlework, executed
by the nimble fingers of the young ladies… elicited warmest
praises.”486
Over 250 girls annually attended the charity school
with 130 from the orphanage and the remaining girls from
the community at large. By 1879 the graduation ceremonies
486
“St. Vincent’s School,” Catholic Mirror, July 1,
1871 and USMC, 1870.
Susan Burns was born to Irish parents while in
England. She lived in Ward One. In 1870 she was seventeen.
Bridget Carroll lived in Ward Two. Bridget was born in
Washington, D.C. but both her parents, James and Elizabeth
Carroll, were from Ireland. Elizabeth, age forty, kept
house; James was a fifty-year old laborer with $3,000 in
real estate property. Also in the home was younger brother
James, thirteen, also born in Washington, D.C.
308
included instrumental as well as vocal music to add to the
celebration of the day. The girls, dressed in blue and
white, sang solos and duets for the gathered audience.
Refreshments were served in the adjoining classrooms where
the
walls were lined with pictures, panels in water
colors, groups of flowers, landscapes in India
ink, sketches in crayon and pencil, beautifully
executed maps, while all around the spacious
rooms were arranged specimens of needle work, two
elegantly embroidered piano covers, a superb
afghan, a tabernacle cover, half a dozen
beautiful chairs in velvet, sofa pillows, lace
handkerchiefs of exquisite work and a large
collection of plain needle work.487
Remarking on the character of the graduates, two of the six
Irish born, the Catholic Mirror said, “Here we may truly
say: Beauty and utility and culture of head and heart go
hand in hand.”488 These girls were noted not for their
immigrant status or their ability to clean a home but for
acquiring and maintaining a cultural standard that
identified them beyond their immigrant beginnings.
Another educational institution for girls was St.
Mary’s House of Industry. Organized through the St.
Aloysius Relief Society, headed by Mrs. Ewing Sherman, this
487
Catholic Mirror, June 28, 1879.
309
institution taught Irish girls the same academic rites as
other schools in the city but concentrated their efforts on
skills of home maintenance and marriage in their
curriculum. The purpose of the society served
all the branches of an ordinary school
education...and selections are made from time to
time, of apt and willing scholars, who are
transferred to the industrial department, where
they are taught self-sustaining trades... as will
sustain them... perchance for their duties as
wives and mothers.489
At the school, girls between the ages of fourteen and
twenty were taught needlework and homemaking skills. They
frequently made clothing for the poor and used the skills
that they received from charity to assist others also in
need. At St. Mary’s Industrial School, girls found work in
families and elsewhere or earned a wage out of the proceeds
of the custom department that was an independent selfsupporting institution.490 The custom department took orders
from the community for tailored goods and boasted that
“your orders will be filled promptly for any garment you
may desire, from the plainest bib or slip to the tucked,
488
489
490
Ibid. and USMC, 1870.
“Charity Box.”
Ibid.
310
embroidered and lace-bedecked trousseau of a millionaire’s
daughter.”491
In connection with the parochial school at St.
Aloysius, St. Mary’s taught the
use of the needle from plain sewing to the finest
embroidery. Here are made beautiful sets of
vestments as well as articles of male and female
wear of all kinds, and all who work receive pay
therefore, the rates being fairly adjusted after
the deduction of actual expenses.492
By 1878 twenty-five girls worked at St. Mary’s with room
for twenty-five more and by 1880 St. Mary’s day classes
expanded to include a dressmaking department. The Sisters
recruited an experienced modiste to increase the
effectiveness of this branch of the school. The expansion
included the making of dresses, suits, “evening costumes
and street wraps at the shortest notice and lowest prices.
Flannel walking suits are a specialty and orders filled for
plain and elaborate undergarments, infants outfits and
christening robes.”493
St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, St. Rose’s Industrial
491
Ibid.
“Notre Dame Schools,” Catholic Mirror, September
14, 1878.
493
“A Want Supplied,” Catholic Mirror, November 6,
1880.
492
311
School and St. Mary’s Industrial School provided Irish
girls with the training and foundation to become selfsupportive and self-sufficient in the face of an immoral
world. The directors of St. Rose’s noted that
all are well drilled in such habits of morality
as will sustain them in their combat with the
world...the education of our children is the
bulwark of our church; upon them the future
depends; upon them as taught in these schools the
morality of our society depends; upon them the
good government of the state must depend, and
upon us and our care of these, the young, to a
great extent depend our and their future.494
In these “nurseries of virtue” the minds of young girls
were “adorned and their tender hearts enriched with the
graces of knowledge sanctified by the Holy Spirit of
religion.”495 With such preparation the girls could “go
forth at a suitable age fully armed and equipped for the
world’s great battle, always keeping in view the higher,
the brighter, the better life that shines beyond the shadow
of the tomb.”496 This experience fortified the District’s
Irish girls with the skills and means to find their place
in the community as a wife and mother.
494
495
496
Vol. 22.
“Charity Box.”
Ibid.
“Our Washington Letter,” Catholic Mirror (1871)
312
This kith and kin support was manifested in parish
schools that provided a free education for those who could
not pay. As newly arrived immigrants, Irish families in the
District rarely could afford tuition to send their children
to Catholic schools. Several orders of nuns in Washington,
D.C. operated free academies for the training and education
of young women. The Sisters of the Visitation, Sisters of
Notre Dame, Sisters of the Holy Cross and Sisters of
Charity provided educational institutions for girls and
young women.
In these schools girls were taught the basic skills of
reading, writing and arithmetic and fine embroidery, sewing
and tailoring. The nuns taught these girls skills to serve
them a lifetime. In the pay academies, free parish schools
and benevolent institutions girls were taught the arts of
domesticity. Although the focus of benevolent institutions
was the industry of young women, the over-arching theme of
Catholic education for Washington’s young women was
domestic arts. Sewing, needlework and cooking skills were
taught in all of Washington’s Catholic schools, boarding
and day. Noticing the trend in women’s education, however,
the Catholic Mirror devoted an extensive article on the
necessary steps for Catholic women’s education. They noted
313
that
female education now-a-days often fails off the
mark, and misses are so both in name and nature.
A contemporary says:-- ‘is housekeeping an
essential part of female education?’ Undoubtedly
it is. For a young woman in any situation of life
to be ignorant of the various business that
belongs to good housekeeping, is as great
deficiency as for a merchant not to understand
accounts, or for the masters of a vessel not to
be acquainted with navigation. If a woman does
not know how the various work of a house should
be done, she might as well know nothing, for that
is her express vocation; and it matters not how
much learning or how many accomplishments she may
have, if she is wanting in that which is to fit
her for her peculiar calling.497
Ironically, the “express vocation” of Irish girls and women
in the capital was housekeeping.
In many ways the emphasis Catholic education placed on
teaching girls the domestic arts was moot given the large
number of Irish Catholic women who worked as domestic
servants in the District. Thus, the church emphasized the
“moral and religious training and habits of industry” as
the primary goal for the education of young women. The
“intellectual culture” came secondary, “even for those who
have superior endowments, and much more so for the
multitude of those who” were “little competent to profit by
497
“A Word to Young Ladies--On Education,” Catholic
Mirror, September 3, 1853.
314
books, and yet whose nominal studies keep them from
employments they are most fitted for, every man of sense
knows that this is true.”498 The Catholic Mirror underscored
the emphasis the church placed on the education of young
girls as the salvation of women in Catholic education came
in the form of domestic arts used in marriage and
motherhood. In this the end justified the means.
Many of Washington’s Catholic parishes staffed
parochial schools that offered a Catholic education to the
young. These schools were staffed primarily with priests
and nuns from various orders. Although a handful of lay
teachers taught in Washington’s parochial schools, the
majority of Catholic education came from religious
servants. As the Catholic parishes in the city grew in
number and size, so too, did the parochial education
offered to Washington Catholics. Three years in a row,
daughters of Irish parents at St. Peter’s parochial school
received public recognition for their outstanding
performances in the closing exercises of the school year.
In 1879 Mary Oulahan, M. Hurley, H. McMeniman, Mary Conner
and Anna Plant performed the production of "Red
498
“Industry and Moral Training,” Catholic Mirror,
December 11, 1858.
315
Ridinghood’s Rescue; or The Dangers of Disobedience."
499
By
1881 five of the Irish girls from 1879 again received
recognition for the successful May concert and varied
entertainment.
500
On the other side of town was the Dominican Academy of
the Sacred Heart. At the eleventh annual commencement,
parents and friends “eager to see the fruits of their
children’s efforts” waited for the rise of the curtain to
see a “tastefully decorated stage, groups of lovely girls
as pure and spotless as their dresses, and above them the
patron and queen of innocence and youth, a statue of our
Lady of the Sacred Heart.”
501
Second-generation immigrant
Miss Josie Fegan sang “Judith” and was acclaimed by all to
“possess a charming soprano voice” and superior training.
She also sang a duet with Miss Vehrmeyer that delighted the
gathered crowd. Later in the program little Kittie McGlynn
performed a musical number after which the end-of-the-year
awards were distributed. Both Misses Mamie Cullivane and
Annie Sheehy, daughters of Irish immigrants, won awards,
499
“May Concert,” Catholic Mirror, May 3, 1879 and
USMC, 1870. See Appendix Eight for further information
regarding the participants of the May Concert.
500
Catholic Mirror, June 26, 1880.
501
Sacred Heart Academy,” Catholic Mirror, June 28,
1879.
316
the former for deportment and the latter the gold medal
award to the Second senior class.502
Throughout the next two years the girls’ parochial
school at Immaculate Conception also honored the
achievements of Irish daughters. For Easter the group
performed an operetta in the church hall. The following
year the commencement moved to Lincoln Hall where Misses
Mary Graham, Julia Casey, Julia Shea, Margaret Nolan, Mary
McCormick and a number of other girls performed a
"beautiful musical program".
503
Many of the graduates
received awards for deportment and subject proficiency.
Throughout the hall the handiwork of the pupils was on
display
in the shape of crayon and water color drawings,
including portraits, tapestry, wax-work,
embroidery and needle work of all kinds,
exhibited in profusion, was proof of the thorough
capacity of the teachers in all grades, whether
of intellectual culture or personal
accomplishment.504
Over the forty years that the Catholic Church provided
502
Ibid. and USMC, 1870. See Appendix Eight for
further information regarding the Academy graduates.
503
Catholic Mirror, June 18, 1881 and USMC, 1870. See
Appendix Eight for further information regarding these
families.
504
Ibid.
317
educational services for girls, whether in a pay academy,
free school or parochial school, the focus of women’s
education was that of hearth and home. Young Catholic women
were trained in the arts of domestic skills that included
sewing, cooking and housekeeping skills. However, as Irish
girls and the daughters of Irish immigrants grew up in the
nineteenth century, the focus of Catholic education for
girls changed. By 1880 this focus maintained an outward
appearance of housekeeping skills but sewing and cooking
were no longer educational staples. A more refined wife was
necessary in the later half of the nineteenth century. This
mark of distinction separated the early days of the
immigrant community from that in the latter decades of the
nineteenth century. What now served the community of Irish
women in Washington, D.C. was not an emphasis on cooking
and cleaning skills, because a hired girl could do that,
but an emphasis on the more refined skills of music and
art.
This transition from an admiration of the domestic
arts of sewing and fine linen work to the admiration of
musical and artistic talents marked a trend that
distinguished the middle-class educated girl from the
working-class girl on the streets or in a home earning her
318
living. Moreover, coming from an impoverished background
where the tuition for a private education was not a reality
did not deter the upward mobility of young Irish girls in
Washington, D.C. These immigrant children, and daughters of
immigrants, were privy to an education reserved primarily
for the elite.
Central to this upward mobility of Washington’s Irish
women was the support they received from Catholic churches
and institutions. The two-fold approach of charity and
education gave Irish women a foothold in the community and
connected them to the larger community of Washington, D.C.
The upward mobility of Irish women was supported through
this alliance of immigrant and church that created a
network of resources. The combination of resources and
training produced a web of opportunities that assisted
Irish women in their transition from Irish immigrant to
Irish American. The mobility Irish women achieved was both
social and economic either through their own wage or the
wage of their husband.
Financial support for the destitute and housing and
training for the young provided a network of Irish
Catholics to nourish Irish women’s health and well being.
This alliance of kith and kin provided the means for Irish
319
women’s upward mobility in the Washington community. Moving
up did not mean having to move out of the community when
the church provided an institutional infrastructure to
support those in need. Arriving in the District as the wife
of an absent husband, the wife of an under-employed
husband, a widow or indigent did not deter Irish women’s
upward mobility given the safety net the Catholic churches
of Washington provided through charity and education for
its own.
320
CHAPTER 8: "A LITTLE BAND OF ZEALOUS WOMEN,
FILLED WITH CHARITY": IRISH WOMEN AT THE
END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
The evenings were long but quite worth the while. For
thirteen days the women of the St. Aloysius Ladies’ Relief
Society, headed by Mrs. General Ewing Sherman, held a
charity fair to raise money for the building of an
industrial school for girls. The Charity Fair Chronicle,
the newspaper of the fair, praised the women noting that
they were prompted by the teachings of our holy church and
were “a little band of zealous women, filled with charity.”
Each night many Irish women hosted tables at the fair where
gifts, food and other items were sold for the benefit of
the Relief Association. The first night Mrs. Lowe sponsored
the evening by advertising her Ladies’ Emporium in the
Chronicle and by the second night Misses Purcell, O’Brien,
Foley, Murphy, Myers and Sullivan hosted tables. “Just
before you leave,” the Chronicle urged “go over to the
wheel of fortune and get Miss Mary McNamara to see if you
321
are all right on the goose.”
By the fourth night
attendance began to wane and the Chronicle noted that “the
few men who were at the fair last night had a… clear
majority of ten to one in favor of the opposite sex… if
husbands, brothers and beaux don’t put in an early
appearance tonight, the bill for the new school house will
be entirely in the hands of the ladies.”
505
Throughout the nineteenth century this little band of
zealous women made their way to Washington, D.C. and found
a city that welcomed them as laborers. As the century
progressed, Irish women used these opportunities to carve a
niche for themselves and their community. Diner notes that
“women left Ireland because it held out nothing for them.
America offered them a chance to earn money and the respect
that money brought.”506 However, in the last half of the
nineteenth century in the capital, Irish women no longer
needed their economic might to find the respect that wage
work brought.
Combining the virtues of American womanhood with their
cultural heritage, Irish women made headway up the ladder
of social mobility in Washington, D.C. Irish women embraced
505
506
“Charity Box.”
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 71.
322
Victorian womanhood and the cult of domesticity in the
capital city because it provided them with a place that
Ireland denied them. That place in the last half of the
nineteenth century was marriage. In Ireland “the
deterioration in the economic status of women affected
their marriage prospects. Before the Famine a wife’s
earnings in domestic industry and her contribution to
agricultural labor made marriage a viable proposition.”507
As the options for marriage dwindled in Ireland, Irish
women sought those opportunities in America. Because
Washington, D.C. maintained a southern culture throughout
this period, it is this heritage that Irish women embraced.
This heritage included piety, purity, submissiveness and
domesticity as well as delicacy, gentility and hospitality
within the domestic sphere of the household.
507
508
They adopted
Margaret Mac Curtain and Donncha O’ Corrain
editors, Women in Irish Society, The Historical Dimension,
Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1979, Joseph J.
Lee, “Women and the Church Since the Famine,” 38.
508
Definitions of cult of domesticity, southern belle
and Victorian womanhood gleaned from Smith-Rosenberg,
Disorderly Conduct; Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady,
From Pedestal to Politics, 1850-1930, University Chicago
Press: Chicago, 1970; Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True
Womanhood: 1800-1860,” American Quarterly 18, 1966, 151-74;
Alexis Girard Brown, “The Women Left Behind: Transformation
of the Southern Belle,” The Historian, vol 62, no 4, 75978, Summer 2000 and Catherine Lavender’s course “Women’s
Pasts: Women in New York City, 1890-1940,
323
this southern version of Victorian womanhood as they
married, became active in Church affairs and raised their
children.
Irish women restored their cultural importance and
respect by moving from wage work to marriage in Washington,
D.C. Early in the century, and even through the Civil War,
Irish women earned a place in American society by earning a
wage. Joseph J. Lee argues that “the Great Famine
drastically weakened the position of women in Irish
society. Before the Famine women’s economic contribution
was so essential to the family economy that they enjoyed
considerable independence.”509 However, as the century
progressed Irish women adapted this cultural heritage to
that of their host country and sought marriage as a means
to restore social importance to their position within the
community.
This was achieved in several ways. One, Irish women
married. Two, Irish women accumulated property. Three,
Irish women moved from a social position as a wage earner
to that of wife. Four, Irish women volunteered in the
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/386/t
ruewoman.htm.
509
Mac Curtain and O’ Corrain, “Women in Irish
Society,” 37.
324
Church and raised money for the benefit of the community.
These activities of Irish women corresponded with the
Victorian ideals present in late nineteenth-century
America. The values of piety, purity and domesticity mixed
with Irish women’s cultural heritage to transform Irish
immigrant women into full-fledged members of the community.
Using church membership, charity work and society
membership as manifestations of her arrival to the middleclass, Washington’s Irish women represent the values
expressed by nineteenth-century America.
Coming from Ireland with a cultural imperative looming
over their heads, Irish women sought employment in the
cities as a way out of the poverty that plagued them in
Ireland. Because the Irish worldview valued female
employment as inevitable and acceptable, the years Irish
girls spent “tending someone else’s home, and the money she
earned as a result of those long days cooking and cleaning
compensated for whatever degradation she might have
felt.”510 This behavior was compatible with nineteenthcentury norms. The Irish worldview that valued female
employment combined with the American worldview that valued
females as wives and mothers. Acculturation took place as
325
Irish women adapted their worldview to American values and
worked toward marriage as inevitable and acceptable
behavior. This transition in worldviews provided Irish
women with an entrée into America’s middle class.
Moreover, throughout the nineteenth century in
Washington, D.C. Irish men lost their importance in the
public sphere while Irish women found theirs. Know
Nothingism in the capital virtually destroyed opportunities
for Irish men and consigned them to a back seat role in the
public sphere of Washington society and politics. However,
as apolitical creatures—assigned this status by gender—
Irish women were not affected by Know Nothing politics in
their upward climb into Washington society. In fact, this
phenomenon served to further the interest of Irish women by
placing the impetus for middle-class status in their hands
instead of the hands of their husbands.
One example is the defeat of Gregory Ennis in the
election for Canal Commissioner in 1853. Gregory Ennis was
a prominent local businessmen, Catholic layman and Irish
resident. However, even his active community involvement
and considerable charitable work for the Church and
community could not secure Ennis a political position. On
510
Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 102.
326
May 28 the Evening Star published a letter to the editor
that argued Gregory Ennis was defeated in the election for
canal commissioner on the grounds that he was an Irishman
by birth.511 Where Ennis’ ethnic heritage helped him create
public importance early in the century in church and ethnic
affairs, he lost public importance in the last half of the
century due to his ethnic heritage.
Irish men were losing their foothold in community
affairs in other ways as well. Just two months after Ennis
lost his election William Thompson, editor of the
Washington News, informed his readers that he had lost his
city printing contract because he was a "naturalized
citizen and a (suspected) Romanist."512 While Irish men were
in the forefront of politics and a public part of the
community in the early nineteenth century, Irish women
disappeared into the background while they worked in hotels
and homes across the city. Serving in the female role of
servant was not a threat to the community as was Irish
men's public roles in civic affairs. Thus, Irish women's
transition from female role as servant to that of wife and
511
512
Cary, Editor, Urban Odyssey, 57.
Ibid.
327
mother was a natural transition and afforded them the means
to middle class status that was denied Irish men.
Middle class status was tied to marriage for American
women in the nineteenth century. Therefore, Irish women
used Washington’s available domestic employment as a
network for marriage and often married men from their
workplaces. Maggie Hurley worked for the Seaton Hotel in
1870 and met her husband there. Darby Haylan, also Irish,
worked as a bartender at the hotel. He and Maggie were
married in 1872 and promptly started a family.513 Moreover,
by 1870, 72 percent of Irish women over fifteen years of
age were married. The Irish women who arrived in
Washington, D.C. single married in great proportions. Their
search for cultural stability was secured in the capital
city through marriage. Whereas, the 1850 and 1860 marriage
rates reflect a changing population born of the post-Famine
migration, the 1870 and 1880 marriage rates demonstrate how
Irish women adapted to American social customs and became
part of the community through marriage.
Other Irish women made the transition from servant to
wife in the national capital. Between 1850 and 1880 over
half of the Irish women who came to Washington, D.C. stayed
328
and made the city their home. Evidence of this is found in
the number of single women counted in the 1860 census and
the overwhelming number of married Irish women in the 1870
and 1880 census. These women came as laborers and ended the
century as wives.
Figure 21: Marital Status of Irish Women over Fifteen Years of Age, Washington, D.C., 18501880
2500
2000
Married
Single
1500
Widow
1000
500
0
1850
1860
1870
1880
Source: USMC, 1850-1880
As Irish women’s income was no longer essential to the
family economy, their role in the family changed. When the
family lost its purpose as an economic unit, women’s roles
within the family transformed. This transformation created
513
USMC, 1860-1880.
329
what is known as the cult of domesticity. As the economic
contribution of Irish women was no longer needed in the
family, they recovered their importance by adapting to
American values and becoming the archetypal mother/wife.
Evidence of this transformation is that by 1880 more than
half of Irish women over the age of fifteen were married.
514
Moreover, by the end of the nineteenth century, the Irish
female population paralleled the marriage rates of the
native population. Mirroring the marital patterns of native
women in Washington, D.C., Irish women restored their place
within the family by accommodating American gender values
and combining them with their social inheritance that
valued marriage.
Another factor in Irish women’s move up the ladder was
their accumulation of wealth. Mary Burns, a boarding house
owner, reported an estimated property value of $2,000.515
She was not alone; about 10 percent of her fellow Irish
women claimed real estate or personal property to census
takers. The personal property was as small as twenty-five
dollars in 1850 and as high as $10,000 in 1870.516 Moreover,
the accumulation of property was not confined to Irish
514
515
USMC, 1880.
USMC, 1850-1880.
330
women who owned businesses or ran shops. Mary McGona worked
as a seamstress out of her home and reported $800 of real
estate property. Ann McDonald worked as a servant for
thirty-four year old clerk Ben Phenix and reported $500
worth of personal property. Similarly, Rosana Staunton, a
shopkeeper, recorded $1,300 of real estate and personal
property. An exception is Margaret Gormley, a Georgetown
shopkeeper, who reported an estimated $10,000 of real
estate and personal property.517
Once an Irish woman accumulated personal wealth, she
often used a local Catholic church as a savings and loan
for her money. Mrs. Delia Herlihy earned 3 percent on her
money by loaning it to the Church. In 1887 she invested
$1,878 of her savings with the Church.518 Many other Irish
names are on the depositors’ list for St. Aloysius Catholic
Church. Daly, Murphy, Sullivan, Connell, Diveney, Callan,
516
Ibid.
Ibid. Burns’ property translates into $43,488.26;
Twenty-five dollars becomes $568.18; $10,000 becomes
$136,986.30; McGona’s property becomes 17391.30; McDonald’s
property becomes $10,869.57; Staunton’s property translates
into $28,260.87 and Gormley’s worth comes to $227,272.73.
All figures are 2002 dollars converted on website
http://www.cjr.org/resources/inflater.asp accessed 5/13/03.
518
College and Church, Annual Summary Report Headings,
1885-1886, Personals, Servants—Creditors, 1885-1911, Box
25, St. Aloysius Catholic Church Archives, St. Aloysius
Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.
517
331
Brennan, O'Kane are just a few of the names of Irish women
who saved their money with the church. Most of these had,
at least, $200 saved. Some of them earned as much as 5
percent on their savings. Mary Lynch invested $17,918.93
with St. Aloysius in 1889 and she, too, earned 5 percent on
her money.
519
A key factor in the growth of Irish women’s
pocketbooks in the District of Columbia was their
adaptability and assimilating skills in the workplace.
Finding ready employment in Washington, D.C. assisted Irish
women in their move up the economic scale. Domestic work,
which provided a home and wage, satisfied two immediate
needs for immigrant women. Once these needs were met, Irish
women moved from job to job until they found a husband or
were able to support themselves with a business. The goal
of employment was self-sufficiency through an earned income
or potential marriage.
This change in values is evident in the change in
women's roles throughout the nineteenth century. Women's
roles in the family moved from that of contributor to the
519
Ibid. Dollars converted on website
http://www.cjr.org/resources/inflater.asp accessed 5/13/03.
Herlihy's $1878 becomes$35,433.96; $200 becomes $3703.70
and Lynch's $17918.93 becomes $351,351.57 in 2002 dollars.
332
family economy to one of custodian of the home. Mintz and
Kellog note that "increasingly, child rearing, not child
bearing, became the most time-consuming aspect of a woman's
life."520 Evidence of this transition is the change of
status for Irish women. Throughout the 1840s, 1850s and to
some degree in the 1860s Irish women who were married
worked outside the home or took in laundry; however, by
1870 most of them kept house. Although many Irish women may
have earned a wage, they did not note that as their primary
identity. In 1870, 87 percent of those who claimed to be
“at home” or “keeping house” were married, 5 percent were
single and 8 percent were widowed.
521
Even single and
widowed women identified with this transformation.
Irish women’s virtual absence from wage work was
another manifestation of their status. In general, woman’s
importance to the economic well-being of the family
lessened throughout the nineteenth century, therefore she
gained importance elsewhere. As her role providing economic
assistance to her family diminished, her role as wife and
mother intensified. This is reflected in the large number
of Irish women who identified with the new role. In 1870
520
521
Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 51.
USMC, 1870.
333
and 1880, 68 percent of Irish women over the age of fifteen
recorded their occupation as “at home” or “keeping house.”
Abigail McMann, who married Frenchmen George Moran, kept
house as did Mrs. Mary McLinden. By 1880 Abigail and Mary
were part of the 73 percent of married Irish women who
claimed to be “at home” or “keeping house”. These
nineteenth-century terms symbolized social positions that
defined a woman’s place within the community. This social
position was that of wife, mother and community member and
not newly arrived immigrant. Marriage in late nineteenthcentury Washington, D.C. signaled arrival for Irish
immigrant women.
The changing role of Irish women within the Catholic
Church also expresses a transition from working-class to
middle class. The Irish women who participated in church
charity activity had risen from the ranks of the workingclass. Where Irish women received benevolent assistance
from Catholic churches in the capital at mid-century, they
delivered benevolent assistance to others by the end of the
century. Alexis Brown finds that “this religious outlet
became an important part of women's growing sense of selfawareness. Ministers also encouraged charity and
hospitality among women who responded with organizations to
334
aid the poor and downtrodden and bible groups to pray for
those less fortunate.”522 It is in this southern church that
the Irish immigrant women of Washington, D.C. found a place
denied them in the Catholic churches of Ireland. It is here
they found a home in a church where they used their
independence and skills to the advantage of many. Lee notes
that in Ireland the Catholic church became increasingly
male dominated. Due to the consequences of the Famine, the
“churches, and particularly the Catholic Church, whose
members were disproportionately affected, could not escape
the implications” the Famine brought to Ireland’s social
structure.
523
Thus, the economic and social consequences of
the Famine increasingly excluded women from the Church and
created a culture—both inside the church and out—that
diminished woman’s place within Irish society.
Piety, purity, and an extension of the domestic sphere
are found as many Irish women formed the core for
fundraising in Washington’s Catholic charities. Hosting
holiday bazaars and going door-to-door to solicit money and
donations from businesses, Irish women financed the
education of many children at benevolent and parochial
522
Brown, “The Women Left Behind,” 759-78.
335
schools and provided the seed money for church building. At
a fair for St. Dominic's Catholic Church Irishwoman
Catharine Brosnan donated her time and efforts to raise
funds. Catherine was a newlywed and volunteered her time
all the while toting around her infant son. Mrs. Arthur
McDermott and her sister Miss Lizzie Haney also worked at
the fair for St. Dominic’s.
524
They were responsible for St.
Joseph’s Table no. Five that provided the confections for
the evening. Lizzie and Isabella’s parents were born in
Ireland and Canada. Both Lizzie and her married sister were
born in Washington, D.C. and lived there most of their
lives. Lizzie was single, twenty-five and did not work for
a wage. Neither did her thirty-one year old sister.525
The efforts of these Irish women combined several
qualities of their ethnic heritage, religious heritage and
host society. In Washington, D.C. this type of activity was
synonymous with Victorian womanhood. The southern belle
qualities of delicacy, gentility and hospitality are
reflected in their charity work in the national capital.526
523
Mac Curtain and O’ Corrain, Women in Irish Society,
524
Catholic Mirror, November 29, 1879 and USMC, 1880.
Ibid.
Brown, “The Women Left Behind,” 759-78.
39.
525
526
336
Moreover, Irish Catholic women in other regions fundraised
in similar fashions. Colleen McDannell’s work on Catholic
parishes in New York City note similar characteristics. She
finds that because the “fairs were held indoors, in space
that could be transformed into a semi-domestic environment”
the ladies became the central actors in this affair. “The
fairs reinforced the relationship between economic
abundance and the social and religious order… the
intermingling of Victorian sensibilities and Catholic piety
was distinctly pedagogical.”527
In Washington other Irish women raised money for St.
Joseph’s Orphan Asylum. Maria Holbrook organized a
tournament and dancing celebration to benefit the
orphanage. The Catholic Mirror bragged that “under the
management” of Maria “a fine supper was spread.”
528
Other
Irish women who contributed to the success of this event
included Kate Kenally who lived with her sister and brother
and Maggie Regan whose mother was born in Ireland and
father was second-generation Irish.529 This extension of the
527
Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian
America, 1840-1900, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1986, 249.
528
Catholic Mirror, October 26, 1878 and USMC, 1870
and 1880.
529
Catholic Mirror, October 26, 1878 USMC, 1880.
337
domestic sphere took place as Irish women—both married and
single—worked in charity affairs within the church.
Specifically, the fair provided Irish women with an
opportunity to be in the public eye and part of the middle
class. “Fairs provide another example of how Irish women
introduced the ‘manners and accouterments of the middle
class’ and ‘spearheaded the push upward’ on the social
ladder.”530 In the context of Irish women in Washington, the
contributions of Kate and Maggie show how Irish women
“utilized their social skills” and displayed an
“understanding of Victorian middle-class culture and
confidence in women’s economic prowess.”
531
This combination
is particularly apt for Irish women given their heritage
that admired the financial contribution of Irish women to
the family economy.
The Ladies’ Relief Society of St. Aloysius’ Catholic
Church also sponsored charitable work. They held a bazaar
and festival in February of 1876 to assist the industrial
school run by the Sisters of Notre Dame. The Catholic
Mirror noted that “this school is one of the most laudable
enterprises in the city, and, besides teaching girls the
530
531
McDannell, Christian Home, 248.
McDannell, Christian Home, 248.
338
profitable use of the needle, it is the means of supplying,
besides vestments and altar furniture, also numberless
articles of wear which are disposed of at reasonable
rates.”532 The school began with three nuns and about 250
students. At the time of the fair the school employed ten
nuns and educated 365 girls.
533
With this growth came a need for funds. Much like the
parent-teacher clubs of today, women with ties to the
church fundraised on behalf of the school. Some of these
were Irish and Irish-American women. The Washington City
Hibernian Benevolent Society (WCHBS) attended the charity
fair sponsored by the Ladies’ Relief Society of St
Aloysius’. On the evening of the 15th
when every one began to feel blue, and signs of
a dull evening were appearing, the Washington
City Hibernian Association—75 men in full
regalia—marched into the room under the command
of Captain Thomas Montgomery, and of course the
spirituous of as many fair damsels were raised at
once to concert pitch. The Lord loves a cheerful
giver, and the Hibernians recognizing this, made
mirth and charity go hand in hand, and their
visit to the fair will be remembered among the
pleasurable and profitable events.534
533
“St. Aloysius Festival,” Catholic Mirror, November
30, 1878.
533
“St. Aloysius Festival,” Catholic Mirror, November
30, 1878.
534
"Charity Box.”
339
Captain Thomas was the husband of Irishwoman Mary who lived
in ward four of Washington, D.C. Captain Montgomery held
influence in the public sphere only in areas of his
ethnicity whereas his wife was able to participate in the
larger community due to the extension of her private sphere
duties.
The role of the men in this fair extended to support
for their wives. Women were the primary movers and
organizers of these events. These Irish women made all the
arrangements for raising funds. They supplied the food,
drinks, and items to sell. They were the ones selling the
items and supervising the men. “While the men might build
booths, act as bouncers, or take tickets, women typically
directed male activities…in the fair environment, male and
female roles were reversed.”535 This was not deviant for
Irish men and women. This was part of their cultural
heritage that accepted women’s roles within the home.
Moreover, this was reinforced by the Southern and Victorian
notions of women’s domestic sphere of influence.
Moreover, at the same fair, just a couple days after
the visit from the WCHBS, Miss Belle Lucas, a granddaughter
340
of Irish immigrants, advertised her and her mother’s
dressmaking shop in the Charity Fair Chronicle and
financially contributed to the evening. Maria Conlan, a
second-generation Irish immigrant, and her nieces also
participated in the fair. They presided at the “centennial
table” on the 18th and helped to sell goods for the benefit
of others. Margaret Cleary and her daughter also worked at
the fair. Margaret, born in Ireland, and her daughter
Katie, born in Washington, D.C. worked many nights at the
fair hosting one of the benefit tables. Katie and her
mother worked the industrial table that offered dolls for
sale. One of them was “the maid of Erin, a tiny blonde,
bearing in her left hand the harp; and in the right a long
green pennant; her attire is… garnished with garlands of
shamrock and emerald ornaments.”
536
McDannell finds that in
the fairs ran by Irish women, the “goods both reflected
Irish history and served to create a distinct American
Irish consciousness.”537 Again, even single Irish women
participated in developing this distinct “American Irish
consciousness.”
535
536
537
McDannell, Christian Home, 237.
Ibid.
McDannell, Christian Home, 250.
341
This bazaar and festival for the Sisters of the Notre
Dame is an example of Irish women's acculturation in
America. The bazaar was held during the 100th anniversary of
the United States and featured Irish souvenirs for sale.
This is the connection between Ireland and America that
only previously Irish men could claim. While Irish men
pledged loyalty to America while retaining their love of
Ireland, Irish women worked at charity events such as this
in honor of their new country and their old. The hosting of
the "centennial table" reflects the identity Irish women
held with their new nation and the ways in which they
adapted their cultural heritage.
The Ladies of the Irish Relief Society also held
fairs, dances and raffles to help their countrymen in
Ireland. The annual ball of the West End Hibernian Society
lasted until the wee hours of the morning while the Ladies
of the Irish Relief Society raffled prizes at other
entertainment events. Mrs. Sheridan held the winning ticket
and was just waiting for the “lucky winner” to come by her
northwest home and claim the prize of a framed portrait.
538
These women were able to participate in these affairs not
538
Catholic Mirror, February 14, 1880.
342
just because of their ethnicity but because of their place
within the larger community.
More evidence of Irish women’s participation in the
Ireland’s affairs is the Ladies’ Land League, the female
companion to the Irish Land League. In this organization
Irish women overstepped the bounds for nineteenth-century
women by organizing a public ball to raise funds for those
in Ireland. This fundraising effort was not to ease the
suffering of the poor but to lend financial support to
political efforts. The fundraising ball was to be held at
the Academy of Music in the capital but was lambasted by
the editors of the Catholic Mirror as inappropriate for
female conduct. The editors commented that
Ladies, upon your conduct depends, to a great
extent, the fate of the Church, the family, and
society, and if you provide recreant to your
sacred calling, woe betide us! It is your duty to
embellish the home circle with your virtues, your
grades, and your good example, but by putting
yourselves forward for public notoriety, and one
which is most unenviable, you must necessarily
forfeit your claim to that modesty and spirit of
retirement which alone is befitting your
condition and your sex. You leave your own sphere
and enter on a domain where you are out of
place...It is not for women to agitate publicly a
political question; leave this to the men. And if
you wish to aid them let it be by your prayers
for the leaders of the cause that they may be
directed by the wisdom of Him “who crushes
empires in the day of His wrath.” And if you
desire to contribute pin-money to any good cause,
343
do so unostentatiously. In this manner you will
not expose yourselves to become a reproach to
your Church, nor lay yourselves open to the
malicious criticisms of a heartless world.”539
Irish women were allowed to participate when fundraising in
church affairs for schools and the poor. These were
extensions of the home. However, when their efforts
extended into the political realm—the domain of men—they
were chastised and rebuked. Irish women’s need to directly
contribute to the family’s economic well being decreased,
so they transferred that role to community efforts at
fundraising. They saw no difference in fundraising for the
Church or fundraising for the lads back home.
Unfortunately, they overstepped the bounds of this southern
version of Victorian womanhood and fell prey to the censure
of the church and community.
The education Irish women received in Washington’s
Catholic schools reinforced this southern version of
Victorian womanhood. The transition in Catholic curriculum
from the middle of the century to the end of the century
contributed to the change in status for Irish women.
Valuing the ability to earn a living as a domestic,
539
1882.
“The Land League,” Catholic Mirror, January 21,
344
Catholic priests and nuns focused their curriculum on
skills that would benefit that end. However, as the century
progressed that curriculum changed to skills that would
benefit a different outcome: marriage. Alexis Brown notes
that the primary reason southern “fathers agreed to send
their daughters to boarding schools and academies was to
master 'polite culture.' Sewing, voice and instrumental
lessons, painting and drawing” and flower arranging “were
all part of teaching young women to be feminine and
dainty.”540 Thus the finer arts, embroidery and home
management became the skills that nuns passed on to the
younger immigrants and the daughters of immigrants. This
change accompanied a shift in Irish women’s pursuit of the
American dream. Their dream was no longer self-sufficiency
in employment but self-sufficiency through marriage.
As manifestations of Irish women’s arrival to
Washington’s middle-class, second and third-generation
Irish girls and women became integral parts of community
events. No longer were they recognized for their
contribution to Irish events but to social occasions part
of the larger community of the capital city. No longer were
Irish women recognized as servants and maids but as women
540
Brown, “The Women Left Behind,” 759-78.
345
of culture and breeding. Maggie Boucher, daughter of
second-generation Irishwoman Eliza Boucher, sang at a
concert at Forrest Hall in Georgetown. This benefit for
Holy Trinity Church featured “the finest musical
entertainment ever given in our neighboring city.”541 Maggie
graduated from the Visitation Academy and was known to be
one of those “accomplished daughters” that
forth to grace society.”
“have been sent
542
Other second and third generation Irish that did well
in the capital included nine-year old Katie Aylmer. Katie
sang in the twenty-eighth annual commencement of the
Visitation Academy in Georgetown.
543
Aggie Markriter also
performed that day. She, along with three other girls,
performed the “Grand Concert March.” Aggie’s grandparents
were born in Germany and Ireland. Aggie’s mother Mary was
born also in Ireland but her father John was born in
Washington, D.C. Aggie’s mother arrived in the District
just before 1860 and married Aggie’s father shortly
thereafter.544 Annie McLaughlin, whose father and mother
were born in Ireland, also received an award for her
541
542
543
Catholic Mirror, April 22, 1871.
Ibid.
Catholic Mirror, July 5, 1879 and USMC, 1850-1880.
346
academic performance that same graduation. Annie’s parents
settled in Washington, D.C. by 1859 where they began their
family.
Other graduations included that of St. Joseph's
Academy for Young Ladies. Helen Riordan, with an Irish
father and native-Washington mother, was awarded an
“elegant silver crown” for her exemplary deportment during
the “scholastic year” at the St. Joseph’s graduation. After
the commencement address the scholars, under the management
of the Sisters of Charity, performed musical pieces for
parents and others in the crowd.545 Other children and
grandchildren of Irish immigrants also participated in
church and community affairs. Sallie Daniels sang soprano
in the St. Aloysius’ Choir. Her parents were born in
Virginia but her maternal grandmother was Irish.
546
Nellie
Eichorn, whose maternal grandmother was born in Ireland,
sang contralto in the choir. These Irish-American women
completed the process begun by their mothers and
grandmothers.
544
545
Ibid.
Catholic Mirror, July 16, 1850, Volume 1, no. 27,
5.
546
Catholic Mirror, September 13, 1879 and USMC, 1880
347
The ready employment Irish women found in the national
capital, the assistance from the Church with their
education, their accumulation of property, their volunteer
work in the Church, the significant proportion of them that
married and their eventual absence from wage work note that
Irish women became part of the Washington community. Irish
women’s status in the early community, their breadth of
presence in the domestic and service industry, their upward
mobility into federal work and their participation in the
lay affairs of the District’s Catholic Churches speaks to
Irish women’s attainment of middle-class status in
nineteenth-century Washington, D.C, thus defining the
evolving role of Irish women within an ethnic community and
within the larger community of the capital. This reciprocal
process of acculturation aided the Irish immigrant woman in
her search for the American dream as visions of hearth and
home was found in the ideals of middle-class life in the
nineteenth-century, Washington, D.C.
348
APPENDIX ONE: METHODOLOGY
The bulk of numbers in this study come from a data set
derived from the manuscripts censuses, 1850-1880. I culled
through each manuscripts census and recorded the household
information for every household that contained an Irish
woman or second-generation Irish woman. For each household
I maintained a database in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft
Access that literally resulted in an "index card" for every
Irish woman or second-generation Irish woman who lived in
Washington, D.C. between 1850 and 1880. Recognizing that
the census is fallible, I took that into consideration and
additionally used the published census for consistency in
representing population data.
The time period represented in this study presented
some problems regarding spatial data. The census tracts
changed between 1850 and 1880. What was considered Ward One
in 1850 was not Ward one in 1880. To maintain consistency,
and avoid comparing apples and oranges, I used the ward,
district and street information in the various censuses to
create a consistent accounting for the differences between
wards. I use the 1850 census maps as the map for the entire
349
study and adapted the following census maps to that
outline. If an Irish woman lived in Ward One in 1850 but
the boundaries of Ward One changed, I then looked up the
street information and placed her in the Ward that
corresponded to the 1850 census maps. In this way ward
boundaries remain consistent throughout the study.
In converting dollar figures from the nineteenth
century to the present I used the CJR Inflation Calculator
found at the following website:
http://www.cjr.org/resources/inflater.
Chapter One: I was able to find Irish women in the
pre-1850 period by using the 1850 manuscript census and
indices from the 1800-1840 censuses. These included last
names and household names. From there, I was able to begin
in 1850 and look backwards for Irish families using the
woman or the male head of house. I used criteria similar to
the criteria in chapter two.
Chapter Two: Using the manuscript census I was able to
track women from one decade to the next. I located them in
one census and then looked for them in the next one. My
criteria for identifying Irish women from one census to the
next included consistency in aging, family structure,
family names, occupations and marital status. Naturally
350
many names were spelled differently throughout the years
and some names even changed. A woman would give her first
name in one census and her middle name in the next. Age was
also a rough estimate both by the census taker and me. The
women I am able to identify meet these criteria. Some women
would be lost in one census and I found them in a following
decade. Where I lose many women is in marriage. Once Irish
women married, their names changed. At the time of this
study the marriage records of the District of Columbia were
not available. They were out of the archives for
microfilming. Using marriage records would help to locate
these single women who married.
In identifying the migration pattern of Irish women I
looked at the place of birth for their children. Although I
do not assume the oldest child listed in a census is the
first child the Irish woman ever bore, this serves as an
indicator of migration patterns for the woman and, to some
extent, her family. When I speak of first child in the
text, I am identifying the first child I can locate. I also
do not assume that the place of birth for the first child
is the first place the Irish woman landed or settled when
arriving in America. The places of birth for children of
Irish women serve to identify patterns and trends of Irish
351
women who came to Washington, D.C. and the places they
lived before arriving in the capital.
Chapter Three: The analysis of marriage rates and
family size come from many sources. I used marriage records
from several Catholic churches in Washington, D.C. and
compared them to the index of marriages published by the
Archives of the District of Columbia. From this I was able
to eliminate marriages that could be counted twice (Once in
the church record, once in the public record.) and maintain
an accounting of Irish marriages. I also used reports from
the Board of Health and published census information.
Chapter Five: For death rates I consulted the
Mortality Schedules of the manuscript census, sampled the
death certificates housed in the Archives of the District
of Columbia and used the Reports of the Board of Health.
These combine to create a well-rounded picture of morbidity
and mortality in Washington, D.C.
352
APPENDIX TWO: AGE OF IRISH BRIDES
Age of Irish Brides in Washington, DC, 1851-1860 Age of Irish Brides in Washington, DC, 1871-1880
45-49
2%
40-44
4%
35-39
50+
1%
45-49
3%
18-24
20%
15%
50+
6%
40-44
8%
35-39
18%
30-34
27%
18-24
11%
25-29
33%
25-29
31%
30-34
21%
Source: USMC, 1850-1880; Annual Report of the Board of
Health of the District of Columbia, 1872-1876, GPO:
Washington, D.C., 1877; Report of the Health Officer of the
District of Columbia, 1878-1890, GPO: Washington, D.C.,
1891; Marriage Records of St. Peter’s Catholic Church,
1850-1871, St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Washington, D.C.;
Marriage Records of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 18501871, Trinity Archives, Georgetown University Archives,
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Marriage Records
of St. Aloysius Catholic Church, 1871-1902, Archives of St.
Aloysius Catholic Church, St. Aloysius Catholic Church,
Washington, D.C.; District of Columbia Marriage Records
Index, District of Columbia Marriage Records and Sampling
of Marriage Certificates, District of Columbia Archives,
Washington, D.C.
353
APPENDIX THREE: NATIONALITY OF MEN MARRIED TO IRISH WOMEN
In 1850, 82 percent of Irish women were married to men
from Ireland, 3 percent to men from Washington, D.C., 9
percent to men from other parts of the United States and 6
percent to men from other countries. These countries
included England, France, Germany, Mexico and Scotland.
Even one or two came from Wales, Holland and Hungary.
Husbands of United States’ birth were primarily from
Maryland at 6 percent of the total marriages with other
husbands from the states born in Massachusetts, New Jersey,
New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Throughout 1860-69 Irish women, again, were married
primarily to Irish men at 90 percent of the total. Men from
Washington, D.C. made up 2 percent of the husbands with men
from the United States and other countries comprising 4
percent.
After 1870 the composition of these marriages changed
little with Irish women married to men from their homeland
in 83 percent of the cases. Husbands from the states
comprised 7 percent, foreign countries 6 percent and the
District 4 percent.
354
By 1880 Irish women’s husbands from Ireland comprised
77 percent of Irish women’s marriages where men from the
states comprised 10 percent, men from foreign countries
comprised 7 percent and men from Washington, D.C. comprised
6 percent.
355
APPENDIX FOUR: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON IRISH WOMEN IN
CHAPTER FOUR
Ellen and her husband Michael lived in Ward Four of
Washington, D.C. Michael had $400 in real estate and was a
laborer born in Maryland. Ellen and Michael had no children
in their home. An Ellen Nash is found in the 1880
Manuscript Census. She was a widow who lived alone in Ward
Four of Washington.
Johanna was twenty-five born in Ireland. Her husband
John was a twenty-nine year old laborer who could not read
or write. He had $150 of personal property. They had a
daughter, Mary, who was just a year old born in the
District of Columbia. Johanna and her family lived in
Washington, D.C. through 1880. The Langs, Margaret and
Patrick, are not found in subsequent census counts and
neither are the Connels. All of the adults were born in
Ireland and both children were born in the capital.
Bridget was a thirty-nine year old grocer with $700 of
real estate property and $100 of personal property. She was
born in Ireland and had foreign parents. In her home were
her children Mary, William, Catharine and Margaret ages
356
eleven, ten, nine and four respectively. Mary, William and
Catharine attended school and all the children were born to
foreign parents in Washington, D.C. Also in the home were
John and William Reed, forty and thirty-four year old
laborers from Ireland.
Mary was a twenty-five year old Irish woman who kept
house. Her thirty-eight year old husband was a blacksmith
from Ireland who had $300 in personal property. Their three
children were Ella, age ten born in Washington, D.C.,
Morris age eight born in the capital, and Minnie age one.
Both Ella and Morris attended school.
357
APPENDIX FIVE: MEDICAL REPORTS FROM COLUMBIA HOSPITAL FOR
WOMEN
Busey's report
Case number two, register number twenty-nine,
admitted on February 8, 1870. This fifty-year-old Irish
woman suffered from Trachoma. By April 22 of 1870 she was
discharged much relieved of her condition.
Case number four, register number 37, admitted March
8, 1870. This thirty five-year old Irish woman let go March
29 improved.
Case number twelve, register number twenty-seven,
admitted on February 14, 1871 for trachoma. This thirtyyear-old Irish woman left on June 20, 1871 much improved.
Case number twenty-three, register number 205,
admitted March 28, 1871. This twenty-one year old Irish
servant left the hospital on May 3, 1872 much improved from
her condition.
Case number twenty, register number 161, admitted on
December 15, 1871. This twelve-year-old girl was quite
obstinate. Discharge date is June 18, 1871. She is of Irish
parentage; pannus recorded in the remarks. (Pannus is
358
chronic inflammation of the corneal surface and, in most
cases, of the conjunctiva of the eye.)
Case number seven, register number fifty, admitted
April 14, 1870 and released the following day. The
thirteen-year old girl was born in New York of Irish
parents. Suffered from herpes and pannus. Discharged as
improved.
Thompson, J. Harry. A.M., M.D., Report of the Columbia
Hospital for Women, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1873.
359
APPENDIX SIX: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON WOMEN
IN CHAPTER FIVE
Sixty-year-old Mary Brown came to the hospital for
treatment for a tumor. She was a sixty-year old married
housekeeper.
Rose Carry was a forty-six year old servant suffering
from consumption.
Nellie Dalton came in to receive medication and
treatment for rheumatism. She was only nineteen and worked
as a servant.
Ellen Donovan, thirty-three, worked as a servant and
was single. She needed medical attention for scorfula
disease.
Ellen Donnelly also had rheumatism. The thirty-four
year old single Irish woman worked as a cook.
Lena Ellis, however, came in feeling ill. She was
treated for a general debility. She was a teacher in
Washington.
Laura Kidwell did not work outside her home. She was
born in New York but her parents were Irish. She was
married and came to the hospital with consumption.
360
Bridget Kinzley was born in Ireland. She worked as a
laundress and also complained of scorfula disease. She was
fifty and single. (Scorfula: tuberculosis of lymph nodes
especially in the neck or swellings of the lymph nodes of
the neck.)
Clara Lawrence was also born in Ireland and worked as
a teacher in Washington. The fifty-six year old Irish
teacher came to the hospital claiming a general debility.
Hannorah O'Neil also complained similarly. She was a
sixty-nine year old housekeeper.
Ella Sheehan complained of nervous spells. She was
single, fifty and worked as a servant. Ella was born in New
York and her parents were born in Ireland.
Kate Thohnan came in with consumption. She was single,
thirty-three and worked as a housekeeper.
361
APPENDIX SEVEN: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON ST. VINCENT
DEPAUL SOCIETY MEMBERS AND THEIR CLIENTS
In 1860, Alfred Shaw was a twenty-eight year old
resident of Ward Three, born in Georgetown. He was married
to twenty-six year old Julia who was born in Ireland. In
his home were Mary E, Catherine and Margaret Walsh, ages
twenty-two, eighteen and sixteen respectively. The oldest
of these was born in Ireland, while the younger two were
born in Washington, D.C. Also in Shaw’s home were sixtyyear old Margaret Mulhare from Ireland and twenty-two year
old Annie Mulhare born in Maryland.
Peter Owens was twenty-five in 1860, born in Ireland
and lived on Massachusetts Avenue between Second and Third
Streets, northeast. He had fifty dollars of personal
property and was married to Irishwoman Mary who also
twenty-five. They lived in Ward Four.
Both Alfred Shaw and Peter Owens were pew holders in
St. Aloysius Catholic Church. Pew holders paid an annual
fee to the church to reserve their seat, so to speak. This
practice was common throughout this period and usually
denoted a person of substantive financial means.
362
In 1860, Mrs. Mary O’Neale also lived in Ward Four.
She was thirty-two years old and could not read or write.
Her husband, thirty-eight year old Cornelius worked as a
laborer. He had fifty dollars in personal property and also
was born in Ireland. Also living in the O’Neale home were
Daniel age nine, John age four and Dennis age two. All were
born in Washington, D.C.
No Mary, thirteen, is listed in
the manuscript census of 1860. Mr. O’Neale died in 1861.
(The spelling of the O’Neill name differs from that found
in the census and other records. The O’Neale’s and the
O’Neill’s are one and the same in this instance.)
In 1870, Daniel O’Neil lived with his Uncle John
Conner, a grocer. Still in Ward Four, he lived at 368 6th
Street west. John and his wife Margaret were both from
Ireland. Dennis lived with Timothy Foley in 1870. In the
Foley household were Timothy Foley, a forty year old
laborer, who had $1500 of real estate property and
Catherine Foley, also from Ireland. The Foley’s had three
children, Matthew age eight, James age five and Timothy
born that August. All the Foley children were born in
Washington, D.C.; Matthew attended school.
In 1850 Daniel and Hanorah Hurley lived in Ward Four,
on the East side of Second West, between F and G Streets
363
north. Daniel was a thirty-one year old brick mason from
Ireland. Hanorah was twenty-six and also born in Ireland.
Their children, Cornelius age five, Frank age three and
Bridget age nine were born in Ireland. Daniel was born in
Washington, D.C., April of 1850. Grandpa Morris was a
laborer born in Ireland and Grandma Joanna was forty-six,
also born in Ireland. Hanorah’s siblings, eighteen year old
Bridget, sixteen year old Margaret and fifteen year old
Peter, also lived in the Hurley home. All of Hanorah’s
siblings were born in Ireland. A group of laborers also
lived in the Hurley home: Michael Grady twenty-one, Peter
Grady nineteen, James Gorman twenty and Shawn McNamee
twenty. George and Michael Briggs, ages seventeen and
sixteen respectively, were cart drivers who also roomed
with the Hurleys.
In 1860, Hanorah still lived with her father, Morris
Nalligan, but they moved down the street to Johnson’s
buildings between G and H Streets and the Government
Printing Office alley.
Hanorah worked as a washerwoman,
could not read or write and had fifteen dollars of personal
property. Baby Frank died in the last decade as did
Hanorah’s mother. None of the children attended school in
364
1860. By 1870 Hanorah and her children disappear from
public records.
365
APPENDIX EIGHT: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON WOMEN IN CHAPTER
SEVEN
Three generations of Mary Oulahan’s lived in Ward Five
near St. Peter’s Catholic Church. Grandmother Oulahan was
sixty-nine from Ireland; mother Mary Oulahan was thirtyeight, also born in Ireland; and daughter Mary Oulahan was
born in Washington, D.C. (1870-1880)
Found other McMenamin’s in ward four--a Margaret age
twenty-nine and a Mary age two in 1870 with Margaret born
in Ireland.
Mary Conner was eleven-years old, from Ward Five and
born in Washington, D.C. but her parents were born in
Ireland. They lived with Morris Conner, a forty-five year
old laborer and thirty-five year old Honora who kept house.
Three younger sisters and two little brothers also lived in
the Conner home. (1870-1880)
Anna Plant was nine and lived in Ward Six with her
Irish mother, Ellen age thirty-six, kept house with Anna’s
father, James Plant, a forty-year old laborer from Ireland.
366
The family maintained real estate worth $800 and had a
personal worth of $300. (1870-1880)
Annie Sheehy was six years old, lived in Ward Seven
and was born in Washington, D.C. She lived with father
Edward Sheehy, a forty-five year old car driver who had
$1500 of real estate and $150 of personal property. Annie’s
parents were born in Ireland. Her mother, Bridget, was
thirty-eight and kept house for the family. Annie’s older
sister Mary was eight and her younger brother Michael was
one. All of the Sheehy children were born in Washington,
D.C. (1870-1880)
Mamie Cullivane’s parents were also from Ireland.
Ellen, forty-one, kept house and her husband was a fortytwo year old contractor. They were a wealthy family with
$50,000 in real estate and $2,000 in personal property.
Annie had a seven-year old brother, John and a three-year
old sister, Mary. All the Cullivane children were born in
Washington. Annie’s grandfather John lived with them. He
was seventy-five. Also in the Cullivane home were seventyfive year old James Cahill and eighteen-year old Mary
Malan. All of these were Irish. (1870-1880)
Josie Fagan lived with her forty-nine year old father
Owen who was an Irish grocer. He had $2,000 of real estate
367
and $500 of personal property. Her mother Margaret was
fifty-six and kept house. Josie was born in Maryland with
an Irish father and an American-born mother. Hugh, an older
brother, was twenty-four and worked as a clerk in his
father’s store. Josie’s older sister Mary was twenty-two
and lived at home as did nineteen-year old Margaret and
seventeen-year old Catharine. John, who was fifteen, and
ten year old sister Josephine attended school. All of the
Fagan children were born in Maryland. (1870-1880)
Mary Graham was born to New Yorker Miles Graham. He
was a thirty-year old Treasury clerk. Mary’s twenty-nine
year old mother, Sarah, was born in Ireland and did not
work for a wage. Mary’s older sister Emma was three. In
1870 Mary was one year old. Emma was born in New York and
Mary in the District of Columbia. Lizzie Rutherford , a
twenty-seven year old milliner from Ireland, lived with the
Grahams.
Julia Casey lived with her father James. He was a
forty-year old Irish painter with $100 of personal
property. Julia’s mother Catherine was thirty-five and kept
house. She, too, was born in Ireland. All of the Casey
children were born in Washington, D.C. James Eden was
368
thirteen; Mary E was ten; James was six; and, Angeline was
just six months old in 1870.
Margaret Noland was two in 1870. She lived with her
forty-one year old Irish father, James. He worked as a
gravel roofer and had $4,000 in real estate and $800 in
personal property. Margaret’s mother, Mary, was born in
Ireland and thirty-two years old. She kept house for her
family. Margaret’s brother Dennis, age eleven, and John,
age nine, attended school. Her younger sister Mary was
four. Each of the Noland children were born in Washington,
D.C. Also in the home is servant Marcella Curtis, a secondgeneration immigrant. (1870-1880)
Mary McCormick could be one of two Mary McCormick’s in
this parish. Both have Irish parents. (1870-1880)
All relations found in USMC, 1870-1880.
369
APPENDIX NINE: OCCUPATION CATEGORIES FROM UNITED STATES
CENSUS, 1890
Agricultural Pursuits: Agricultural Labor, Farmers,
Planters and Overseers, All others in this class.
Professional Service: Musicians and Teachers of music,
Teachers and Professors in Colleges.
Domestic and Personal Service: Boarding, Lodging House
and Hotel Keeper, Housekeepers and Stewardesses,
Janitresses, Laborers, Laundresses, Nurses and Midwives,
Servants and Waitresses.
Trade and Transportation: Bookkeepers and Accountants,
Clerks and Copyists, Hucksters and Peddlers, Merchants and
Dealers (except wholesale), Messengers and Errand and
Office Girls, Packers and Shippers, Saleswomen,
Stenographers and Typewriters, Telegraph and Telephone
Operators.
Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits: Bookbinder,
Box Maker, Gold and Silver Workers, Hat and Cap Makers.
Needle Trades: Dressmakers, Milliners, Seamstresses,
Tailoresses; Paper and Pulp Mill Operatives: Printers,
Lithographers and Pressmen, Shirt, Collar and Cuff Makers.
370
Textile Mill Operatives: Cotton Mill, Silk Mill,
Woolen Mill, other Textile Mill; Tobacco and Cigar Factory
Operatives.
371
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