I have long lamented the fact that so little is written
about the Irish in Chicago in the mid- nineteenth century. I have wondered what
life was like in Chicago for my great, great grandparents, John Carney/Kearney
and Mary Duffy in the 1870s and 1880s. But as so often happens in life, when
you put something out there, suddenly help appears! I found a reference to
Ellen Skerrett in a Chicago Tribune newspaper article by Ken O’Brien. He described Ellen as “a
walking, talking book of Chicago history.” When O’Brien further stated that Ellen had
spent years researching the Chicago Irish, I was hooked! I had to find out
more.
As I read O’Brien’s article, I saw that while working on her
Master’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1974, Ellen began studying the
part that neighborhood Catholic parishes played in the lives of the immigrant Irish
in Chicago in the nineteenth century. From that time on, she has been
researching, writing and collaborating with other experts on the Irish American
experience in Chicago to produce numerous books. In this post, I will discuss
two of her contributions to the field:
“Nineteenth Century
Chicago Irish: A Social and Political Portrait” (Charles Fanning, Ellen
Skerrett, John Corrigan). Loyola
University Center for Urban Policy, 1980 [title abbreviation: NCCI]
Used by permission of Ellen Skerrett |
Ellen, Skerrett, Editor, At the Crossroads: Old Saint Patrick’s and the Chicago Irish.
Loyola Press, 1997 [title abbreviation: ATC]
From these two works, I learned much about the attitude of
US-born people in Chicago to the immigrant Irish, the poverty that plagued the new
arrivals, the role the parish church played in bringing the newcomers into
mainstream American life, and how the Irish used the Anglo-Saxon government
structure to their advantage. The Irish faced the disadvantages of arriving in
this urban setting with few skills other than subsistence farming and of
following a religion that raised the suspicions of the native Protestant
Chicagoans. Yet, as Ellen discusses in her ATC essay "Creating Sacred Space in an Early Chicago Neighborhood", the Catholic Church provided the Irish with a community that
held them together, ministered to their needs and educated their children, thus
helping the second generation move toward the middle class:
Used by permission of Ellen Skerrett |
"...Irish Catholics in Chicago used the process of church-building to create a place for themselves -- and leave their imprint on the landscape." p 24 ATC
St. Patrick's Church,
Adams & Desplaines Streets, Chicago (Cook County, Illinois, from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS),Wikimedia. |
"...creating sacred space in the city built community and laid the foundation for other important initiatives, especially parochial schools and social services." p. 34 ATC
The reaction of US-born Americans to the stream of
Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century is a familiar one in American
history and is still around today in the immigration debate. Whether newcomers are welcomed or fiercely
rejected by those already here depends on several factors. One is the economy.
If it is booming and jobs are plentiful, then new workers are accepted. But
when jobs are scarce, new arrivals are viewed as a threat. A second factor, discussed by Eileen Durkin, one of the essayists in ATC, in her piece "Saint Patrick's Day at Saint Patrick's Church", is the
number of incoming persons:
“By 1843, they (the Irish immigrants) accounted for only 773
of Chicago’s 7,580 residents (about 10%)
….” p. 5 ATC
These numbers didn’t raise much worry among the native born
population. But in 1845, the Great Famine struck Ireland, and it continued to devastate the land until 1850. Trying to escape starvation, the Irish came to America in huge numbers, and
many settled in Chicago as Ms. Durkin writes:
“After the Famine, almost one in five (about 20%) Chicagoans
were Irish-born.” p. 7 ATC
On the Library of Congress website, I found an advertisement for a "short-lived nativist newspaper" -- American Citizen -- that was published in Boston in 1852. It shows the venom of the nativist position:
As illustrated above, another factor affecting the reception given to immigrants
is the religion of the new arrivals. The large increase in mostly poor,
low-skilled Irish Catholic immigrants
caused fear and anger in the city. No longer were these Catholic newcomers
unnoticed. An editorial in the Chicago Tribune in 1855, quoted by Lawrence J. McCaffrey in his essay "Preserving the Union, Shaping a New Image: Chicago's Irish Catholics and the Civil War", captured the sentiments
of many “nativists” in Chicago:
On the Library of Congress website, I found an advertisement for a "short-lived nativist newspaper" -- American Citizen -- that was published in Boston in 1852. It shows the venom of the nativist position:
A paper
entitled the American patriot, Boston : Published by
J.E. Farwell & Co.,
1852, LC-DIG-ppmsca-07575,
Library of Congress website http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008661538/
|
“Who does not know that the most depraved, debased,
worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the community are
Irish Catholics?” p. 53 ATC
But McCaffrey goes on to say that the Irish showed patriotism and bravery in the Civil War:
“…the Chicago Times acknowledged the bravery and patriotism of Irish immigrants and noted that thousands of Irish Catholics had already rushed to the rescue of their adopted country, leaving ‘peaceful avocations’; to bring ‘terror and dismay’ to the Confederate foe.” p. 64 ATC
Poverty, its causes and effects can be very public: disease-ravaged slums teeming with families in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation, abandoned children in the poor house, increasing numbers of the destitute, the hopelessness of lack of opportunity, domestic violence and drunkenness were not easy to overlook.
But McCaffrey goes on to say that the Irish showed patriotism and bravery in the Civil War:
Col. Jas. A.
Mulligan: Of the Illinois "Irish Brigade",
New York: Currier &
Ives, between 1860 and 1870,
LC-DIG-ppmsca-08408
(digital file from original
print),
Library of Congress website. |
“…the Chicago Times acknowledged the bravery and patriotism of Irish immigrants and noted that thousands of Irish Catholics had already rushed to the rescue of their adopted country, leaving ‘peaceful avocations’; to bring ‘terror and dismay’ to the Confederate foe.” p. 64 ATC
Poverty, its causes and effects can be very public: disease-ravaged slums teeming with families in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation, abandoned children in the poor house, increasing numbers of the destitute, the hopelessness of lack of opportunity, domestic violence and drunkenness were not easy to overlook.
In the eyes of many of the Anglo-Saxon Protestants of
Chicago, the poverty of the Irish and their foreign religion were a double
threat to the public order. The fear that somehow the Pope might try to influence
America’s government was still present when the Irish-American (4th
generation Irish) John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960.
While local newspapers and some people running for office on an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform decried the Irish, the Catholic Church in Chicago set about helping them. As Suellen Hoy describes in her essay "Walking Nuns: Chicago's Irish Sisters of Mercy", in 1846, the Sisters of Mercy arrived in Chicago and began their life-saving ministry, including building Mercy Hospital:
Mercy Hospital,
Chicago Daily
News, Inc.,
photographer, 1909, DN-0007384,
Chicago Daily
News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.
|
By 1849, “the Sisters of Mercy were already operating three
schools, teaching Sunday School at Saint Patrick’s, running an employment
bureau for Irish working women, volunteering at a free dispensary opened by
Rush Medical College, and holding night classes for illiterate adults.” Then “…when a cholera epidemic struck during
the summer of 1849…a large number of Irish died….they [the Sisters] began
nursing cholera victims.” p. 41 ATC
The Irish turned to their parish churches for more than spiritual guidance, education for their children, and medical help. The parish became the foundation, the springboard for the Irish to infiltrate Chicago politics. It was in the parish that Irish politicians began building their power base, to take advantage of the Irishman’s desire to become American. Citizenship was an important step towards reaching the goal. And with citizenship came the right to vote. The influx of Irish voters guaranteed a majority voting the Irish ticket in Ward elections. And so control was gradually wrested away from the old Anglo-Saxon power elite. (pgs. 2-3 NCCI)
April 10, 2011, Flickr,
Creative Commons.
|
The Irish turned to their parish churches for more than spiritual guidance, education for their children, and medical help. The parish became the foundation, the springboard for the Irish to infiltrate Chicago politics. It was in the parish that Irish politicians began building their power base, to take advantage of the Irishman’s desire to become American. Citizenship was an important step towards reaching the goal. And with citizenship came the right to vote. The influx of Irish voters guaranteed a majority voting the Irish ticket in Ward elections. And so control was gradually wrested away from the old Anglo-Saxon power elite. (pgs. 2-3 NCCI)
But getting people to vote and getting into office was just the
first part of the Irish-American politicos’strategy. The new Ward aldermen knew
their way around the Anglo-Saxon system of government from all the years they
and/or their parents had spent living in Ireland and dealing with British
colonialism, a knowledge that the other immigrant groups to America lacked. (p.
2, NCCI) Using the boss system or machine politics, (and some would say abusing their
political power), the aldermen provided relief to their communities:
“…the poor obtained food, coal, and jobs; Christmas turkeys
and Easter hams found their way to empty tables; and the financial burden
associated with baptisms, weddings, and wakes was lightened by contributions
from the ward boss or his precinct captain.” (p. 14, NCCI)
As you can see, these two histories ̶
one edited and one co-written by Ellen
Skerrett ̶ give us a
clear picture of the life of the Irish in nineteenth century Chicago: their
struggle to overcome prejudice, poverty, lack of a voice in the new land, and
the role the Catholic Church played in both ameliorating the burdens of the
first generation and moving the second generation into the American mainstream.
But there is much more to discover in the two books.
Finley Peter
Dunne, "Mr. Dooley", Artist: Ward,
Leslie Matthew, aka SPY, Lithograph
July 27, 1905,
CCNY Art Collection, Flickr, public domain.
|
“Between 1893 and 1900, some three hundred Dooley pieces
appeared ….Taken together, they form a coherent body of work, in which a vivid,
detailed world comes into existence—a self-contained immigrant/ethnic culture
with its own customs, ceremonies, ‘sacred sites,’ social pecking order, heroes,
villains, and victims.” p. 72 ATC
As you can see, if you want a glimpse into what life was
like for the Irish of Chicago in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, you will
want to read Ellen Skerrett’s books. Since they are both out of print, you will
need to use interlibrary loan, (ILL) or see if you can locate one on ebay.com,
as I did.
Categories: genealogy tools