From Ireland to Boston and no Further

Today is Saint Patrick's Day (Slainte!), and as everyone knows, Boston is one of the most Irish cities in the United States. St. Paddy's is celebrated here with an almost religious fervor, on a par with Mardi Gras in New Orleans or New Year's Eve in Times Square.

But the Irish whose descendants shower Boston Common with green beer every March 17th didn't just appear in Massachusetts out of nowhere. Starting in the colonial period and continuing into the early 20th century, thousands of Irish fled the wars, poverty and famine of their homeland for the relative security of North America.

As a relatively small city with little industry to employ unskilled laborers, Boston was not the first place many of these refugees would have chosen to call home. It was simply a place to make port before heading west to find jobs and buy land. But for the Irish immigrants who had enough money to get to the United States and no further, Boston was the end of the line. By 1890, Massachusetts was home to 260,000 Irish immigrants-- over a quarter of a million people-- and the majority lived in the greater Boston area.

Like New York city, Boston had Federal offices and officials who were tasked with receiving, processing, and vetting this flood of humanity. Newly arrived, confused and disoriented, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans and others were packed into immigration stations and "inspected" to determine whether or not to allow them to enter the country, often on the basis of physical and mental factors.

Unlike New York's Ellis Island, however, Boston-bound immigrants were not received in a single, centralized hub, but rather through isolated stations on Long Wharf, in East and South Boston, and in Charlestown, adding to the confusion. And once these new arrivals were deemed fit to enter the country, Federal officials often took no more notice of them, leaving "bewildered immigrants" to spill out into the street with nowhere to go and no idea what to do next.

I set out to briefly write about a small glimpse of Boston's immigrant past, and ended up covering only a fraction of what I intended. There will be much more to come. But if you want to read more on the subject  now you can do so here, at the website of the exotically-named Gjenvik-Gjonvik Archives, which is actually in Woodstock, Georgia.