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

ABSTRACT ...... 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., 1800- 1850...... 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

iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE 1: PERCENT OF IRISH ARRIVING IN THE UNITED STATES , 1820-1850 29

FIGURE 2: POPULATION OF 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 OF WASHINGTON , D.C., 1850-1890 ..... 74

FIGURE 5: IRISH IMMIGRANTS BY WARD , WASHINGTON , D.C., 1850-1880 .. 79

FIGURE 6: IRISH AND FOREIGN WOMEN IN WASHINGTON , D.C., 1850-1880 . 88

FIGURE 7: FEMALE POPULATION IN 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., 1874- 1883 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 100 th 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. 5 Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origin , New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, 61.

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. 7

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.

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. 9 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.

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. 15 Janet Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women’s Emigration from Ireland, 1885-1920 , Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1989, 14.

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 non- industrial, 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 Conzen and Gerber, “The Invention of Ethnicity.” 17 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 middle- class 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 working- class 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 middle- class 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 middle- class 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.” 25 These conditions

13 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%

0% 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 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 Ibid., 193-197. 29 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. 31 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.

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. 41 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.

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 Hutchins and Moore, The National Capital, 157-160. 45 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. 47 Green, Washington , 79.

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. 51 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,

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. 60

57 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

African American 25000 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 McAleer, “Green Streets,” in Cary, Urban Odyssey, 44-45.

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, 1787- 1860 , 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 nineteenth- century 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. 69 Given that

68 Ibid., 135-138. 69 Betty L. Plummer, “A History of Public Health in Washington, D.C. 1800-1890, ”Unpublished dissertation, University of Maryland, 1984, 48.

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 McAleer, “The Green Streets,” 20. 76 Warner, At Peace , 202. 77 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. 79

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.

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. 85 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.

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 insurance- like 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 17 th 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. 92 Ibid., Edward Waite, The Washington Directory, and Congressional and Executive Register for 1850 , Washington:

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 non-

Europeans 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

50 1870 1880 1890

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 mid- century. This community offered bonds of kinship and opportunity that helped ease the transition from post-

Famine 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 well- established 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 Twenty- third 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 Wards in Washington, D.C. 1 2 3 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 Ibid., “to his uncle,” 25 September 1863. 117 Ibid., “to cousin,” 9 June 1874.” 118 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. 123 Miller, Emigrants and Exiles , 406.

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 mid- century. 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

Foreign 3,000

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, foreign- born 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., 1850- 1880

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 USMC, 1850-1880 . 130 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 Ibid. 132 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 Ibid. 134 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 working- class women the means and opportunities for quick employment and housing.

136 Ibid. 137 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 Ibid. 139 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

34 th 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 Ibid. 143 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-to- be. 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 middle- class 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 female- headed 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 Miller, Emigrants and Exiles , 513. 152 Diner, Erin's Daughters , 46. 153 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., 1850- 1880 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 Diner, Erin's Daughters , 52. 156 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. 158 David Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 , Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001, 56.

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 thirty- four. 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. 160 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.

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, 1850- 1871, 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 Canada 170 . 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 Burchell, San Francisco Irish, 79-81. 170 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 Ibid. 172 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 Ibid. 174 Ibid.

130 Figure 13: Nationality of Fathers of Children Born to Irish Mothers, 1860-1880 1800 Ireland 1600

United States 1400

1200 Washington, DC

1000 Other Foreign Country

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 second- generation 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 second- generation 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 American- born 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 Ibid.. 177 Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 51. 178 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. 181

179 Ibid. 180 Report of the Health Officer of the District of Columbia, 1878-1890 . 181 USMC , 1850-1880.

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 Ibid. 183 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. 185 Report of the Health Officer of the District of Columbia, 1878-1890 .

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. 187 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.

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 Ibid. 190 USMC , 1850-1880. 191 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 Degler, At Odds, 130. 193 USMC , 1850-1880. 194 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 Ibid. 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid.. 199 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 Ibid. 201 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 Adapted from Dudden, Serving Women. 204 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 native- born 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. 208 Reports of the Immigration Commission . See Appendix Nine for occupational categories and census definitions. 209 Gabaccia, From the Other Side , 48.

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 “fast- increasing 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. 216 Plain Talk and Friendly Advice to Domestics with Good Counsel on Home Matters , Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1855, 69-70. 217 Ibid.

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 semi- skilled and skilled occupations in Washington, D.C.

218 USMC , 1860. 219 Ibid.

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 working- class 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 pre-

Civil War codes that the city enforced against the African

American population. The city council required a fifty- dollar 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

5,000 Irish

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 Horton, “Days of Jubilee,” in Cary, Urban Odyssey, 71.

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 whole day through. 229

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 USMC , 1850-1870. 232 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 USMC, 1850-1880 . 234 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. 236 Stephen J. Ochs, Academy on the Patowmack: Georgetown Preparatory School, 1789-1927 , Rockville, MD: Georgetown Preparatory School, 1989, 17. 237 USMC , 1860.

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. 239 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.

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. 242 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.

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. 245 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.

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 USMC , 1850. 247 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 USMC , 1850-1880. 250 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 thirty- year 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 USMC , 1850-1880. 254 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 semi- skilled 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. 256 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.

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. 259 Ibid., 357. 260 Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington , Hartford, Connecticut: A.D. Worthington and Co., 1873, 530- 532.

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. 262 Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington , Hartford, Connecticut: A.D. Worthington and Co., 1873, 527- 528, “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.

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. 269 United States National Register, 1865-1879, New York: Scribner and Sons, 1866-1880.

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.C 272 . 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 USMC , 1850. 272 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 USMC , 1850-1880. 274 USMC , 1850-1880. 275 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 14 th 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. 277 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.

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, 1850- 1880.

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 Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 1890, Part III , 526-527.

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-for- service 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. 289 Ibid. 290 Ibid. 291 Morris J. Vogel, “The Transformation of the American Hospital, 1850-1920,” 105-116 in Susan Reverby and David Rosner, Health Care in America, Essays in Social History , Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 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 USMC, 1860. 293 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 twenty- year-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 Ibid. 295 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 non- military 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 Ibid. 299 Ibid.

195 Figure 15: Irish Women Treated at the Douglas Military Hospital by Illness, Washington, D.C., 1862-1864

Injuries/Accidents 4%

Heart Disease 2% Alcohol-Related Debility 2% 14%

Nervous System 3% Contagious Diseases Cancer 24% 1%

Digestive Complaints 17% Breathing Related 2%

Female Related Sexually Transmitted Diseases 15% 16%

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. 303 Ann Dally, Women Under the Knife, A History of Surgery , New York: Routledge, 1992, 97.

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 USMC, Mortality Schedules , 1870. 308 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. 310 Field Hospital Registers, Douglas Military Hospital.

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. Birth Excluding Washington, D.C.

350 Ireland

Other Foreign Birth 300 African American Born in Washington, D.C.

250 African American Born Outside of Washington, D.C.

200

150

100

50

0 Digestive Fevers, Typhoid Sexually Heart Diseases Female-Related Suicide and Nervous Respiratory Alcohol Related Illnesses and Malarial Transmitted Illnesses Insanity System, Brain Related Diseases 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 Ibid. 312 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 “Deaths from Principal Diseases by Age.” 314 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. 317 Ibid. Mary Patterson was thirty-five, a widow born in Ireland. She was maimed and unemployed. Both her parents

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 non- native 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. 319 USMC, 1880 . 320 Minutes of Consulting Board, 1876-1891, Columbia Hospital for Women, President’s Office, Columbia Hospital for Women, Washington, D.C.

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. 322 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.

209 Figure 17: Cancer Deaths of Women by Nativity and Type in Washington, D.C., 1874-1890 180

160

140 Washington, D.C.

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 All Others and its Contents 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 native- born. 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 Ibid., 22-23. 328 Ibid. 329 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. 334

333 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, 1866- 1884," 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, simple- life, the freedom from dissipation and excitement, steady and healthful employment, enforced self-restraint, the freedom from care and responsibility, the plain, wholesome,

344 Ibid. 345 Ibid.

222 nourishing food, comfortable clothing, the open- air 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 smaller than the white. 347

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 Ibid., 373-374. 347 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/09-14- 1998; 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 female- related 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. 359 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

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 Ibid. 372 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 Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct , 191. 374 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 1886 378 .

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 foreign- born 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 Diner, Erin’s Daughters, 114. 385 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 twenty- two 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 foreign- born 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 Report on Crime . 390 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 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887. 394 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 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887. 397 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 Reports of the Immigration Commission, 191. 399 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 Diner, Erin’s Daughters , 113. 402 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 Ibid. 404 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 Ibid., 157. 406 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. 408 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1870 . See Appendix Four for further information regarding these families.

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 Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, 71. 412 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. 414 Ibid. A five dollar fine translates into approximately seventy-five 2002 dollars. All figures are

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-to- hand 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 three- to-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. 418 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.

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 Conduct Fighting Larceny Liqour Violations Other Vagrant Disorderly

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

419 crime against Johanna.

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 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887. 420 "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 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1880 . 422 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 Green, Washington, 251. 424 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 twenty- eight 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. 426 USMC , 1860. 427 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887 and USMC, 1860, 1870 and 1880 . See Appendix Four for further information regarding these families.

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 Arrest Books 1861-1878 and 1887. 432 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 . 434 Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19 th Century American South, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, 198.

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 self- supportive; 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 well- known 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 self- sufficient 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. 443 John O’Grady, Catholic Charities in the United States: History and Problems , Washington, D.C., National Conference of Catholic Charities, 1930, 32.

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 USMC, 1870 . 446 Ibid. 447 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. 449 Ibid. and Sadlier’s Catholic Almanac and Order for the Year of Our Lord, 1880-1890 , Sadliers: New York, 1880- 1890.

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 USMC , 1880. 452 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. 454 Rev. Daniel T. McColgan, A Century of Charity, The First One Hundred Years of the Society of St. Vincent De

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. The Conference

460 Catholic Mirror , February 1, 1879. 461 Parish--St. Vincent de Paul Society, 1861-1871, Box 40, December 1, 1861 and USMC , 1860. 462 Ibid. and USMC 1850-1860.

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 self- supportive.” 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 USMC , 1860-1880. 469 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 “Memorial of the Sisters of Charity .” 471 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. Vincent’s Female Orphan Asylum, Catholic University of America Archives, Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. and USMC , 1850, 1860 and 1870. 476 Webb, The laws of the Corporation of the City of Washington, 296-297.

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. 478 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.

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. 480 “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.

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 self- supporting 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 Ibid. and USMC , 1870. 489 “Charity Box.” 490 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. 492 “Notre Dame Schools,” Catholic Mirror , September 14, 1878. 493 “A Want Supplied,” Catholic Mirror , November 6, 1880.

311 School and St. Mary’s Industrial School provided Irish girls with the training and foundation to become self- supportive 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 “Charity Box.” 495 Ibid. 496 “Our Washington Letter,” Catholic Mirror (1871) Vol. 22.

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 “Charity Box.” 506 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. 508 They adopted

507 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, 759- 78, 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 middle- class, 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 nineteenth- century 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 Cary, Editor, Urban Odyssey , 57. 512 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., 1850- 1880 2500

2000

Married

1500 Single 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 USMC , 1880. 515 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. 517 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.

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 Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 51. 521 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 nineteenth- century 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 working- class. 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 self- awareness. 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, 39. 524 Catholic Mirror , November 29, 1879 and USMC, 1880. 525 Ibid . 526 Brown, “The Women Left Behind,” 759-78.

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 McDannell, Christian Home , 248. 531 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 15 th

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 18 th 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 McDannell, Christian Home , 237. 536 Ibid. 537 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 100 th 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 “The Land League,” Catholic Mirror , January 21, 1882.

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 “have been sent forth to grace society.” 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 Catholic Mirror , April 22, 1871. 542 Ibid. 543 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 Ibid. 545 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% 50+ 40-44 1% 50+ 18 -24 4% 18-24 45 -49 6% 20% 3% 11% 35-39 15% 40 -44 8%

35 -39 25 -29 18% 33%

30-34 25-29 27% 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, 1850- 1871 , 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 thirty- year-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 sixty- year 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 thirty- eight, 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 forty- two 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 seventy- five 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 second- generation 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.

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